Obedient
to his first instructions, the main body had spread out in long,
irregular skirmish rank, their mettlesome ponies capering and dancing in
their eagerness. Chanting in chorus some shrill, weird song, the line
was now slowly, steadily advancing, still too far away to warrant the
wasting of a shot, yet unmistakably seeking to close as much as possible
before bursting in with the final charge.
[Illustration: "SOME FEW OF THEIR NUMBER BORNE AWAY BY THEIR COMRADES."]
And still the red leader sat at gaze, oblivious for the moment of
everything around him, ignoring the coming of orders possibly from Lame
Wolf himself. Suddenly the silver armlets once more gleamed on high.
Then, clapping the palm of his right hand to his mouth, Red Fox gave
voice to a ringing war whoop, fierce, savage and exultant, and, almost
at the instant, like the boom and rumble that follows some vivid
lightning flash, the prairie woke and trembled to the thunder of near a
thousand hoofs. From every point of the compass--from every side,
yelling like fiends of some orthodox hell, down they came--the wild
warriors of the frontier in furious rush upon the silent and almost
peaceful covert of this little band of brothers in the dusty garb of
blue.
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