ear, and the air so still that the galloping
hoofs of the Cheyenne ponies far out on the prairie sound close at hand.

"That's what makes it hard," says Ray, who is bending over the prostrate
form of Captain Wayne. "If it were storming or blowing, or something to
deaden the hoof-beats, I could make it easier; but it's the only
chance."

The only chance of what?

When the sun went down upon Wayne's timber citadel, and the final
account of stock was taken for the day, it was found that with
one-fourth of the command, men and horses, killed and wounded there were
left not more than three hundred cartridges, all told, to enable some
sixty men to hold out until relief could come against an enemy
encircling them on every side, and who had only to send over to the
neighboring reservation--forty miles away--and get all the cartridges
they wanted. Mr. ---- would let their friends have them to kill buffalo,
though Mr. ---- and their friends knew there wasn't a buffalo left
within four hundred miles.

They _could_ cut through, of course, and race up the valley to find the
--th, but they would have to leave the wounded and the dismounted
behind,--to death by torture,--so that ended the matter. Only one thing
remained. In some way--by some means--word must be carried to the
regiment. The chances were ten to one against the couriers slipping out.
Up and down the valley, out on the prairie on both sides of the stream,
the Cheyennes kept vigilant watch. They had their hated enemies in a
death-grip, and only waited the coming of other warriors and more
ammunition to finish them--as the Sioux had finished Custer. _They_
knew, though the besieged did not, that, the very evening before, the
--th had marched away westward, and were far from their comrades. All
they had to do was to prevent any one's escaping to give warning of the
condition of things in Wayne's command. All, therefore, were on the
alert, and of this there was constant indication. The man or men who
made the attempt would have to run the gauntlet. The one remaining scout
who had been employed for such work refused the attempt as simply
madness. He had lived too long among the Indians to dare it, yet Wayne
and Ray and Dana and Hunter, and the whole command, for that matter,
knew that some one _must_ try it. Who was it to be?

There was no long discussion. Wayne called the sulking scout a damned
coward, which consoled him somewhat, but didn't help matters. Ray had
been a