Then, just as they had begun to despair of their lives, their pursuers, who had been circling around the tangle of scrub growth, began singing a slow chant and withdrew to the summit of the hill.
There they remained in council a little time and then cantered away single file.
Fearing another trap, the white men remained for weary hours in their hiding-place, but at last were compelled by thirst and hunger to come out.
No Indians were visible, nor did any appear as, worn out and dispirited, they dragged themselves to the camp of the soldiers.

In the forty-eight hours since he had been cut off from his command De Rudio had undergone all the horrors of Indian warfare and a hundred times had given himself up for dead.
Bullets had passed many times within a few inches of him.

Half a dozen times only a lucky chance had intervened between him and the horrible death that Indians know so well how to inflict.

Yet, save for the bruises from his fall off his horse, and the abrasions of the brush through which he had traveled, he had never received a scratch..