ced now with the flying ponies of
the Indians, and the hills echoed with ominous cries.

Without a word of warning, the few fleeing men who had been working
too far from camp to reach it in safety were mercilessly cut down.
Their comrades under arms, with an answering cry of defiance poured a
volley of cartridge balls into the thin, black circle that rode ever
closer and closer to the muzzles of the muskets. Jack Casement and his
brother Dan recklessly urged their men to the most advanced posts of
defence, and from behind scrapers, wagons, flat cars, and friendly
hillocks the railroad men poured a galling fire into their active
foe.

The Indians, seeking with unerring instinct the weakest point in the
defence, converged in hundreds upon the long string of box-cars that
made up the construction train at the rear of the camp, where Stanley,
extending his few men in a resolute skirmish line, endeavored to
prevent the savages from scalping the non-combatant cooks and burning
the sleeping-cars. Bucks saw, conspicuous in the attack, a slender
Sioux chief riding a strong-limbed, fleet pony with a coat of
burnished gold and as much filled with the fire of the fight as his
master was. Riding hither and thither and swinging a long, heavy
musket like a marshal's baton, the Sioux warrior, almost everywhere at
once, urged his men to the fighting, and the fate of the few white men
they were able to cut down or scalp before Stanley could cover the
line of box-cars seemed to add vigor to their onslaught.

Stanley himself, attacked by ten braves for every man he could muster
at that point with a gun, dashed up and down the old wagon roads along
the right of way, a conspicuous target for the Indians. His hat, in
the melee, had disappeared, and, swinging a heavy Colt's revolver,
which the Indians shrank from with a healthy instinct of danger, he
pressed back the hungry red line again and again, supported only by
such musketry fire as the men crouching under, within, and between the
box-cars could offer.

Wherever he rode his wily foes retreated, but they closed in
constantly behind him, and one brave, more daring than his fellows,
succeeded in setting fire to a box-car. A shout of triumph rose from
the circling horsemen, but it was short-lived. Stanley, wheeling like
a flash, gave chase to the incendiary. The Sioux rode for his life,
but his pony's pace was no match for the springing strides of
Stanley's American horse.

For an ins