I feel again, so much almost that my body swings in unison, the
gathering stride of the ponies cutting the dust into clouds. I see the
color and the swiftness of it all, and feel its thrill, the strength and
tenseness of it all. And again I feel, as though it were to-day, the
high, keen, pleasant resolution which came to me. We had women with us.
Whether this young woman was now to die or not, none of us men would see
it happen.
They came on, massed as I have said, to within about two hundred and
fifty yards, then swung out around us, their horse line rippling up over
the broken ground apparently as easily as it had gone on the level floor
of the valley. Still we made no volley fire. I rejoiced to see the cool
pallor of Belknap's face, and saw him brave and angry to the core. Our
plainsmen, too, were grim, though eager; and our little band of cavalry,
hired fighters, rose above that station and became not mongrel private
soldiers, but Anglo-Saxons each. They lay or knelt or stood back of the
wagon line, imperturbable as wooden men, and waited for the order to
fire, though meantime two of them dropped, hit by chance bullets from
the wavering line of horsemen that now encircled us.
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