the veteran's lips set Geordie to staring, and presently out
went his hand and up went his glad young voice:

"Nolan! Nolan! _You_ back with us again!"

"Couldn't keep out of it, sir, when we got word that the old troop was
to have another Indian campaign. No more could Toomey."

And lo! it was his friend of the Big Mogul now again bestriding a troop
horse, detailed specially to meet him! And Lane, with a wave of his
hand and a laugh that was good to hear, left the three cronies of
Silver Run to ride in together while he galloped on to his duties.

"But the mines, Nolan, and your position?" questioned Geordie, as soon
as the greetings were over and he could recover from his amaze.

"The mine is as sound as a government bond, sir, and Shiner's holding
down my job till I want it again; and Mr. Anthony told me to say that
whenever the lieutenant got tired of soldiering to come back with
Toomey and take his old trick with the shovel."

And so, joyous and laughing, the three friends of old rode down to the
thronging camps in the valley, and to the stern duties that so soon
awaited them.

For there came a day when men's faces went white with the news that
Sitting Bull, the great chief (Tatanka-iyo-Tanka), had died in
desperate fight with the police sent to arrest him; that Si Tanka and
his band, nabbed by "Napa Yahmni," had most unaccountably managed later
to elude him, and were now at large, raising the standard of revolt,
summoning all the wild warriors far and near to join forces with him.
And then, indeed, the frontier blazed with signal-fires by night and
burning ranches by day, and there came a week of hard riding for the
old regiment, and of sharp campaigning for all--a week in which at last
the wily red chief Si Tanka was finally surrounded and, with all his
people and ponies, herded on down through the Bad Lands to the breaks
of Wounded Knee--fierce, truculent, defiant. For long months he had
braved the "Great Father" himself, refusing to submit to any authority;
but the sight of those long columns of silent, disciplined "horse
soldiers," squadrons white and black, some of them riding along with
wonderful little field-guns clinking beside them on wheels, overawed
Si Tanka's followers and disheartened his friends.

There came a day when he had to submit, and agree to surrender, and go
whither orders might send him, and with his fierce spirit crushed, he
bowed his head and took to his lodge, and laid him down i