"I thought you were away on a ten days' vacation, O'mie. Dever said you were." She could not bear the silence.

"I'm on a tin days' vacation, but I'm not away, Marjie, darlin'," O'mie replied.

"Oh, O'mie, don't joke. I can't stand it to-night." Her face was white and her eyes were full of pain.

"Indade, I'm not jokin'. I came up here to show you somethin' and to tell you somethin'."

He took an old note book from his pocket and opened it to where a few brown blossoms lay flatly pressed between the leaves.

"Thim's not pretty now, Marjie, but the day I got 'em they was dainty an' pink as the dainty pink-cheeked girl whose brown curls they was wreathed about. These are the flowers Phil Baronet put on your hair out in the West Draw by the big cottonwood one April evenin' durin' the war; the flowers Jean Pahusca kissed an' throwed away. But I saved 'em because I love you, Marjie."

She shivered and bent her head.

"Oh, not like thim two ornery tramps who had these blossoms 'fore I got 'em, but like I'd love a sister, if I had one; like Father Le Claire loves me. D'ye see?"

"You are a dear, good brother, O'mie," Marjie murmured, without lifting her head.

"Oh, yis, I'm all av that an' more. Marjie, I'm goin' to kape these flowers till—well, now, Marjie, shall I tell you whin?"

"Yes, O'mie," Marjie said faintly.

"Well, till I see the pretty white veil lifted fur friends to kiss the bride an' I catch the scent av orange blossoms in thim soft little waves." He put his hand gently on her bowed head. "I'll get to do it, too," he went on, "not right away, but not fur off, nather; an' it won't be a little man, ner a rid-headed Irishman, ner a sharp-nosed school-teacher; but—Heaven bless an' kape him to-night!—it'll be a big, broad-shouldered, handsome rascal, whose heart has niver changed an' niver can change toward you, little sister, 'cause he's his father's own son—lovin', constant, white an' clane through an' through. Be patient. It's goin' to be all right for you two." He closed the book and put it back in its place. "But I mustn't stay here. I've got to tag Lettie some more. Her an' some others. That's what my tin days' vacation's fur, mostly." And O'mie leaped through the bushes and was gone.

The twilight was deepening when Marjie at last roused herself.

"I'll go down and see if he did get my letter," she murmured, taking her way down the rough stair. There was no letter in the crevice where she had placed it securely two nights before. Lifting her face upward she clasped her hands in sorrow.

"He took it away, but he did not come to me. He knows I love him." Then remembering herself, "I would not let him speak. But he said he hated 'Rockport.' Oh, what can it all mean? How could he be so good to me and then deceive me so? Shall I believe Lettie, or O'mie?"

Kneeling there in the deep shadows of the cliff-side with the Neosho gurgling darkly below her, and the long shafts of pink radiance from the hidden sunset illumining the sky above her, Marjie prayed for strength to bear her burden, for courage to meet whatever must come to her, and for the assurance of divine Love although now her lover, as well as her father, was lost to her. The simple pleading cry of a grief-stricken heart it was. Heaven heard that prayer, and Marjie went down the hill with womanly grace and courage and faith to face whatever must befall her in the new life opening before her.

In the days that followed my little girl was more than ever the idol of Springvale. Her sweet, sunny nature now had a new beauty. Her sorrow she hid away so completely there were few who guessed what her thoughts were. Lettie Conlow was not deceived, for jealousy has sharp eyes. O'mie understood, for O'mie had carried a sad, hungry heart underneath his happy-go-lucky carelessness all the years of his life. Aunt Candace was a woman who had overcome a grief of her own, and had been cheery and bright down the years. She knew the mark of conquest in the face. And lastly, my father, through his innate power to read human nature, watched Marjie as if she were his own child. Quietly, too, so quietly that nobody noticed it, he became a guardian over her. Where she went and what she did he knew as well as Jean Pahusca, watching in the lilac clump, long ago. For fourteen years he had come and gone to our house on Cliff Street up and down the gentler slope two blocks to the west of Whately's. Nobody knew, until it had become habitual, when he changed his daily walk homeward up the steeper climb that led him by Marjie's house farther down the street. Nobody realized, until it was too common for comment, how much a part of all the social life of Springvale my father had become. He had come to Kansas a widower, but gossip long ago gave up trying to do anything with him. And now, as always, he was a welcome factor everywhere, a genial, courteous gentleman, whose dignity of character matched his stern uprightness and courage in civic matters. Among all the things for which I bless his memory, not the least of them was this strong, unostentatious guardianship of a girl when her need for protection was greatest, as that Winter that followed proved.

I knew nothing of all this then. I only knew my loved one had turned against me. Of course I knew that Rachel was the cause, but I could not understand why Marjie would listen to no explanation, why she should turn completely from me when I had told her everything in the letter I wrote the night of the party at Anderson's. And now I was many miles from Springvale, and the very thought of the past was like a knife-thrust. All my future now looked to the Westward. I longed for action, for the opportunity to do something, and they came swiftly, the opportunity and the action.



CHAPTER XVI

BEGINNING AGAIN

It matters not what fruit the hand may gather, If God approves, and says, "This is the best." It matters not how far the feet may wander, If He says, "Go, and leave to Me the rest."

—ALBERT MACY.

I stood in the August twilight by the railway station in the little frontier town of Salina, where the Union Pacific train had abandoned me to my fate. Turning toward the unmapped, limitless Northwest, I suddenly realized that I was at the edge of the earth now. Behind me were civilization and safety. Beyond me was only a waste of gray nothingness. Yet this was the world I had come hither to conquer. Here were the spaces wherein I should find peace. I set my face with grim determination to work now, out of the thing before me, a purpose that controlled me.

Morton's claim was a far day's journey up the Saline Valley. It would be nearly a week before I could find a man to drive me thither; so I secured careful directions, and the next morning I left the town on foot and alone. I did not mind the labor of it. I was as vigorous as a young giant, fear of personal peril I had never known, and the love of adventure was singing its siren's song to me. I was clad in the strong, coarse garments, suited to the Plains. I was armed with two heavy revolvers and a small pistol. Hidden inside of my belt as a last defence was the short, sharp knife bearing Jean Le Claire's name in script lettering.

I shall never forget the moment when a low bluff beyond a bend in the Saline River shut off the distant town from my view and I stood utterly alone in a wide, silent world, left just as God had made it. Humility and uplift mingle in the soul in such a time and place. One question ran back and forth across my mind: What conquering power can ever bring the warmth of glad welcome to the still, hostile, impenetrable beauty of these boundless plains?

"The air is full of spirits out here," I said to myself. "There is no living thing in sight, and yet the land seems inhabited, just as that old haunted cabin down on the Neosho seemed last June."

And then with the thought of that June day Memory began to play her tricks on me and I cried out, "Oh, perdition take that stone cabin and the whole Neosho Valley if that will make me forget it all!"

I strode forward along the silent, sunshiny way, with a thousand things on my mind's surface and only one thought in its inner deeps. The sun swung up the sky, and the thin August air even in its heat was light and invigorating. The river banks were low and soft where the stream cuts through the alluvial soil a channel many feet below the level of the Plains. The day was long, but full of interest to me, who took its sight as a child takes a new picture-book, albeit a certain sense of peril lurked in the shadowing corners of my thought.

The August sun was low in the west when I climbed up the grassy slope to Morton's little square stone cabin. It stood on a bold height overlooking the Saline River. Far away in every direction the land billows lay fold on fold. Treeless and wide they stretched out to the horizon, with here and there a low elevation, and here and there the faint black markings of scrubby bushes clinging to the bank of a stream. The stream itself, now only a shallow spread of water, bore witness to the fierce thirst of the summer sun. Up and down the Saline Valley only a few scattered homesteads were to be seen, and a few fields of slender, stunted corn told the story of the first struggle for conquest in a beautiful but lonely and unfriendly land.

Morton was standing at the door of his cabin looking out on that sweep of plains with thoughtful eyes. He did not see me until I was fairly up the hill, and when he did he made no motion towards me, but stood and waited for my coming. In those few moments as I swung forward leisurely—for I was very tired now—I think we read each other's character and formed our estimates more accurately than many men have done after years of close business association.

He was a small man beside me, as I have said, and his quiet manner, and retiring disposition, half dignity, half modesty, gave the casual acquaintance no true estimate of his innate force. Three things, however, had attracted me to him in our brief meeting at Topeka: his voice, though low, had a thrill of power in it; his hand-clasp was firm and full of meaning; and when I looked into his blue eyes I recalled the words which the Earl of Kent said to King Lear:

"You have that in your countenance which I would fain call master."

