and straining every nerve to reach the
scene.

Only five days before, as he stepped from the railway car at the supply
station, a wagon-train had come in from the front escorted by Mr. Lee's
own troop; his captain with it, wounded. Just as soon as it could reload
with rations and ammunition the train was to start on its eight days'
journey to the Spirit Wolf, where Colonel Stanley and the --th were
bivouacked and scouring the neighboring mountains. Already a battalion
of infantry was at the station, another was on its way, and supplies
were being hurried forward. Captain Gregg brought the first reliable
news. The Indians had apparently withdrawn from the road. The
wagon-train had come through unmolested, and Colonel Stanley was
expecting to push forward into their fastnesses farther south the moment
he could obtain authority from head-quarters. With these necessary
orders two couriers had started just twelve hours before. The captain
was rejoiced to see his favorite lieutenant and to welcome Philip
Stanley to the regiment. "Everybody seemed to feel that you too would be
coming right along," he said; "but, Phil, my boy, I'm afraid you're too
late for the fun. You cannot catch the command before it starts from
Spirit Wolf."

And yet this was just what Phil had tried to do. Lee knew nothing of his
plan until everything had been arranged between the young officer and
the major commanding the temporary camp at the station. Then it was too
late to protest. While it was Mr. Lee's duty to remain and escort the
train, Philip Stanley, with two scouts and half a dozen troopers, had
pushed out to overtake the regiment two hundred miles away. Forty-eight
hours later, as the wagon-train with its guard was slowly crawling
southward, it was met by a courier with ghastly face. He was one of
three who had started from the ruined agency together. They met no
Indians, but at Box Elder Springs had come upon the bodies of a little
party of soldiers stripped, scalped, gashed, and mutilated,--nine in
all. There could be little doubt that they were those of poor Philip and
his new-found comrades. The courier had recognized two of the bodies as
those of Forbes and Whiting,--the scouts who had gone with the party;
the others he did not know at all.

Parking his train then and there, sending back to the railway for an
infantry company to hasten forward and take charge of it, Mr. Lee never
hesitated as to his own course. He and his troop pushed