Darkness has settled down in the shadowy Wyoming valley. By the light of a tiny fire under the bank some twenty forms can be seen stretched upon the sand,--they are wounded soldiers. A little distance away are nine others, shrouded in blankets: they are the dead. Huddled in confused and cowering group are a few score horses, many of them sprawled upon the sand motionless; others occasionally struggle to rise or plunge about in their misery. Crouching among the timber, vigilant but weary, dispersed in a big, irregular circle around the beleaguered bivouac, some sixty soldiers are still on the active list. All around them, vigilant and vengeful, lurk the Cheyennes. Every now and then the bark as of a coyote is heard,--a yelping, querulous cry,--and it is answered far across the valley or down the stream. There is no moon; the darkness is intense, though the starlight is clear, and the air so still that the galloping hoofs of the Cheyenne ponies far out on the prairie sound close at hand. "That's what makes it hard," says Ray, who is bending over the prostrate form of Captain Wayne. "If it were storming or blowing, or something to deaden the hoof-beats, I could make it easier; but it's the only chance." The only chance of what? When the sun went down upon Wayne's timber citadel, and the final account of stock was taken for the day, it was found that with one-fourth of the command, men and horses, killed and wounded, there were left not more than three hundred cartridges, all told, to enable some sixty men to hold out until relief could come against an enemy who encircled them on every side, and who had only to send over to the neighboring reservation--forty miles away--and get all the cartridges they wanted. Mr. ---- would let their friends have them to kill "buffalo," though Mr. ---- knew there wasn't a buffalo left within four hundred miles.