uld risk a night march through the sand-hills, infested with a
thousand and more Indians.

Now the corral and the soldiers waited for morning. At first daylight
the reveille was sounded in the army camp. This was military
regulations, but gave the Indians warning.

The shrill notes pealed far among the slumberous dunes. The Kiowas and
Comanches, leaping to their feet, stared amazed. Down there, at the
wagon corral, two hundred blue-coated American soldiers had grown
over-night! Musket barrels faintly gleamed, two score fresh wagon-tops
glimmered, figures hastened to and fro, there was clatter of arms.

Wah! These were no traders. They were warriors--American warriors.
That made a different proposition. How had they come, and from where?

"We will go," the chiefs decided. "The Mexican soldiers may be coming,
too, and we shall be caught between."

So they all rode away.

Major Riley determined that the whole party must march on. To stay
here, in this little basin surrounded by the hills, was dangerous. It
was no place in which to fight. He would escort the caravan at least a
day's stint farther, into more open country.

First, Trader Lamme's body was found, and buried. He had been
arrow-shot and lanced; scalped, stripped, and his head cut off. So he
was left under the desert sand, and later his bones were dug up and
reburied in St. Louis. Then the long column wended for the narrow pass
out. It was reconnoitered and found to be undefended. They hastened
through, while occupying the high ground on both flanks, and after a
short but hard march halted, to camp.

Major Riley was still game. He agreed to advance another day's stint,
in order to see the caravan well started into safer regions. With the
rise of the sun, a gale also arose. The wind blew hot and hotter,
driving the sand in clouds and almost smothering the men and animals.
Therefore little could be done. The mules and oxen had to be
unyoked--they stood with tongues out and tails to the gale; the wagon
covers lashed and bellied; the men sheltered themselves as best they
might from the stinging storm out of a clear sky.

By four o'clock in the afternoon the wind died. Every vestige of a
trail had been wiped clean; but in ten miles the column luckily
blundered upon sign of water, in a dry creek-bed. Hurrah! The scouts
searching about found water itself: a pool, in the midst of an acre or
two of grass!

The surface of the pool was cov