The screeching braves did not stop even when revolvers were emptied at them. Rushing on the horsemen, they caught them by the legs and pulled them bodily to the ground. They seemed in a fanatical rage. The falling men were shot and hatcheted. Those who at first, in fright, pulled their horses round, got away. The others fell, dead or wounded, or captured. Not even the horses were spared; for when there seemed no white men to kill the Utes began to slay the animals. It was not a rout, it was annihilation.
Matt Shepard had been shot from his horse, a bullet passing through his body; but he still lived when he struck the ground, and did not lose consciousness.
With such horror as he had never felt, he witnessed the terrible massacre of his followers. A groan which the sight drew from him told the warriors that he was not dead. One of the braves, thereupon, jumped at him with a lance, to run him through.
But the small painted chief, whom Shepard had noticed at the beginning of the charge, leaped in, caught the lance, and turned its point aside, so that it drove into the ground; then he shouted angrily to the other Indians, who were crowding round to finish the white prisoner.
When it seemed that the Utes would kill Shepard, the small man, yelling something, pulled a whisky bottle from beneath his blanket and flung it out from him.
The drug-and-whisky-crazed warriors made a combined rush for it, and in a minute were fighting among themselves for its possession.
The small man whom Shepard thought a chief stood now before him. Close behind the small man came that other painted figure, that had such a marked resemblance to a wild animal.
The little man spoke in English, and Shepard recognized the voice of Tim Benson.
“Yes, I know you now,” Shepard admitted. “It explains things.”
“Glad you see a great light. But you ain’t going to last long.”
“I know it,” said Shepard; “I don’t reckon I can live half an hour. I’m bleeding inside.”
“You were coming to the Ute village to get me?”
“Yes; there’s no use denyin’ it. I’d have done it, but for this treachery.”
“Is it treachery for a man to protect himself?”
“We won’t argue it--I ain’t got time! But the white man who will furnish whisky to Indians had ought to be tortured as well as hung.”