t grinned at the cavalrymen as they told the
story. He assured them that they had got off lightly, and that if
Bucks's signals had not alarmed the little war-party they might have
carried away scalps as well as horses.

"We shall be in luck if we don't hear more of those fellows," said he
to Bucks afterward. There was now manifestly nothing to do but to go
in, and later in the day a freight train was flagged and the whole
party, with Scuffy and the hounds, returned to Casement's camp. Scott
sent his dogs thence to the ranch in Medicine Bend, and at Bucks's
urgent request Scuffy was sent with them to await his own return to
head-quarters.

CHAPTER IX

The foray of the Indians at the Spider Water Bridge proved, as Bob
Scott had feared, only a forerunner of active hostilities. Casement
had already taken all necessary measures of defence. His construction
camp was moved steadily westward, though sometimes inside the picket
lines of troops, despite the warring Indians and the difficulties of
his situation. Alarms, however, were continual and the graders, many
of whom were old soldiers, worked at all times with their muskets
stacked on the dump beside them. In the construction camp Bucks saw
also many negroes, and at night the camp-fires of their quarters were
alive with the singing and dancing of the old plantation life in the
South.

While waiting for Stanley's inspection of the grading and track-laying,
Bucks relieved at times the camp operator, whose principal business
was the rushing of emphatic demands to Omaha for material and
supplies.

During other intervals Bucks found a chance to study the system that
underlay the seemingly hopeless confusion of the construction work.
The engineers moving far in advance had located the line, and
following these came the graders and bridge- and culvert-builders,
cutting through the hills, levelling the fills, and spanning the
streams and water-ways with trestles and wooden bridges, miles in
advance of the main army. Behind these came Casement's own big camp
with the tiemen, the track-layers, and the ballast gangs.

Every Eastern market was drawn upon for materials, and when these
reached Omaha, trains loaded with them were constantly pushed to the
front. The chief spiker of the rail gang, taking a fancy to Bucks,
invited him to go out with the rail-layers one day, and Bucks took a
temporary commission as spike-dropper.

To do this, he followed Dancing up the track