CHAPTER XVI
BEGINNING AGAIN
It matters not what fruit the hand may gather, If God approves, and says, "This is the best." It matters not how far the feet may wander, If He says, "Go, and leave to Me the rest."
--ALBERT MACY.
I stood in the August twilight by the railway station in the littlefrontier town of Salina, where the Union Pacific train had abandoned meto my fate. Turning toward the unmapped, limitless Northwest, I suddenlyrealized that I was at the edge of the earth now. Behind me werecivilization and safety. Beyond me was only a waste of gray nothingness.Yet this was the world I had come hither to conquer. Here were thespaces wherein I should find peace. I set my face with grimdetermination to work now, out of the thing before me, a purpose thatcontrolled me.
Morton's claim was a far day's journey up the Saline Valley. It would benearly a week before I could find a man to drive me thither; so Isecured careful directions, and the next morning I left the town on footand alone. I did not mind the labor of it. I was as vigorous as a younggiant, fear of personal peril I had never known, and the love ofadventure was singing its siren's song to me. I was clad in the strong,coarse garments, suited to the Plains. I was armed with two heavyrevolvers and a small pistol. Hidden inside of my belt as a lastdefence was the short, sharp knife bearing Jean Le Claire's name inscript lettering.
I shall never forget the moment when a low bluff beyond a bend in theSaline River shut off the distant town from my view and I stood utterlyalone in a wide, silent world, left just as God had made it. Humilityand uplift mingle in the soul in such a time and place. One question ranback and forth across my mind: What conquering power can ever bring thewarmth of glad welcome to the still, hostile, impenetrable beauty ofthese boundless plains?
"The air is full of spirits out here," I said to myself. "There is noliving thing in sight, and yet the land seems inhabited, just as thatold haunted cabin down on the Neosho seemed last June."
And then with the thought of that June day Memory began to play hertricks on me and I cried out, "Oh, perdition take that stone cabin andthe whole Neosho Valley if that will make me forget it all!"
I strode forward along the silent, sunshiny way, with a thousand thingson my mind's surface and only one thought in its inner deeps. The sunswung up the sky, and the thin August air even in its heat was light andinvigorating. The river banks were low and soft where the stream cutsthrough the alluvial soil a channel many feet below the level of thePlains. The day was long, but full of interest to me, who took its sightas a child takes a new picture-book, albeit a certain sense of perillurked in the shadowing corners of my thought.
The August sun was low in the west when I climbed up the grassy slope toMorton's little square stone cabin. It stood on a bold heightoverlooking the Saline River. Far away in every direction the landbillows lay fold on fold. Treeless and wide they stretched out to thehorizon, with here and there a low elevation, and here and there thefaint black markings of scrubby bushes clinging to the bank of a stream.The stream itself, now only a shallow spread of water, bore witness tothe fierce thirst of the summer sun. Up and down the Saline Valley onlya few scattered homesteads were to be seen, and a few fields of slender,stunted corn told the story of the first struggle for conquest in abeautiful but lonely and unfriendly land.
Morton was standing at the door of his cabin looking out on that sweepof plains with thoughtful eyes. He did not see me until I was fairly upthe hill, and when he did he made no motion towards me, but stood andwaited for my coming. In those few moments as I swung forwardleisurely--for I was very tired now--I think we read each other'scharacter and formed our estimates more accurately than many men havedone after years of close business association.
He was a small man beside me, as I have said, and his quiet manner, andretiring disposition, half dignity, half modesty, gave the casualacquaintance no true estimate of his innate force. Three things,however, had attracted me to him in our brief meeting at Topeka: hisvoice, though low, had a thrill of power in it; his hand-clasp was firmand full of meaning; and when I looked into his blue eyes I recalled thewords which the Earl of Kent said to King Lear:
"You have that in your countenance which I would fain call master."
And when King Lear asked, "What's that?" Kent replied, "Authority."
