All day, with neither food nor water, amid bewildering bluffs and gorges, alive with savage warriors, the cavalrymen had striven desperately.  Night fell, and in the clear moonlight they forced their way across the Prairie Dog, and neither man nor horse dared to stop to drink because an instant’s pause meant death.

And the evening and the morning were the first day.  And the second was like unto it, albeit we were no longer a triangle, made up of wagon-train here and main command there, and our twenty-nine—­less two lost ones—­under Captain Jenness, at a third point.  Before noon, our force was all united and we joined hands for the finish.

Beverly and I rode side by side all day.  Everywhere around us the half-breed, Charlie Bent, dashed boldly on his big, white horse calling us cowardly dogs and taunting us with lack of marksmanship.

“I’m getting tired of that fellow, Gail.  I’ll pick his horse out from under him pretty soon, see if I don’t.”  My cousin called to me as Bent’s insolent cry burst forth: 

“Come out, and let me show you how to shoot.”

Beverly leaped out toward the Indian horde surrounding Bent.  He raised his carbine, and with steady aim, fired far across the field of battle, the cleanest shot I ever saw.  Years ago my cousin had urged Uncle Esmond to let him practise shooting on horseback.  He was a master of the art now.  Charlie Bent’s splendid white steed fell headlong, hurling its rider to the ground and dragging him, face downward, in the dirt.

I cannot paint that day’s deeds with my pen, nor ever artist lived whose brush could reproduce it.  If we should lose here, it meant the turning of the clock from morning back to midnight on the Kansas plains.

Between this and the safety of the prairies stood fewer than a hundred and fifty men, against a thousand warriors, led by cunning half-breeds skilled in the white man’s language and the red man’s fiendishness.

If we should lose—­We did not go out there to lose.  When each man does a man’s part there is no failure possible at last.

As the sun sank toward late afternoon, the savage force massed for its great, crushing blow that should annihilate us.  The strong center, made up of the flower of every tribe engaged, was on the crest of a long, westward-reaching slope, a splendid company of barbaric warriors—­strong, eager, vengeful, doggedly determined to finish now the struggle with the power they hated.

The air was very clear, and in its crystal distances we could see every movement and hear each command.

The valley rang with the taunts and jeers and threats and mocking laughter of our foes, daring us to come out and meet them face to face, like men.  And we went out and met them face to face, like men.