eds
skilled in the white man's language and the red man's fiendishness.

If we should lose--We did not go out there to lose. When each man does a
man's part there is no failure possible at last.

As the sun sank toward late afternoon, the savage force massed for its
great, crushing blow that should annihilate us. The strong center, made
up of the flower of every tribe engaged, was on the crest of a long,
westward-reaching slope, a splendid company of barbaric
warriors--strong, eager, vengeful, doggedly determined to finish now
the struggle with the power they hated.

The air was very clear, and in its crystal distances we could see every
movement and hear each command.

The valley rang with the taunts and jeers and threats and mocking
laughter of our foes, daring us to come out and meet them face to face,
like men. And we went out and met them face to face, like men.

A little force of soldiery fighting, not for ourselves, but for the
hearthstones of a nobler people, our cavalry swung up that long, western
slope in the face of a murderous fire, into the very heart of Cheyenne
strength, enforced by all the iron of the allied tribes. I marvel at it
now, when, in solid phalanx, our foes might easily have mowed us down
like a thin line of standing grain; for their numbers seemed unending,
while flight on flight of arrows and fierce sheets of rifle-fire swept
our ranks as we rode on to death or victory. But each man's face among
us there was bright with courage, and with our steady force unchecked we
swept right on to the very crest of the high slope, scattering the
enemy, at last, like wind-blown autumn leaves, until upon our guidons
victory rested and the long day was won.

XX

GONE OUT

I wander alone at dead of night,
But ever before me I see a light,
In darkest hours more clear, more bright;
And the hope that I bear fails never.

FREDRICH RUeCKERT.

The waters of the Smoky Hill flowed yellow, flecked with foam, beside
our camp, where, in a little grove of cottonwood trees, we rested from a
long day's march. The heat of a late Kansas summer day was fanned away
at twilight by the cool prairie breeze. There was an appealing something
in the air that evening hour that made me homesick. So I went down
beside the river to fight out my daily battle and let the wide spaces of
the landscape soothe me, and all the opal tints of sunset skies and the
soft radiance of a prairie twili