"No man, sir," said the non-commissioned officer, stoutly.

"But there must have been—or no, perhaps he could have run along the left side of the train from a forward car and jumped on the platform. I didn't think of that. Did you see or hear no one?"

"I heard some one on the platform of the sleeper, sir, but I thought it was the lieutenant."

Going forward Davies met with no better success. The guard at each door was positive no man had gone out. Then, unless there were collusion on the part of the sentries, he must have slipped through some window, said Davies to himself. Miss Loomis was still up and rearranging Mrs. Cranston's pillows when he returned.

"Did you ascertain anything?" she asked.

"Nothing. They all deny any knowledge of such a thing."

"Do you know, I thought there was something strange about it. The man seemed hurried and excited, talked low and fast, and when Brannan refused or seemed to refuse what was asked, I heard him say, 'Well, you'll be a sorry man if you don't.'"

But of this threat Brannan denied all knowledge whatsoever. Davies, feeling sure that the young soldier was concealing something, decided to ask no more questions inviting more lies, but to wait and report the affair to the captain after breakfast. This time the sergeants did not overlook the lance corporal in the distribution of coffee and rations. Davies found that Miss Loomis had just finished dressing and bandaging the wound when he returned to the sleeper shortly after they resumed the journey. The soldier looked gratefully into her face as he turned away, and murmured something the young officer could not hear. "Yes, I understand," said Miss Loomis in reply.

A moment later she accosted him. "I'm going to ask you something that may sound very strange," she said, and her color heightened and the lids swept quickly over her eyes, "yet—I believe you won't misunderstand. I want you to do something—or rather not to do something—for me. You were going to tell Captain Tibbetts about that affair of last night,—that other soldier's coming in here, were you not?"

"I certainly was."

"Well—please don't."



CHAPTER V.

A week later, with additional detachments of horse, foot, and recruits, Mr. Davies found himself in camp on the sandy, sage-covered flats to the west of old Fort Fetterman. Here, too, were gathered wagons and mules laden with ammunition and supplies for the big column already in the field far to the northward. Officers hurrying to the front from leave of absence which they had promptly relinquished, newspaper correspondents, packers, teamsters, scouts and would-be scouts, soldiers old and soldiers new,—it was a strange and motley array, all awaiting the coming of the cavalry command, which was to be their escort through the Indian-infested region that lay between them and the main supply camp beyond Cloud Peak. Between them and the barren slopes to the northward rolled the swollen Platte, its shallowest fords breast-deep. At rare intervals, with his life in his hands and his despatches done up in oil-skin, some solitary courier came galloping down to the opposite bank and was hauled over by the rope ferry, the only means of dry communication between the shores. One day, strongly guarded, there arrived a little procession of ambulances and travois, bearing such of the wounded as could stand such rude transportation,—but this was while Davies with his recruits was still on his foot tramp through the passes of the Medicine Bow,—and among these wounded was Captain Cranston, now comfortably housed in the quarters of a brother officer who was with his troop at the front, and there Davies found the two ladies, his companions of the railway ride, duly installed as nurses. Almost the first question asked by Miss Loomis was about her patient, the lance corporal.

"He is here with us," said Davies, "his hand still in a sling. That was a deep cut and a bad one, but he's a plucky young fellow and declined to be left behind at Sanders. He tells me, however, that the hospital steward with us cannot compare in skill with the nurse he had on the cars."

Miss Loomis smiled. "You know I owe that to father," she said. Then, with quick change of subject, "But I haven't congratulated you on your assignment."

"Is it here?—has it come?" he asked, eagerly. "I did not know. What regiment?"

"To the Eleventh Cavalry,—Captain Cranston's own regiment."

"The Eleventh Cavalry!" he exclaimed, surprise and pleasure in his face. "I had not hoped for that; and yet——" a shadow falling and constraint creeping into his tone. "I fear I ought to have gone into the infantry. I had made every preparation. Where did you hear?"

"About the orders? Why, from Colonel Denton. He came last evening to call, and we were speaking of you. Haven't you been to see him yet? You know that's an officer's first duty on coming to a post."

"I came here first," answered Davies. "It seemed most natural. Of course I was going to call on the commanding officer. Captain Tibbetts said he would take me as soon as he came up, a little later. I got away earlier, as I wanted to inquire for my letters, but I missed them after all,—they had been sent over to camp. Are you sure about my being assigned to the cavalry?"

"There's no doubt about it. Colonel Denton said instructions came by telegraph to notify you of your assignment to the Eleventh, and directing you as having relinquished graduation leave to report to Colonel Winthrop, now commanding the regiment in the field. Perhaps your throwing up your leave and seeking instant service had something to do with your good fortune,—if cavalry is really what you wanted."

"It is certainly what I would most like," he answered; "and yet,—there were reasons."

She stood there in the door-way in her cool white dress looking so fresh and dainty and fair to see; her dark eyes had lighted with pleasure at sight of her friend, and the flush was still on her soft and rounded cheek. She was noting how his few days of marching and campaigning had improved him, even at the expense of a sensitive complexion. Mr. Davies's nose was peeling, as a result of a week's exposure to blistering Wyoming suns, his eyes were red-rimmed too, in tribute to alkali dust and water. The gloss was gone from his trim fatigue dress, a red silk handkerchief had replaced the white starched collar, and a soft drab felt hat the natty forage-cap. But he looked the more soldierly and serviceable if less trim, and being tall, spare, and athletic, if not particularly handsome, Mr. Davies was at least as presentable as the average of his fellows now thronging the post, for bristling beards and frontier scouting-dress banish all vestige of dandyism. But if she liked him still better now that the week had wrought its changes, what could be said of his impressions? Attractive as she had appeared in the grime and dust and heat of the railway car, now in that dainty gown of cool white lawn, open at the rounded throat, she saw with woman's unerring eye the unspoken approval if not open admiration in his face. Not yet nineteen, she had lived a busy, earnest, thoughtful life. The Cranstons had known her from early maidenhood. She was a child in the Southern garrison in the days of the great epidemic, when the young captain owed his life to the doctor's skill and assiduous care. It was this that led to the deep friendship between the two men, and to Cranston's assuming the duties of guardian and protector after Loomis's lamented death. It was this that determined her hastening to Mrs. Cranston the moment the sad news came, and then accompanying her to the frontier. A mature head was that on her young shoulders, but she who had so easily repelled the advances of the admiring fellow-passenger on the train had been attracted by the bearing and behavior of the young officer, who, absorbed in his new cares and duties, had apparently noticed her hardly at all. She and the train conductor and Mr. Langston, the elder of the two civilians, at least, knew who was the inspiration of that effective squelching given the rioting recruits, whatever impression might be prevailing at department head-quarters or at Sanders. She, presumably, had her duties as assistant to Mrs. Cranston at the bedside of the sorely wounded officer. Davies, too, had matters requiring his attention about the post, for the word had gone the rounds that they were to march at dawn on the morrow. Yet here under the vine-sheltered portico they lingered, chatting on all manner of topics. Mrs. Cranston came smilingly to congratulate the young officer on his assignment to her husband's regiment, to say the captain was dozing now and that she thought she would lie down a while, but that Miss Loomis was not to think of coming in out of the sweet summer air.

"Oh, Mr. Davies is only waiting for Captain Tibbetts to come up from camp to call with him on the post commander," said Miss Loomis; "and here comes the captain now," she continued, as a stalwart, full-bearded, heavily-built fellow swung himself off his horse at the gate, and, leaving him with his orderly, came forward with cordial inquiries for his wounded comrade, and with a packet of letters, at least a dozen, which he handed to the new lieutenant.

"Seven of them addressed in the same fair, feminine hand, youngster," said he, in the easy jocularity of the frontier. "That gives you dead away."

And the color that mounted to Mr. Davies's forehead, a cloud of embarrassment, told plainly that the shot was a centre. He had not recovered himself when the captain again turned, saying they must go to the commanding officer's quarters at once or be too late.

"Remember, you are to come and lunch with us, Mr. Davies," said the captain's wife, as he was saying adieu.

"I—I'm afraid I can't, Mrs. Cranston," was his answer. "We march so soon, and I have so many preparations to make."

"Preparations? Why, what on earth have you been doing ever since you came up to the post?" asked his witless or too witty tormentor. "He's simply eager to get off by himself somewhere and devour his ration of spoon meat. I know how it is, Mrs. Cranston. I was there ten years ago." And Davies's low-toned protestations were drowned in the jovial tones of his burly comrade.

"I'll come to say good-by to-night, perhaps," he stammered, as he was led away, still clutching his packet; but Miss Loomis had turned and gone within-doors before the visitors reached the gate.

"I'm sorry to hear of it," said Captain Cranston, when later that evening his wife was laughingly telling of Davies's betrayal and confusion. "I always feel distressed to find a young fellow, just entering service, has already enlisted in one much more exacting. I was in love when I graduated myself."

And Davies didn't come to say adieu. He wrote a note to Mrs. Cranston saying he found so many duties crowding on him at the last moment, so many home letters to be written owing to his having left in such haste, that it was impossible for him to leave camp. He begged her to say good-by for him to Miss Loomis, whom he sincerely hoped he might meet again, and with his best wishes for the captain's speedy recovery and restoration to duty, he begged to subscribe himself her friend and most obedient servant.

"Now, I like that young fellow," said Mrs. Cranston, folding up the letter, "only I didn't——"

"Well, didn't what?" asked her companion, seeing that she had faltered for a word.