And when King Lear asked, "What's that?" Kent replied, "Authority."



It was in Morton's face. Although he was not more than a dozen years my senior, I instinctively looked upon him as a leader of men, and he became then and has always since been one of my manhood's ideals.

"I'm glad to see you, Baronet. Come in." He grasped my hand firmly and led the way into the house. I sat down wearily in the chair he offered me. It was well that I had walked the last stage of my journey. Had I been twenty-four hours later I should have missed him, and this one story of the West might never have been told.

The inside of the cabin was what one would expect to find in a Plainsman's home who had no one but himself to consider.

While I rested he prepared our supper. Disappointment in love does not always show itself in the appetite, and I was as hungry as a coyote. All day new sights and experiences had been crowding in upon me. The exhilaration of the wild Plains was beginning to pulse in my veins. I had come into a strange, untried world. The past, with its broken ties and its pain and loss, must be only a memory that at my leisure I might call back; but here was a different life, under new skies, with new people. The sunset lights, the gray evening shadows, and the dip and swell of the purple distances brought their heartache; but now I was hungry, and Morton was making johnny cakes and frying bacon; wild plums were simmering on the fire, and coffee was filling the room with the rarest of all good odors vouchsafed to mortal sense.

At the supper table my host went directly to my case by asking, "Have you come out here to prospect or to take hold?"

"To take hold," I answered.

"Are you tired after your journey?" he queried.

"I? No. A night's sleep will fix me." I looked down at my strong arms, and stalwart limbs.

"You sleep well?" His questions were brief.

"I never missed but one night in twenty-one years, except when I sat up with a sick boy one Summer," I replied.

"When was that one night?"

"Oh, during the war when the border ruffians and Copperheads terrorized our town."

"You are like your father, I see." He did not say in what particular; and I added, "I hope I am."

We finished the meal in silence. Then we sat down by the west doorway and saw the whole Saline Valley shimmer through the soft glow of twilight and lose itself at length in the darkness that folded down about it. A gentle breeze swept along from somewhere in the far southwest, a thousand insects chirped in the grasses. Down by the river a few faint sounds of night birds could be heard, and then loneliness and homesickness had their time, denied during every other hour of the twenty-four.

After a time my host turned toward me in the gloom and looked steadily into my eyes.

"He's taking my measure," I thought.

"Well," I said, "will I do?"

"Yes," he answered. "Your father told me once in the army that his boy could ride like a Comanche, and turn his back to a mark and hit it over his shoulder." He smiled.

"That's because one evening I shot the head off a scarecrow he had put up in the cherry tree when I was hiding around a corner to keep out of his sight. All the Springvale boys learned how to ride and shoot and to do both at once, although we never had any shooting to do that really counted."

"Baronet"—there was a tone in Morton's voice that gripped and held me—"you have come here in a good time. We need you now. Men of your build and endurance and skill are what this West's got to have."

"Well, I'm here," I answered seriously.

"I shall leave for Fort Harker to-morrow with a crowd of men from the valley to join a company Sheridan has called for," he went on. "You know about the Indian raid the first of this month. The Cheyennes came across here, and up on Spillman Creek and over on the Solomon they killed a dozen or more people. They burned every farm-house, and outraged every woman, and butchered every man and child they could lay hands on. You heard about it at Topeka."

"Hasn't that Indian massacre been avenged yet?" I cried.

Clearly in my memory came the two women of my dream of long ago. How deeply that dream had impressed itself upon my mind! And then there flashed across my brain the image of Marjie, as she looked the night when she stood in the doorway with the lamplight on her brown curls, and it became clear to me that she was safe at home. Oh, the joy of that moment! The unutterable thankfulness that filled my soul was matched in intensity only by the horror that fills it even now when I think of a white woman in Indian slave-bonds. And while I was thinking of this I was listening to Morton's more minute account of what had been taking place about him, and why he and his neighbors were to start on the next day for Fort Harker down on the Smoky Hill River.

Early in that memorable August of 1868 a band of forty Cheyenne braves, under their chief Black Kettle, came riding up from their far-away villages in the southwest, bent on a merciless murdering raid upon the unguarded frontier settlements. They were a dirty, ragged, sullen crew as ever rode out of the wilderness. Down on the Washita River their own squaws and papooses were safe in their tepees too far from civilization for any retaliatory measure to reach them.

When Black Kettle's band came to Fort Hays, after the Indian custom they made the claim of being "good Indians."

"Black Kettle loves his white soldier brothers, and his heart feels glad when he meets them," the Chief declared. "We would be like white soldiers, but we cannot, for we are Indians; but we can all be brothers. It is a long way that we have come to see you. Six moons have come and gone, and there has been no rain; the wind blows hot from the south all day and all night; the ground is hot and cracked; the grass is burned up; the buffalo wallows are dry; the streams are dry; the game is scarce; Black Kettle is poor, and his band is hungry. He asks the white soldiers for food for his braves and their squaws and papooses. All other Indians may take the war-trail, but Black Kettle will forever keep friendship with his white brothers."

Such were his honeyed words. The commander of the fort issued to each brave a bountiful supply of flour and bacon and beans and coffee. Beyond the shadow of the fort they feasted that night. The next morning they had disappeared, these loving-hearted, loyal Indians, over whom the home missionary used to weep copious tears of pity. They had gone—but whither? Black Kettle and his noble braves were not hurrying southward toward their squaws and papooses with the liberal supplies issued to them by the Government. Crossing to the Saline Valley, not good Indians, but a band of human fiends, they swept down on the unsuspecting settlements. A homestead unprotected by the husband and father was their supreme joy. Then before the eyes of the mother, little children were tortured to death, while the mother herself—God pity her—was not only tortured, but what was more cruel, was kept alive.

Across the Saline Valley, over the divide, and up the Solomon River Valley this band of demons pushed their way. Behind them were hot ashes where homes had been, and putrid, unburied bodies of murdered men and children, mutilated beyond recognition. On their ponies, bound hand and foot, were wretched, terror-stricken women. The smiling Plains lay swathed in the August sunshine, and the richness of purple twilights, and of rose-hued day dawns, and the pitiless noontime skies of brass only mocked them in their misery. Did a merciful God forget the Plains in those days of prairie conquest? No force rose up to turn Black Kettle and his murderous horde back from the imperilled settlements until loaded with plunder, their savage souls sated with cruelty, with helpless captives for promise of further fiendish sport, they headed southward and escaped untouched to their far-away village in the pleasant, grassy lands that border the Washita River.

Not all their captives went with them, however. With these "good Indians," recipients of the Fort Hays bounty, were two women, mothers of a few months, not equal to the awful tax of human endurance. These, bound hand and foot, they staked out on the solitary Plains under the blazing August skies, while their tormentors rode gayly away to join their fat, lazy squaws awaiting them in the southland by the winding Washita.

This was the story Morton was telling to me as we sat in the dusk by his cabin door. This was the condition of those fair Kansas River valleys, for the Cheyennes under Black Kettle were not the only foes here. Other Cheyenne bands, with the Sioux, the Brules, and the Dog Indians from every tribe were making every Plains trail a warpath.

"The captives are probably all dead by this time; but the crimes are not avenged, and the settlers are no safer than they were before the raid," Morton was saying. "Governor Crawford and the Governor of Colorado have urged the authorities at Washington to protect our frontier, but they have done nothing. Now General Sheridan has decided to act anyhow. He has given orders to Colonel George A. Forsyth of the U. S. Cavalry, to make up a company of picked men to go after the Cheyennes at once. There are some two hundred of them hiding somewhere out in the Solomon or the Republican River country. It is business now. No foolishness. A lot of us around here are going down to Harker to enlist. Will you go with us, Baronet? It's no boys' play. The safety of our homes is matched against the cunning savagery of the redskins. We paid fifteen million dollars for this country west of the Mississippi. If these Indians aren't driven out and made to suffer, and these women's wrongs avenged, we'd better sell the country back to France for fifteen cents. But it's no easy piece of work. Those Cheyennes know these Plains as well as you know the streets of Springvale. They are built like giants, and they fight like demons. Don't underestimate the size of the contract. I know John Baronet well enough to know that if his boy begins, he won't quit till the battle is done. I want you to go into this with your eyes open. Whoever fights the Indians must make his will before the battle begins. Forsyth's company will be made up of soldiers from the late war, frontiersmen, and scouts. You're not any one of these, but—" he hesitated a little—"when I heard your speech at Topeka I knew you had the right metal. Your spirit is in this thing. You are willing to pay the price demanded here for the hearthstones of the West."

