"We couldn't have a better roost,
lads," he said. "We can stand off double their number easy. We can hold
out a week if need be, but you bet the major will be reaching out after
us before we're two days older. Don't waste your shots. Coax them close
in. Don't fire at a galloping Indian beyond three hundred yards. It's
waste of powder and lead."
Cheerily, joyously they answered him, these his comrades, his soldier
children, men who had fought with him, many of their number, in a dozen
fields, and men who would stand by him, their dark-eyed little captain,
to the last. Even the youngest trooper of the fifty seemed inspired by
the easy, laughing confidence of the lighter hearts among their number,
or the grim, matter of fact pugnacity of the older campaigners. It was
significant, too, that the Indians seemed so divided in mind as to the
next move. There was loud wrangling and much disputation going on in
that savage council to the north. Stabber's braves and Lame Wolf's
followers seemed bitterly at odds, for old hands in the fast-growing
rifle pits pointed out on one side as many as half a dozen of the
former's warriors whom they recognized and knew by sight, while Ray,
studying the shifting concourse through his glasses, could easily see
Stabber himself raging among them in violent altercation with a tall,
superbly built and bedizened young brave, a sub-chief, apparently, who
for his part, seemed giving Stabber as good as he got.
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