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“I’ll show you th’ way back, miss,” he said, diffidently.

“Thank you,” replied Miss Caldwell, with a slight coldness, “I can find my own way back.”

“Yes, of course,” hastened Alfred, in an agony. “But don’t you think we ought to start back now? I’d like to go with you, miss, if you’d let me. You see the afternoon’s quite late.”

Miss Caldwell cast a quizzical eye at the sun.

“Why, it’s hours yet till dark!” she said, amusedly.

Then Alfred surprised Miss Caldwell.

His diffident manner suddenly left him. He jumped like lightning from his horse, threw the reins over the animal’s head so he would stand, and ran around to face Miss Caldwell.

“Here, jump down!” he commanded.

The soft Southern burr of his ordinary conversation had given place to a clear incisiveness. Miss Caldwell looked at him amazed.

Seeing that she did not at once obey, Alfred actually began to fumble hastily with the straps that held her riding-skirt in place. This was so unusual in the bashful Alfred that Miss Caldwell roused and slipped lightly to the ground.

“Now what?” she asked.

Alfred, without replying, drew the bit to within a few inches of the animal’s hoofs, and tied both fetlocks firmly together with the double-loop. This brought the pony’s nose down close to his shackled feet. Then he did the same thing with his own beast. Thus neither animal could so much as hobble one way or the other. They were securely moored.

Alfred stepped a few paces to the eastward. Miss Caldwell followed.

“Sit down,” said he.

Miss Caldwell obeyed with some nervousness. She did not understand at all, and that made her afraid. She began to have a dim fear lest Alfred might have gone crazy. His next move strengthened this suspicion. He walked away ten feet and raised his hand over his head, palm forward. She watched him so intently that for a moment she saw nothing else. Then she followed the direction of his gaze, and uttered a little sobbing cry.

Just below the sky-line of the first slope to eastward was silhouetted a figure on horseback. The figure on horseback sat motionless.

“We’re in for fight,” said Alfred, coming back after a moment. “He won’t answer my peace-sign, and he’s a Sioux. We can’t make a run for it through this dog-town. We’ve just got to stand ’em off.”

He threw down and back the lever of his old 44 Winchester, and softly uncocked the arm. Then he sat down by Miss Caldwell.

From various directions, silently, warriors on horseback sprang into sight and moved dignifiedly toward the first-comer, forming at the last a band of perhaps thirty men. They talked together for a moment, and then one by one, at regular intervals, detached themselves and began circling at full speed to the left, throwing themselves behind their horses, and yelling shrill-voiced, but firing no shot as yet.

“They’ll rush us,” speculated Alfred. “We’re too few to monkey with this way. This is a bluff.”

The circle about the two was now complete. After watching the whirl of figures a few minutes, and the motionless landscape beyond, the eye became dizzied and confused.

“They won’t have no picnic,” went on Alfred, with a little chuckle. “Dog-hole’s as bad fer them as fer us. They don’t know how to fight. If they was to come in on all sides, I couldn’t handle ’em, but they always rush in a bunch, like damn fools!” and then Alfred became suffused with blushes, and commenced to apologise abjectly and profusely to a girl who had heard neither the word nor its atonement. The savages and the approaching fight were all she could think of.

Suddenly one of the Sioux threw himself forward under his horse’s neck and fired. The bullet went wild, of course, but it shrieked with the rising inflection of a wind-squall through bared boughs, seeming to come ever nearer. Miss Caldwell screamed and covered her face. The savages yelled in chorus.

The one shot seemed to be the signal for a spattering fire all along the line. Indians never clean their rifles, rarely get good ammunition, and are deficient in the philosophy of hind-sights. Besides this, it is not easy to shoot at long range in a constrained position from a running horse. Alfred watched them contemptuously in silence.