My spirit! My blood was racing through every artery in leaps and bounds. Here was a man calmly setting forth the action that had been my very dream of heroism, and here was a call to duty, where duty and ideal blend into one. And then I was young, and thought myself at the beginning of a new life; pain of body was unknown to me; the lure of the Plains was calling to me—daring adventure, the need for courage, the patriotism that fires the young man's heart, and, at the final analysis, my loyalty to the defenceless, my secret notions of the value of the American home, my horror of Indian captivity, a horror I had known when my mind was most impressible—all these were motives driving me on. I wondered that my companion could be so calm, sitting there in the dim twilight explaining carefully what lay before me; and yet I felt the power of that calmness building up a surer strength in me. I did not dream of home that night. I chased Indians until I wakened with a scream.

"What's the matter, Baronet?" Morton asked.

"I thought the Cheyennes had me," I answered sleepily.

"Don't waste time in dreaming it. Better go to sleep and let 'em alone," he advised; and I obeyed.

The next morning we were joined by half a dozen settlers of that scattered community, and together we rode across the Plains toward Fort Harker. I had expected to find a fortified stronghold at the end of our ride. Something in imposing stone on a commanding height. Something of frowning, impenetrable strength. Out on the open plain by the lazy, slow-crawling Smoky Hill River were low buildings forming a quadrangle about a parade ground. Officers' quarters, soldiers' barracks, and stables for the cavalry horses and Government mules, there were, but no fortifications were there anywhere. Yet the fort was ample for the needs of the Plains. The Indian puts up only a defensive fight in the region of Federal power. It is out in the wide blank lands where distance mocks at retreat that he leads out in open hostility against the white man. Here General Sheridan had given Colonel Forsyth commission to organize a Company of Plainsmen. And this Company was to drive out or annihilate the roving bands of redskins who menaced every home along the westward-creeping Kansas frontier in the years that followed the Civil War. It was to offer themselves to this cause that the men from Morton's community, whom I had joined, rode across the divide from the Saline Valley on that August day, and came in the early twilight to the solitary unpretentious Federal post on the Smoky Hill.

It is only to a military man in the present time that this picture of Fort Harker would be interesting, and there is nothing now in all that peaceful land to suggest the frontier military station which I saw on that summer day, now nearly four decades ago. But everything was interesting to me then, and my greatest study was the men gathered there for a grim and urgent purpose. My impression of frontiersmen had been shaped by the loud threats, the swagger, and much profanity of the border people of the Territorial and Civil War days. Here were quiet men who made no boasts. Strong, wiry men they were, tanned by the sun of the Plains, their hands hardened, their eyes keen. They were military men who rode like centaurs, scouts who shot with marvellous accuracy, and the sturdy settlers, builders of empire in this stubborn West. Had I been older I would have felt my own lack of training among them. My hands, beside theirs, were soft and white, and while I was accounted a good marksman in Springvale I was a novice here. But since the night long ago when Jean Pahusca frightened Marjie by peering through our schoolroom window I had felt myself in duty bound to drive back the Indians. I had a giant's strength, and no Baronet was ever seriously called a coward.

The hours at Fort Barker were busy ones for Colonel Forsyth and Lieutenant Fred Beecher, first in command under him. Their task of selecting men for the expedition was quickly performed. My heart beat fast when my own turn came. Forsyth's young lieutenant was one of the Lord's anointed. Soft-voiced, modest, handsome, with a nature so lovable, I find it hard to-day to think of him in the military ranks where war and bloodshed are the ultimate business. But young Beecher was a soldier of the highest order, fearless and resourceful. I cannot say how much it lay in Morton's recommendation, and how much in the lieutenant's kind heart that I was able to pass muster and be written into that little company of less than threescore picked men. The available material at Fort Harker was quickly exhausted, and the men chosen were hurried by trains to Fort Hays, where the remainder of the Company was made up.

Dawned then that morning in late Summer when we moved out from the Fort and fronted the wilderness. On the night before we started I wrote a brief letter to Aunt Candace, telling her what I was about to do.

"If I never come back, auntie," I added, "tell the little girl down on the side of the hill that I tried to do for Kansas what her father did for the nation, that I gave up my life to establish peace. And tell her, too, if I really do fall out by the way, that I'll be lonely even in heaven till she comes."

But with the morning all my sentiment vanished and I was eager for the thing before me. Two hundred Indians we were told we should find and every man of us was accounted good for at least five redskins. At sunrise on the twenty-ninth day of August in the year of our Lord 1868, Colonel Forsyth's little company started on its expedition of defence for the frontier settlements, and for just vengeance on the Cheyennes of the plains and their allied forces from kindred bands. Fort Hays was the very outpost of occupation. To the north and west lay a silent, pathless country which the finger of the white man had not touched. We knew we were bidding good-bye to civilization as we marched out that morning, were turning our backs on safety and comfort and all that makes life fine. Before us was the wilderness, with its perils and lonely desolation and mysteries.

But the wilderness has a siren's power over the Anglo-Saxon always. The strange savage land was splendid even in its silent level sweep of distance. When I was a boy I used to think that the big cottonwood beyond the West Draw was the limit of human exploration. It marked the world's western bound for me. Here were miles on miles of landscape opening wide to more stretches of leagues and leagues of far boundless plains, and all of it was weird, unconquerable, and very beautiful. The earth was spread with a carpet of gold splashed with bronze and scarlet and purple, with here and there a shimmer of green showing through the yellow, or streaking the shallow waterways. Far and wide there was not a tree to give the eye a point of attachment; neither orchard nor forest nor lonely sentinel to show that Nature had ever cherished the land for the white man's home and joy. The buffalo herd paid little heed to our brave company marching out like the true knights of old to defend the weak and oppressed. The gray wolf skulked along in the shadows of the draws behind us and at night the coyotes barked harshly at the invading band. But there was no mark of civilized habitation, no friendly hint that aught but the unknown and unconquerable lay before us.

I was learning quickly in those days of marching and nights of dreamless sleep under sweet, health-giving skies. After all, Harvard had done me much service; for the university training, no less than the boyhood on the Territorial border, had its part in giving me mental discipline for my duties now. Camp life came easy to me, and I fell into the soldier way of thinking, more readily than I had ever hoped to do.

On we went, northward to the Saline Valley, and beyond that to where the Solomon River winds down through a region of summer splendor, its rippling waves of sod a-tint with all the green and gold and russet and crimson hues of the virgin Plains, while overhead there arched the sky, tenderly blue in the morning, brazen at noonday, and pink and gray and purple in the evening lights. But we found no Indians, though we followed trail on trail. Beyond the Solomon we turned to the southwest, and the early days of September found us resting briefly at Fort Wallace, near the western bound of Kansas.

The real power that subdues the wilderness may be, nay, is, the spirit of the missionary, but the mark of military occupation is a tremendous convincer of truth. The shotgun and the Bible worked side by side in the conquest of the Plains; the smell of powder was often the only incense on the altars, and human blood was sprinkled for holy water. Fort Wallace, with the Stars and Stripes afloat, looked good to me after that ten days in the trackless solitude. And yet I was disappointed, for I thought our quest might end here with nothing to show in results for our pains. I did not know Forsyth and his band, as the next twenty days were to show me.

While we were resting at the Fort, scouts brought in the news of an Indian attack on a wagon train a score of miles eastward, and soon we were away again, this time equipped for the thing in hand, splendidly equipped, it seemed, for what we should really need to do. We were all well mounted, and each of us carried a blanket, saddle, bridle, picket-pin, and lariat; each had a haversack, a canteen, a butcher knife, a tin plate and tin cup. We had Spencer rifles and Colt's revolvers, with rounds of ammunition for both; and each of us carried seven days' rations. Besides this equipment the pack mules bore a large additional store of ammunition, together with rations and hospital supplies.

Northward again we pushed, alert for every faint sign of Indians. Those keen-eyed scouts were a marvel to me. They read the ground, the streams, the sagebrush, and the horizon as a primer set in fat black type. Leader of them, and official guide, was a man named Grover, who could tell by the hither side of a bluff what was on the farther side. But for five days the trails were illusive, finally vanishing in a spread of faint footprints radiating from a centre telling us that the Indians had broken up and scattered over separate ways. And so again we seemed to have been deceived in this unmapped land.