"Well—he didn't act at all like an engaged man,—like he ought to have acted," said Mrs. Cranston, with honest disdain of masculine flirts or malevolent rules of speech, due perhaps to long association with belles of the Blue Grass country.

"Why, I didn't think he was engaged," said Miss Loomis.

"No,—and he didn't mean you to. But when one mail brings a man seven letters from one girl, I've no use for him."

"Well, I should much rather he had them of one than from seven different girls," said Miss Loomis, smiling resolutely.

"Oh, you're bound to uphold him, I see. All the same, I thought better of him."

"Ah?" And now in a very pretty, playful way did Miss Loomis take her companion's flushed face between two long, white, slender hands,—very cool and dainty members were they,—and archly queried, "Are you beginning to tire of your bargain, Lady Cranston? Are you planning already to unload me, as the captain says, on somebody else?"

The answer came with sudden vehemence and a hug. "You are much too good for any man I know,—except Will, and you can't have him. And I'll never let you go till the right one comes."

After which outburst, and for over a week, did this young matron say little more to Miss Loomis on the subject, but she must have enlivened some hours of the captain's convalescence with her views on recent graduates in general, and this one in particular, for when at last letters came from the front announcing the arrival of the reinforcements and the final cutting loose of the reorganized column from its base, the prostrate warrior glanced up at his busy wife with an odd mixture of merriment and concern in his haggard face.

"To whose troop do you suppose your friend Davies has been assigned?"

"Not to yours, surely. You have no vacancy."

"No. I fear I wish I had,—every time I see my bulky senior sub in saddle. But, of all men you know——"

"Will Cranston! You don't mean Captain Devers?"

"Yes,—Captain Differs, for a fact."

"Well, then your protege and Mr. Davies have gone into the same troop. What a strange coincidence! Isn't it time Mrs. Barnard answered Agatha's letter?"

"Time she answered it? Yes," replied Cranston, "yet not time for her answer to get here. Poor lady! She was so distressed at the thought of his going into the army. I hope that letter will comfort her. It ought to. I doubt if he ever did an honest day's work before."



CHAPTER VI.

The battalion had halted at the foot of the slope, each troop closing up on its predecessor and huddling in shivering silence. No trumpet sounded; no word of command was heard. Every troop leader threw up his hand when he thought he had gone far enough and rolled stiffly out of saddle, his horse only too willingly standing stock-still the instant he found himself no longer urged. "Dismount" either by signal or command would have been an affront to a cavalry force two-thirds of whose array seemed to be dismounted already, some towing along by taut bridle-rein the famished relic of a once spirited charger, others comforting themselves with the reflection that at least they had now only their own carcass to care for, others still wishing they had not even that responsibility, wondering how much longer their aggrieved stomachs might have to struggle with the only pabulum upon which they had been allowed to expend their gastric juices for over forty-eight hours, and suffering the pangs of remorse, both physical and mental, in the poignant consciousness that the cause of this distress was the undigested portion of some late faithful four-footed friend and companion, for the command for rations had been reduced to horse meat on the hoof. Three hundred miles from the nearest post when their supplies gave out, in the heart of the Bad Lands and the height of the worst season of the year, except midwinter, it had turned its back to the forts and its face to the foe, true to its orders, still following the trail of the hostile tribe,—the only hot thing it had struck for a week. "Live on the country, there isn't anything else," were their orders, as they cut loose from the main command, and their major—a reserved and conservative fellow at other times—came away from the grim presence of his commander with blasphemy on his bearded lips. The only human habitation within scores of miles of his line of march were Indian lodges, and both grass for the horses and game for the men had been fired off the face of the earth by those active foemen before the drenching wintry rain set in and chilled to the marrow the shelterless forms of starving trooper and staggering steed.

"Live on the country, indeed! Two antelope and ten prairie dogs was the sum total of the game secured by the hunters in three days' pursuit. And what are they," said Captain Truman, "among so many? Barley loaves and Galilee perch might be made to go round in a bigger crowd in the days of miracles, but this isn't Jordan's strand," he added, as he glanced around at the dripping, desolate slopes, and then, fortified in his opinion by the gloomy survey, concluded, with cavalry elegance, "not by a damn sight."

"What's the matter ahead, anyhow?" hailed a brother captain, up to his shins in sticky mud, who had been making mental calculation as to how many more hours of such wearing work and wretched weather it would take to unhorse his entire company.

"Don't know," was the short answer. Men fight, but they seldom talk on empty stomachs.

"Why, I thought I saw you talking with Hastings when he rode back." Hastings being the battalion adjutant. "Didn't he say what they were pow-wowing about?"

"No, and I didn't ask. There was nothing to eat in sight, and that's the only matter that interests my people just now. Just look at those poor brutes!" And Truman heaved a sigh as he gazed about among his gaunt, dejected horses, many of them so weak as barely to be able to stand.

"My men are as bad off as the horses, pretty near," said Captain Devers, the other. "There isn't one of them that hasn't turned his saddle-bags inside out to-day for the last crumb of hard-tack. They're worn to skin and bone. Three of them broke down entirely back there at the creek crossing, and if there weren't Indians all round us, nothing would have fetched them along. There goes Davies, coddling 'em again, damn it! That man would spoil any troop——Mr. Davies!" he called, and a gaunt, wiry fellow, with a stiff beard sprouting on his thin, haggard face, turned away from a bedraggled trooper who had thrown himself in utter abandonment among the dripping sage brush at the side of the trail, and came to his troop commander.

"I wish you wouldn't make such a fuss over those men," said Devers, petulantly. "Just leave 'em alone. They'll come out all right. This coddling and petting isn't going to do any good. Soldiers are not like sick children."

"A good many of ours seem to feel that way just now, sir," said the young officer. "I only thought to cheer him up a bit."

"Well, when my men need nursing, Mr. Davies, I'll have you detailed in that capacity, but be so good as to refrain from it otherwise. I don't like it. That's all."

Without a word Davies turned on his heel and went back to his horse. Truman, looking after him with a not unkindly interest in his tired eyes, saw that he swayed a little as he ploughed his way through the thick and sticky mud. "That boy's as weak as a sick child himself, Devers," said he. "You'll have to have a nurse for him before we get in."

"Well, it's his own fault, then. He had just as much in his haversack as I had when we cut loose from the main column. I 'spose he's given it away."

"I know he has," was the curt rejoinder. "Neither of those two men could stomach tough mule meat. I suppose that was the only way to get 'em along."

Devers turned gloomily about. Down in the bottom of his heart he felt that in his annoyance at what he considered disregard of his instructions he had spoken harshly and unjustly to a young officer of whom he had heard many a word of praise during the hard and trying campaign now drawing to a close. True, the words had fallen mainly from the lips of those of the rank and file or from seniors whom he didn't like. In some, cases, especially among the enlisted men, they would appear to have been spoken for the captain's especial benefit. Devers, while a painstaking officer and not unmindful of the care of his men, was one who "lacked magnetism," to say the least, and never won from them the enthusiastic homage they often lavished on others among their superiors. The fact that Lieutenant Davies, finding Moore and Rupp actually so weak from lack of food that they could hardly drag one leg after another, had been sharing with them his own slender store of provision was not the first thing the men had noted in his favor, but that was no reason, thought Devers, why they should raise their voices and glance covertly in his direction when referring to it. Devers was one of the kind sometimes called unsympathetic, that is, he seemed so, but it was more in manner than in fact, for few troop commanders in his regiment were really more careful in providing for their men than he. But these were days that tried men's tempers as well as their souls, and the officer who could look back on that long campaign against the Sioux without regretting some speech wrung from him by the exasperation produced by incessant exposure, hardship, and finally by starvation, were few indeed. Devers was honest enough to admit to himself at the moment that he wished he hadn't said what he did say to Davies, but not so honest as to confess it to any one else. Yet stealing a glance at the young fellow whom he had humiliated, now wearily leaning against his saddle, Devers would have been glad to find some way of making amends, but, stealing another glance around another way after Truman, of whom he was both jealous and afraid, he hardened his heart. It is one thing to say "I was in the wrong" to the victim, and quite another to admit it to one's fellows. It is fear of what the world will say that keeps many a man from righting many a wrong, and men, too, who wouldn't flinch in front of a mile of batteries.

Standing listlessly by their horses, the men of Devers's troop had, some of them at least, been silent witnesses of the scene. One or two officers also had marked and conjectured, though they had not heard, what had taken place. Truman alone was cognizant of all, and, whatever may have been his views, this was neither the time nor place to express them. But he took occasion to stop as he was returning to the head of his own troop and speak to the young officer in the case.

"Davies," said he, kindly, "come over with me a moment. I've got a little chunk of antelope in my saddle-bags, and you need it, man. We'll all have something to eat to-night—sure. We'll make the Belle Fourche by nine."

Davies looked up gratefully. "I'm ever so much obliged, captain," he began, "but I can't eat with all those poor fellows looking at me. They're about done up."

"Oh, it's rough, I know, but all they've got to do is tag along with the column till night and then eat their fill. You haven't had enough to live on, and may have work ahead. Here comes Hastings now."

And as he spoke the battalion adjutant came spurring down from a low ridge at the front fast as a miserably jaded horse could bear him. Earlier in the campaign every man would have felt the thrill of coming excitement,—a chase, a brush of some kind, perhaps,—but now all were weak and weary. Even the Patlanders in Truman's troop, men of whom it had often been said that they'd rather fight than eat, were no more full of fight to-day than they were of food.

