inch" at last was the
generally expressed sentiment. Devers had run to the end of his tether,
said Boynton, unfeelingly. "I could add a charge or two myself if I
didn't know he was loaded with them so deep that he can't stagger."
Boynton, limping still, had come back to resume command of the agency
guard, for Davies's wound had proved deep and serious. He had been
stabbed by Red Dog after that warrior was raised to his feet, after
Cranston's skirmishers had swept the field, after Davies thought the
struggle at an end, and was unprepared for the stealthy blow. Nothing
but Brannan's vigilance, and the warning cry which caused the lieutenant
to turn in the nick of time, had saved his life. Red Dog in irons lay in
the log guard-house. Thunder Hawk, on parole,--for White had dared the
wrath of the bureau and refused to let McPhail have him,--walked the
garrison at will. Mr. Davies, still weak and languid, lay in the big
hospital tent, really the most comfortable dwelling at the station, now
that the weather was growing warm, and there, attended by Burroughs and
ministered to by a pathetically pretty wife (who had somewhat recovered
from her panic, now that she was within the stockade of a military post
with lots of men around to watch her and be fascinated), was on the road
to speedy convalescence. He was being allowed occasional visitors, and
while his own comrades vied in their attentions, nothing could exceed
the anxiety of old White, the major commanding. Twice did he have
Thunder Hawk recount to him the details of Davies's calm courage in this
second daring capture, red-handed, of the rebellious chief, and White
went to Cranston like the blunt, outspoken campaigner that he was.

"It begins to look to me," said he, "as if this young fellow had been
most damnably backbitten. You can haul Devers before a court, but what
can we do with these women?"

"You have never told me, major, what these women had to say against
him."

"And I'm not going to," said White. "When a man's ashamed of having
believed a mean story, the sooner he buries it the better. Men like him
don't go round abusing their own wife or insulting anybody else's. It's
my belief that the swarm that buzzes around the throne there at Mrs.
Pegleg's ought to be muzzled, and if the old man hadn't lost his grip in
this seizure he's had, I'd tell him so."

But this seizure of Pegleg's had indeed proved a serious matter. So far
from recovering his accustomed spirit