Every movement of ours had been watched by Indian scouts]
It was in Morton's face. Although he was not more than a dozen years mysenior, I instinctively looked upon him as a leader of men, and hebecame then and has always since been one of my manhood's ideals.
"I'm glad to see you, Baronet. Come in." He grasped my hand firmly andled the way into the house. I sat down wearily in the chair he offeredme. It was well that I had walked the last stage of my journey. Had Ibeen twenty-four hours later I should have missed him, and this onestory of the West might never have been told.
The inside of the cabin was what one would expect to find in aPlainsman's home who had no one but himself to consider.
While I rested he prepared our supper. Disappointment in love does notalways show itself in the appetite, and I was as hungry as a coyote. Allday new sights and experiences had been crowding in upon me. Theexhilaration of the wild Plains was beginning to pulse in my veins. Ihad come into a strange, untried world. The past, with its broken tiesand its pain and loss, must be only a memory that at my leisure I mightcall back; but here was a different life, under new skies, with newpeople. The sunset lights, the gray evening shadows, and the dip andswell of the purple distances brought their heartache; but now I washungry, and Morton was making johnny cakes and frying bacon; wild plumswere simmering on the fire, and coffee was filling the room with therarest of all good odors vouchsafed to mortal sense.
At the supper table my host went directly to my case by asking, "Haveyou come out here to prospect or to take hold?"
"To take hold," I answered.
"Are you tired after your journey?" he queried.
"I? No. A night's sleep will fix me." I looked down at my strong arms,and stalwart limbs.
"You sleep well?" His questions were brief.
"I never missed but one night in twenty-one years, except when I sat upwith a sick boy one Summer," I replied.
"When was that one night?"
"Oh, during the war when the border ruffians and Copperheads terrorizedour town."
"You are like your father, I see." He did not say in what particular;and I added, "I hope I am."
We finished the meal in silence. Then we sat down by the west doorwayand saw the whole Saline Valley shimmer through the soft glow oftwilight and lose itself at length in the darkness that folded downabout it. A gentle breeze swept along from somewhere in the farsouthwest, a thousand insects chirped in the grasses. Down by the rivera few faint sounds of night birds could be heard, and then lonelinessand homesickness had their time, denied during every other hour of thetwenty-four.
After a time my host turned toward me in the gloom and looked steadilyinto my eyes.
"He's taking my measure," I thought.
"Well," I said, "will I do?"
"Yes," he answered. "Your father told me once in the army that his boycould ride like a Comanche, and turn his back to a mark and hit it overhis shoulder." He smiled.
"That's because one evening I shot the head off a scarecrow he had putup in the cherry tree when I was hiding around a corner to keep out ofhis sight. All the Springvale boys learned how to ride and shoot and todo both at once, although we never had any shooting to do that reallycounted."
"Baronet"--there was a tone in Morton's voice that gripped and heldme--"you have come here in a good time. We need you now. Men of yourbuild and endurance and skill are what this West's got to have."
"Well, I'm here," I answered seriously.
"I shall leave for Fort Harker to-morrow with a crowd of men from thevalley to join a company Sheridan has called for," he went on. "You knowabout the Indian raid the first of this month. The Cheyennes came acrosshere, a
nd up on Spillman Creek and over on the Solomon they killed adozen or more people. They burned every farm-house, and outraged everywoman, and butchered every man and child they could lay hands on. Youheard about it at Topeka."
"Hasn't that Indian massacre been avenged yet?" I cried.
Clearly in my memory came the two women of my dream of long ago. Howdeeply that dream had impressed itself upon my mind! And then thereflashed across my brain the image of Marjie, as she looked the nightwhen she stood in the doorway with the lamplight on her brown curls, andit became clear to me that she was safe at home. Oh, the joy of thatmoment! The unutterable thankfulness that filled my soul was matched inintensity only by the horror that fills it even now when I think of awhite woman in Indian slave-bonds. And while I was thinking of this Iwas listening to Morton's more minute account of what had been takingplace about him, and why he and his neighbors were to start on the nextday for Fort Harker down on the Smoky Hill River.
