e
circle, and as the rays of the setting sun began to expand fanlike
across the plain the cavalcade moved on. But between them and the
sinking sun, and visible through its last rays, was a faint line of haze
parallel with their track. Yet even this, too, quickly faded away.

Had the guide, however, penetrated half a mile further to the west
he would have come upon the cause of the panic, and a spectacle more
marvelous than that he had just witnessed. For the illimitable plain
with its monotonous prospect was far from being level; a hundred yards
further on he would have slowly and imperceptibly descended into
a depression nearly a mile in width. Here he not only would have
completely lost sight of his own cavalcade, but have come upon another
thrice its length. For here was a trailing line of jog-trotting dusky
shapes, some crouching on dwarf ponies half their size, some trailing
lances, lodge-poles, rifles, women and children after them, all moving
with a monotonous rhythmic motion as marked as the military precision
of the other cavalcade, and always on a parallel line with it. They had
done so all day, keeping touch and distance by stealthy videttes that
crept and crawled along the imperceptible slope towards the unconscious
white men. It was, no doubt, the near proximity of one of those watchers
that had touched the keen scent of the troopers' horses.

The moon came up; the two cavalcades, scarcely a mile apart, moved on
in unison together. Then suddenly the dusky caravan seemed to arise,
stretch itself out, and swept away like a morning mist towards the west.
The bugles of Fort Biggs had just rung out.

*****

Peter Atherly was up early the next morning pacing the veranda of the
commandant's house at Fort Biggs. It had been his intention to visit
the new Indian Reservation that day, but he had just received a letter
announcing an unexpected visit from his sister, who wished to join him.
He had never told her the secret of their Indian paternity, as it had
been revealed to him from the scornful lips of Gray Eagle a year ago;
he knew her strangely excitable nature; besides, she was a wife now, and
the secret would have to be shared with her husband. When he himself
had recovered from the shock of the revelation, two things had impressed
themselves upon his reserved and gloomy nature: a horror of his previous
claim upon the Atherlys, and an infinite pity and sense of duty towards
his own race. He had devoted himse