usty guardians by the
score; but, far as eye could see down the beautiful valley, not a sign
of Sanders, his party, his comrades of the Eleventh, or, worse than all,
of the pack-train, and Chrome and his people were getting hungry.

There were still with him the sergeant and trumpeter who had brought the
despatch from Colonel Winthrop, and to them again did Chrome appeal for
an estimate of the probable distance and direction of the colonel's
camp. With an officer and twenty troopers as an escort they rode to the
summit of the nearest bluff on the western shore, and with their
field-glasses studied the landscape for miles. Far to the southwest lay
the placid valley, unvexed now by sign of hostile force of any kind, and
the sergeant indicated, some fifteen miles away, the butte near which
they made their crossing of the stream the previous day. Far to the west
and northwest rolled a wild, tumbling sea of prairie upland, wave after
wave of gray-green earth, spanned at the horizon by the black,
pine-covered range of the Medicine Hills, pierced nearly due west from
them by the deep slit the sergeant said was Slaughter Cove. To the
northwest they could trace the general course of the Wakon valley,
though the stream itself was nowhere in view, even among the broader
levels toward its mouth, for everything down the Ska beyond a point
three miles away was hidden from their sight by the bold cliffs that
jutted out almost into the foaming waters. "Somewhere off there, fifteen
or twenty miles," said the sergeant, pointing towards Slaughter Cove,
"the colonel is probably marching." He had pursued the warriors into the
hills after their heavy fight, and wouldn't let up on them till he ran
them back to the agency, but the camp where he had left his wounded, his
wagons, and supplies and their guard couldn't be more than twenty miles
farther up the valley. Of the Indian village they had attacked at
sunrise nothing could be seen. Eastward and south westward the opposite
bluffs cut off the view, and such Indians as watched them did so from
the concealment of the ridges and ravines. Chrome's triumphant rejoicing
of the early day was rapidly giving place to uneasiness. In the absence
of rations even martial fame is an empty thing. It was a bitter pill to
have to go down and consult with Canker, but he did not know what else
to do. Noon found him, watched by the lurking Indians among the bluffs,
still guarding his captured herd and waiting fo