Early in that memorable August of 1868 a band of forty Cheyenne braves,under their chief Black Kettle, came riding up from their far-awayvillages in the southwest, bent on a merciless murdering raid upon theunguarded frontier settlements. They were a dirty, ragged, sullen crewas ever rode out of the wilderness. Down on the Washita River their ownsquaws and papooses were safe in their tepees too far from civilizationfor any retaliatory measure to reach them.
When Black Kettle's band came to Fort Hays, after the Indian custom theymade the claim of being "good Indians."
"Black Kettle loves his white soldier brothers, and his heart feels gladwhen he meets them," the Chief declared. "We would be like whitesoldiers, but we cannot, for we are Indians; but we can all be brothers.It is a long way that we have come to see you. Six moons have come andgone, and there has been no rain; the wind blows hot from the south allday and all night; the ground is hot and cracked; the grass is burnedup; the buffalo wallows are dry; the streams are dry; the game isscarce; Black Kettle is poor, and his band is hungry. He asks the whitesoldiers for food for his braves and their squaws and papooses. Allother Indians may take the war-trail, but Black Kettle will forever keepfriendship with his white brothers."
Such were his honeyed words. The commander of the fort issued to eachbrave a bountiful supply of flour and bacon and beans and coffee. Beyondthe shadow of the fort they feasted that night. The next morning theyhad disappeared, these loving-hearted, loyal Indians, over whom the homemissionary used to weep copious tears of pity. They had gone--butwhither? Black Kettle and his noble braves were not hurrying southwardtoward their squaws and papooses with the liberal supplies issued tothem by the Government. Crossing to the Saline Valley, not good Indians,but a band of human fiends, they swept down on the unsuspectingsettlements. A homestead unprotected by the husband and father wastheir supreme joy. Then before the eyes of the mother, little childrenwere tortured to death, while the mother herself--God pity her--was notonly tortured, but what was more cruel, was kept alive.
Across the Saline Valley, over the divide, and up the Solomon RiverValley this band of demons pushed their way. Behind them were hot asheswhere homes had been, and putrid, unburied bodies of murdered men andchildren, mutilated beyond recognition. On their ponies, bound hand andfoot, were wretched, terror-stricken women. The smiling Plains layswathed in the August sunshine, and the richness of purple twilights,and of rose-hued day dawns, and the pitiless noontime skies of brassonly mocked them in their misery. Did a merciful God forget the Plainsin those days of prairie conquest? No force rose up to turn Black Kettleand his murderous horde back from the imperilled settlements untilloaded with plunder, their savage souls sated with cruelty, withhelpless captives for promise of further fiendish sport, they headedsouthward and escaped untouched to their far-away village in thepleasant, grassy lands that border the Washita River.
Not all their captives went with them, however. With these "goodIndians," recipients of the Fort Hays bounty, were two women, mothers ofa few months, not equal to the awful tax of human endurance. These,bound hand and foot, they staked out on the solitary Plains under theblazing August skies, while their tormentors rode gayly away to jointheir fat, lazy squaws awaiting them in the southland by the windingWashita.
This was the story Morton was telling to me as we sat in the dusk by hiscabin door. This was the condition of those fair Kansas River valleys,for the Cheyennes under Black Kettle were not the only foes here. OtherCheyenne bands, with the Sioux, the Brules, and the Dog Indians fromevery tribe were making every Plains trail a warpath.