"What's he want?" growled Devers, sauntering over to where the officer stood. "We've left the Indians miles behind. Surely there can't be any between us and the river."

Many eyes were fixed on the coming horseman or on the little group of scouts and soldiers surrounding the major, who, kneeling, was levelling his field-glasses over the ridge at some objects far away, apparently towards the southeast.

"They're everywhere,—damn them!" was the curt answer, "except where we want them. But he's looking off square to the left, not ahead."

This was true. Whatever it might have been far to the front of the weary column that caused the little squad of scouts to signal halt after their first cautious peep over that ridge, the object at which so many were now excitedly peering and pointing was at right angles to the direction of the march. Yet did the advance keep well concealed against observant eyes ahead, though why they should do so when every Indian in Dakota by this time knew all about them, their movements, and those of the main column farther over towards the Little Missouri, Truman couldn't understand.

"Have you ten horses that can stand a side scout?" asked the adjutant, urging his mud-spattered mount to the head of Devers's troop. He spoke abruptly, and without salute, to his superior officer,—his own captain at that.

"What are we on but a side scout now?" demanded that officer, in the surly tone the best of men may fall into under such circumstances.

"That isn't the question," replied Mr. Hastings, "and we've no time for points. Davies, it's your detail. There's something—we can't make out what—over towards the river. Report to the major and I'll find your party."

"I doubt if my horse can stand any side scout," said Davies, slowly, "but I am ready."

"Oh, your horse's as good as any in the outfit," interposed the adjutant, impatiently. "The major wants ten men from your troop at once, captain,—the ten who have the strongest horses. It won't take 'em more than a dozen miles out of the way, I reckon. The whole crowd would go, only men and horses can barely make the day's march as it is."

"See any Indians?" asked Truman, lounging up.

"I haven't. Crounse and the scouts say they have, and it's likely enough. Of course you've seen the pony tracks, and what's queer is that many of them head over towards the very point where this smoke is drifting from. Looks as if they'd jumped some wagons and burned them."

Meantime, Mr. Davies had slowly mounted and was urging his reluctant horse into some semblance of a canter. As the slope in front of him steepened, however, both horse and rider abandoned the effort, and, full fifty yards below the point where the battalion commander and his scouts were in consultation, the lieutenant dismounted, and leaving his steed unguarded to nibble at a patch of scant and sodden herbage that had survived the Indian fires, he slowly climbed the ascent. "I am ordered to report to you, sir," was all he had to say.

The major lowered his field-glass and looked back over a broad, burly shoulder garbed in canvas shooting-jacket. Not a stitch of uniform graced his massive person from head to heel, yet soldier was manifest in every gesture or attitude. A keen observer might have said that a shade of disappointment crossed his fine, full-bearded face as he heard the subaltern's voice, but no sign of it appeared in his tone when he spoke.

"Mr. Davies, just take this glass and see what you make of that smoke off yonder. The sun is getting low and it baffles me somewhat." Silently the lieutenant obeyed, and creeping up towards the crest he knelt and took a preliminary peep.

Issuing from the Bad Lands the jaded column had been plodding all day long, though with frequent enforced rests, through a rolling sea of barren, turfless earth. What grass had carpeted its surface in the spring had been burned off by sagacious Indians, bent on impeding by every known device the march of troops through their lands,—and what device the Indian does not know is little worth knowing. Under a dripping leaden sky the earth lay desolate and repulsive. Miles away to the north the dim, castellated buttes and pinnacles of the range were still faintly visible, and the tortuous trail of the column of twos winding its way over wave after wave of barren prairie like the wake of some terrestrial bark in a sea of mud. Far to the westward a jagged line of hills, sharply defined, seemed to rear their crests from the general level of the land, and somewhere along the eastern slope of that ridge, and not far from where two twin-pointed buttes seemed peeping over at these uncouth invaders, the main command of the expedition should have passed earlier in the day, making for the crossing of the swift-running stream that circled the northern border of some black, forbidding heights lying like a dark patch upon the landscape at its southwestern edge. Black as it looked, that was their one refuge. There alone dare they hope to find food. Thither had been sent an advanced detail with orders to buy at owners' prices flour, bacon, bread, coffee, anything the outlying settlements might have for sale that would sustain life. Men who had been living on horse or prairie-dog would not be fastidious. Here, too, the major had hoped by night to bivouac his weary men, but it seemed desperately far away. The march had been much impeded, and now, far out on his left flank was something that could not be passed uninvestigated. He, with his worn battalion of four troops, had been detached from the main column three days previous with orders to follow the trail of a war-party of Sioux, and smite them hip and thigh if he could catch them in forty-eight hours; if not, to veer around for the valley and rejoin the column at its bivouac among the foot-hills. There they should rest and recuperate. The pursued Indians, fortunately, had turned southward and gone jogging leisurely away towards their reservations, until warned of the pursuit by ambitious young braves still hovering about the troops in hope of slicing off the scalp of some straggler. Then, every man for himself, they had apparently scattered over the face of the country, laughing gleefully to think what fun the white chief would have in deciding which trail to follow. The situation on the third day out had been summarized by Crounse, the guide, about as follows: "So long as this outfit pulls together it won't catch an Indian; so soon as it doesn't pull together it'll catch hell," which being interpreted meant that the four companies united were too strong for the number of Indians within striking distance, or say three days' march, but that if it were divided into little detachments, and sent hither and yon in pursuit of such small parties as would then allow themselves to be seen, the chances were that those pursuing squads would one by one be lured beyond support, surrounded, cut off, and then massacred to a man. The major and his officers, most of them, knew this as well as Crounse. They knew, moreover, that even so large a command as theirs had been cut off, surrounded, and massacred more than once in the history of Sioux warfare, but then the Indians were massed, not scattered helter-skelter all over the continent as was the case the end of this eventful summer. Well did Major Warren understand that with such broken-down horses and weakened men he could now effect little or nothing against the Indians after whom he had been sent, even could he overtake them, and his instructions were literally obeyed. It was high time for him to restore his men to their comrades. He was making the best of his way to the rendezvous, hoping almost against hope to reach the welcome of the bivouac fires, and hot tins of coffee and toothsome morsels of hard-tack and bacon, things they had not had a scrap of for three days, and only occasional reminders of for the previous ten, when lo! off to their flank, far to the southeast there appeared this unwelcome yet importunate sign. Was it appeal for help or lure to ambush? Who could say? Only one thing was certain,—a thick smoke drifting westward from the clump of wallows and timber surrounding what Crounse said was a spring could not be passed unheeded.

"If we march the whole command over there, it will be another twenty-four hours before we can reach the regiment. I don't think many of the men, or horses either, can go that much longer without a bite," said Mr. Hastings, the battalion adjutant, seeing in his senior's eye a permission to speak.

"Well, there are no settlements there and never have been," said Crounse, "so it can't be cabins or shacks. Wagons it may be, but who'd be damn fool enough to start a wagon-train up the valley this year of all others, when every Indian at the reservation except old Spot is in league with the hostiles? I can't believe it's wagons, yet it's on the road full a mile this side of the river itself. What I'm afraid of is that it's a plant. They want to coax us over there and cut us off, as they did Custer." The major was silent and thoughtful. Davies, still studying the distant objects, said not a word. Leading their horses, eight troopers following a sergeant, all wet, weary, and heaven only knows how hungry, came slowly forward up the slope until they reached the spot where Davies's horse was nibbling. Here the foremost halted without a word, and the others grouped about him or, stopping short when their leader did so, threw themselves on the wet ground reckless of cold or rheumatism, as spiritless a squad as frontier warfare could well develop. Valley Forge knew nothing like it. The retreat from Moscow might have furnished a parallel.

Leaving his horse to do as his jaded fancy might suggest, the battalion adjutant, returning from his quest, came slowly to the major's side. "I've picked out nine, sir. It was simply impossible to find another in the whole two hundred. Some of these look barely able to stagger as it is."

"And it's Davies's detail?" asked the major, in low tone.

"Yes, sir. He's the only sub in the battalion who hasn't been on detachment duty since we left the Yellowstone, and his horse is able to go. Look at him, actually kicking!"

This was true. The sergeant's starving charger, showing a disposition to poach on the little preserve that Davies's steed had pre-empted, was rewarded by a sudden whirl about and flourish of two shod hoofs.

"Davies," said the major, kindly, yet with quick decision, "I hate to impose additional work on worn-out men, but we can't leave that matter uninvestigated. I want you to ride over there and see what that smoke means. I don't think Indians in any force are near, and ten men ought to be enough to stand 'em off. If it's nothing of consequence you can follow on up-stream or camp as you please. If it's a wagon outfit attacked, and there's anything left to help, do your best. We'll keep a troop in supporting distance, and instead of marching straight for the hills, I'll edge off here towards the river, sending Devers well out towards you. We've got nearly three hours of daylight yet. Think you understand?"

"I think so, sir," said Davies, slowly replacing his glass, then looking hesitatingly around.

"Anything you want?" asked Warren.

"Well, I should like to see Captain Truman just a minute, sir."

"He's three hundred yards back there now, and time's precious. Can't I do?" asked the major, not unkindly. "Want to leave anything?"

