one of their number reading the service for the burial of the
dead. Never did Cranston take the field without Margaret's stowing in
the corner of his saddlebag a little prayer-book of her church, and this
the captain had handed silently to Davies. Side by side the forms of the
two sergeants and their comrade troopers were laid in the sandy pit.
Reverently the bearded, war-worn men uncovered and stood with drooping
heads while their grave young officer read the solemn words. Here and
there along the big circle of their surrounding foe the faint distant
crack of the rifle punctuated the sentences as they fell from soldier
lips, and every moment a bullet whistled overhead. Somewhere down the
valley, borne on the wings of the breeze, the wail of Indian women
mourning their braves slain in the earlier battle echoed and almost
overwhelmed the solitary voice that rose in soldier tribute to the
soldier dead. Then with one brief, fervent prayer, the solemnly murmured
"Amen," carving no line, raising no stone, but tamping deep and heavy
the earth upon their blanket-shrouded forms, without the trooper
volleys, with only the faint soft winding of the trooper's last earthly
trumpet-call singing "lights out" to sadly listening ears, the little
group dispersed, each man going to his post.

An hour later still and the bluffs were throwing long shadows across the
valley, and the crack of Indian rifles and occasional loud bark of the
carbine close at hand seemed growing more frequent, and watchers at the
outskirts became conscious of increasing excitement among the warriors
up the valley to the west as well as over to the south, and listening
men, laying their ears to earth, declared that there was tremor and
vibration, and dull distant thunder of myriad hoofs, and over in the
village there was hurrying to and fro and growing clamor of squaws and
children, and dusky women could be seen clutching their little ones and
speeding away towards the hills down-stream, while others began rapidly
tearing down the painted lodges of hide or cloth, and such Indians as
had no mount, but were skulking under the banks or among the bluffs
across the stream, could be seen leaping and crouching and racing back
toward the village, and presently there went up a shout from the
lookouts towards the upper Ska: "Big dust-cloud coming. Must be the pony
herd again!" And men began springing to their feet and scrambling out of
their shelters, and staring around them