k implied, and they bent to it like men who can pay on demand the
price of sacrifice. Their names were Donovan and Pliley, recorded in the
military roster as private scouts, but the titles they bear in the
memory of every man who sat in that grim council on that night, has a
grander sound than the written records declare.

"Boys," Forsyth said, lifting himself on his elbow where he lay in his
sand bed, "this is the last chance. If you can get to the fort and send
us help we can hold out a while. But it must come quickly. You know what
it means for you to try, and for us, if you succeed."

The two men nodded assent, then girding on their equipments, they gave
us their last messages to be repeated if deliverance ever came to us and
they were never heard of again. We were getting accustomed to this now,
for Death stalked beside us every hour. They said a brief good-bye and
slipped out from us into the dangerous dark on their chosen task. Then
the chill of the night, with its uncertainty and gloom, with its ominous
silences broken only by the howl of the gray wolves, who closed in about
us and set up their hunger wails beyond the reach of our bullets; and
the heat of the day with its peril of arrow and rifle-ball filled the
long hours. Hunger was a terror now. Our meat was gone save a few
decayed portions which we could barely swallow after we had sprinkled
them over with gunpowder. For the stomach refused them even in
starvation. Dreams of banquets tortured our short, troubled sleep, and
the waking was a horror. A luckless little coyote wandered one day too
near our fold. We ate his flesh and boiled his bones for soup. And one
day a daring soldier slipped out from our sand pit in search of
food--anything--to eat in place of that rotting horseflesh. In the
bushes at the end of the island, he found a few wild plums. Oh, food
for the gods was that portion of stewed plums carefully doled out to
each of us.

Six days went by. I do not know on which one the Sabbath fell, for God
has no holy day in the Plains warfare. Six days, and no aid had come
from Fort Wallace. That our scouts had failed, and our fate was decreed,
was now the settled conclusion in every mind.

On the evening of this sixth day our leader called us about him. How
gray and drawn his face looked in the shadowy gray light, but his eyes
were clear and his voice steady.

"Boys, we've got to the end of our rope, now. Over there," pointing to
the low hills, "the