"No, sir. It's of no consequence." And turning abruptly, Davies went half sliding, half shuffling down the slippery slope, kicked the mud off his boots, and briefly nodding to the sergeant, said "Mount," hoisted himself into saddle, and led his little party silently away. One of the men looked appealingly back towards Crounse.

"Got any baccy, Jim?"

"Not a pinch. I'd give my boots for a chew."

Davies heard the appeal and turned to his sergeant. "Tell Dunn to come up here alongside," said he, reaching down into his saddle-pocket; "I've half a plug left, sergeant, and we'll divide."

"It'll help the men as much as a square meal, sir," said the trooper, gratefully; "but I never saw the lieutenant chew."

"I don't, but it's some I fetched along for just such an emergency."

Meantime the major and his party stood gazing silently after them. They saw them winding away down the southward face of the long ridge and crossing the shallow ravine at its foot. Beyond lay another long, low spur of treeless prairie.

"The Parson didn't seem over-anxious to go," muttered Mr. Hastings, as though to himself.

"Small blame to him!" promptly answered the major. "I don't blame any man in this command for declining any invitation, except to dinner. Hallo! What's that?"

In Davies's little party the men had been seen passing some object from one to the other. One or two who had ridden up alongside the young officer touched their hats and fell back to their place. Suddenly two of them left the squad and, urging their horses to such speed as they were capable of, went at heavy plunging lope over the southern end of the opposite ridge and disappeared from view.

"Antelope, by jimminy! I thought I saw a buck's horns over that crest yonder a minute ago," said an orderly.

"Antelope be damned!" said Crounse, gritting his teeth. "If those men knew this country as I do they'd think twice before they rode a hundred yards away from the column. I wouldn't undertake to ride from here to that butte yonder,—not for a beefsteak, I wouldn't,—God knows what else I wouldn't do for that!"

"Why, you can see the whole valley, and there ain't an Indian in sight," said the orderly trumpeter, disdainfully.

"Yes, and it's just when you can't see one that a valley's most apt to be full of 'em, kid," began the frontiersman, but the major cut him off.

"Ride after Mr. Davies with my compliments, trumpeter, and tell him to recall those men, and not to let them straggle, even after game."

The trumpeter touched his ragged hat-brim and turned away to get his horse, which he presently spurred to a sputtering lope, and went clattering away on the trail.

"We may as well mount now and push ahead," said the major, after a moment's reflection. "Keep Davies in sight as much as possible, Crounse." And so saying he went on and climbed stiffly into saddle, for he, too, was wet and chilled and sore-spirited; but it was his business to put the best face on matters in general, and the troopers, seeing the major mount, got themselves to their horses without further order. None of the horses, poor brutes, required holding, but stood there with dejected crest, pasterns deep in the mud, too weak to wander even in search of grass. Warren came riding slowly towards his men.

"Captain Devers," said he, "I have sent Mr. Davies off to the left to scout towards the valley. I wish you to follow his trail a mile, and then to march due south by compass, keeping about midway between him and us. Hold him in sight, if possible, and be ready to support him if he should be attacked. We will back you. If all is quiet by the time you strike the old road in the valley, turn west and follow on to camp."

But Captain Devers was one of those officers who seemed never to grasp an order at first hand. Even when it came in writing, clear, brief, and explicit, he often required explanations. "I don't think I understand, sir," he began, but Warren cut him short.

"I should have been prepared for that," he exclaimed, giving way for the first time to the generally peppery and irascible spirit of semi-starved men. "Mount!" he ordered. "Captain Truman, lead the column,—Crounse will show you the line. I will ride here awhile with Devers and show him what's wanted."

Now, it is one of the peculiarities of prairie landscape that where whole counties may appear to be one general level or open slopes when viewed from the distance, the face of the country is really cut up in countless directions by ravines, watercourses and coulees, so that, except in the level bottom-lands along a river-bed, it is next to impossible to keep moving objects continually in view. Davies and his little party were out of sight when the major reappeared on the ridge with Devers's ragged troop at his heels. So, too, were the would-be hunters. "Kid" Murray, the trumpeter, alone remained in view, and he had just reached the crest of a parallel ridge somewhat lower and about a quarter of a mile to the left.

Then those at the head of column saw a strange thing. The young trumpeter, instead of pushing forward on the trail, had suddenly reined in. Bending forward in his saddle, he was gazing eagerly in the direction taken by the antelope-stalkers; then, suddenly again, whirled about and began frantically signalling to the column. They saw him quickly swing his battered trumpet from behind his back and raise it to his lips, sounding some call. Floating across the wind, over the bleak and barren prairie, came almost together the muffled sound of two rifle-shots, then the stirring trumpet signal,—gallop.

"Away with you, Devers!" ordered the major. "Head Truman this way, Mr. Hastings. Tell him to come on." And forty horsemen went laboring down the gentle slope, lugging their rusty brown carbines, one by one, from the mud-covered sockets.



CHAPTER VII.

Jaded as were the horses, it was only by vigorous spurring that they were forced into anything like a gallop. Earlier in the campaign, only with extreme difficulty could they have been held. In dispersed order, spreading out, fan-like, to avoid the volleys of mud hurled back by the leaders, the troop came struggling up to the opposite ridge, many of the men loading as they rode, all with eager eyes and compressed lips staring straight ahead for the first glance at what each knew must be the foe. That no shot was to be dreaded from lurking Indians along the ridge each reasoned from the fact that the trumpeter, after sounding his signal and seeing them well on their way, had himself pushed on out of sight. Once or twice the foremost thought they heard other shots. All reined up as they reached the crest, and this was what they saw:

Far ahead, down towards the valley ran a long tongue or spur from the high ground over which they had steadily been marching since the dawn. Farther away, perhaps ten miles, a black fringe in the depths of the valley marked the winding river-bed. Against this and the dull background of the opposite rise a faint column of pale, blue-white smoke was drifting slowly westward from a little patch of trees at least a mile nearer them than the river. "That's Antelope Springs," said Crounse, who knew every league of the valley. Straight towards this point a little party of horse were now steadily moving, a dark spot upon the slopes, and nearly a thousand yards away. They were gradually descending to the valley along the eastern side of the long tongue referred to, all ignorant, probably, of what might be going on upon the other. Obedient to his orders then, Davies was riding by the shortest line to the designated goal, and all with them thus far seemed tranquil enough. But hardly half a mile to the right front of their supporting comrades, afoot now, and stopping every minute to let drive a long-range shot at some objects scurrying away over the slopes to the south, "the Kid" was running, and ever and anon turning to beckon them on. One glance told the experienced hands what those fleeing rascals were,—Indians, fresh from some deviltry, their swift ponies bounding over the little gullies and watercourses like so many goats. Once more the troop spurred on, though every man realized the hopelessness of any pursuit. The first thought in every mind was the fate of their two venturesome comrades. Even "the Kid" could not be sure what that was as they reached him. "They're just over around that point," he almost sobbed in his excitement. "I saw the Indians sneaking up the ridge yonder. They fired from there, and then rushed in with a yell, and I'm afraid they've got 'em."

Brief search was all that was needed. Not half a mile west of the little party, and hidden from the sight and hearing of their comrades, the two eager, hungry hunters had met their fate. Four lurking warriors,—part of the daring band that, hanging about the battalion, watched its every move, ever on the alert for just such opportunity as this—had lashed their ponies to the gallop, darted along the winding ravine between the two ridges until opposite the point where the hunters crossed, then crawling to the top, had shot the poor fellows from their hidden covert, and rushing in as they tumbled from their saddles, had quickly finished the bloody work. One of the men, Mullen, a notable shot, seemed to have been killed at the first fire, as he lay face downward, his hands gripping the wet soil, his scalp torn from the bare and bleeding skull. Phillips, his chum, had died fighting, and was riddled with shot and lance wounds. His horse, too, was killed, while that of Mullen was wandering helplessly about in a dazed sort of way, as though unable to comprehend his own narrow escape. For once there had been no time for further mutilation. Contenting themselves with the arms, ammunition, and scalps of the troopers, the Indians had scurried away on the instant. The whole affair had not lasted two minutes, yet there on the open prairie, in broad daylight, with a four-company battalion of horse not six hundred yards away in one direction, and double their own number of troopers riding along not six hundred yards away in another, they had dared interpose between and swoop down upon their victims in their fancied security. Devers was almost beside himself with grief and rage.

"It's all that damned Sunday-school soldier's fault!" he burst forth. "He's let these poor fellows ride slap into ambush, and gone off without a thought of them." He would have said more, and in the full hearing of the whole command, but the stern voice of the major checked him.

"Hush, Devers, hush!" he ordered, as he rode into the midst of the pale and excited group gathered about the lifeless forms. "Don't halt, Truman," he ordered, as the senior captain came trotting up at the head of the long straggling column. "Push right on and do your best to catch those devils. I'll follow in a minute."

Without either orders or permission six or eight of Devers's men spurred into the nearest gaps in Truman's column,—and gaps were many,—others, half dazed, hung about their captain.

"Send a messenger to Mr. Davies and let him know what's happened," continued the major, after a moment of painful thought. "Bury your dead as quick as you can, then carry out your orders. Better halt Davies until you're ready to move ahead." Saying this, and followed by his orderly, the battalion commander spurred away towards a bedraggled party of some fifty dismounted men, some with horses meekly drooping at their master's heels, several without even the shadow of a steed. Truman had "fallen out" his utterly ineffective to form a guard for the sick and unhorsed, Davies's two patients among them, and one of those now, in weakness and excitement, crying like a child. A gray-haired lieutenant was with the party striving to get this reserve into some kind of shape. "Follow Captain Truman's trail to the river, Mr. Calvert," said the major. "Bring your party along as well as you can. You'll find camp somewhere up-stream. We'll have rations to meet you. I'll have to go on now after the battalion,—what there is of it," he added to himself, his teeth firmly set. "Was ever luck worse than this?"

