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Phillips and Baker, who had heard the sounds, joined them at the instant. Nearer and nearer came a panting horse; a shadowy rider loomed into sight up the road, and in another moment a young ranchman galloped up to the very doors.

“All safe, fellows? Thank goodness for that! I’ve had a ride for it, and we’re dead beat. Indians? Why, the whole country’s alive with ’em between here and Hunton’s. I promised I’d go over to Farron’s if they ever came around that way, but they may beat me there yet. How many men have you here?”

“Seven now, counting Baker and Ralph; but I’ll wire right back to Lodge Pole and let the Fifth Cavalry know. Quick, Ralph, give ’em your signal now!”

Ralph seized his carbine and ran out on the prairie behind the corral, the others eagerly following him to note the effect. Bang! went the gun with a resounding roar that echoed from the cliffs at the east and came thundering back to them just in time to “fall in” behind two other ringing reports at short, five-second intervals.

Three times the flash lighted up the faces of the little party; set and stern and full of pluck they were. Then all eyes were turned to the dark, shadowy, low-lying objects far up the stream, the roofs of Farron’s threatened ranch.

Full half a minute they watched, hearts beating high, breath coming thick and fast, hands clinching in the intensity of their anxiety.

Then, hurrah! Faint and flickering at first, then shining a few seconds in clear, steady beam, the sergeant’s answering signal streamed out upon the night, a calm, steadfast, unwavering response, resolute as the spirit of its soldier sender, and then suddenly disappeared.

“He’s all right!” said Ralph, joyously, as the young ranchman put spurs to his panting horse and rode off to the west. “Now, what about Lodge Pole?”

Just as they turned away there came a sound far out on the prairie that made them pause and look wonderingly a moment in one another’s eyes. The horseman had disappeared from view. They had watched him until he had passed out of sight in the dim distance. The hoof-beats of his horse had died away before they turned to go.

Yet now there came the distant thunder of an hundred hoofs bounding over the sod.

Out from behind a jutting spur of a bluff a horde of shadows sweep forth upon the open prairie towards the trail on which the solitary rider has disappeared. Here and there among them swift gleams, like silver streaks, are plainly seen, as the moonbeams glint on armlet or bracelet, or the nickel plating on their gaudy trappings.

Then see! a ruddy flash! another! another! the muffled bang of fire-arms, and the vengeful yell and whoops of savage foeman float down to the breathless listeners at the station on the Chug. The Sioux are here in full force, and a score of them have swept down on that brave, hapless, helpless fellow riding through the darkness alone.

Phillips groaned. “Oh, why did we let him go? Quick, now! Every man to the ranch, and you get word to Lodge Pole, will you?”

“Ay, ay, and fetch the whole Fifth Cavalry here at a gallop!”

But when Ralph ran into the telegraph station a moment later, he found the operator with his head bowed upon his arms and his face hidden from view.

“What’s the matter,–quick?” demanded Ralph.

It was a ghastly face that was raised to the boy, as the operator answered,–

“It–it’s all my fault. I’ve waited too long. They’ve cut the line behind us!”

CHAPTER V.

AT FARRON’S RANCH.

When Sergeant Wells reached Farron’s ranch that evening little Jessie was peacefully sleeping in the room that had been her mother’s. The child was tired after the long, fifty-mile drive from Russell, and had been easily persuaded to go to bed.

Farron himself, with the two men who worked for him, was having a sociable smoke and chat, and the three were not a little surprised at Wells’s coming and the unwelcome news he bore. The ranchman was one of the best-hearted fellows in the world, but he had a few infirmities of disposition and one or two little conceits that sometimes marred his better judgment. Having lived in the Chug Valley a year or two before the regiment came there, he had conceived it to be his prerogative to adopt a somewhat patronizing tone to its men, and believed that he knew much more about the manners and customs of the Sioux than they could possibly have learned.