The Sioux had guns also, and though they rested most on the bow, their chance rifle fire was dangerous.  As for the arrows, even from this disadvantageous station these peerless bowmen sent them up in a high arc so that they fell inside the inclosure and took their toll.  Three men, two women lay wounded at the first ride, and the animals were plunging.

The war chief led his warriors in the circle once more, chanting his own song to the continuous chorus of savage ululations.  The entire fighting force of the Sioux village was in the circle.

The ring ran closer.  The Sioux were inside seventy-five yards, the dust streaming, the hideously painted faces of the riders showing through, red, saffron, yellow, as one after another warrior twanged a bow under his horse’s neck as he ran.

But this was easy range for the steady rifles of men who kneeled and fired with careful aim.  Even the six-shooters, then new to the Sioux, could work.  Pony after pony fell, until the line showed gaps; whereas now the wagon corral showed no gap at all, while through the wheels, and over the tongue spaces, from every crevice of the gray towering wall came the fire of more and more men.  The medicine of the white men was strong.

Three times the ring passed, and that was all.  The third circuit was wide and ragged.  The riders dared not come close enough to carry off their dead and wounded.  Then the attack dwindled, the savages scattering and breaking back to the cover of the stream.

“Now, men, come on!” called out Banion.  “Ride them down!  Give them a trimming they’ll remember!  Come on, boys!”

Within a half hour fifty more Sioux were down, dead or very soon to die.  Of the living not one remained in sight.

“They wanted hit, an’ they got hit!” exclaimed Bridger, when at length he rode back, four war bonnets across his saddle and scalps at his cantle.  He raised his voice in a fierce yell of triumph, not much other than savage himself, dismounted and disdainfully cast his trophies across a wagon tongue.

“I’ve et horse an’ mule an’ dog,” said he, “an’ wolf, wil’cat an’ skunk, an’ perrairy dog an’ snake an’ most ever’thing else that wears a hide, but I never could eat Sioux.  But to-morrer we’ll have ribs in camp.  I’ve seed the buffler, an’ we own this side the river now.”

Molly Wingate sat on a bed roll near by, knitting as calmly as though at home, but filled with wrath.

“Them nasty, dirty critters!” she exclaimed.  “I wish’t the boys had killed them all.  Even in daylight they don’t stand up and fight fair like men.  I lost a whole churnin’ yesterday.  Besides, they killed my best cow this mornin’, that’s what they done.  And lookit this thing!”

She held up an Indian arrow, its strap-iron head bent over at right angles.  “They shot this into our plow beam.  Looks like they got a spite at our plow.”

“Ma’am, they have got a spite at hit,” said the old scout, seating himself on the ground near by.  “They’re scared o’ hit.  I’ve seed a bunch o’ Sioux out at Laramie with a plow some Mormon left around when he died.  They’d walk around and around that thing by the hour, talkin’ low to theirselves.  They couldn’t figger hit out no ways a-tall.