sent him with an order to Canker, who, out on
the right flank, was making the morning blue with blasphemy, and Sanders
poured his tale into Canker's ears, and begged him to come and make
Chrome understand the situation, and Canker replied that nothing short
of a pile-driver could hammer an idea into a skull as thick as Chrome's,
and nothing short of a blast get anything out of it. The man was a born
idiot and had no more idea how to command cavalry in the field than he,
Canker, had of teaching Sunday-school. Oddly enough, many of Canker's
contemporaries said the same of him, but one never knows and rarely
suspects half what one's brethren say or think of him. The valley was
black with ponies, the troopers were black with dust, and a pall as of
night hung over the herd, so dense that the sun rays were swallowed up
in its depths and gave but little light below, and tears of rage and
misery that started from Sanders's eyes trickled down through a sandy
desert on each sun-blistered cheek. He rode back to his temporary chief
just as an Indian bullet had whizzed in front of the major's nose and
made his eyes almost pop from his head. "Don't you see," he urged,
reproachfully, "how very much more they are around us? If Truman or
Cranston needed help they would have let us know long ago."

After a brisk gallop of three or four miles up the valley of the Ska,
the troopers of the --th had permitted the stampeded ponies to take
things more leisurely, and so it resulted that by six o'clock many of
their number were stopping occasionally to nibble at the grass which
grew here luxuriantly, but there was, all the same, a steady, persistent
movement of the living mass,--an enforced migration at the rate of at
least three miles an hour. Well out on the foot-hills Canker's troop had
thrown its flankers, while the other in long skirmish line, with
appropriate reserves, interposed between the herd and possible Indian
attack from the north. The eastern banks of the Ska along here were high
and steep, and the stream flowed deep and rapid at their base, so attack
from that quarter was not to be dreaded. All the same, occasional
warriors could be seen along the bluff, scampering from point to point,
firing long-range chance shots at the officers or men distinguishable
through the edge of the dust-cloud, but venturing no closer. It was
Chrome's idea, as he frankly said, to keep moving southwestward until
Tintop's scouts should see the huge colum