We were beyond the Republican River now, in the very northwest corner of Kansas, and the thought of turning back toward civilization had come to some of us, when a fresh trail told us we were still in the Indian country. We headed our horses toward the southwest, following the trail that hugged the Republican River. It did not fade out as the others had done, but grew plainer each mile.

The whole command was in a fever of expectancy. Forsyth's face was bright and eager with the anticipation of coming danger. Lieutenant Beecher was serious and silent, while the guide, Sharp Grover, was alert and cool. A tenseness had made itself felt throughout the command. I learned early not to ask questions; but as we came one noon upon a broad path leading up to the main trail where from this union we looked out on a wide, well-beaten way, I turned an inquiring face toward Morton, who rode beside me. There was strength in the answer his eyes gave mine. He had what the latter-day students of psychology call "poise," a grip on himself. It is by such men that the Plains have been won from a desert demesne to fruitful fields.

"I gave you warning it was no boy's play," he said simply.

I nodded and we rode on in silence. We pressed westward to where the smaller streams combine to form the Republican River. The trail here led us up the Arickaree fork, a shallow stream at this season of the year, full of sand-bars and gravelly shoals. Here the waters lost themselves for many feet in the underflow so common in this land of aimless, uncertain waterways.

On the afternoon of the sixteenth of September the trail led to a little gorge through which the Arickaree passes in a narrower channel. Beyond it the valley opened out with a level space reaching back to low hills on the north, while an undulating plain spread away to the south. The grass was tall and rank in this open space, which closed in with a bluff a mile or more to the west. Although it was hardly beyond midafternoon, Colonel Forsyth halted the company, and we went into camp. We were almost out of rations. Our horses having no food now, were carefully picketed out to graze at the end of their lariats. A general sense of impending calamity pervaded the camp. But the Plainsmen were accustomed to this kind of thing, and the Civil War soldiers had learned their lesson at Gettysburg and Chickamauga and Malvern Hill. I was the green hand, and I dare say my anxiety was greater than that of any other one there. But I had a double reason for apprehension.

As we had come through the little gorge that afternoon, I was riding some distance in the rear of the line. Beside me was a boy of eighteen, fair-haired, blue-eyed, his cheek as smooth as a girl's. His trim little figure, clad in picturesque buckskin, suggested a pretty actor in a Wild West play. And yet this boy, Jack Stillwell, was a scout of the uttermost daring and shrewdness. He always made me think of Bud Anderson. I even missed Bud's lisp when he spoke.

"Stillwell," I said in a low tone as we rode along, "tell me what you think of this. Aren't we pretty near the edge? I've felt for three days as if an Indian was riding beside me and I couldn't see him. It's not the mirage, and I'm not locoed. Did you ever feel as if you were near somebody you couldn't see?"

The boy turned his fair, smooth face toward mine and looked steadily at me.

"You mustn't get to seein' things," he murmured. "This country turns itself upside down for the fellow who does that. And in Heaven's name we need every man in his right senses now. What do I think? Good God, Baronet! I think we are marching straight into Hell's jaws. Sandy knows it"—"Sandy" was Forsyth's military pet name—"but he's too set to back out now. Besides, who wants to back out? or what's to be gained by it? We've come out here to fight the Cheyennes. We're gettin' to 'em, that's all. Only there's too damned many of 'em. This trail's like the old Santa Fe Trail, wide enough for a Mormon church to move along. And as to feelin' like somebody's near you, it's more 'n feelin'; it's fact. There's Injuns on track of this squad every minute. I'm only eighteen, but I've been in the saddle six years, and I know a few things without seein' 'em. Sharp Grover knows, too. He's the doggondest scout that ever rode over these Plains. He knows the trap we've got into. But he's like Sandy, come out to fight, and he'll do it. All we've got to do is to keep our opinions to ourselves. They don't want to be told nothin'; they know."

The remainder of the company was almost out of sight as we rounded the shoulder of the gorge. The afternoon sunlight dazzled me. Lifting my eyes just then I saw a strange vision. What I had thought to be only a piece of brown rock, above and beyond me, slowly rose to almost a sitting posture before my blinking eyes, and a man, no, two men, seemed to gaze a moment after our retreating line of blue-coats. It was but an instant, yet I caught sight of two faces. Stillwell was glancing backward at that moment and did not see anything. At the sound of our horses' feet on the gravel the two figures changed to brown rock again. In the moment my eye had caught the merest glint of sunlight on an artillery bugle, a gleam, and nothing more.

"What's the matter, Baronet? You're white as a ghost. Are you scared or sick?" Stillwell spoke in a low voice. We didn't do any shouting in those trying days.

"Neither one," I answered, but I had cause to wonder whether I was insane or not. As I live, and hope to keep my record clear, the two figures I had seen were not strangers to me. The smaller of the two had the narrow forehead and secretive countenance of the Reverend Mr. Dodd. In his hand was an artillery bugle. Beyond him, though he wore an Indian dress, rose the broad shoulders and square, black-shadowed forehead of Father Le Claire.

"It is the hallucination of this mirage-girt land," I told myself. "The Plains life is affecting my vision, and then the sun has blinded me. I'm not delirious, but this marching is telling on me. Oh, it is at a fearful price that the frontier creeps westward, that homes are planted, and peace, blood-stained, abides with them."

So I meditated as I watched the sun go down on that September night on the far Colorado Plains by the grassy slopes and yellow sands and thin, slow-moving currents of the Arickaree.



CHAPTER XVII

IN THE VALLEY OF THE ARICKAREE

A blush as of roses Where rose never grew! Great drops on the bunch grass. But not of the dew! A taint in the sweet air For wild bees to shun! A stain that shall never Bleach out in the sun!

—WHITTIER.

Stillwell was right. Sharp Grover knew, as well as the boy knew, that we were trapped, that before us now were the awful chances of unequal Plains warfare. A mere handful of us had been hurrying after a host, whose numbers the broad beaten road told us was legion. There was no mirth in that little camp that night in mid-September, and I thought of other things besides my strange vision at the gorge. The camp was the only mark of human habitation in all that wide and utterly desolate land. For days we had noted even the absence of all game—strong evidence that a host had driven it away before us. Everywhere, save about that winking camp fire was silence. The sunset was gorgeous, in the barbaric sublimity of its seas of gold and crimson atmosphere. And then came the rich coloring of that purple twilight. It is no wonder they call it regal. Out on the Plains that night it swathed the landscape with a rarer hue than I have ever seen anywhere else, although I have watched the sun go down into the Atlantic off the Rockport coast, and have seen it lost over the edge of the West Prairie beyond the big cottonwood above the farther draw. As I watched the evening shadows deepen, I remembered what Morton had told me in the little cabin back in the Saline country, "Who ever fights the Indians must make his will before the battle begins." Now that I was face to face with the real issue, life became very sweet to me. How grand over war and hate were the thoughts of peace and love! And yet every foot of this beautiful land must be bought with a price. No matter where the great blame lies, nor who sinned first in getting formal possession, the real occupation is won only by sacrifice. And I was confronted with my part of the offering. Strange thoughts come in such an hour. Sitting there in the twilight, I asked myself why I should want to live; and I realized how strong, after all, was the tie that bound me to Springvale; how under all my pretence of beginning a new life I had not really faced the future separated from the girl I loved. And then I remembered that it would mean nothing serious to her how this campaign ended. Oh! I was in the crucible now. I must prove myself the thing I always meant to be. God knew the heroic spirit I needed that lonely September night. As I sat looking out toward the west the years of my boyhood came back to me, and then I remembered O'mie's words when he told me of his struggle:

"It was to save a woman, Phil. He could only kill me. He wouldn't have been that good to her. You'd have done the same to save any woman, aven a stranger to you. Wait an' see."

I thought of the two women in the Solomon Valley, whom Black Kettle's band had dragged from their homes, tortured inhumanly, and at last staked out hand and foot on the prairie to die in agony under pitiless skies.

"When the day av choosin' comes," O'mie said, "we can't do no more 'n to take our places. We all do it. When you git face to face with a thing like that, somehow the everlastin' arms Dr. Hemingway preaches about is strong underneath you."

Oh, blessed O'mie! Had he told me that to give me courage in my hour of shrinking? Wherever he was to-night I knew his heart was with me, who so little deserved the love he gave me. At last I rolled myself snugly in my blanket, for the September evenings are cold in Colorado. The simple prayers of childhood came back to me, and I repeated the "Now I lay me" I used to say every night at Aunt Candace's knee. It had a wonderful meaning to me to-night. And once more I thought of O'mie and how his thin hand gripped mine when he said: "Most av all, don't niver forgit it, Phil, when the thing comes to you, aven in your strength. Most av all, above all sufferin', and natural longin' to live, there comes the reality av them words Aunt Candace taught us: 'Though I walk through the valley av the shadow av death, I will fear no evil.'"

