Distant about three hundred yards upon the sandy plain are other men and horses, to the number of near two hundred.

Their half-naked bodies of bronze colour, fantastically marked with devices in chalk-white, charcoal-black, and vermillion red--their buckskin breech-clouts and leggings, with plumes sticking tuft-like above their crowns--all these insignia show them to be Indians.
It is a predatory band of the red pirates, who have attacked a travelling party of whites--no new spectacle on the prairies.
They have made the first onslaught, which was intended to stampede the caravan, and at once capture it.

This was done before daybreak.

Foiled in the attempt, they are now laying siege to it, having surrounded it on all sides at a distance just beyond range of the rifles of those besieged.

Their line forms the circumference of a circle of which the waggon clump is the centre.