And thus was Captain Devers, as senior officer, left in command with the troops that remained clustered about the still warm and bleeding bodies of their murdered comrades, and his first order was characteristic. "Ride after Mr. Davies, trumpeter. Tell him to halt his party where they are, and say I wish to see him at once." Dashing the tears away from his eyes, little Murray said, "Yes, sir," and mounted his horse. He was starting when Devers called him again. "You needn't tell Mr. Davies what's happened," he said. "It would demoralize him entirely;" adding in an undertone that was none the less audible to the men around him, "He's worse than demoralized now."

Digging graves with hunting-knives and fingers as the only tools is wearisome work. "What's the use of it anyhow?" reasoned the captain, impatiently. "We simply can't dig anything but a shallow trench inside an hour with the means at hand. The coyotes would paw up the bodies, sure, before we'd gone five miles. Better carry them along on these led horses by the shortest route to the river. We're bound to find plenty of rocks there that the wolves can't roll away." It wasn't the first time the sad little command had had to "pack" their dead and wounded, and in a quarter of an hour, with perhaps thirty men trailing along behind him, Devers, instead of obeying his original instructions, was striking straight across country for the river. And so it happened as nightfall approached there were four parties of cavalry, widely dispersed, in the gathering gloom of the desolate prairie. The major with about one hundred men was still hurrying far to the southwest on the trail of the Indians, hoping before dark to find them in sufficient force to halt and show fight. Calvert with his invalid corps followed three miles in their wake, and losing ground with every minute; then Devers, with about thirty men in saddle and two dead on their travois, was slowly plodding southward towards the stream. Davies's little squad, halted as ordered, was now isolated from all, far over on the east side of the jagged spur, over whose crest their lieutenant had just disappeared from their sight, with Murray in attendance, riding wearily back to find his captain, disturbed by contradictory orders and dishearted to see him in march full a mile farther away than he supposed, and diverging from the point of direction of his own party with every step. Time and again had Devers, still fuming with nervous tension and mingled wrath and pain,—hungry and savage, too, it must be borne in mind,—given vent to some petulant expression because of the non-arrival of the young officer whom he saw fit to hold responsible for the loss of his men; and when at last Mr. Davies neared them, riding diagonally towards the troop from the low divide to the east, Devers did not change the direction of his little column so as to meet him half-way, but held on sullenly southward. Observance of the major's orders would have carried him along the trail of Davies's party until well across that ridge or spur, then having gone the designated mile he should now be marching southward along the ridge where he could, frequently at least, see both Davies's squad and their distant objective-point,—that smouldering fire in the valley. Marching as he was he could see neither.

Presently coming to the head of one of those tortuous ravines washed out from the general surface of the prairie by the melting snows of centuries, and noting that if he kept to the eastward side he would have to deflect a trifle to that direction, Devers inclined to his right, and ten minutes later found it swinging around in front of him, already broad and deep and obliquely crossing his path. Either he must dismount and lead down the abrupt declivity and up the opposite bank, or, keeping along the bluff, follow the windings of the ravine. One wrong step had led with him to another. There is a fatality about such things that besets the truest of men and bedevils the best intentions. The more he followed the right bank the farther west of south it bore him, and Devers hid his compass with his conscience in the breast of his hunting-shirt, and found relief in renewed expletives. It was Davies who had to urge his horse to the lope to overtake the command so steadily pulling away from him. He wondered who the poor fellows could be who seemed to have given out and were being dragged along on the travois, but it soon became necessary for him to descend into the depths of the ravine, down along a tributary break, and then even in nearing he lost sight of them until, after another canter and a hard pull up the opposite slope, he came at last suddenly face to face with his captain. Murray by this time, his horse entirely used up, was far to the rear.

"It's an hour since I sent for you, Mr. Davies," began the captain, sternly. "What in God's name has kept you so long?"

"I could come no quicker, sir," was the reply, given in respectful yet remonstrative tone. "My horse——"

"Oh, you've got the best horse in the battalion, and he carries the lightest weight," said the captain, angrily; "physically and intellectually both, by God!" he added to himself. "You must have been far off your course to have been so long reaching me."

"I was heading straight for the fire, captain,—straight as men could go. I kept it in sight every minute from the time we crossed the crest yonder," said Davies, his tired, haggard eyes looking squarely into those of his commander instead of seeking sympathetic glance from the pale, drawn faces of the silent troopers nearest him.

"Well, then, that is your excuse, I suppose, for allowing men to straggle in defiance of my orders."

"It is partially so, sir, partially not. I knew these were the orders early in the campaign, but ever since we ran out of rations Mullen and Phillips, as well as dozens of other men in the regiment, have been out hunting on the flanks every day. They never stopped to ask permission this time. I never knew that they were gone until they were out of sight. I supposed, of course, they wouldn't be away so long."

"I have told you more than once, Mr. Davies, that you were reckless of my instructions, and I've sent for you to show, once and for all, what it has cost. Stand aside there!" he said sternly to the men, whom some instinct of pity had prompted to gather between them and the stiffening forms of the dead. "There are your hunters,—two of my best men, Mr. Davies, and who but you is responsible for this?"

For a moment the young officer gazed as though stricken with sudden horror, his blue eyes staring, his gaunt, pinched features ghastly white, and then Sergeant Haney and another trooper sprang from their horses and ran to his side. Weak, worn, starved, he had quailed at the dreadful sight, and was toppling head-foremost to the ground, swooning away.



When half an hour later the captain with his silent and gloomy party had resumed his march for the river, only with the field-glasses could occasional glimpses be had of the main command far away to the southwest in the gathering dusk. Lieutenant Calvert, with his invalid corps, was dragging wearily after them, something like two miles away over the rolling surface, sometimes dipping out of sight among the swales and coulees, sometimes crawling over some low wave, and Davies, restored to consciousness and accompanied by one of Devers's oldest troopers, Sergeant McGrath, had once more ridden away to join his distant and isolated party. Just before it grew too dark to see anything at all he was faintly visible at the top of the divide where he and the sergeant had halted, evidently searching in the gloom of the lowlands beyond for sign of the squad he had left over an hour before. Then they disappeared and were seen no more.

Ten miles up-stream, around rousing camp-fires, in the thick of the timber, the main body of the expedition—their lately starving comrades—were holding high carnival. Men and horses were astonishing their stomachs with dainties to which they had long been unaccustomed, for wagons had come out from the settlements to meet them, pouring in all the afternoon, and, mindful of his detached battalion, the colonel had presently despatched three or four of these welcome loads, well guarded, down the winding river in search of Warren, with instructions to bivouac at once and feast, and at nightfall they had met him, halted at the river after the luckless pursuit. The wagons were unloaded on the spot, and two of them pushed on out to meet Calvert, and be loaded up again with his exhausted plodders, while scouts, mounted on the draught mules that had had so long and hard a pull all day, and yet were stronger and fresher than the starving horses, were sent on down-stream in search of Devers. With these latter went a pencilled note from the battalion commander as follows:

"Rations here in plenty. Unless you and Davies are used up, you'd better come along to camp. We'll keep bright fires burning to guide you. I presume you've seen no Indians, or we'd have heard from you before now."

In sending this letter Major Warren assumed two things: first, that Devers had carried out his orders, crossed the long spur that jutted down almost to the stream at its deep concave bend, and then, moving south, had kept Davies in sight, if not actually in touch. Second, that Davies had carried out his orders, investigated the fire, and then rejoined his captain. For, reasoned the major, had Davies been attacked, Devers would have known it, supported him at once, and sent word to us. Men instructed to watch for signals from the ridge had reported that nothing had been seen, which surely would not have been the case had Devers desired to communicate. He assumed further that Davies must now be somewhere about the point where the spur sank to the general level of the valley, some eight or nine miles down-stream, too far to send a wagon in the dark where there was no road, but not too far for men to march, with rations as their reward.

"Ride straight for that point," said he to the sergeant who was to carry the note, "and watch for their fires in case they have camped." And the sergeant and his companions—two wiry troopers whom nothing seemed to daunt or tire—had ridden away on their ambling mules, their own stomachs warmed with hot coffee and bread and bacon, and their soldier maws crammed with that most beneficent and comforting of frontier luxuries,—navy plug. What was a night ride after their weeks of marching to the joy of being first to announce full rations for all hands! They had gone only half-way, perhaps four miles, when from somewhere in the timber to their right front, certainly not more than five hundred yards ahead, they came suddenly in view of something at which each man instantly reined in, and the sergeant, springing from his saddle, grabbed his mule by the nose. "Grab yours, too," he muttered, hoarsely; "for God's sake don't let the damn fools bray." And in another instant each of the astonished and protesting brutes was grabbed accordingly.

"Sure it must be the camp of 'B' Troop," said the other man, resentfully. "Indians wouldn't be lighting camp-fires so close to us."

"It can't be the captain," answered Sergeant Rice, with emphasis he well remembered and spoke of long months later. "I heard the major's orders to him, and he couldn't be this side of that point without having disobeyed them."

