But for you I should have been left behind."

"But for me!--left behind!" she cried. "Oh, Howard, Howard! have I
only--only won you to send you into danger? Oh, my darling! Oh, God!
Don't--don't go! They will kill you! It will kill me! Oh, what have I
done? what have I done?"

"Nina, hush! My honor is with the regiment. I _must_ go, child. We'll be
back in a few weeks. Indeed, I fear 'twill all be over before we get
there. _Nina_, don't look so! Don't act so! Think where you are!"

But she had borne too much, and the blow came all too soon,--too heavy.
She was wellnigh senseless when the Beaubien carriage came whirling into
the fort and old Maman rushed forth in voluble and rabid charge upon her
daughter. All too late! it was useless now. Her darling's heart was
weaned away, and her love lavished on that tall, objectionable young
soldier so soon to go forth to battle. Reproaches, tears, wrath, were
all in order, but were abandoned at sight of poor Nina's agony of grief.
Noon came, and the train, and with buoyant tread the gallant command
marched down the winding road and filed aboard the cars, and Howard
Jerrold, shame-stricken, humbled at the contemplation of his own
unworthiness, slowly unclasped her arms from about his neck, laid one
long kiss upon her white and quivering lips, took one brief look in the
great, dark, haunting, despairing eyes, and carried her wail of anguish
ringing in his ears as he sprang aboard and was whirled away.

But there were women who deemed themselves worse off than Nina
Beaubien,--the wives and daughters and sweethearts whom she met that
morn in town; for when they got back to Sibley the regiment was miles
away. For them there was not even a kiss from the lips of those they
loved. Time and train waited for no woman. There were comrades battling
for life in the Colorado Rockies, and aid could not come too soon.

XVII.

Under the cloudless heavens, under the starlit skies, blessing the
grateful dew that cools the upland air and moistens the bunch-grass that
has been bleaching all day in the fierce rays of the summer sun, a
little column of infantry is swinging steadily southward. Long and
toilsome has been the march; hot, dusty, and parching the day. Halts
have been few and far between, and every man, from the colonel down, is
coated with a gray mask of powdered alkali, the contribution of a two
hours' tramp through Deadman's Canon just before the sun went down. Now,
however,