ter, and was fortunate
enough merely to cripple a pony with one of them. The kicking,
screaming, little beast interposed a momentary but effective barrier
between the sheriff and his foes. A rattling fire from one of his
six-shooters into the brown of the hesitating charge broke it. The
self-induced excitement ebbed, and the Indians swerved and swept on by.

On the other side, the outlaw had also managed to kill a pony within a
few feet of the impromptu breastwork, and, direct riding-down being thus
prevented in front, he was lying stretched on his side, coolly letting
off first one revolver then the other in the face of imminent ruin.
Alfred's attentions, however, and the defection of the right wing, drove
these savages, too, into flight. Miraculously, neither man was more than
scratched, though their clothes and the ground about them showed the
marks of bullets. Strangely enough, too, the outlaw's other pony stood
unhurt at a little distance whither the rush of the charge had carried
him. Alfred arose and drove him back. Then both men made a triangular
breastwork of the two dead horses and their saddles.

"Cyan't do that more'n once," observed the outlaw, taking a long breath.

"They don't want her more'n once," replied Alfred, sagely.

The men tried to take score. This was not easy. Out of the hundred and
twelve cartridges with which they had started the fight, there remained
sixty-eight. That meant they had expended thirty-nine in the last charge
alone. As near as they could make out, they had accounted for eight of
the enemy, four in the melee just finished. Besides, there were a number
of ponies down. At first glance this might seem like poor shooting. It
was not. A rapidly moving figure is a difficult rifle-mark with the best
of conditions. In this case the conditions would have rendered an
Easterner incapable of hitting a feather pillow at three yards.

And now began the most terrible part of this terrible day. A dozen of
the warriors dismounted, made a short circle to the left, and
disappeared in a thin growth of dried grasses, old mulliens, and
stunted, scattered brush barely six inches high. There seemed hardly
cover enough to hide a man, and yet the dozen were as completely
swallowed up as though they had plunged beneath the waters of the sea.
Only occasionally the top of a grass tuft or a greasewood shivered. It
became the duty of Alfred and his companion to shoot suddenly and
accurately at these motion