But just then, soft and faint, sad and plaintive and low, there came floating on the night wind the familiar notes of the sweetest of trumpet calls, and Rice turned to his comrades in amaze. "It is old Differs, by Jupiter! Who but he would be sounding taps with Indians on every side? Does the darn crank think that worn-out men can't go to sleep without it?" Even the soldiers, then, were alive to some of the captain's peculiarities. Even they could not do him justice. Even Rice supposed that Devers, rejoicing in being once more freed from the supervision of superior authority which he so cordially hated and so persistently strove to evade, was celebrating the event by resuming the sounding of unnecessary bugle calls, prohibited for night use during the recent campaign. But neither the sergeant nor his comrades dreamed that it was in its other, in its saddest significance, the sweet old call was sounding,—that Devers and his men were bidding the last farewell, and piping "lights out" to them who rode forth gallantly at morn, only at sundown to be numbered with the dead.



CHAPTER VIII.

Morning dawned over the bivouacs along the stream in hilarity unknown for previous weeks. The sun that for a fortnight had refused his face, and sent wet skies to weep in sympathy with the hungering column, now that the troopers no longer cared a rap whether he sulked or shone, came forth in all his glory to surround and beam upon and shower congratulation as do mundane friends who hold aloof when days are dark and troublous, yet swarm like bees when dazzling and unexpected prosperity bursts upon the lately fallen. Merrily rang the reveille as "jocund day" came riding o'er the misty mountain-tops. With joke and song and laughter answered the war-worn men, scores of whom had alternately dozed and cooked and eaten and drunk all the live-long night. Vain were counsels of captains and doctors. Soldier stomachs that could tackle mule and horse meat could stand any load, said the boys, and loaded accordingly. Cheer and laughter and merry-making, fun and chaff and jollity, ran through the ranks, where all, but another sun agone, was silence and despond. The rough campaign was practically over. Only scattered bands of hostiles remained, in this part of the country at least. Rest and recuperation for those "tatterdemalions" would be the enforced order of the day for a month to come, for while they might readily and speedily build up, it would take many a week to remount the column or restore such horses as remained. Here among the Cottonwoods, with fire and water and food at hand, the men could have loafed in comfort and content a month, if need be; but here was no grass, and barely a nibble of oats could be distributed for each surviving horse from the scanty supply hurried forward the previous day. Before noon, therefore, after another morning devoted principally to breakfasting, the trumpets were sounding "boots and saddles." No need to sound "The General" with its stirring summons to "Strike your tents and march away," for tents had long months before been struck—by the pen of the commander—from the list of camp equipage to be taken to the field. "We were only waiting for Warren to come on," explained an aide of the general to a regimental commander, "and we've sent him word to meet us on the Birchwood farther up among the hills. We'll camp there to-night. What kept him, do you suppose?"

But the colonel couldn't imagine. Away down the valley to the eastward Warren's men had slept, as they had marched, much later,—those of them who could sleep at all, for all through the night there had been cause of disturbance to more than a few of the command. It was late before the demands of hunger were appeased. Little fires blazed all through the timber, and men cooked and ate until they could eat and drink and cook no more. Then the luxury of tobacco kept many awake. Then came advanced troopers to say Devers was coming in, and despite the fact that two good and gallant comrades would no more gather with them about the camp-fire, there went up a cheer of welcome, and many men ran to meet the worn arrivals, to take their horses to feed and water so that the masters might be fed at once, and the major's first thought had been to welcome his subordinate and fill him with comfort before requiring of him detailed account of the day's doings. "I hardly expected you so soon," he said; "but here's coffee all ready, baker's bread fresh in town yesterday,—think of it!—and bacon and flapjacks. Your men must be pretty tired."

"They're about used up," said Devers; "but of course when we got your instructions to come on we came."

"Oh, I didn't mean you to come on if you were in camp for the night. Our men would rather eat than sleep and we thought yours would; but here—swallow this," said he, hospitably. "This is no time for business. I haven't tasted anything so good as that coffee in years."

"Thanks," said Devers, pulling gratefully at the steaming tin. "That is good. I'm glad, for my part, you told us to come along," he went on, reverting again to the subject of the major's note. "We shouldn't have done anything of the kind, of course, otherwise,—especially with Davies still out."

"What! Isn't Davies with you?" asked Warren, with sudden anxiety and suspicion. "Why, I thought——"

"Well, we couldn't wait for him, you know, in face of your directions," said the captain, his eyes glancing quickly, almost furtively, from one to another of the bearded faces about him, for Truman, Hastings, Calvert, and all the officers of the little command had gathered. "Of course, I sent couriers right out to guide him——"

"Why—what I meant was for you to bring him along," said the major, gravely, yet not unkindly. "I felt sure, of course, you were within communicating distance at least, even if he hadn't come in. What did that smoke turn out to be when you got a closer look at it?"

"We—didn't get any closer look," answered Devers, in apparent surprise. "You ordered me to bury my dead and then go on. We had just buried them when your next orders reached us,—to join you at once. These, of course, superseded the others."

There was profound silence. The major stood by the camp-fire, his hands clasped behind his back, looking full in the face of the troop commander, all the old sayings that he had ever heard with regard to Devers crowding upon him now. When promoted to the regiment only just in time to join it on this hard campaign, and when assigned to the command of this battalion in which Devers was senior captain, the colonel himself had said, "Be on your guard with Devers. He's the trickiest of subordinates." Old Riggs, lieutenant-colonel commanding the Twelfth, had remarked, "So Devers is in your battalion, is he? Well, when you want him to do anything you stand over him while he's at it, or else do it yourself." An intimate friend and classmate whom he had not seen for years had given the new major this significant pointer: "There's a man who could be one of the most valuable officers in service if he devoted to obeying an order one-tenth the energy he throws into finding a way of avoiding it." Yet, in the honesty and earnestness of his own character, Warren was slow to suspect a fellow-soldier of disloyalty. The campaign had gone on without special friction, though he remembered that he had heard Hastings swearing sotto voce more than once at Devers's cantankerous ways, and he recalled now two or three incidents—little things—in which Devers claimed to have misunderstood instructions; but this was so glaring, so gross a departure from both the spirit and letter of the orders he had given when face to face with the captain, that for a moment or two he was at a loss what to say. He was indignant, too, but it was a rule of his to control his temper and never speak to a subordinate in wrath. He had broken it that morning and was sorry; so when at last he trusted himself to speak, he said,—

"It must have been more than six hours ago that I told you to bury those two men and then go on. Surely, captain, you could not have taken all this time."

"It was nearly five o'clock, sir, when you ordered me to bury my dead as well as I could, and only a little after eight when we finished it; meantime, we had to march seven or eight miles before we could find a place where we could bury them at all well."

"Why, I meant you to bury them right then and there, just where you were, not go marching in search of a place."

"But we couldn't bury them there; major, I had no tools to dig graves in a hard prairie——"

"Then you mean that you failed to go on after Davies,—failed to support him?—that you haven't seen him since I gave those orders? My heaven, Captain Devers! I told you never to let him out of your sight."

"Oh, he wasn't out of sight until darkness,—that is, he was frequently in sight. I not only saw, but communicated with him until that time."

"Thank God for that, at least! If he wasn't attacked before dark he's probably safe,—Indians are cowards in the dark. He ought to be coming along presently, I suppose. He couldn't have been more than a mile or so east of you."

But to this observation, half query, half self-consolation, Captain Devers made no verbal response. He bowed his head as he took a long swig at his can of coffee, and then a big bite into a ham sandwich of portentous size. The major and one or two others considered it a nod of assent, and ascribed to ravenous hunger the captain's failure to respond by word of mouth. Partially relieved of his anxiety on Davies's account and unwilling to spoil a gentleman's first supper after such long deprivation, the battalion commander turned away, saying,—

"Well, eat and drink till you're comforted, anyhow, captain, then we can hear all about it. I'll take a smoke meantime." Truman and Hastings joined him at a fallen Cottonwood a few yards away, and the three puffed their pipes and thanked Providence for the mercies that had come with the close of the day. And then the officer of the guard appeared to ask a question about the posting of the pickets, and, leaving the others with Devers, the major strode off with the officer through the timber to satisfy himself as to the security of the horses for the night, and when he returned—not having been gone ten minutes—Devers had disappeared.

"I wanted to hear his report," said Warren, "and told him so. I supposed he understood." To which neither of his subordinates made reply. When ten minutes more elapsed and Devers did not come, Hastings, noting the major's impatience, called to the orderly trumpeter sitting at the neighboring fire,—

"Raney, go and see if Captain Devers is over with his troop anywhere,—the major desires to see him." Raney was gone full ten minutes, and when he returned it was to say that Devers's first sergeant said the captain had given orders that all talk must stop so that the worn-out men could rest, and the captain himself, rolled in his blanket, was already sound asleep.

"Well, I swear!" exclaimed the major. "Didn't you understand me to say I wanted to hear all about his march as soon as he finished supper?"

"I certainly did," replied Captain Truman, with an accent on the I that meant volumes.

"So did I," growled Hastings; but he never could bear Devers, who was persistently distorting or misunderstanding the orders the adjutant was compelled to convey to him.

"Well, let him sleep," said Warren, finally. "I suppose he's tired out, and very probably Davies will speedily come in."

