"One thing occurs to me, Hunter. You and six or eight men take your carbines and go up-stream with a dozen horses until you come to the rifle-pits. Be all ready. If I get clear through you won't hear any row, but if they sight or hear me before I get through, then, of course, there will be the biggest kind of an excitement, and you'll hear the shooting. The moment it begins, give a yell; fire your guns, go whooping up the stream with the horses as though the whole crowd were trying to cut out that way, but get right back. The excitement will distract them and help me. Now, good-by, and good luck to you, crowd." "Ray, will you have a nip before you try it? You must be nearly used up after this day's work." And he held out his flask to him. "No. I had some hot coffee just ten minutes ago, and I feel like a four-year-old. I'm riding new colors; didn't you know it? By jove!" he added, suddenly, "this is my first run under the Preakness blue." Even then and there he thought too quickly to speak her name. "Now then, some of you crawl out to the south edge of the timber with me, and lie flat in the prairie and keep me in sight as long as you can." He took one more look at his revolver. "I'm drawing to a bob-tail. If I fail, I'll bluff; if I fill, I'll knock spots out of any threes in the Cheyenne outfit." Three minutes more and the watchers at the edge of the timber have seen him, leading Dandy by the bridle, slowly, stealthily, creeping out into the darkness; a moment the forms of man and horse are outlined against the stars: then are swallowed up in the night. Hunter and the sergeants with him grasp their carbines and lie prone upon the turf, watching, waiting. In the bivouac is the stillness of death. Ten soldiers--carbines in hand--mounted on their unsaddled steeds are waiting in the darkness at the upper rifle-pits for Hunter's signal. If he shouts, every man is to yell and break for the front. Otherwise, all are to remain quiet. Back at the watch-fire under the bank Wayne is squatting, watch in one hand, pistol in the other. Near by lie the wounded, still as their comrades just beyond,--the dead. All around among the trees and in the sand pits up- and down-stream, fourscore men are listening to the beating of their own hearts. In the distance, once in a while, is heard the yelp of coyote or the neigh of Indian pony. In the distance, too, are the gleams of Indian fires, but they are beyond the positions occupied by the besieging warriors. Darkness shrouds them. Far aloft the stars are twinkling through the cool and breezeless air. With wind, or storm, or tempest, the gallant fellow whom all hearts are following would have something to favor, something to aid; but in this almost cruel stillness nothing under God can help him,--nothing but darkness and his own brave spirit. "If I get through this scrape in safety," mutters Wayne between his set teeth, "the --th shall never hear the last of this work of Ray's."