hours from the time the courier started. They might
expect the good news during the afternoon of Thursday. Scouts and
flankers reported finding _travois_ and pony tracks leading westward
from the scene of Ray's fierce battle, indicating that the Indians had
carried their dead and wounded into the fastnesses of the southern
slopes of the Big Horn, and that their punishment had been heavy. Among
the chiefs killed or seriously wounded was this new, vehement leader
whom Captains Blake and Ray thought might be Red Fox, who was so
truculent at the Black Hills conference the previous year. Certain of
the men, however, who had seen Red Fox at that time expressed doubts.
Lieutenant Field, said Webb, had seen him, and could probably say.

Over this despatch the general pondered gravely. "From what I know of
Red Fox," said he, "I should think him a leader of the Sitting Bull
type,--a shrew, intriguing, mischief-making fellow, a sort of Sioux
walking delegate, not a battle leader; but according to Blake and Ray
this new man is a fighter."

Then Mrs. Dade came out and bore the general off to breakfast, and
during breakfast the chief was much preoccupied. Mrs. Dade and the
aide-de-camp chatted on social matters. The general exchanged an
occasional word with his host and hostess, and finally surprised neither
of them, when breakfast was over and he had consumed the last of his
glass of hot water, by saying to his staff officer, "I should like to
see Mrs. Hay a few minutes, if possible. We'll walk round there first.
Then--let the team be ready at ten o'clock."

But the team, although ready, did not start northward at ten, and the
general, though he saw Mrs. Hay, had no speech with her upon the
important matters uppermost in his mind during the earlier hours of the
day. He found that good lady in a state of wild excitement and alarm.
One of the two outriders who had started with her husband and niece at
dawn, was mounted on a dun-colored cow pony, with white face and feet.
One of the two troopers sent by Dade to overtake and bring them back,
was turning a blown and exhausted horse over to the care of Hay's
stablemen, as he briefly told his story to the wild-eyed, well nigh
distracted woman. Six miles up stream, he said, they had come suddenly
upon a dun-colored cow pony, dead in his tracks, with white feet in air
and white muzzle bathed in blood; bridle, saddle and rider gone; signs
of struggle in places--but no signs of the party, t