"It may be that's the Arickaree Valley for me," I said to myself. "If it is, I will fear no evil." And I stretched out on the brown grasses and fell asleep.

About midnight I wakened suddenly. A light was gleaming near. Some one stood beside me, and presently I saw Colonel Forsyth looking down into my face with kindly eyes. I raised myself on my elbow and watched him passing among the slumbering soldiers. Even now I can see Jack Stillwell's fair girl-face with the dim light on it as he slept beside me. What a picture that face would make if my pen were an artist's brush! At three in the morning I wakened again. It was very dark, but I knew some one was near me, and I judged instinctively it was Forsyth. It was sixty hours before I slept again.

For five days every movement of ours had been watched by Indian scouts. Night and day they had hung on our borders, just out of sight, waiting their time to strike. Had we made a full march on that sixteenth day of September, instead of halting to rest and graze our horses, we should have gone, as Stillwell predicted, straight into Hell's jaws. As it was, Hell rose up and crept stealthily toward us. For while our little band slept, and while our commander passed restlessly among us on that night, the redskins moved upon our borders.

Morning was gray in the east and the little valley was full of shadows, when suddenly the sentinel's cry of "Indians! Indians!" aroused the sleeping force. The shouts of our guards, the clatter of ponies' hoofs, the rattling of dry skins, the swinging of blankets, the fierce yells of the invading foe made a scene of tragic confusion, as a horde of redskins swept down upon us like a whirlwind. In this mad attempt to stampede our stock nothing but discipline saved us. A few of the mules and horses not properly picketed, broke loose and galloped off before the attacking force, the remaining animals held as the Indians fled away before the sharp fire of our soldiers.

"Well, we licked them, anyhow," I said to myself exultantly as we obeyed the instant orders to get into the saddle.

The first crimson line of morning was streaking the east and I lifted my face triumphantly to the new day. Sharp Grover stood just before me; his hand was on Forsyth's shoulder.

Suddenly he uttered a low exclamation. "Oh, heavens! General, look at the Indians."

This was no vision of brown rock and sun-blinded eyes. From every direction, over the bluff, out from the tall grass, across the slope on the south, came Indians, hundreds on hundreds. They seemed to spring from the sod like Roderick Dhu's Highland Scots, and people every curve and hollow. Swift as the wind, savage as hate, cruel as hell, they bore down upon us from every way the wind blows. The thrill of that moment is in my blood as I write this. It was then I first understood the tie between the commanding officer and his men. It is easy to laud the file of privates on dress parade, but the man who directs the file in the hour of battle is the real power. In that instant of peril I turned to Forsyth with that trust that the little child gives to its father. How cool he was, and yet how lightning-swift in thought and action.

In all the valley there was no refuge where we might hide, nor height on which we might defend ourselves. The Indians had counted on our making a dash to the eastward, and had left that way open for us. They had not reckoned well on Colonel Forsyth. He knew intuitively that the gorge at the lower end of the valley was even then filled with a hidden foe, and not a man of us would ever have passed through it alive. To advance meant death, and there was no retreat possible. Out in the middle of the Arickaree, hardly three feet above the river-bed, lay a little island. In the years to be when the history of the West shall be fully told, it may become one of the Nation's shrines. But now in this dim morning light it showed only an insignificant elevation. Its sandy surface was grown over with tall sage grasses and weeds.

A few wild plums and alder bushes, a clump of low willow shrubs, and a small cottonwood tree completed its vegetation.

"How about that island, Grover?" I heard Forsyth ask.

"It's all we can do," the scout answered; and the command: "Reach the island! hitch the horses!" rang through the camp.

It takes long to tell it, this dash for the island. The execution of the order was like the passing of a hurricane. Horses, mules, men, all dashed toward the place, but in the rush the hospital supplies and rations were lost. The Indians had not counted on the island, and they raged in fury at their oversight. There were a thousand savage warriors attacking half a hundred soldiers, and they had gloated over the fifty scalps to be taken in the little gorge to the east. The break in their plans confused them but momentarily, however.

On the island we tied our horses in the bushes and quickly formed a circle. The soil was all soft sand. We cut the thin sod with our butcher knives and began throwing up a low defence, working like fiends with our hands and elbows and toes, scooping out the sand with our tin plates, making the commencement of shallow pits. We were stationed in couples, and I was beside Morton when the onslaught came. Up from the undulating south, and down over the north bluff swept the furious horde. On they came with terrific speed, their blood-curdling yells of hate mingling with the wild songs, and cries and taunts of hundreds of squaws and children that crowded the heights out of range of danger, watching the charge and urging their braves to battle. Over the slopes to the very banks of the creek, into the sandy bed of the stream, and up to the island they hurled their forces, while bullets crashed murderously, and arrows whizzed with deadly swiftness into our little sand-built defence.

In the midst of the charge, twice above the din, I caught the clear notes of an artillery bugle. It was dim daylight now. Rifle-smoke and clouds of dust and gray mist shot through with flashes of powder, and the awful rage, as if all the demons of Hell were crying vengeance, are all in that picture burned into my memory with a white-hot brand. And above all these there come back to me the faces of that little band of resolute men biding the moment when the command to charge should be given. Such determination and such splendid heroism, not twice in a lifetime is it vouchsafed to many to behold.

We held our fire until the enemy was almost upon us. At the right instant our rifles poured out a perfect billow of death. Painted bodies reeled and fell; horses sank down, or rushed mad with pain, upon their fallen riders; shrieks of agony mingled with the unearthly yells; while above all this, the steady roar of our guns—not a wasted bullet in all the line—carried death waves out from the island thicket. To me that first defence of ours was more tragic than anything in the days and nights that followed it. The first hour's struggle seasoned me for the siege.

The fury of the Indian warriors and of the watching squaws is indescribable. The foe deflected to left and right, vainly seeking to carry their dead from the field with them. The effort cost many Indian lives. The long grass on either side of the stream was full of sharpshooters. The morning was bright now, and we durst not lift our heads above our low entrenchment. Our position was in the centre of a space open to attack from every arc of the circle. Caution counted more than courage here. Whoever stood upright was offering his life to his enemy. Our horses suffered first. By the end of an hour every one of them was dead. My own mount, a fine sorrel cavalry horse, given to me at Fort Hays, was the last sacrifice. He was standing near me in the brown bushes. I could see his superb head and chest as, with nostrils wide, and flashing eyes, he saw and felt the battle charge. Subconsciously I felt that so long as he was unhurt I had a sure way of escape. Subconsciously, too, I blessed the day that Bud Anderson taught O'mie and me to drop on the side of Tell Mapleson's pony and ride like a Plains Indian. But even as I looked up over my little sand ridge a bullet crashed into his broad chest. He plunged forward toward us, breaking his tether. He staggered to his knees, rose again with a lunge, and turning half way round reared his fore feet in agony and seemed about to fall into our pit. At that instant I heard a laugh just beyond the bushes, and a voice, not Indian, but English, cried exultingly, "There goes the last damned horse, anyhow."

It was the same voice that I had heard up on "Rockport" one evening, promising Marjie in pleading tones to be a "good Indian." The same hard, cold voice I had heard in the same place saying to me, as a promise before high heaven: "I will go. But I shall see you there. When we meet again my hand will be on your throat and—I don't care whose son you are."

Well, we were about to meet. The wounded animal was just above our pit. Morton rose up with lifted carbine to drive him back when from the same gun that had done for my horse came a bullet full into the man's face. It ploughed through his left eye and lodged in the bones beyond it. He uttered no cry, but dropped into the pit beside me, his blood, streaming from the wound, splashed hot on my forehead as he fell. I was stunned by his disaster, but he never faltered. Taking his handkerchief from his pocket, he bound it tightly about his head and set his rifle ready for the next charge. After that, nothing counted with me. I no longer shrank in dread of what might happen. All fear of life, or death, of pain, or Indians, or fiends from Hades fell away from me, and never again did my hand tremble, nor my heart-beat quicken in the presence of peril. By the warm blood of the brave man beside me I was baptized a soldier.

