days when torrents fell and swelled the streams that must be crossed,
and when the mud lay ankle-deep; days when the cattle stampeded, and the
round-up meant long, extra hours of heavy work; and, hardest but most
needed work of all, the eternal vigil 'gainst an Indian attack.

Will did not share the anxiety of his companions. To him a brush with
Indians would prove that boyhood's dreams sometimes come true, and
in imagination he anticipated the glory of a first encounter with the
"noble red man," after the fashion of the heroes in the hair-lifting
Western tales he had read. He was soon to learn, as many another has
learned, that the Indian of real Life is vastly different from the
Indian of fiction. He refuses to "bite the dust" at sight of a paleface,
and a dozen of them have been known to hold their own against as many
white men.

Some twenty miles west of Fort Kearny a halt was made for dinner at the
bank of a creek that emptied into the Platte River. No signs of
Indians had been observed, and there was no thought of special danger.
Nevertheless, three men were constantly on guard. Many of the trainmen
were asleep under the wagons while waiting dinner, and Will was watching
the maneuvers of the cook in his mess. Suddenly a score of shots rang
out from the direction of a neighboring thicket, succeeded by a chorus
of savage yells.

Will saw the three men on the lookout drop in their tracks, and saw the
Indians divide, one wing stampeding the cattle, the other charging down
upon the camp.

The trainmen were old frontiersmen, and although taken wholly by
surprise, they lined up swiftly in battle array behind the wagons, with