Also, the savages had by now taken the measure of their white opponents.
They knew they had to deal with experience. Suspicion of this must have
been aroused by the practised manner in which the men had hobbled their
horses and had assumed the easiest posture of defence. The idea would
have gained strength from their superior marksmanship; but it would have
become absolute certainty from the small detail that, in all this hurl
and rush of excitement, they had fired but five shots, and those at
close range. It is difficult to refrain from banging away for general
results when so many marks so loudly present themselves. It is equally
fatal to do so. A few misses are a great encouragement to a savage, and
seem to breed their like in subsequent shooting. They destroy your own
coolness and confidence, and they excite the enemy an inch nearer to
that dead-line of the lust of fighting, beyond which prudence gives
place to the fury of killing. An Indian is the most cautious and wily
of fighters before he goes mad: and the most terribly reckless after. In
a few moments four of their number had passed to the happy
hunting-grounds, and they were left, no nearer their prey, to
contemplate the fact.

The tornado moved. It swept at the top jump of ponies used to the chase
of the buffalo, as sudden and terrible and imminent as the loom of a
black cloud on the wings of storm, and, like it, seeming to gather speed
and awfulness as it rushed nearer. Each rider bent low over his pony's
neck and shot--a hail of bullets, which, while most passed too high,
nevertheless shrieked and spun through the volume of coarser sound. The
ponies stretched their necks and opened their red mouths and made their
little feet go with a rapidity that twinkled as bewilderingly as a
picket-fence passing a train. And the light snow swirled and eddied
behind them.

The two men behind the dead horse were not deceived by this excitement
into rising to their knees. They realised that this was the critical
point in the fight, and they shot hard and fast, concentrating all the
energy of their souls into the steady glare of their eyes over the
sights of the smoking rifles. In a moment the foremost warrior was
trying to leap his pony at the barrier before him, but the little animal
refused the strange jump and shied to the left, cannoning and plunging
into the stream of braves rushing in on that side. Into the confusion
Alfred emptied the last two shots of his Winches