The force drew back from this first attempt to take the island, but the fire of the hidden enemy did not cease. In this brief breathing spell we dug deeper into our pits, making our defences stronger where we lay. Disaster was heavy upon us. The sun beat down pitilessly on the hot, dry earth where we burrowed. Out in the open the Indians were crawling like serpents through the tall grasses toward our poor house of sand, hoping to fall upon us unseen. They had every advantage, for we did not dare to let our bodies be exposed above the low breastworks, and we could not see their advance. Nearly one-half of our own men were dead or wounded. Each man counted for so much on that battle-girt island that day. Our surgeon had been struck in the first round and through all the rest of his living hours he was in a delirium. Forsyth himself, grievously wounded in both lower limbs, could only drag his body about by his arms. A rifle ball had grazed his scalp and fractured his skull. The pain from this wound was almost unbearable. But he did not loosen his grip on the military power delegated to him. From a hastily scooped-out pit where we laid him he directed the whole battle.

And now we girded on our armor for the supreme ordeal. The unbounded wrath of the Indians at their unlooked-for failure in their first attack told us what to expect. Our own guns were ready for instant use. The arms of our dead and wounded comrades were placed beside our own. No time was there in those awful hours to listen to the groans of the stricken ones nor to close the dying eyes. Not a soul of us in those sand-pits had any thought that we should ever see another sunset. All we could do was to put the highest price upon our lives. It was ten o'clock in the forenoon. The firing about the island had almost ceased, and the silence was more ominous than the noise of bullets. Over on the bluff the powers were gathering. The sunlight glinted on their arms and lighted up their fantastic equipments of war. They formed in battle array. And then there came a sight the Plains will never see again, a sight that history records not once in a century. There were hundreds of these warriors, the flower of the fierce Cheyenne tribe, drawn up in military order, mounted on great horses, riding bareback, their rifles held aloft in their right hands, the left hand grasping the flowing mane, their naked bodies hideously adorned with paint, their long scalp-locks braided and trimmed with plumes and quills. They were the very acme of grandeur in a warfare as splendid as it was barbaric. And I, who live to write these lines, account myself most fortunate that I saw it all.

They were arrayed in battle lines riding sixty abreast. It was a man of genius who formed that military movement that day. On they came in orderly ranks but with terrific speed, straight down the slope, across the level, and on to the island, as if by their huge weight and terrible momentum they would trample it into the very level dust of the earth, that the winds of heaven might scatter it broadcast on the Arickaree waters. Till the day of my death I shall hear the hoof-beats of that cavalry charge.

Down through the centuries the great commanders have left us their stories of prowess, and we have kept their portraits to adorn our stately halls of fame; and in our historic shrines we have preserved their records—Cyrus, Alexander, Leonidas at Thermopylae, Hannibal crossing the Alps, Charles Martel at Tours, the white-plumed Henry of Navarre leading his soldiers in the battle of Ivry, Cromwell with his Ironsides—godly men who chanted hymns while they fought—Napoleon's grand finale at Waterloo, with his three thousand steeds mingling the sound of hoof-beats with the clang of cuirasses and the clash of sabres; Pickett's grand sweep at Gettysburg, and Hooker's charge up Lookout Mountain.

But who shall paint the picture of that terrific struggle on that September day, or write the tale of that swirl of Indian warriors, a thousand strong, as they swept down in their barbaric fury upon the handful of Anglo-Saxon soldiers crouching there in the sand-pits awaiting their onslaught? It was the old, old story retold that day on the Colorado plains by the sunlit waters of the Arickaree—the white man's civilization against the untamed life of the wilderness. And for that struggle there is only one outcome.

Before the advancing foe, in front of the very centre of the foremost line, was their leader, Roman Nose, chief warrior of the Cheyennes. He was riding a great, clean-limbed horse, his left hand grasping its mane. His right hand was raised aloft, directing his forces. If ever the moulds of Nature turned out physical perfection, she realized her ideal in that superb Cheyenne. He stood six feet and three inches in his moccasins. He was built like a giant, with a muscular symmetry that was artistically beautiful. About his naked body was a broad, blood-red silken sash, the ends of which floated in the wind. His war bonnet, with its two short, curved, black buffalo horns, above his brow, was a magnificent thing crowning his head and falling behind him in a sweep of heron plumes and eagle feathers. The Plains never saw a grander warrior, nor did savage tribe ever claim a more daring and able commander. He was by inherent right a ruler. In him was the culmination of the intelligent prowess and courage and physical supremacy of the free life of the broad, unfettered West.

On they rushed that mount of eager warriors. The hills behind them swarmed with squaws and children. Their shrieks of grief and anger and encouragement filled the air. They were beholding the action that down to the last of the tribe would be recounted a victory to be chanted in all future years over the graves of their dead, and sung in heroic strain when their braves went forth to conquest. And so, with all the power of heart and voice, they cried out from the low hill-tops. Just at the brink of the stream the leader, Roman Nose, turned his face a moment toward the watching women. Lifting high his right hand he waved them a proud salute. The gesture was so regal, and the man himself so like a king of men, that I involuntarily held my breath. But the set blood-stained face of the wounded man beside me told what that kingship meant.

As he faced the island again, Roman Nose rose up to his full height and shook his clenched fist toward our entrenchment. Then suddenly lifting his eyes toward the blue sky above him, he uttered a war-cry, unlike any other cry I have ever heard. It was so strong, so vehement, so full of pleading, and yet so dominant in its certainty, as if he were invoking the gods of all the tribes for their aid, yet sure in his defiant soul that victory was his by right of might. The unearthly, blood-chilling cry was caught up by all his command and reechoed by the watchers on the hills till, away and away over the undulating plains it rolled, dying out in weird cadences in the far-off spaces of the haze-wreathed horizon.

Then came the dash for our island entrenchment. As the Indians entered the stream I caught the sound of a bugle note, the same I had heard twice before. On the edge of the island through a rift in the dust-cloud, I saw in the front line on the end nearest me a horse a little smaller than the others, making its rider a trifle lower than his comrades. And then I caught one glimpse of the rider's face. It was the man whose bullet had wounded Morton—Jean Pahusca.

We held back our fire again, as in the first attack, until the foe was almost upon us. With Forsyth's order, "Now! now!" our part of the drama began. I marvel yet at the power of that return charge. Steady, constant, true to the last shot, we swept back each advancing wave of warriors, maddened now to maniac fury. In the very moment of victory, defeat was breaking the forces, mowing down the strongest, and spreading confusion everywhere. A thousand wild beasts on the hills, frenzied with torture, could not have raged more than those frantic Indian women and shrieking children watching the fray.

With us it was the last stand. We wasted no strength in this grim crisis; each turn of the hand counted. While fearless as though he bore a charmed life, the gallant savage commander dared death at our hands, heeding no more our rain of rifle balls than if they had been the drops of a summer shower. Right on he pressed regardless of his fallen braves. How grandly he towered above them in his great strength and superb physique, a very prince of prowess, the type of leader in a land where the battle is always to the strong. And no shot of our men was able to reach him until our finish seemed certain, and the time-limit closing in. But down in the thick weeds, under a flimsy rampart of soft sand, crouched a slender fair-haired boy. Trim and pink-cheeked as a girl, young Stillwell was matching his cool nerve and steady marksmanship against the exultant dominance of a savage giant. It was David and Goliath played out in the Plains warfare of the Western continent. At the crucial moment the scout's bullet went home with unerring aim, and the one man whose power counted as a thousand warriors among his own people received his mortal wound. Backward he reeled, and dead, or dying, he was taken from the field. Like one of the anointed he was mourned by his people, for he had never known fear, and on his banners victory had constantly perched.

In the confusion over the loss of their leader the Indians again divided about the island and fell back out of range of our fire. As the tide of battle ebbed out, Colonel Forsyth, helpless in his sand pit, watching the attack, called to his guide.

"Can they do better than that, Grover?"

"I've been on the Plains since I was a boy and I never saw such a charge as that. I think they have done their level best," the scout replied.

"All right, then, we are good for them." How cheery the Colonel's voice was! It thrilled my spirits with its courage. And we needed courage, for just then, Lieutenant Beecher was stretching himself wearily before his superior officer, saying briefly:

"I have my death-wound; good-night." And like a brave man who had done his best he pillowed his head face downward on his arms, and spoke not any more on earth forever.

It has all been told in history how that day went by. When evening fell upon that eternity-long time, our outlook was full of gloom. Hardly one-half of our company was able to bear arms. Our horses had all been killed, our supplies and hospital appliances were lost. Our wounds were undressed; our surgeon was slowly dying; our commander was helpless, and his lieutenant dead. We had been all day without food or water. We were prisoners on this island, and every man of us had half a hundred jailers, each one a fiend in the high art of human torture.

