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.
[Illustration: "THERE ARE YOUR HUNTERS,--TWO OF MY BEST MEN."
Page 96.]
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
_coulées_, 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.