trooper came up at the run, Boynton's big bay trotting at
his heels. The lieutenant was in saddle in a second. "Are you agreed?"
he asked.

"Why, they'll say we began it, lieutenant. They'll swear they were only
coming to talk. They've always been accustomed to come here whenever
they wanted to. We have only a handful of men; they've got a thousand
fighting braves within a day's call. My God! I can't risk my family!"

"You've done that already with your confounded temporizing. Look there,
man. It's too late now. There's where I would have held them, along the
creek bank. Now they're swarming across."

Singing, shouting, brandishing lance and rifle, their barbaric ornaments
gleaming in the frosty moonlight, some of the younger men darting to and
fro on their swift ponies, mad with excitement, on came the surging
crowd, led by the majestic figure of the big chief, jogging straight on
at the slow, characteristic amble of the Indian pony, his war-bonnet
trailing to the ground. From far and near, up and down the valley, dim,
ghostly, shadowy horsemen came darting to join the array. Close behind
Red Dog some rabid warrior began a wild war chant, and others took it
up. Somewhere along the throng a tom-tom began its rapid, monotonous
thump, and here, there, and everywhere the rattles played their weird,
stirring accompaniment.

"Well, by God, McPhail! you may let them ride over you and yours, but
they can't ride over me and mine without a fight," said Boynton, now
wild with wrath. "That whole force will be swarming through the premises
in five minutes. Quick, Davies!" he cried. "Forward as skirmishers!
Cover that front! Ten men will do." And without further command,
scorning prescribed order of formation, but with the quick intuition of
the American soldier,--the finest skirmisher in the world,--a little
party of troopers watching at the corral gate, sprang forth into the
moonlight and, opening out like a fan, carbines at trail or on the
shoulder, forward at full run they dashed, spreading as rapidly as they
possibly could to irregular intervals of something like ten yards from
man to man, and presently there interposed between the coming host and
the black group of buildings at their back this thin line of dismounted
men, halted in silence to await the orders of the tall, slender
subaltern officer, who, afoot like themselves, now stood some thirty
paces in rear of their centre, calmly confronting the advancing Indians.
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