ed friends
for nearly twenty years,--were seen by the next in column, a single
corporal following them at thirty yards' distance, to halt and begin
poking at some dark object by the wayside. Then they pushed on again. A
dead pony, under a quarter inch coverlet of snow, was what met the eyes
of the silently trudging command as it followed. The high-peaked wooden
saddle tree was still "cinched" to the stiffening carcass. Either the
Indians were pushed for time or overstocked with saddlery. Presently
there came a low whistle from the military "middleman" between the
scouts and a little advance guard. "Run ahead," growled the sergeant
commanding to his boy trumpeter. "Give me your reins." And, leaving his
horse, the youngster stumbled along up the winding trail; got his
message and waited. "Give this to the captain," was the word sent back
by Schreiber, and "this" was a mitten of Indian tanned buckskin, soft
and warm if unsightly, a mitten too small for a warrior's hand, if ever
warrior deigned to wear one,--a mitten the captain examined curiously,
as he ploughed ahead of his main body, and then returned to his
subaltern with a grin on his face:

"Beauty draws us with a single hair," said he, "and can't shake us even
when she gives us the mitten. Ross," he added, after a moment's thought,
"remember this. With this gang there are two or three sub-chiefs that we
should get, alive or dead, but the chief end of man, so far as 'K'
Troop's concerned, is to capture that girl, unharmed."

And just at dawn, so gray and wan and pallid it could hardly be told
from the pale moonlight of the earlier hours, the dark, snake-like
column was halted again, nine miles further in among the wooded heights.
With Bear Cliff still out of range and sight, something had stopped the
scouts, and Blake was needed at the front. He found Schreiber crouching
at the foot of a tree, gazing warily forward along a southward-sloping
face of the mountain that was sparsely covered with tall, straight
pines, and that faded into mist a few hundred yards away. The
trail,--the main trail, that is,--seemed to go straight away eastward,
and, for a short distance, downward through a hollow or depression;
while, up the mountain side to the left, the north, following the spur
or shoulder, there were signs as of hoof tracks, half sheeted by the
new-fallen snow, and through this fresh, fleecy mantlet ploughed the
trooper boots in rude, insistent pursuit. The sergeants' ho