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THE LAST DROP OF WATER
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THE ATTACK
vided between regrets for the homes they had left behind and apprehension of the desert and savages ahead.
It still lacked several hours of nightfall when the outriders of the caravan came upon a grove of cottonwood trees by the bank of a tiny, twisted little river bed, now dried and baked in the sun.
' ' Here 's the place to camp, ' ' insisted Jim, well knowing that sufficient digging in the sandy bed of the stream would furnish a supply of water for the cattle and horses. "After we cross here we're in th' desert for sure. ' '
In vain he whispered to two of the older men that several solitary Indian horsemen had been sighted at intervals during the past forty-eight hours. Evidently they were keeping a sharp watch on the caravan.
"Lame Wolf and Red Fox are on the rampage up in th' North," said
Jim. "Every Sioux on the plains will soon be on the way to join them. Mark my words, they're ugly. One of them I saw had on a war-bonnet. ' !
But it was of no use. Jim was out-argued. The long, slow-moving wagon train passed clumsily down one side of the dry stream bed and up at the other, then on and on, out over the gray, lifeless plain.
It was moonlight, and the train kept moving until a much later hour than usual. They camped without water that night, for it had become evident at last that none was in sight. Ten men, well deployed, had been placed on watch. Suddenly, Jim Burgess, looking off toward a slight rise at the
THE INDIANS CAPTURE TWO OF THE TRAIN
CALLING FOR VOLUNTEERS TO GET WATER
north, saw a thin wave of smoke slowly ascending. Quickly glancing in the opposite direction, he detected a second smoke, the answering signal. Another and another sprang up.
"Mirror fires!" he cried. "By thunder, they 're all about us ! "
In an instant all was commotion in the emigrants' camp. The cumbrous wagons were brought into position to form a hollow square, from within which the men made ready to defend the women and children. Out on the plains the Indians could be seen, their lithe, painted bodies fairly gleaming in the moonlight as they went galloping, circling, sweeping to right and to left, clinging with one leg and arm as they sheltered themselves behind