Why should they? Easier, safer far, to rest secure behind their
shelters, and wait in patience until the little band had fired its last
shot. Now they skulked timorously, but then they might walk upright
and glut their fiendish lust for blood.
Twice during that long night volunteers sought vainly to pierce those
lines of savage watchers. A long wailing cry of agony from out the
thick darkness told the fate of their first messenger, while Casey, of
the "X L," crept slowly, painfully back, with an Indian bullet embedded
deep in his shoulder. Just before the coming of dawn, Hampton, without
uttering a word, calmly turned up the collar of his tightly buttoned
coat, so as better to conceal the white collar he wore, gripped his
revolver between his teeth, and crept like some wriggling snake among
the black rocks and through the dense underbrush in search after water.
By some miracle of divine mercy he was permitted to pass unscathed, and
came crawling back, a dozen hastily filled canteens dangling across his
shoulders. It was like nectar to those parched, feverish throats; but
of food barely a mouthful apiece remained in the haversacks.
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