n' you to your hidin'-place. Bud, Heaven bless him, told me
where your little sanctuary was, the night before he--went away." There
were tears in O'mie's voice, but soldiers do not weep. "I had hard work
to find the path. But it was better so maybe."

"You were just in time, you red-headed angel. Life is sweet." I breathed
deeply of the pleasant air. "Oh, why did Bud have to give it up, I
wonder."

We sat down behind the big bowlder round which Bud, wounded unto death,
had staggered toward me only a few days before.

"Talk, O'mie; I can't," I said, stretching myself out at full length.

"I was just in time to see Jean spring his trap on you. I waited and
swore, and swore and waited, for him to give me the chance to get
betwane you and the pollutin' pup! It didn't come until the sun took his
face full and square, and I see my chance to make two steps. He's so
doggoned quick he'd have caught me, if it hadn't been for that blessed
gleam in his eyes. He wa'n't takin' no chances. By the way," he added as
an afterthought, "the General says we break camp soon. Didn't say it to
me, av course. Good-night now. Sleep sweet, and don't get too far from
your chest protector,--that's me." He smiled good-bye with as light a
heart as though the hours just past had been full of innocent play
instead of grim tragedy.

* * * * *

February on the Plains was slipping into March when the garrison at Fort
Sill broke up for the final movement. This winter campaign, as war
records run, had been marked by only one engagement, Custer's attack on
the Cheyenne village on the Washita River. But the hurling of so large a
force as the Fort Sill garrison into the Indian stronghold in the depth
of winter carried to the savage mind and spirit a deeper conviction of
our power than could have been carried by a score of victories on the
green prairies of summer. For the Indian stronghold, be it understood,
consisted not in mountain fastnesses, cunning hiding-places, caves in
the earth, and narrow passes guarded by impregnable cliffs. This was no
repetition of the warfare of the Celts among the rugged rocks of Wales,
nor of the Greeks at Thermopylae, nor of the Swiss on Alpine footpaths.
This savage stronghold was an open, desolate, boundless plain, fortified
by distances and equipped with the slow sure weapons of starvation.
That Government was a terror to the Indian mind whose soldiers dared to
risk its perils and occupy