bleak day in November. He pulled out of Plum Creek with a sharp
warning ringing in his ears. Indians were on the war-path, and trouble
was more likely than not ahead. Lieutenant Flowers, assistant division
agent, was on the box with him, and within the coach were six well-armed
passengers.

Half the run had been covered, when Will's experienced eye detected
the promised red men. Before him lay a stream which must be forded. The
creek was densely fringed with underbrush, and along this the Indians
were skulking, expecting to cut the stage off at the only possible
crossing.

Perhaps this is a good place to say a word concerning the seemingly
extraordinary fortune that has stood by Will in his adventures. Not
only have his own many escapes been of the hairbreadth sort, but he has
arrived on the scene of danger at just the right moment to rescue others
from extinction. Of course, an element of luck has entered into these
affairs, but for the most part they simply proved the old saying that an
ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. Will had studied
the plains as an astronomer studies the heavens. The slightest
disarrangement of the natural order of things caught his eye. With the
astronomer, it is a comet or an asteroid appearing upon a field whose
every object has long since been placed and studied; with Will, it was
a feathered headdress where there should have been but tree, or rock, or
grass; a moving figure where nature should have been inanimate.

When seen, those things were calculated as the astronomer calculates the
motion of the objects that he studies. A planet will arrive at a given
place at a certain time; an Indian will reach a ford in a stream in
about so many minutes. If there be time to cross before him, it is a
matter of hard driving; if the odds are with the Indian, that is another
matter.

A less experienced observer than Will would not have seen the skulking
redskins; a less skilled frontiersman would not have apprehended their
design; a less expert driver would not have taken the running chance for
life; a less accurate marksman would not have picked off an Indian with
a rifle while shooting from the top of a swinging, jerking stagecoach.

Will did not hesitate. A warning shout to the passengers, and the whip
was laid on, and off went the horses full speed. Seeing that they had
been discovered, the Indians came out into the open, and ran their
ponies for the ford, but the stage was th