"The captives are probably all dead by this time; but the crimes are notavenged, and the settlers are no safer than they were before the raid,"Morton was saying. "Governor Crawford and the Governor of Colorado haveurged the authorities at Washington to protect our frontier, but theyhave done nothing. Now General Sheridan has decided to act anyhow. Hehas given orders to Colonel George A. Forsyth of the U. S. Cavalry, tomake up a company of picked men to go after the Cheyennes at once. Thereare some two hundred of them hiding somewhere out in the Solomon or theRepublican River country. It is business now. No foolishness. A lot ofus around here are going down to Harker to enlist. Will you go with us,Baronet? It's no boys' play. The safety of our homes is matched againstthe cunning savagery of the redskins. We paid fifteen million dollarsfor this country west of the Mississippi. If these Indians aren't drivenout and made to suffer, and these women's wrongs avenged, we'd bettersell the country back to France for fifteen cents. But it's no easypiece of work. Those Cheyennes know these Plains as well as you know thestreets of Springvale. They are built like giants, and they fight likedemons. Don't underestimate the size of the contract. I know JohnBaronet well enough to know that if his boy begins, he won't quit tillthe battle is done. I want you to go into this with your eyes open.Whoever fights the Indians must make his will before the battle begins.Forsyth's company will be made up of soldiers from the late war,frontiersmen, and scouts. You're not any one of these, but--" hehesitated a little--"when I heard your speech at Topeka I knew you hadthe right metal. Your spirit is in this thing. You are willing to paythe price demanded here for the hearthstones of the West."
My spirit! My blood was racing through every artery in leaps and bounds.Here was a man calmly setting forth the action that had been my verydream of heroism, and here was a call to duty, where duty and idealblend into one. And then I was young, and thought myself at thebeginning of a new life; pain of body was unknown to me; the lure of thePlains was calling to me--daring adventure, the need for courage, thepatriotism that fires the young man's heart, and, at the final analysis,my loyalty to the defenceless, my secret notions of the value of theAmerican home, my horror of Indian captivity, a horror I had known whenmy mind was most impressible--all these were motives driving me on. Iwondered that my companion could be so calm, sitting there in the dimtwilight explaining carefully what lay before me; and yet I felt thepower of that calmness building up a surer strength in me. I did notdream of home that night. I chased Indians until I wakened with ascream.
"What's the matter, Baronet?" Morton asked.
"I thought the Cheyennes had me," I answered sleepily.
"Don't waste time in dreaming it. Better go to sleep and let 'em alone,"he advised; and I obeyed.
The next morning we were joined by half a dozen settlers of thatscattered community, and together we rode across the Plains toward FortHarker. I had expected to find a fortified stronghold at the end of ourride. Something in imposing stone on a commanding height. Something offrowning, impenetrable strength. Out on the open plain by the lazy,slow-crawling Smoky Hill River were low buildings forming a quadrangleabout a parade ground. Officers' quarters, soldiers' barracks, andstables for the cavalry horses and Government mules, there were, but nofortifications were there anywhere. Yet the fort was ample for the needsof the Plains. The Indian puts up only a defensive fight in the regionof Federal power. It is out in the wide blank lands where distance mocksat retreat that he leads out in open hostility against the white man.Here General Sher
idan had given Colonel Forsyth commission to organize aCompany of Plainsmen. And this Company was to drive out or annihilatethe roving bands of redskins who menaced every home along thewestward-creeping Kansas frontier in the years that followed the CivilWar. It was to offer themselves to this cause that the men from Morton'scommunity, whom I had joined, rode across the divide from the SalineValley on that August day, and came in the early twilight to thesolitary unpretentious Federal post on the Smoky Hill.
