Under Fire by King Charles

Author:King, Charles [King, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-02-28T00:57:36.828000+00:00

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CHAPTER XX.

When Sanders, with solemn face, turned to meet the general and report his discovery, the difference between the young and the old campaigner was told in their own words.

"I'm afraid we're too late to save 'em, sir. Everything's wiped out but the stockade."

"If the stockade's left, they've saved themselves," was the answer, and the Gray Fox was right. Long before the column reached the lowlands of the valley horsemen could be seen spurring eagerly forward to meet it, and the first-comer was Trooper O'Brien, who saluted the general with all soldierly grace and the rest of the array with a sociable grin.

"We're all right, general,--leastwise most of us is. Two of the boys is killed, and Loot'n't Boynton's wounded,--and four others,--but the women's all safe, and the agent--bad scran to him! Is there a doctor along?" A doctor was along,--Burroughs,--riding with the senior captain commanding the battalion, and Burroughs was hurried forward with Sanders and a squad of men, while O'Brien, proud of his prominence, rode by the general's side and told the story of the sharp and sudden fight.

"They came down on us like a crowd of grasshoppers so soon as it was light enough to see anything, but they couldn't get near us without our bowling over bucks and ponies. The prairie's dotted with the corpses of the poor beggars, sir,--the ponies, that is; they never left an Indian. We stood 'em off first rate. Loot'nant Boynton and Loot'nant Davies was everywhere at once, and after trying two dashes the Indians gave it up and kept at long range. They was a thousand strong at least, and Elk came in with a white flag for a parley, and Mr. Boynton ordered him back, but McPhail let him in. He said we must give up Red Dog or they'd burn the agency over our heads and massacre every man, and McPhail was for letting him go then, but Mr. Boynton and he had words over it, and they kept him. That night was cloudy and the moon was hid, and sure enough at ten o'clock they crawled in on the storehouse side and heaped up timber under them flimsy pine boards, and no one could see them on that side until everything was in a broad blaze. It was when trying to bucket out the fire the lieut'nant was shot, and it was a roaring conflagration in five minutes, and from that it spread to the agency and the other shebangs, and it was all we could do to get the women and children out of the cellars and into the corral, and them bucks firing from every sage brush for a mile around. The whole thing was down by midnight, but it didn't do them no good: we was really better off with less to take care of and more men to do it with, and we had wather in the well and rations for all hands, and the agent and his non-combatants under cover in one corner of the stockade, and Red Dog tied up in another.

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