y lie, in wayside graves, waiting
for glorious mention until the last reveille shall sound above the
battlements of heaven.

And I was one among these vanguards of the plains, making the old Santa
Fe Trail safe for the feet of trade; and the wide Kansas prairies safe
for homes, and happiness, and hope, and power. I lived the life, and
toughened in its grind. But in my dreams sometimes my other life
returned to me, and a sweet face, with a cloud of golden hair, and dark
eyes looking into mine, came like a benediction to me. Another face came
sometimes now--black, big, and glistening, with eyes of strange, far
vision looking at me, and I heard, over and over, the words of Esmond
Clarenden's cook:

"If you get into trouble, Mr. Bev, I'll come, hot streaks, to help you."

But trouble never stuck to "Mr. Bev," because he failed to know it when
it came.

Mid-August found us at Fort Hays on the Smoky Hill, beyond whose
protecting guns the wilderness ruled. A wilderness checkered by faint
trails of lawless feet, a wilderness set with bloody claws and poison
stings and cruel fangs, and slow, agonizing death. And with all a
wilderness of weird, fascinating distances and danger, charm and beauty.
The thrill of the explorer of new lands possessed us as we looked far
into the heart of it. Here in these August days the Cheyenne and
Arapahoe and Kiowa bands were riding trails blood-stained by victims
dragged from lonely homesteads, and butchered, here and there, to make
an Indian holiday. The scenes along the valleys of the Sappa and the
Beaver and the Prairie Dog creeks were far too brutal and revolting to
belong to modern life. Against these our Eighteenth Kansas, with a small
body of United States cavalry, struck northward from Fort Hays. We
rested through the long, hot days and marched by night. The moon was
growing toward the full, and in its clear, white splendor the prairies
lay revealed for miles about us. Our command was small and meagerly
equipped, and we were moving on to meet a foe of overwhelming numbers.
Men took strange odds with Fate upon the plains.

Beyond the open, level lands lay a rugged region hemming in the valley
of the Prairie Dog Creek. Here picturesque cliffs and deep, earth-walled
canons split the hills, affording easy ambush for a regiment of red men.
And here, in a triangle of a few miles area, a new Thermopylae, with no
Leonidas but Kansas plainsmen, was staged through two long August days
and nigh