It is only to a military man in the present time that this picture ofFort Harker would be interesting, and there is nothing now in all thatpeaceful land to suggest the frontier military station which I saw onthat summer day, now nearly four decades ago. But everything wasinteresting to me then, and my greatest study was the men gathered therefor a grim and urgent purpose. My impression of frontiersmen had beenshaped by the loud threats, the swagger, and much profanity of theborder people of the Territorial and Civil War days. Here were quiet menwho made no boasts. Strong, wiry men they were, tanned by the sun of thePlains, their hands hardened, their eyes keen. They were military menwho rode like centaurs, scouts who shot with marvellous accuracy, andthe sturdy settlers, builders of empire in this stubborn West. Had Ibeen older I would have felt my own lack of training among them. Myhands, beside theirs, were soft and white, and while I was accounted agood marksman in Springvale I was a novice here. But since the nightlong ago when Jean Pahusca frightened Marjie by peering through ourschoolroom window I had felt myself in duty bound to drive back theIndians. I had a giant's strength, and no Baronet was ever seriouslycalled a coward.
The hours at Fort Barker were busy ones for Colonel Forsyth andLieutenant Fred Beecher, first in command under him. Their task ofselecting men for the expedition was quickly performed. My heart beatfast when my own turn came. Forsyth's young lieutenant was one of theLord's anointed. Soft-voiced, modest, handsome, with a nature solovable, I find it hard to-day to think of him in the military rankswhere war and bloodshed are the ultimate business. But young Beecher wasa soldier of the highest order, fearless and resourceful. I cannot sayhow much it lay in Morton's recommendation, and how much in thelieutenant's kind heart that I was able to pass muster and be writteninto that little company of less than threescore picked men. Theavailable material at Fort Harker was quickly exhausted, and the menchosen were hurried by trains to Fort Hays, where the remainder of theCompany was made up.
Dawned then that morning in late Summer when we moved out from the Fortand fronted the wilderness. On the night before we started I wrote abrief letter to Aunt Candace, telling her what I was about to do.
"If I never come back, auntie," I added, "tell the little girl down onthe side of the hill that I tried to do for Kansas what her father didfor the nation, that I gave up my life to establish peace. And tellher, too, if I really do fall out by the way, that I'll be lonely evenin heaven till she comes."
But with the morning all my sentiment vanished and I was eager for thething before me. Two hundred Indians we were told we should find andevery man of us was accounted good for at least five redskins. Atsunrise on the twenty-ninth day of August in the year of our Lord 1868,Colonel Forsyth's little company started on its expedition of defencefor the frontier settlements, and for just vengeance on the Cheyennes ofthe plains and their allied forces from kindred bands. Fort Hays was thevery outpost of occupation. To the north and west lay a silent, pathlesscountry which the finger of the white man had not touched. We knew wewere bidding good-bye to civilization as we marched out that morning,were turning our backs on safety and comfort and all that makes lifefine. Before us was the wilderness, with its perils and lonelydesolation and mysteries.
But the wilderness has a siren's power over the Anglo-Saxon always. Thestrange savage land was splendid even in its silent level sweep ofdistance. When I was a boy I used to think that the big cottonwoodbeyond the West Draw was the limit of human exploration. It marked theworld's western bound for me. Here were miles on miles of landscapeopening wide to more stretches of leagues and leagues of far boundlessplains, and all of it was weird, unconquerable, and very beautiful. Theearth was spread with a carpet of gold splashed with bronze and scarletand purple, with here and there a shimmer of green showing through theyellow, or streaking the shallow waterways. Far and wide there was not atree to give the eye a point of attachment; neither orchard nor forestnor lonely sentinel to show that Nature had ever cherished the land forthe white man's home and joy. The buffalo herd paid little heed to ourbrave company marching out like the true knights of old to defend theweak and oppressed. The gray wolf skulked along in the shadows of thedraws behind us and at night the coyotes barked harshly at the invadingband. But there was no mark of civilized habitation, no friendly hintthat aught but the unknown and unconquerable lay before us.
I was learning quickly in those days of marching and nights of dreamlesssleep under sweet, health-giving skies. After all, Harvard had done memuch service; for the university training, no less than the boyhood onthe Territorial border, had its part in giving me mental discipline formy duties now. Camp life came easy to me, and I fell into the soldierway of thinking, more readily than I had ever hoped to do.