I learned here how brave and resourceful men can be in the face of disaster. One of our number had already begun to dig a shallow well. It was a muddy drink, but, God be praised, it was water! Our supper was a steak cut from a slaughtered horse, but we did not complain. We gathered round our wounded commander and did what we could for each other, and no man thought of himself first. Our dead were laid in shallow graves, without a prayer. There was no time here for the ceremonies of peace; and some of the men, before they went out into the Unknown that night, sent their last messages to their friends, if we should ever be able to reach home again.

At nightfall came a gentle shower. We held out our hands to it, and bathed our fevered faces. It was very dark and we must make the most of every hour. The Indians do not fight by night, but the morrow might bring its tale of battles. So we digged, and shaped our stronghold, and told over our resources, and planned our defences, and all the time hunger and suffering and sorrow and peril stalked about with us. All night the Indians gathered up their dead, and all night they chanted their weird, blood-chilling death-songs, while the lamentations of the squaws through that dreadful night filled all the long hours with hideous mourning unlike any other earthly discord. But the darkness folded us in, and the blessed rain fell softly on all alike, on skilful guide, and busy soldier, on the wounded lying helpless in their beds of sand, on the newly made graves of those for whom life's fitful fever was ended. And above all, the loving Father, whose arm is never shortened that He cannot save, gave His angels charge over us to keep us in all our ways.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE SUNLIGHT ON OLD GLORY

The little green tent is made of sod, And it is not long, and it is not broad, But the soldiers have lots of room. And the sod is a part of the land they saved, When the flag of the enemy darkly waved, A symbol of dole and gloom.

—WALT MASON.

"Baronet, we must have that spade we left over there this morning. Are you the man to get it?" Sharp Grover said to me just after dusk. "We've got to have water or die, and Burke here can't dig a well with his toe nails, though he can come about as near to it as anybody." Burke was an industrious Irishman who had already found water for us. "And then we must take care of these." He motioned toward a still form at my feet, and his tone was reverent.

"Over there" was the camp ground of the night before. It had been trampled by hundreds of feet. Our camp was small, and finding the spade by day might be easy enough. To grope in the dark and danger was another matter. Twenty-four hours before, I would not have dared to try. Nothing counted with me now. I had just risen from the stiffening body of a comrade whom I had been trying to compose for his final rest. I had no more sentiment for myself than I had for him. My time might come at any moment.

"Yes, sir, I'll go," I answered the scout, and I felt of my revolvers; my own and the one I had taken from the man who lay at my feet.

"Well, take no foolish chances. Come back if the way is blocked, but get the spade if you can. Take your time. You'd better wait an hour than be dead in a minute," and he turned to the next work before him.

He was guide, commander, and lieutenant all in one, and his duties were many. I slipped out in the danger-filled shadows toward our camping place of the night before. Every step was full of peril. The Indians had no notion of letting us slip through their fingers in the dark. Added to their day's defeats, we had slain their greatest warrior, and they would have perished by inches rather than let us escape now. So our island was guarded on every side. The black shadowed Plains were crossed and re-crossed by the braves silently gathering in their lost ones for burial. My scalp would have been a joy to them who had as yet no human trophy to gloat over. Surely a spade was never so valuable before. My sense of direction is fair and to my great relief I found that precious implement marvellously soon, but the creek lay between me and the island. Just at its bank I was compelled to drop into a clump of weeds as three forms crept near me and straightened themselves up in the gloom. They were speaking in low tones, and as they stood upright I caught their words.

"You made that bugle talk, anyhow, Dodd."

So Dodd was the renegade whom I had heard three times in the conflict. My vision at the gorge was not the insanity of the Plains, after all. I was listening ravenously now. The man who had spoken stood nearest me. There was a certain softness of accent and a familiar tone in his speech. As he turned toward the other two, even in the dim light, the outline of his form and the set of his uncovered head I knew.

"That's Le Claire, as true as heaven, all but the voice," I said to myself. "But I'll never believe that metallic ring is the priest's. It is Le Claire turned renegade, too, or it's a man on a pattern so like him, they couldn't tell themselves apart."

I recalled all the gentleness and manliness of the Father. Never an act of his was cruel, or selfish, or deceptive. True to his principles, he had warned us again and again not to trust Jean. And yet he had always seemed to protect the boy, always knew his comings and goings, and the two had grown yearly to resemble each other more and more in face and form and gesture. Was Le Claire a villain in holy guise?

I did not meditate long, for the third man spoke. Oh, the "good Indian"! Never could he conceal his voice from me.

"Now, what I want you to do is to tell them all which one he is. I've just been clear around their hole in the sand. I could have hit my choice of the lot. But he wasn't there."

No, I had just stepped out after the spade.

"If he had been, I'd have shot him right then, no matter what come next. But I don't want him shot. He's mine. Now tell every brave to leave him to me, the big one, nearly as big as Roman Nose, whiter than the others, because he's not been out here long. But he's no coward. The one with thick dark curly hair; it would make a beautiful scalp. But I want him."

"What will you do with him?" the man nearest to me queried.

"Round the bend below the gorge the Arickaree runs over a little strip of gravel with a ripple that sounds just like the Neosho above the Deep Hole. I'll stake him out there where he can hear it and think of home until he dies. And before I leave him I've got a letter to read to him. It'll help to keep Springvale in his mind if the water fails. I've promised him what to expect when he comes into my country."

"Do it," the smallest of the three spoke up. "Do it. It'll pay him for setting Bud Anderson on me and nearly killing me in the alley back of the courthouse the night we were going to burn up Springvale. I was making for the courthouse to get the papers to burn sure. I'd got the key and could have got them easy—and there's some needed burning specially—when that lispin' tow-head caught my arm and gave my head such a cut that I'll always carry the scar, and twisted my wrist so I've never been able to lift anything heavier than an artillery bugle since. Nobody ever knew it back there but Mapleson and Conlow and Judson. Funny nobody ever guessed Judson's part in that thing except his wife, and she kept it to herself and broke her heart and died. Everybody else said he was water-bound away from home. He wasn't twenty feet from his own house when the Whately girl come out. He was helpin' Jean then. Thought her mother'd be killed, and Whately'd never get home alive—as he didn't—and he'd get the whole store; greediest man on earth for money. He's got the store anyhow, now, and he's going to marry the girl he was helpin' Jean to take out of his way. That store never would have been burnt that night. I wish Jean had got her, though. Then I'd turned things against Tell Mapleson and run him out of town instead of his driving me from Springvale. Tell played a double game damned well. I'm outlawed and he's gettin' richer every day at home."

So spoke the Rev. Mr. Dodd, pastor of the Methodist Church South. It may be I needed the discipline of that day's fighting to hold me motionless and silent in the clump of grass beside these three men.

"Well, let's get up there and watch the fool women cry for their men." It was none other than Father Le Claire's form before me, but this man's voice was never that soft French tone of the good man's—low and musical, matching his kindly eyes and sweet smile. As the three slipped away I did the only foolish act of mine in the whole campaign: I rose from my hiding place, shouldered that spade, and stalked straight down the bank, across the creek, and up to our works in the centre of the island as upright and free as if I were walking up Cliff Street to Judge Baronet's front door. Jean's words had put into me just what I needed—not acceptance of the inevitable, but a power of resistance, the indomitable spirit that overcomes.

History is stranger than fiction, and the story of the Kansas frontier is more tragical than all the Wild West yellow-backed novels ever turned off the press. To me this campaign of the Arickaree has always read like a piece of bloody drama, so terrible in its reality, it puts the imagination out of service.

We had only one chance for deliverance, we must get the tidings of our dreadful plight to Fort Wallace, a hundred miles away. Jack Stillwell and another brave scout were chosen for the dangerous task. At midnight they left us, moving cautiously away into the black blank space toward the southwest, and making a wide detour from their real line of direction. The Indians were on the alert, and a man must walk as noiselessly as a panther to slip between their guards.

The scouts wore blankets to resemble the Indians more closely in the shadows of the night. They made moccasins out of boot tops, that their footprints might tell no story. In sandy places they even walked backward that they should leave no tell-tale trail out of the valley.

