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The shot had attracted the attention of all the Indians in that immediate neighborhood, and there were plenty of them there for all offensive purposes. De Rudio jumped down the creek bank and hid in an excavation while a hail of bullets spattered the water ahead of him and raised a dozen little clouds of dust at his feet.
In the forty-eight hours since he had been cut off from his command De Rudio had undergone all the horrors of Indian warfare and a hundred times had given himself up for dead. Bullets had passed many times within a few inches of him. Half a dozen times only a lucky chance had intervened between him and the horrible death that Indians know so well how to inflict.
Presently the firing on the hill ceased, and hundreds of Indians came slowly back. But they were hard pressed by the soldiers, and the battle was soon resumed, to break out intermittently through the entire night. In a quiet interval the two soldiers got their horses, and with their companion and De Rudio holding to the animals' tails forded the river and made a détour round the Indians.
A story of a personal adventure and a hairbreadth escape in which Lieutenant De Rudio figured was so typical of the fighting days of the West that I want my readers to know it. I shall tell it, as nearly as I can, just as it came to me around the flickering fire in that picturesque border camp.
De Rudio had just returned from his adventure, and he told it to us between puffs of his pipe so realistically that I caught several of my old friends of the Plains peering about into the darkness as if to make sure that no lurking redskins were creeping up on them.
In the fight of a few days before De Rudio was guarding a pony crossing with eight men when one of them sang out: "Lieutenant, get your horse, quick. No trumpet had sounded, however, and no orders had been given, so the lieutenant hesitated to retire. His men left in a hurry, but he remained, quietly waiting for the call.
So heavy had this volley been that the Indians decided that the bullets had done their work, and a wild yell broke from them. Suddenly the yell changed to another sort of outcry, and the firing abruptly ceased. Peering out, De Rudio saw Captain Benteen's column coming up over the hill. He began to hope that his rescue was at hand.
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