A whiff of wind from the north blew a heavy cloud of smoke low down over a bunch of White Caps lying in the shelter of a small creek some fifty yards from the cabin, and when it lifted Ben Champion stood amongst them with a smoking revolver in his hand. A moment later he lay dead on the sand with over forty bullets through his body, but in that short space of time his deadly Colt had sent two more of the White Caps to their last reckoning.
[Illustration: “BEN CHAMPION APPEARED IN THE DOORWAY WITH A SIX-SHOOTER IN EITHER HAND STREAMING FIRE AND LEAD.”]
While the White Caps were burying their dead, the horses and wagons were brought up and the outfit cooked their breakfast on the embers of the burning logs. Then, placing their wounded comrade in a supply wagon, they moved up the river in search of more victims. Surrounding two ranches, they crept up to them, only to find them vacant; they were too late, for their firing had attracted the attention of a rancher named Whitmore as he stopped to water his horse at the ford a mile below Champion’s ranch, and he had ridden up close enough to see the finish of the unequal fight, and had then spurred his horse up the river, warning the settlers that the much-talked-of White Cap invasion had begun. The news spread over the country like wildfire, and, instead of fleeing from the danger-zone, the ranchers and cow-punchers buckled on their guns and headed for the scene of the fight. They started in ones and twos, but as they got closer in they began to gather in bunches of ten or twelve, all spoiling for a fight, if there was a prospect of avenging the death of their comrades.
In vain did Benton and his regiment try to close with any of these bunches; their horses were fresh, and they would run as long as chased by the White Caps; but once let the chase cease and they were back again, waiting for a chance to sneak up under cover of a hill or ravine to pour in a volley of bullets and again take to their heels if pursued. By three o’clock there were fully fifty men harassing the White Caps, and Benton decided to make for the shelter of the A--T ranch on Crazy Woman Creek, some fifty miles to the north-west. The first few miles was an orderly march, but the “Rustlers,” as the other side called them, were constantly increasing in numbers and pressing in closer behind. At five o’clock Benton gave his men the order to strap their ammunition on to the backs of the wagon horses and to abandon the wagons and supplies. From an orderly march their ride had now degenerated into a wild dash over the barren sage brush flats for refuge in the far-off ranch. Darkness alone saved them from extermination, and as it was, only forty-five powder-stained, worn-out White Caps rode up to Dr. Hays’s A--T ranch just as the sun rose on Monday morning.