g in and out
between the dog-holes. Their riders shot and yelled wildly, but none of
the bullets went lower than ten feet. The circle of their advance looked
somehow like the surge shoreward of a great wave, and the similarity was
heightened by the nodding glimpses of the light eagles' feathers in
their hair.

The run across the honey-combed plain was hazardous--even to Indian
ponies--and three went down kicking, one after the other. Two of the
riders lay stunned. The third sat up and began to rub his knee. The pony
belonging to Miss Caldwell, becoming frightened, threw itself and lay on
its side, kicking out frantically with its hind legs.

At the proper moment Alfred cocked his rifle and rose swiftly to his
knees. As he did so, the mound on which he had been kneeling caved into
the hole beneath it, and threw him forward on his face. With a furious
curse, he sprang to his feet and levelled his rifle at the thick of the
press. The scheme worked. In a flash every savage disappeared behind his
pony, and nothing was to be seen but an arm and a leg. The band divided
on either hand as promptly as though the signal for such a drill had
been given, and swept gracefully around in two long circles until it
reined up motionless at nearly the exact point from which it had
started on its imposing charge. Alfred had not fired a shot.

He turned to the girl with a short laugh.

She lay face upward on the ground, staring at the sky with wide-open,
horror-stricken eyes. In her brow was a small blackened hole, and under
her head, which lay strangely flat against the earth, the grasses had
turned red. Near her hand lay the heavy Colt's 44.

Alfred looked at her a minute without winking. Then he nodded his head.

"It was 'cause I fell down that hole--she thought they'd got me!" he
said aloud to himself. "Pore little gal! She hadn't ought to have did
it!"

He blushed deeply, and, turning his face away, pulled down her skirt
until it covered her ankles. Then he picked up his Winchester and fired
three shots. The first hit directly back of the ear one of the stunned
Indians who had fallen with his horse. The second went through the other
stunned Indian's chest. The third caught the Indian with the broken leg
between the shoulders just as he tried to get behind his struggling
pony.

Shortly after, Billy Knapp and the wagon-train came along.

II

BILLY'S TENDERFOOT

During one spring of the early seventies Billy Knapp ran