On we went, northward to the Saline Valley, and beyond that to where theSolomon River winds down through a region of summer splendor, itsrippling waves of sod a-tint with all the green and gold and russet andcrimson hues of the virgin Plains, while overhead there arched the sky,tenderly blue in the morning, brazen at noonday, and pink and gray andpurple in the evening lights. But we found no Indians, though wefollowed trail on trail. Beyond the Solomon we turned to the southwest,and the early days of September found us resting briefly at FortWallace, near the western bound of Kansas.
The real power that subdues the wilderness may be, nay, is, the spiritof the missionary, but the mark of military occupation is a tremendousconvincer of truth. The shotgun and the Bible worked side by side in theconquest of the Plains; the smell of powder was often the only incenseon the altars, and human blood was sprinkled for holy water. FortWallace, with the Stars and Stripes afloat, looked good to me afterthat ten days in the trackless solitude. And yet I was disappointed, forI thought our quest might end here with nothing to show in results forour pains. I did not know Forsyth and his band, as the next twenty dayswere to show me.
While we were resting at the Fort, scouts brought in the news of anIndian attack on a wagon train a score of miles eastward, and soon wewere away again, this time equipped for the thing in hand, splendidlyequipped, it seemed, for what we should really need to do. We were allwell mounted, and each of us carried a blanket, saddle, bridle,picket-pin, and lariat; each had a haversack, a canteen, a butcherknife, a tin plate and tin cup. We had Spencer rifles and Colt'srevolvers, with rounds of ammunition for both; and each of us carriedseven days' rations. Besides this equipment the pack mules bore a largeadditional store of ammunition, together with rations and hospitalsupplies.
Northward again we pushed, alert for every faint sign of Indians. Thosekeen-eyed scouts were a marvel to me. They read the ground, the streams,the sagebrush, and the horizon as a primer set in fat black type. Leaderof them, and official guide, was a man named Grover, who could tell bythe hither side of a bluff what was on the farther side. But for fivedays the trails were illusive, finally vanishing in a spread of faintfootprints radiating from a centre telling us that the Indians hadbroken up and scattered over separate ways. And so again we seemed tohave been deceived in this unmapped land.
We were beyond the Republican River now, in the very northwest corner ofKansas, and the thought of turning back toward civilization had come tosome of us, when a fresh trail told us we were still in the Indiancountry. We headed our horses toward the southwest, following the trailthat hugged the Republican River. It did not fade out as the others haddone, but grew plainer each mile.
The whole command was in a fever of expectancy. Forsyth's face wasbright and eager with the anticipation of coming danger. LieutenantBeecher was serious and silent, while
the guide, Sharp Grover, was alertand cool. A tenseness had made itself felt throughout the command. Ilearned early not to ask questions; but as we came one noon upon a broadpath leading up to the main trail where from this union we looked out ona wide, well-beaten way, I turned an inquiring face toward Morton, whorode beside me. There was strength in the answer his eyes gave mine. Hehad what the latter-day students of psychology call "poise," a grip onhimself. It is by such men that the Plains have been won from a desertdemesne to fruitful fields.
"I gave you warning it was no boy's play," he said simply.
I nodded and we rode on in silence. We pressed westward to where thesmaller streams combine to form the Republican River. The trail here ledus up the Arickaree fork, a shallow stream at this season of the year,full of sand-bars and gravelly shoals. Here the waters lost themselvesfor many feet in the underflow so common in this land of aimless,uncertain waterways.
On the afternoon of the sixteenth of September the trail led to a littlegorge through which the Arickaree passes in a narrower channel. Beyondit the valley opened out with a level space reaching back to low hillson the north, while an undulating plain spread away to the south. Thegrass was tall and rank in this open space, which closed in with a bluffa mile or more to the west. Although it was hardly beyond midafternoon,Colonel Forsyth halted the company, and we went into camp. We werealmost out of rations. Our horses having no food now, were carefullypicketed out to graze at the end of their lariats. A general sense ofimpending calamity pervaded the camp. But the Plainsmen were accustomedto this kind of thing, and the Civil War soldiers had learned theirlesson at Gettysburg and Chickamauga and Malvern Hill. I was the greenhand, and I dare say my anxiety was greater than that of any other onethere. But I had a double reason for apprehension.