But midnight came and no Davies. Out on the prairie—now dimly lighted by the rays of the waning moon—the pickets at the east had descried no moving objects. Every now and then the yelp of a coyote on one side of camp would be echoed far over at the other. These, with an occasional paw or snort from the side-lined herd, and the murmuring rush of the river over its gravelly bed, were the only sounds that drifted to the night-watchers from the sleeping bivouac. Towards one o'clock the sergeant of the guard came out to take a peep. Later, about two, Lieutenant Sanders, officer of the guard, a plucky little chap of whom the men were especially fond, made his way around the chain of posts and stayed some time peering with his glass over the dim vista of prairie to the eastward.

"I declare I thought I saw something moving out there," he muttered, after long study. "Are you sure you've seen or heard nothing?" he inquired of the silent sentry.

"Not a thing, lieutenant, beyond coyotes or Indian signals, I can't tell which. They keep at respectful distance, whatever they are."

"Well, even if Mr. Davies's horses were too used up to come, the couriers ought to have got back long ago. Tell them to find me as soon as they come in," said he, and went back to his saddle pillow in the heart of the grove. At its edge a solitary figure was standing gazing out into the night.

"That you, Sanders?" hailed a voice in low tone.

"Yes," answered the lieutenant, shortly, for he recognized Devers and he didn't like him.

"Isn't Davies in yet?"

"No, and it's two o'clock."

"Oh, he'll turn up all right," said the captain, in airy confidence. "It was all absurd sending him out to scout a smoke,—as if we hadn't seen and smelled smoke enough this summer to last a lifetime. He's probably camped down the valley somewhere, and they're all waiting for morning. I'm not worrying about him."

"No, I judge not," muttered Sanders to himself, as he trudged on in the dark. "You're simply keeping awake for the fun of the thing." But even Devers got to sleep at last, and when he woke it was with a sudden start, with broad daylight streaming in his eyes, and stir and bustle and low-toned orders and rapid movement among the men, and Hastings was stirring him up with insubordinate boot and speaking in tones suggestive of neither respect nor esteem.

"Come, tumble up, captain; we're all wanted; Davies has been cut off and massacred."

Already his orderly had led up the captain's horse, pricking his ears and sniffing excitedly around him, and with trembling hands the young German was dragging out from among the blankets the captain's saddle, the hot tears falling as he stooped. His own brother was of Davies's party. Devers was on his feet in an instant, dismayed, and, buckling on his revolver, he went striding through the trees to where Warren stood, pale and distressed, questioning a haggard trooper,—one of the couriers sent on for Davies the previous evening. Devers burst in with interrupting words, and was instantly coolly checked.

"Never mind now, captain. Mount at once and get your men in saddle." Nor would Warren see or speak with him, as with a hundred troopers at his heels—all whose horses were even moderately fit for a ten-mile trot—the major led the way down the valley, a few eager scouts cantering on before. All Devers could learn as they jogged along was that Tate, one of the couriers, had ridden in at seven on an exhausted mule to say that not until after dawn had they found Davies's party,—seven of them,—stone dead, stripped, scalped, gashed, mutilated almost beyond recognition, far out on the slopes east of that fatal spur over which the September sun had risen before he came, leaving his stunned comrade trailing hopelessly behind.



CHAPTER IX.

The prairie sod was torn by the hoofs of a hundred ponies. That was evident. All around a little sink in the surface at a distance of several hundred yards the warriors must have dashed and circled for full an hour. Here along the rim of the shallow basin, each behind the bloated and stiffening carcass of his horse,—each surrounded by threescore copper shells, showing that he had fought till hope and ammunition both were gone,—lay the poor remains of the gallant boys who had ridden silently away in obedience to their orders on the previous afternoon,—recognizable now only by their teeth or some still ungashed body mark. How long they had pluckily, cheerily held out, confident of the speedy coming of the comrades from over that westward spur, and therefore less miserly of their lead and eager to stretch some of their yelling foes upon the sward, could now only be conjectured. Little by little their fierce, defiant fire had slackened. Little by little confidence had waned, and doubt and dread replaced it. Some, probably, had been earlier shot by the storm of centring bullets; some, possibly, had sent their last shot into the reeling brain,—death by one's own hand being better at least than by slow and fiendish torture; and at last, probably just at dusk, the triumphant savages were able to close in upon their helpless prey and reap their reward of scalps and plunder and wreak their fury on a mute and defenceless foe.

But in a search of full an hour not a sign had Warren's best scouts discovered of Davies or his companion. The Indian trail, that of a war-party of at least fifty or sixty braves, led away southward again, into and through the timber in the distant river bottom, and there it became scattered, most of the party seeming to have ridden on towards the reservation in the darkness of the night, while others turned up-stream, and their pony-tracks led towards the point where Warren's battalion had bivouacked. These were probably the causes of the flitting shadows Sanders had detected far out on the prairie,—these the owls and coyotes whose weird cries had at intervals disturbed the silence of the night. Solemnly, sadly, now, the burial-parties labored. The soil was comparatively soft in the neighboring ravine,—much more so than higher up the slopes where the two crack shots had fallen earlier in the afternoon,—and here, with picket-pins and a spade or two which happened to be with the pack-train, a trench was scooped out, into which the poor remains were lowered and then covered with stones, dragged from the depths of the neighboring coulee. It took some hours to finish the sad duty, and meanwhile sharp-eyed scouts were busily occupied striving to determine what had become of Davies and Sergeant McGrath.

In this work the major himself took the lead, and here Devers's statements had to be drawn upon. Old Indian-fighters pointed out many a significant sign to sustain the theory that the fight must have lasted full an hour,—the trampled condition of the turf,—the quantities of shells lying behind every little hummock or ridge in the surrounding prairie that commanded the position of the defence or afforded shelter from its fire. Down in the very ravine in which the bodies were buried, full four hundred yards from the scene of their desperate stand, the soft, sandy soil was pawed and trodden by waiting war-ponies, whose riders, lying flat on their stomachs along the bank above, had kept their watch upon the besieged, firing whenever head or hand appeared above their carcass fortification. The whole ingenuity of the Indian plan became apparent as the situation was studied. Noting after ten o'clock that morning that the battalion was no longer marching due south, but had turned, heading southwest straight away for the landmark of the valley,—that distant, black, pine-crested peak,—the lurking warriors had devised their scheme to lure a scouting detachment away from the support of the column. Far down in the river bottom, ten miles away to the left of the trail, they had built at the springs a "shack" from the relics of some miner's outfit captured thereabouts earlier in the summer, and waiting until the head of the column was approaching the crest of the water-shed to the north, set fire to their pile and then secreted their main body in a deep ravine to await results, while small parties were thrown well forward to pick off venturesome individuals, if only such rode out in reconnoissance. If the white chief "bit" and detached a small party, then every effort was to be made to keep the battalion occupied and interested,—to draw it along, if possible, towards the southwest,—just a few daring spirits devoting themselves to this duty, while the stronger party, keeping in hiding until they lured it far beyond rescuing distance, gradually encircled the isolated squad and at last pounced upon their prey. It is no new device. It was to prevent just such a play that Warren had ordered Devers with his troop to keep midway, holding Davies's little party in sight and support and the main column in communication. Had Devers obeyed the instructions given him and gone on down along that jutting spur instead of far to the west of it, the catastrophe would have been averted,—the Indian attack, even if attempted, could have been beaten off.

In bitterness of spirit the major was riding over the field, too full of exasperation as yet to trust himself to send for and speak to his subordinate, even when he felt that he must hold conference with him in order to determine how best to direct the search. Twice or thrice had Devers essayed to open communication with his chief and impress him with his views, but Warren had sent him word by Hastings to supervise at the designated point—which he himself selected—the burial of the men, while he, the major, went on with the search. Time and again it was noted how often Devers would climb the bank and anxiously gaze off to the west toward that fatal curtain,—the spur that separated him from the sacrificed detachment the night before. What his thoughts were could only be conjectured, but little Sanders seemed to hit pretty near the mark when he confided to Hastings that Differs didn't seem to care a damn whether Warren followed the Indian trail or not; what he was afraid of was that the major would "get onto" his own. And indeed as the morning wore on it began to look as though that were what the major was bent on doing. The scouting-parties had come back with their report of what they had found in the river bottom, and by this time Warren with his escort was three miles over to the west and slowly searching along the east face of the spur, peeping into every hollow and depression that might shelter a human form and looking everywhere for the print of horses' hoofs. At ten o'clock he had sent to Devers for some intelligent non-commissioned officer who could point out about where they had last seen Davies as he crossed the ridge returning to his men at sundown, but Devers very plausibly responded that while it might not be difficult to do so from where they parted, "just over on the west side," it couldn't be reliably done from so far to the east. The reply must at least serve to delay matters awhile, and every moment was of value to Devers.

