pon the air, over to the northward and apparently
just at the base of the line of bluffs, the yelps and prolonged bark of
the coyote. It died away, and then, far on to the southward, somewhere
about the slopes where the road climbed the divide, there came an
answering yelp, shrill, querulous, and prolonged.

"Know what that is, boys?" queried Phillips.

"Coyotes, I s'pose," answered one of the men,--a comparatively new hand.

"Coyotes are scarce in this neighborhood nowadays. Those are Sioux
signals, and we are surrounded. No man in this crowd could get out now.
Ralph ain't out a moment too soon. God speed him! If Farron don't owe
his life and little Jessie's to that boy's bravery, it'll be because
nobody could get to them in time to save them. Why _didn't_ he send her
here?"

Bad as was the outlook, anxious as were all their hearts, what was their
distress to what it would have been had they known the truth,--that
Warner lay only a mile up the trail, stripped, scalped, gashed, and
mutilated! Still warm, yet stone dead! And that all alone, with little
Jessie in his arms, Sergeant Wells had ridden down that trail into the
very midst of the thronging foe! Let us follow him, for he is a soldier
who deserves the faith that Farron placed in him.

For a few moments after leaving the ranch the sergeant rides along at
rapid lope, glancing keenly over the broad, open valley for any sign
that might reveal the presence of hostile Indians, and then hopefully at
the distant light at the station. He holds little Jessie in firm but
gentle clasp, and speaks in fond encouragement every moment or two. She
is bundled like a pappoose in the blanket, but her big, dark eyes look
up trustfully into his, and once or twice she faintly smiles. All seems
so quiet; all so secure in the soldier's strong clasp.

"That's my brave little girl!" says the sergeant. "Papa was right when
he told us down at Russell that he had the pluckiest little daughter in
all Wyoming. It isn't every baby that would take a night ride with an
old dragoon so quietly."

He bends down and softly kisses the thick, curling hair that hangs over
her forehead. Then his keen eye again sweeps over the valley, and he
touches his charger's flank with the spur.

"_Looks_ all clear," he mutters, "but I've seen a hundred Indians spring
up out of a flatter plain than that. They'll skulk behind the smallest
kind of a ridge, and not show a feather until one runs right in among
th