Dawn found them only three miles away from their starting place. A hollow bank overhung with long, dry grasses, and fronted with rank sunflowers, gave them a place of concealment through the daylight hours. Again on the second night they hurried cautiously forward. The second morning they were near an Indian village. Their only retreat was in the tall growth of a low, marshy place. Here they crouched through another long day. The unsuspecting squaws, hunting fuel, tramped the grasses dangerously near to them, but a merciful Providence guarded their hiding-place.

On the third night they pushed forward more boldly, hoping that the next day they need not waste the precious hours in concealment. In the early morning they saw coming down over the prairie the first guard of a Cheyenne village moving southward across their path. The Plains were flat and covertless. No tall grass, nor friendly bank, nor bush, nor hollow of ground was there to cover them from their enemies. But out before them lay the rotting carcass of an old buffalo. Its hide still hung about its bones. And inside the narrow shelter of this carcass the two concealed themselves while a whole village passed near them trailing off toward the south.

Insufficient food, lack of sleep, and poisonous water from the buffalo wallows brought nausea and weakness to the faithful men making their way across the hostile land to bring help to us in our dire extremity. It is all recorded in history how these two men fared in that hazardous undertaking. No hundred miles of sandy plain were ever more fraught with peril; and yet these two pressed on with that fearless and indomitable courage that has characterized the Saxon people on every field of conquest.

Meanwhile day crept over the eastern horizon, and the cold chill of the shadows gave place to the burning glare of the September sun. Hot and withering it beat down upon us and upon the unburied dead that lay all about us. The braves that had fallen in the strife strewed the island's edges. Their blood lay dark on the sandy shoals of the stream and stained to duller brown the trampled grasses. Daylight brought the renewal of the treacherous sharpshooting. The enemy closed in about us and from their points of vantage their deadly arrows and bullets were hurled upon our low wall of defence. And so the unequal struggle continued. Ours was henceforth an ambush fight. The redskins did not attack us in open charge again, and we durst not go out to meet them. And so the thing became a game of endurance with us, a slow wearing away of ammunition and food, a growing fever from weakness and loss of blood, a festering of wounds, the ebbing out of strength and hope; while putrid mule meat and muddy water, the sickening stench from naked bloated bodies under the blazing heat of day, the long, long hours of watching for deliverance that came not, and the certainty of the fate awaiting us at last if rescue failed us—these things marked the hours and made them all alike. As to the Indians, the passing of Roman Nose had broken their fighting spirit; and now it was a mere matter of letting us run to the end of our tether and then—well, Jean had hinted what would happen.

On the third night two more scouts left us. It seemed an eternity since Stillwell and his comrade had started from the camp. We felt sure that they must have fallen by the way, and the second attempt was doubly hazardous. The two who volunteered were quiet men. They knew what the task implied, and they bent to it like men who can pay on demand the price of sacrifice. Their names were Donovan and Pliley, recorded in the military roster as private scouts, but the titles they bear in the memory of every man who sat in that grim council on that night, has a grander sound than the written records declare.

"Boys," Forsyth said, lifting himself on his elbow where he lay in his sand bed, "this is the last chance. If you can get to the fort and send us help we can hold out a while. But it must come quickly. You know what it means for you to try, and for us, if you succeed."

The two men nodded assent, then girding on their equipments, they gave us their last messages to be repeated if deliverance ever came to us and they were never heard of again. We were getting accustomed to this now, for Death stalked beside us every hour. They said a brief good-bye and slipped out from us into the dangerous dark on their chosen task. Then the chill of the night, with its uncertainty and gloom, with its ominous silences broken only by the howl of the gray wolves, who closed in about us and set up their hunger wails beyond the reach of our bullets; and the heat of the day with its peril of arrow and rifle-ball filled the long hours. Hunger was a terror now. Our meat was gone save a few decayed portions which we could barely swallow after we had sprinkled them over with gunpowder. For the stomach refused them even in starvation. Dreams of banquets tortured our short, troubled sleep, and the waking was a horror. A luckless little coyote wandered one day too near our fold. We ate his flesh and boiled his bones for soup. And one day a daring soldier slipped out from our sand pit in search of food—anything—to eat in place of that rotting horseflesh. In the bushes at the end of the island, he found a few wild plums. Oh, food for the gods was that portion of stewed plums carefully doled out to each of us.

Six days went by. I do not know on which one the Sabbath fell, for God has no holy day in the Plains warfare. Six days, and no aid had come from Fort Wallace. That our scouts had failed, and our fate was decreed, was now the settled conclusion in every mind.

On the evening of this sixth day our leader called us about him. How gray and drawn his face looked in the shadowy gray light, but his eyes were clear and his voice steady.

"Boys, we've got to the end of our rope, now. Over there," pointing to the low hills, "the Indian wolves are waiting for us. It's the hazard of war; that's all. But we needn't all be sacrificed. You, who aren't wounded, can't help us who are. You have nothing here to make our suffering less. To stay here means—you all know what. Now the men who can go must leave us to what's coming. I feel sure now that you can get through together somehow, for the tribes are scattering. It is only the remnant left over there to burn us out at last. There is no reason why you should stay here and die. Make your dash for escape together to-night, and save your lives if you can. And"—his voice was brave and full of cheer—"I believe you can."

Then a silence fell. There were two dozen of us gaunt, hungry men, haggard from lack of sleep and the fearful tax on mind and body that tested human endurance to the limit—two dozen, to whom escape was not impossible now, though every foot of the way was dangerous. Life is sweet, and hope is imperishable. We looked into one another's face grimly, for the crisis of a lifetime was upon us. Beside me lay Morton. The handkerchief he had bound about his head in the first hour of battle had not once been removed. There was no other handkerchief to take its place.

"Go, Baronet," he said to me. "Tell your father, if you see him again, that I remembered Whately and how he went down at Chattanooga."

His voice was low and firm and yet he knew what was awaiting him. Oh! men walked on red-hot ploughshares in the days of the winning of the West.

Sharp Grover was sitting beside Forsyth. In the silence of the council the guide turned his eyes toward each of us. Then, clenching his gaunt, knotted hands with a grip of steel, he said in a low, measured voice:

"It's no use asking us, General. We have fought together, and, by Heaven, we'll die together."

In the great crises of life the only joy is the joy of self-sacrifice. Every man of us breathed freer, and we were happier now than we had been at any time since the conflict began. And so another twenty-four hours, and still another twenty-four went by.

The sun came up and the sun went down, And day and night were the same as one.

And any evil chance seemed better than this slow dragging out of misery-laden time.

"Nature meant me to defend the weak and helpless. The West needs me," I had said to my father. And now I had given it my best. A slow fever was creeping upon me, and weariness of body was greater than pain and hunger. Death would be a welcome thing now that hope seemed dead. I thought of O'mie, bound hand and foot in the Hermit's Cave, and like him, I wished that I might go quickly if I must go. For back of my stolid mental state was a frenzied desire to outwit Jean Pahusca, who was biding his time, and keeping a surer watch on our poor battle-wrecked, starving force than any other Indian in the horde that kept us imprisoned.

The sunrise of the twenty-fifth of September was a dream of beauty on the Colorado Plains. I sat with my face to the eastward and saw the whole pageantry of morning sweep up in a splendor of color through stretches of far limitless distances. Oh! it was gorgeous, with a glory fresh from the hand of the Infinite God, whose is the earth and the seas. Mechanically I thought of the sunrise beyond the Neosho Valley, but nothing there could be half so magnificent as this. And as I looked, the thought grew firmer that this sublimity had been poured out for me for the last time, and I gazed at the face of the morning as we look at the face awaiting the coffin lid.

And even as the thought clinched itself upon me came the sentinel's cry of "Indians! Indians!"

We grasped our weapons at the shrill warning. It was the death-grip now. We knew as surely as we stood there that we could not resist this last attack. The redskins must have saved themselves for this final blow, when resistance on our part was a feeble mockery. The hills to the northward were black with the approaching force, but we were determined to make our last stand heroically, and to sell our lives as dearly as possible. As with a grim last measure of courage we waited, Sharp Grover, who stood motionless, alert, with arms ready, suddenly threw his rifle high in air, and with a shout that rose to heaven, he cried in an ecstasy of joy:

"By the God above us, it's an ambulance!"

To us for whom the frenzied shrieks of the squaws, the fiendish yells of the savage warriors, and the weird, unearthly wailing for the dead were the only cries that had resounded above the Plains these many days, this shout from Grover was like the music of heaven. A darkness came before me, and my strength seemed momentarily to go from me. It was but a moment, and then I opened my eyes to the sublimest sight it is given to the Anglo-American to look upon.