gon. Both
horses had been shot, and were still in their gear attached to
the wagon.

Dick examined the wagon carefully, and as he yet heard and saw no
signs of a human being save himself, his courage grew. It was a
big wagon of the kind used for crossing the plains, with boxes
around the inside like lockers. Almost everything of value had
been taken by the Sioux, but in one of the lockers Dick was lucky
enough to find a large, heavy, gray blanket. He rolled it up at
once, and with a strap cut from the horse's gear tied it on his back,
after the fashion of a soldier on the march.

"The first great treasure!" he murmured exultantly. "Now for the
next!"

He found in the same wagon, jammed under the driver's seat and
hidden from hasty view, about the half of a side of bacon--ten
pounds, perhaps. Dick fairly laughed when he got his hands upon
it, and he clasped it lovingly, as if it were a ten-pound nugget of
pure gold. But it was far better than gold just then. He wrapped
it in a piece of canvas which he cut from the cover of the wagon,
and tied it on his back above the blanket.

Finding nothing more of value in the wagon, he resumed his
progress up the pass. It was well for Dick that he was
stout-hearted, and well for him, too, that he was driven by great
need, else he would surely have gone back.

He was now come into the thick of it. Around him everywhere lay
the fallen, and the deeds done in Indian warfare were not
lacking. Sam Conway lay upon his side, and brutal as the man had
been, Dick felt grief when he saw him. Here were others, too,
that he knew, and he counted the bodies of the few women who had
been with the train. They had died probably in the battle like
the rest. They, like the men, had been hardened, rough, and
coarse of speech and act, but Dick felt grief, too, when he saw
them. Nearly all the animals had been slain also in the fury of
the attack, and they were scattered far up the pass.

Dick resolutely turned his face away from the dead and began to
glean among the wagons for what the Sioux might have left. All
these wagons were built like the first that he had searched, and
he was confident that he would find much of value. Nor was he
disappointed. He found three more blankets, and in their own
wagon the buffalo robe that he had lamented. Doubtless, its
presence there was accounted for by the fact that the Sioux did
not consider a buffalo robe a trophy of their victory over