Two minutes more and the entire party of blue-coats were spurring swiftly northward up the winding gorge, the pack-horses lumbering alongside. Eagerly Dean and Bruce in the lead looked right and left for a game trail leading up the slope, for well they knew that the moment their reinforcements came the warriors would dash into the ravine and, finding their antagonists fled, would pursue along the banks. It would never do to be caught in such a trap. A gallop of a quarter of a mile and, off to the right, a branch ravine opened out to higher ground, and into this the leaders dove and, checking speed, rode at the trot until the ascent grew steep. Five minutes more and they were well up toward the head of the gulch and presently found themselves nearly on a level with the hillsides about them. Here, too, were scattered pine-trees and a few scrub-oak. The timber, then, was close at hand. Signaling halt to the climbing column, Dean and Bruce, springing from saddle, scrambled up the bank to their right and peered cautiously back down over the tumbling waves of the foothills, and what they saw was enough to blanch the cheek of even veteran Indian fighters. Far over to the east, beyond an intervening ridge and under the dun cloud of dust, the earth was black for miles with herds of running buffalo. Far down to the southeast, here, there and everywhere over the land, the slopes were dotted with little knots of Indian braves--they could be nothing else--all riding like mad, coming straight toward them. Machpealota probably had launched his whole force on the trail of the luckless troopers. CHAPTER XIX.