Fortunately the Indians were poorly mounted-their horses were no match for the Hat Creek horses, and the two men soon widened the gap between them and their pursuers. They were out of range of arrows, and of bullets too, Pea hoped, but he had hardly hoped it when a bullet stung him just above the shoulder blade. But the creek was only three or four miles ahead. If they could make it there would be time enough to worry about wounds.

Gus was trying to pull the arrows out of his leg as he rode, but he was having no luck.

They saw the curve of the little creek from two miles away and angled for the nearest juncture. The Indians had fallen nearly a quarter of a mile back, but were still coming. When they struck the creek Augustus raced along the bank until he found a spot where the weeds and brush were thickest. Then he jumped his horse off the bank and grabbed his saddlebags.

"Get all the ammunition you can," he said. "We're in for a shooting match. And tie the horses in the best cover you can find, or they'll shoot 'em. This is long country to be afoot in."

Then he hobbled to the bank, wishing he had time to cut the two arrows out of his leg. But if they were poisoned it was already too late, and if he didn't do some fine shooting it wouldn't matter anyway because the Indians would overrun them.

Pea heard the big Henry rifle begin to roar as he dragged the sweating horses into the thickest part of the underbrush. It was thick but low, and he didn't think there was much chance for the horses. He yanked the saddlebags and bedrolls off both horses and was hiding them under the bank when Gus stopped firing for a moment.

"Get my saddle," he said. "I'll show you a trick."

Then he began to fire again. Evidently he had turned the Indians, or they would already have been in the creek bed. Pea dutifully got the saddle.

When he got back Gus was reloading. Pea peeped over the bank and saw the Indians, stopped some distance away. Many of them had dismounted and were standing behind their horses, using them as shields.

"How many'd you kill?" he asked.

"Not but three," Augustus said. "This is a smart bunch we're up against. They seen right off a rush would cost them dear."

Pea Eye watched the Indians for a while. They weren't yelling, and they didn't seem excited.

"I don't see what's so smart about them," he said. "They're just standing there."

"Yes, but they're out of range," Augustus said. "They're hoping to tempt me to waste ammunition."

Augustus propped the saddle on the bank in such a way that he could shoot under it and be that much safer if the Indians shot back. He then proceeded to shoot six times, rapidly. Five of the Indians horses dropped, and a sixth ran squealing over the prairie-it fell several hundred yards away. The Indians fired several shots in reply, their bullets slicing harmlessly into the underbrush.

The party of Indians then split. Several Indians went north of them, several south, and eight or ten stayed where they were.

"Well, we're practically surrounded," Augustus said. "I don't expect we'll hear any more from them till dark."

"I'd hate to wait around here till dark," Pea Eye said.

"Did you know you're shot?" Augustus asked.

Pea had forgotten it. Sure enough, the front of his shirt was soaked with blood. He took it off and Augustus examined the wound, which was clean. The bullet had gone right through.

They turned their attention to the arrows in Augustus's left leg. Augustus twisted at them whenever he got a moment. One arrow he soon got out, but the other wouldn't budge.

"This one's in deep," he said. "That brave wasn't more than twenty yards away when he let fly. I think it's worked under the bone, but it ain't poisoned. If it was I'd be feeling it by now."

Pea had a try at removing the arrow, while Gus gritted his teeth and held his leg steady with both hands. The arrow wouldn't budge. It wouldn't even turn, though Pea Eye twisted hard enough to cause a stream of blood to flow down Gus's leg.

As they were working with the arrow there was a sudden terrified squeal from the horses. Augustus hobbled over, drawing his pistol, and saw that both horses were down, their throats cut, their blood very bright on the green weeds and bushes.

"Stay back, Pea," he said, crouching. The Indian that had killed the horses was there somewhere, in the underbrush, but he couldn't see him.

"Watch to the north, Pea," he said. "I don't think these boys want to stay around here till dark, either."

He quickly wiped the sweat from his forehead. Keeping a bush directly in front of him he edged very slowly to the bank, just high enough that he could see the tops of the weeds and underbrush. Then he waited. Once the dying horses finally stopped thrashing, it was very still. Augustus regretted that his preoccupation with the arrows had made him so lax that he had failed to protect the horses. It put them in a ticklish spot. It was over a hundred miles back to the Yellowstone and in all likelihood the herd hadn't even got there yet.

He kept his eyes focused on the tops of the underbrush. It was perfectly windless in the creek bottom, and if the underbrush moved it would be because someone moved it. His big pistol was cocked. He didn't move, and time stretched out. Minutes passed. Augustus carefully kept the sweat wiped out of his eyes, concentrating on keeping his focus. The silence seemed to ring, it was so absolute. There were no flies buzzing yet, no birds flying, nothing. He would have bet the Indian was not twenty yards away from him, and yet he had no inkling of precisely where he was.

"Ain't you coming back, Gus?" Pea Eye asked, after several minutes.

Augustus didn't answer. He watched the tops of the weeds, patiently. It was no time for hurry, much less for conversation. Patience was an Indian virtue. He, himself, didn't have it in day-to-day life, but he could summon it when it seemed essential. Then he heard a movement behind him, and glanced around quickly, to see if Pea had suddenly decided to take a stroll. When he did he saw the edge of a rifle extending an inch or two from the weeds, pointed not at himself but at Pea. He immediately fired twice into the weeds and an Indian flopped over as a fish might flop.

A second later, as the echo of the gun died, he heard a click a few yards to his right. He whirled and fired at it. A moment later the underbrush began to shake as if a huge snake were wiggling through it. Augustus ran into the weeds and saw the wounded Indian trying to crawl away. He at once shot him in the back of the head, and didn't stop to turn him over. Backing out of the weeds, he stepped on the pistol that had misfired, an old cap-and-ball gun. He stuck it in his belt and hurried back to Pea, who looked white. He had sense enough to realize he had just almost been shot. Augustus glanced at the other dead Indian, a fat boy of maybe seventeen. His rifle was an old Sharps carbine, which Augustus threw to Pea.

"We gotta move," he said. "This cover's working against us. But for luck we'd both be dead now already. What we need is a stretch with a steep bank and no cover."

They worked their way upstream, carrying the saddle, saddlebags and guns, for nearly a mile, hugging the bank. Augustus was limping badly but didn't stop to worry about it. Finally they came to a bend in the creek, where the bank was sheer and about ten feet high. The creek bottom was nearly bare of foliage.

"Let's dig," Augustus said, and began to work with his knife to create a shallow cave under the bank. They worked furiously for half an hour until both were drenched with sweat and covered with dirt. Augustus used the stock of the Indian boy's carbine as a rude shovel and tried to shape the dirt they raked out into low breastworks on either side of the cave. They watched as best they could, but saw no Indians.