a dozen anxious, pleading faces beyond
the steps. His hand shook in spite of himself, and he knew he could not
open and read it in their presence. "One moment," he said, his heart
going out to them in sympathy as well as dread. "You shall hear in one
moment," and turned aside into the little army parlor.

But he could not turn from his wife and child. They followed and stood
studying his pale face as he read the fateful words that told so little,
yet so much:--

Reached Ray just in time. Sharp affair. Dr. Waller will have to
come at once, as Tracy goes on with us to rescue stage people at
Dry Fork. Better send infantry escort and all hospital attendants
that can be possibly spared; also chaplain. Sergeants Burroughs and
Wing, Corporal Foot and Troopers Denny, Flood, Kerrigan and
Preusser killed. Many wounded--Lieutenant Field seriously.

WEBB.

CHAPTER X

"I'LL NEVER GO BACK"

A sharp affair indeed was that of this September day!--a fight long
talked of on the frontier if soon forgotten in "the States." Obedient to
his orders to push to the relief of the imperilled party on the Dry
Fork, Ray had made good time to Moccasin Ridge, even though saving
horses and men for the test of the later hours. Well he knew his march
would be watched by some of Stabber's band, but little did he dream at
starting that Indian strategy would take the unusual form of dropping
what promised to be a sure thing, leaving the people at the stage
station to the guardianship of less than a dozen braves, and launching
out with a big band to aid a little one in attack on one lone detachment
that might not come at all. But Lame Wolf reasoned that the people
penned at the stage station were in no condition to attempt escape. They
were safe whenever he chose to return to them, and Lame Wolf knew this
of Stabber--that he had long been a hanger-on about the military
reservations, that he had made a study of the methods of the white
chiefs, that he was able to almost accurately predict what their course
would be in such event as this, and that Stabber had recently received
accessions whose boast it was that they had information at first hand of
the white chief's plans and intentions. Stabber had sent swift runners
to Lame Wolf urging him to bring his warriors to aid him in surrounding
the first troops sent forth from Frayne. Stabber had noted, year after