As we had come through the little gorge that afternoon, I was ridingsome distance in the rear of the line. Beside me was a boy of eighteen,fair-haired, blue-eyed, his cheek as smooth as a girl's. His trim littlefigure, clad in picturesque buckskin, suggested a pretty actor in a WildWest play. And yet this boy, Jack Stillwell, was a scout of theuttermost daring and shrewdness. He always made me think of BudAnderson. I even missed Bud's lisp when he spoke.
"Stillwell," I said in a low tone as we rode along, "tell me what youthink of this. Aren't we pretty near the edge? I've felt for three daysas if an Indian was riding beside me and I couldn't see him. It's notthe mirage, and I'm not locoed. Did you ever feel as if you were nearsomebody you couldn't see?"
The boy turned his fair, smooth face toward mine and looked steadily atme.
"You mustn't get to seein' things," he murmured. "This country turnsitself upside down for the fellow who does that. And in Heaven's name weneed every man in his right senses now. What do I think? Good God,Baronet! I think we are marching straight into Hell's jaws. Sandy knowsit"--"Sandy" was Forsyth's military pet name--"but he's too set to backout now. Besides, who wants to back out? or what's to be gained by it?We've come out here to fight the Cheyennes. We're gettin' to 'em, that'sall. Only there's too damned many of 'em. This trail's like the oldSanta Fe Trail, wide enough for a Mormon church to move along. And as tofeelin' like somebody's near you, it's more 'n feelin'; it's fact.There's Injuns on track of this squad every minute. I'm only eighteen,but I've been in the saddle six years, and I know a few things withoutseein' 'em. Sharp Grover knows, too. He's the doggondest scout that everrode over these Plains. He knows the trap we've got into. But he's likeSandy, come out to fight, and he'll do it. All we've got to do is tokeep our opinions to ourselves. They don't want to be told nothin'; theyknow."
The remainder of the company was almost out of sight as we rounded theshoulder of the gorge. The afternoon sunlight dazzled me. Lifting myeyes just then I saw a strange vision. What I had thought to be only apiece of brown rock, above and beyond me, slowly rose to almost asitting posture before my blinking eyes, and a man, no, two men, seemedto gaze a moment after our retreating line of blue-coats. It was but aninstant, yet I caught sight of two faces. Stillwell was glancingbackward at that moment and did not see anything. At the sound of ourhorses' feet on the gravel the two figures changed to brown rock again.In the moment my eye had caught the merest glint of sunlight on anartillery bugle, a gleam, and nothing more.
"What's the matter, Baronet? You're white as a ghost. Are you scared orsick?" Stillwell spoke in a low voice. We didn't do any shouting inthose trying days.
"Neither one," I answered, but I had cause to wonder whether I wasinsane or not. As I live, and hope to keep my record clear, the twofigures I had seen were not strangers to me. The smaller of the two hadthe narrow forehead and secretive countenance of the Reverend Mr. Dodd.In his hand was an artillery bugle. Beyond him, though he wore an Indiandress, rose the broad shoulders and square, black-shadowed forehead ofFather Le Claire.
"It is the hallucination of this mirage-girt land," I told myself. "ThePlains life is affecting my vision, and then the sun has blinded me. I'mnot delirious, but this marching is telling on me. Oh, it is at afearful price that the frontier creeps westward, that homes are planted,and peace, blood-stained, abides with them."
So I meditated as I watched the sun go down on that September night onthe far Colorado Plains by the grassy slopes and yellow sands and thin,slow-moving currents of the Arickaree.