esence of the fluttering, yet reawakened,
life the one had so nearly imperiled, the other had so indomitably
battled to save.

And all this while there were other lives and other fates and other
fortunes almost as desperately entangled and endangered. The general had
summoned Stone to follow him afield. It was hard work finding those
scattered wards of the nation, those lambs of the flock fled afar from
the agency, and Stone left with the fate of his three wood guards still
undetermined, for the soldiers had searched in vain. He left, too, with
most of his men, while Major Layton, ordered up from Niobrara, took
temporary command of the post, Dwight being, as yet, unfit for duty of
any kind. Stone was a week away, scouting through the Sagamore and over
toward the Belle Fourche, and brought back with him some four-score
"reds" of various ages and sexes, and two well-nigh starved and
exhausted men, two of French's devoted band, who, they said, had been
sent out the night before the attack to build and fire a beacon on the
summit of a tall, sharp, pine-crested height a mile away from camp.
French thought the signal might bring help from the post. They never
reached that crest. They heard the Indians shouting to each other in
pursuit. They made their way farther into the hills and lived on what
they had in their haversacks, hiding by day, for the hills seemed full
of redskins. They were taken to hospital to recuperate, and meantime,
while Stone's battalion settled down again into quarters, and business
at Skidmore's resumed its normal aspect, and the guard and prisoners
their abnormal number, Major Layton returned to Niobrara after imparting
to Colonel Stone a story he had succeeded in tracing back to three
sentries, a story he could neither stifle nor throttle, and that he left
with Colonel Stone to deal with as best he might; and Stone, thinking
again, as he had thought a thousand times before, of that letter in
feminine hand, and in his private desk, felt his heart go down to his
boots. In brief, the story was that twice during the week a young and
slender officer had issued from the rear gate of Lieutenant Purdy's
quarters, made his way in the black shadows of the fence-line to the
rear gate of Major Dwight's, where once, at least No. 4 could swear, it
was nearly an hour before he reappeared.

Stone took council that very evening with Waring, the senior surgeon.
Waring had just come from Rays', saying little Jim, though