ennes were caught by it. When the precise moment came
the shrewd commander seized the chief men of the village and gave his
ultimatum--a life for a life. The two white women safe from harm must be
brought to him or these mighty men must become degraded captives. Then
followed an Indian hurricane of wrath and prayers and trickery. It
availed nothing except to prolong the hours, and hunger and cold filled
another night in our desolate camp.

Day brought a renewal of demand, a renewal of excuse and delay and an
attempt to outwit by promises. But a second command was more telling.
The yellow-haired general's word now went forth: "If by sunset to-morrow
night these two women are not returned to my possession, these chiefs
will hang."

So Custer said, and the grim selection of the gallows and the
preparation for fulfilment of his threat went swiftly forward. The
chiefs were terror-stricken, and anxious messages were sent to their
people. Meanwhile the Cheyenne forces were moving farther and farther
away. The squaws and children were being taken to a safe distance, and a
quick flight was in preparation. So another night of hunger and waiting
fell upon us. Then came the day of my dream long ago. The same people I
knew first on the night after Jean Pahusca's attempt on Marjie's life,
when we were hunting our cows out on the West Prairie, came now in
reality before me.

The Sweetwater Valley spread out under the late sunshine of a March day
was rimmed about by low hills. Beyond these, again, were the Plains, the
same monotony of earth beneath and sky above, the two meeting away and
away in an amethyst fold of mist around the world's far bound. There
were touches of green in the brown valley, but the hill slopes and all
the spread of land about them were gray and splotched and dull against a
blue-gray sickly sky. The hours went by slowly to each anxious soldier,
for endurance was almost at its limit. More heavily still they must have
dragged for the man on whom the burden of command rested. High noon, and
then the afternoon interminably long and dull, and by and by came the
sunset on the Sweetwater Valley, and a new heaven and a new earth were
revealed to the sons of men. Like a chariot of fire, the great sun
rolled in all its gorgeous beauty down the west. The eastern sky grew
radiant with a pink splendor, and every brown and mottled stretch of
distant landscape was touched with golden light or deepened into richest
purple, or