magnificent rose-tipped palisade of rock
that jutted out across their path. "That's Good Heart Butte, and the
Wakon comes in just around it. It's ten to one we'll find them right
there. Where're you going, Cullen?" he called to a trooper who came
cantering back past the flank of the column.

"To hurry up the pack-train, sir. It's the major's orders," sung out the
trooper, only momentarily checking his horse. It always annoys the
officers of a marching column to have messengers galloping up and down
along their flanks, but this was the major's own orderly, and no man
might rebuke but the chief himself.

"Reckon I'd better get up to the front again," said Sanders, as he
spurred away and left the friends together. Cranston looked back at his
leading four. His veteran first sergeant was commanding a platoon, and
it was a junior sergeant who rode with the head of column, and next him
a stunted little Irish corporal, for by the inexorable rule of the
cavalry the shorter men rode at the flanks of the troop. Midway down the
column the guidon-bearer was just unfurling and shaking out its silken
folds, but without raising it so as to attract the attention of possible
spies. Forward, in the ranks of the two companies of the --th, uniforms
were rare and no guidons visible;--long campaigning in Arizona had
taught the uselessness of both in Indian warfare, but the Eleventh had
their traditions, as had the Seventh, and rode into action with a
certain old-fashioned style and circumstance that lent inspiration to
the scene. Turning out of column for a moment the captain rode slowly
alongside, looking over his men as they passed him by. There was always
something trim, elastic, jaunty about his troop, and they knew it, and
even on long marches in hard campaigns the men would instinctively
"brace up" and raise their heads and square their dusty shoulders when
they felt the captain's eye upon them. He couldn't help seeing how
eagerly and with what trust and faith in their leader many of his sixty
glanced at him as though to question what work he might have in hand for
them to-day. Side by side with the guidon-bearer rode Corporal Brannan.
"Another chance for our prodigy," smiled Cranston to himself. "I wonder
if it will be as warm in Chicago as it promises to be here. More than
one mother there will be kneeling little dreaming, even as she prays for
his safety, what scenes her boy may be battling through this day." The
thought sent a lum