Inside five minutes scarcely a horse remained in the stables, and the men were flying at a gallop across the dusky prairie laughing at the risk of a stumble in a deadly badger-hole.

Yet, in the haste of saddling, they found time to arrange a twenty-dollar sweepstake and the allowance for weight.
Up the long rise, and down the back of it, they swept, stirrup by stirrup and neck by neck, while the roar of the hoofs reft the silence of the prairie like the roll of musketry.

Behind came the wagons, lurching up the slope, and the blood surged to the brave young faces as the night wind smote them and fanned into brightness the crimson smear on the horizon.

They were English lads of the stock that had furnished their nation's fighting line, and not infrequently counted no sacrifice too great that brought their colors home first on the racing turf.
Still, careless to the verge of irresponsibility as they were in most affairs that did not touch their pride, the man who rode with red spurs and Dane next behind him, a clear length before the first of them, asked no better allies in what was to be done.
Then the line drew out as the pace began to tell, though the rearmost rode grimly, knowing the risks the leaders ran, and that the chance of being first to meet the fire might yet fall to them.

There was not one among them who would not have killed his best horse for that honor, and for further incentive the Colonel's niece, in streaming habit, flitted in front of them.