His own theory was that, as twilight was setting in as Davies recrossed the ridge, everything beyond in the low grounds was in deep obscurity. The attack had probably begun about the time the young officer, with Murray, first crossed the ridge in obedience to the captain's orders to report to him in person. Less than an hour, Devers thought, elapsed before he could again have come within sight of the spot where he left his little command. By that time all was practically over. In the gathering darkness and in the glut and greed of their savage triumph the Indians had crowded about the victims. Davies and the sergeant, returning, had been allowed unmolested to make their way well down toward the scene. The fire in the bottom was fed to lure them on (it was still smouldering when Warren's men trotted thither in the morning), and the two had either been captured alive and run off with the main body to grace the stake at the scalp-dance to be held with fiendish rejoicing somewhere beyond danger of interruption, or else, warned in some way, the two had sought to escape, and had been headed off and killed in some of the still unexplored ravines or coulees farther to the southwest. In either case, provided the major did not persist in his investigation and so discover how very far Devers had led his troop away from sight or support of Davies's men, and how utterly he had failed to carry out his orders, the captain felt tolerably confident that all the blame would be landed where it properly belonged,—on the shoulders of the dead and defenceless lieutenant, whose reluctance to undertake the duty many had observed, and whose womanish swoon at sight of the slaughtered men had not only proved his unfitness for frontier service, but long delayed his return to his party. Devers had always said Davies was entirely overrated by the colonel and Truman and others; he had held all summer that the lieutenant was a "molly-coddle;" he had been reproved more than once for what they termed his injustice to his subaltern, and now Davies had proved just exactly what he knew he would prove,—a carpet knight, a prayer-meeting soldier, with neither grit nor brawn nor backbone; and if he was killed, at least he had died in time to save the regiment from having to blush for him in the future. Devers had served throughout the war of the rebellion in a regiment that saw no end of hard fighting, but always when he happened to be on sick-leave or detached service of some kind, for in all of his years of service no man in his grade or corps had so seldom been under fire, either in the South or on the plains. With abilities unquestioned and opportunities second to none, it was nevertheless observed of him at the close of the four years' struggle that there, at least, was a man who hadn't even mustering or recruiting service to fall back upon when "brevets" went scattering broadcast over the army, showering like the rain upon the just and the unjust. He had lived all through it without having become distinguished for anything that might become a man, winning a name for himself principally for consummate skill in getting out of what he was told to do without getting into a scrape or out of the service. He became a tremendous paper-fighter in the days that followed, however, and like some of our war generals, could find the weak points in the armor of his comrades if he couldn't in that of the enemy. He became a club-room critic of other fellows' campaigns, companies, or conduct, as probably the most effective way of diverting attention from his own. He sneered at the war record of every contemporary who had achieved rank superior to his own, as with hardly an exception every one of them had done so, and made the burden of his song among the younger men the blunders, faults, and follies of the elders. Without a drop of Irish blood in his veins, he inspired the belief that he must be own cousin to the newly-landed Hibernian who announced himself as "agin the governmint," for post and regimental commanders without exception found him the most adroit, crafty, sinuous, and troublesome of captains,—one who was forever doing something to try them, yet nothing on which they could try him. Well he knew his unpopularity and sagely judged his opportunities. The liberties he had dared with Warren he would not now have ventured with Riggs, or Black Bill, or old Tintop, one and all of whom had learned to know him well, and would have been prepared for some such betrayal of the trust reposed in him.

He had worried Black Bill—long time his post commander—to the verge of exasperation with his perpetual hair-splitting and quibbling. He had played his last trump with Tintop early in the campaign, and received that grizzled veteran's rasping intimation that one more experiment would lead to arrest and court-martial, and received it with every appearance of amaze and pain, which might have been effective had not Hastings been called upon beforehand to give his version of the affair that led to it. It was one of those constantly recurring examples of Devers's "cussedness" which led many a stout cavalry officer to set forth just what he'd do with Devers if he only had him under his command, yet the very men so confident they could bring him to time were not infrequently the ones who subsequently found him too adroit for their straightforward methods. Black Bill told Tintop that Devers was as bad as the Irishman's flea,—put your thumb on him and he isn't there. "I'll cinch him," said Tintop in reply, "if he tries any of his damned nonsense on me." But with every intention of doing his level best, "Topsy" little knew the infinite resources of the man.

One of Devers's idiosyncrasies was a hatred of doing things as anybody else did them. This in a service where absolute uniformity was expected was prolific of no end of chafing. In every garrison where his troop was stationed he had become notorious. If the other companies turned out in white gloves at retreat, Devers's would come in gauntlets. When dress parade, dismounted, was ordered at Fort Birney one mild November evening, he marched his men out in arctics and fur caps, and claimed that to be the proper full dress for the season. When Colonel Emerson in regimental orders lauded the devotion of Sergeant Foley, who swam the icy Missouri with despatches from Captain Cameron's beleaguered command, and ordered a handsome collar to be made by the regimental saddler to be worn thereafter by his gallant gray, now transferred to the band because of the cuts and scars he had received in that fierce campaign, Devers similarly decorated Trumpeter Finnegan's bull terrier "Mike," who swam the Mini Ska in pursuit of his master the night of the wintry dash on Tall Bull's village, and gravely paraded "Mike" with the troop next muster day. These and a score of similarly annoying yet hardly punishable attempts to bring ridicule upon or run counter to the orders of his commanders, had actually rendered some of his seniors so averse to having him under them that it often resulted in his being given independent details, lonely detachment duty, "one-company posts," and similar isolation which almost any other officer would have shrunk from, but that Devers really seemed to enjoy, and, from having been so much his own commanding officer, he was all the less fitted to render prompt and cheerful obedience to others when they again had to have him. With any command greater than that of a single troop he had never been intrusted. There was no end of speculation and chaff around the camp-fires, therefore, early in the summer, when Devers, most unwillingly, it was said, was hauled in from some outlying post where he had nothing to do but hunt, eat, and sleep, and reported for duty on what turned out to be the toughest of Indian campaigns. What was worse, he was ordered to report to Tintop, and now, said the boys, there will be fun.

Well, there was. It took a week of persistent "cinching" to get Devers and his troop to understand that they were no longer an independent body, but must serve under the orders of a colonel or major. He had at first been put in Bell's battalion, and every time the colonel pointed out a fault Devers "thought" that was as Major Bell wanted it, and when Bell called his attention to some irregularity, Devers had understood Colonel Winthrop to say that that was the way it should be done. Bell finally said that he'd be damned if he wouldn't rather have no command at all than one with Devers in it. The first day Devers's horses were herded to graze far out on the slopes,—five hundred yards beyond those of any other troop,—and Tintop said he wished Captain Devers hereafter not to allow his herd to be driven beyond those of the rest of the regiment. Next day they were kicking up a dust not fifty yards from Tintop's tent,—as far inside the cordon as they had been outside before,—and Devers plausibly explained that he wanted to be sure he wasn't too far away. The third day, after a long march with Indians on every hand, Tintop ordered "double guards and side lines when the herds went out to graze." The horses of the other troops were ridden out by the men to good grazing-ground some five hundred yards from the bivouac fires, and there the riders slipped off and the side lines were slipped on; but Devers's horses were side-lined as soon as unsaddled, and then the poor brutes, thus hobbled fore and aft, were driven, painfully lurching, out to graze. Tintop boiled over at the sight of so unhorsemanlike a proceeding and rode wrathfully at Devers to rebuke him. "Why, colonel," said Devers, "I wouldn't have done it for the world, but Mr. Gray was so positive in saying it must be done when they went out, I couldn't do otherwise. Of course if he'd said when they got out I——" And though Tintop swore savagely through his teeth that Devers knew well just what was meant, as did every other troop commander, he couldn't prove it. Next day, before the side lines were put on, in some mysterious way Devers's herd was stampeded and ran six miles before they could be rounded up, and he explained it was all because they weren't side-lined in the first place, as they were always accustomed to being, and as the regulations required they should be in the Indian country. This was another thing to make Tintop blaspheme. Every day for a week something was amiss, and, having gone to the length of his own tether, Devers took to saying that it was all Mr. Davies's fault or Sergeant Somebody's,—"Mr. Davies had just joined and was utterly inexperienced." Then Tintop gave Devers positive orders not to content himself with telling people to do thus and so, but to see that the orders were obeyed, and Devers then took his pipe and his blankets and ostentatiously spent hours of the afternoon out on the open prairie, a monument to the severity and exactions of his colonel. And still the horses, all of them, got far out on the foot-hills, and Tintop ordered him a day or two later, when on Scalp Creek, not to let his herd get more than half a mile away from the troop fires, as they had no tents, and then Devers had his herd-guards build fires and boil coffee far out on the prairie, and claimed that those were his troop fires, and therefore his herd was within reasonable distance of them. Then Tintop swore another oath and ordered Devers not to let his horses graze more than half or less than quarter of a mile from his own head-quarters fire, and as there followed a few days of hot weather, Devers sent his herd to the foot-hills again, claiming that there was no longer a head-quarters fire to regulate by, which proved to be a fact, as in such warm weather there was no need of one. Then, one day, Tintop in so many words ordered the captain hereafter not to do as he thought, but simply as his colonel said, and this led to the final incident, still more side-splitting,—one that the boys in the regiment never tired of telling. Tintop with his battalion was sent on a seven days' scout, during which he ordered all the troop commanders, until further instruction, not to permit their herds to graze more than five hundred yards from camp. Three days later, what was his wrath to find Devers's herd almost a mile away down the stream, and close by the tents of Major Roome's battalion of Foot that had been for a week placidly awaiting the return of the cavalry! Tintop had halted and unsaddled some distance up-stream. There wasn't a shred of canvas with the regiment while on this brisk raid, nor was there need of it in such perfect weather, and Tintop with Gray by his side stood fuming in the midst of surrounding cook fires, when Devers came placidly up in obedience to the summons of the orderly, and many an ear was brought to bear and bets were given and taken that this time Devers would catch it and no rebate. "How is it, sir," demanded Tintop, "that in defiance of my positive orders you allow your herd to go so far away?"