his arm. "It
was Iron Hand."

"Iron Hand!" echoed Bob, lifting his eyebrows. "Brules, then. It will
be a long chase. What did he say?"

"Why, we talked pretty fast," stammered Bucks. "He spoke about the
venison but never said a blamed word about my fixing his arm."

Bob laughed as he struck his horse and galloped on to pass the news to
Stanley. A detail was left to clear the cotton-woods across the creek
and guard the railroad men against possible attack while clearing the
wreck. The body of the unfortunate brakeman was brought across the
bridge and laid in the baggage car and a tent was pitched to serve as
a temporary station for Bucks.

While this was being done, Bob Scott, who had ridden farthest up the
creek, appeared leading his horse and talking to a white man who was
walking beside him. He had found the conductor of the wrecked train,
Pat Francis, who, young though he was, had escaped the Indians long
enough to reach a cave in the creek bank and whose rifle shots Bucks
had heard, while Francis was holding the Sioux at bay during the
fight. The plucky conductor, who was covered with dust, was greeted
with acclamations.

"He claims," volunteered Scott, speaking to Stanley, "he could have
stood them off all day."

Francis's eyes fell regretfully on the dead brakeman. "If that boy had
minded what I said and come with me he would have been alive now."

The wrecking train, with a gang of men from Medicine Bend, arrived
late in the afternoon, and at supper-time a courier rode in from
Stanley's scouting party with despatches for General Park. Stanley
reported the chase futile. As Bob Scott had predicted, the Brules had
burned the ranch and craftily scattered the moment they reached the
sand-hills. Instead of a single trail to follow, Stanley found fifty.
Only his determination to give the Indians a punishment that they
would remember held the pursuing party together, and three days
afterward he fought a battle with the wily raiders, surprised in a
canyon on the Frenchman River, which, though indecisive, gave Iron
Hand's band a wholesome respect for the stubborn engineer.

The train service under the attacks of the Indians thus repeated, fell
into serious demoralization, and an armed guard of regular soldiers
rode all trains for months after the Goose Creek attack. Bucks was
given a guard for his own lonely and exposed position in the person of
Bob Scott, the man of all men the young operator would have wished