ttonwoods, men had been assigned their
stations and bidden to find cover for themselves without delay. Many
burrowed in the soft and yielding soil, throwing the earth forward in
front of them. Others utilized fallen trees or branches. Some two or
three piled saddles and blanket rolls into a low barricade, and all,
while crouching about their work, watched the feathered warriors as they
steadily completed their big circle far out on the prairie. Bullets came
whistling now fast and frequently, nipping off leaves and twigs and
causing many a fellow to duck instinctively and to look about him,
ashamed of his dodge, yet sure of the fact that time had been in the
days of the most hardened veteran of the troop when he, too, knew what
it was to shrink from the whistle of hostile lead. It would be but a
moment or two, they all understood, before the foe would decide on the
next move; then every man would be needed.

Meantime, having stationed Field on the north front, with orders to note
every movement of the Sioux, and having assigned Clayton to the minor
duty of watching the south front and the flanks, Ray was moving cheerily
among his men, speeding from cover to cover, suggesting here, helping
there, alert, even joyous in manner. "We couldn't have a better roost,
lads," he said. "We can stand off double their number easy. We can hold
out a week if need be, but you bet the major will be reaching out after
us before we're two days older. Don't waste your shots. Coax them close
in. Don't fire at a galloping Indian beyond three hundred yards. It's
waste of powder and lead."

Cheerily, joyously they answered him, these his comrades, his soldier
children, men who had fought with him, many of their number, in a dozen
fields, and men who would stand by him, their dark-eyed little captain,
to the last. Even the youngest trooper of the fifty seemed inspired by
the easy, laughing confidence of the lighter hearts among their number,
or the grim, matter of fact pugnacity of the older campaigners. It was
significant, too, that the Indians seemed so divided in mind as to the
next move. There was loud wrangling and much disputation going on in
that savage council to the north. Stabber's braves and Lame Wolf's
followers seemed bitterly at odds, for old hands in the fast-growing
rifle pits pointed out on one side as many as half a dozen of the
former's warriors whom they recognized and knew by sight, while Ray,
studying the shifting concourse