set with a roseate bound of flame. Somewhere far away, a
feathery gray mist hung like a silvery veil toning down the earth from
the noonday glare to the sunset glory. Down in the very middle of all
this was a band of a thousand men; their faded clothing, their uncertain
step, their knotted hands, and their great hungry eyes told the price
that had been paid for the drama this sunset hour was to bring. Slowly
the moments passed as when in our little sanctuary above the pleasant
parks at Fort Sill I had watched the light measured out. And then the
low hills began to rise up and shut out the crimson west as twilight
crept toward the Sweetwater Valley.

Suddenly, for there had been nothing there a moment before, all
suddenly, an Indian scout was outlined on the top of the low bluff
nearest us. Motionless he sat on his pony a moment, then he waved a
signal to the farther height beyond him. A second pony and a second
Indian scout appeared. Another signal and then came a third Indian on a
third pony farther away. Each Indian seemed to call out another until a
line of them had been signalled from the purple mist, out of which they
appeared to be created. Last of all and farthest away, was a pony on
which two figures were faintly outlined. Down in the valley we waited,
all eyes looking toward the hills as these two drew nearer. Up in a
group on the bluff beyond the valley the Indians halted. The two riders
of the pony slipped to the ground. With their arms about each other, in
close embrace, they came slowly toward us, the two captive women for
whom we waited. It was a tragic scene, such as our history has rarely
known, watched by a thousand men, mute and motionless, under its spell.
Even now, after the lapse of nearly four decades, the picture is as
vivid as if it were but yesterday that I stood on the Texas Plains a
soldier of twenty-two years, feeling my heart throbs quicken as that
sunset scene is enacted before me.

We had thought ourselves the victims of a hard fate in that winter of
terrible suffering; but these two women, Kansas girls, no older than
Marjie, home-loving, sheltered, womanly, a maiden and a bride of only a
few months--shall I ever forget them as they walked into my life on that
March day in the sunset hour by the Sweetwater? Their meagre clothing
was of thin flour sacks with buckskin moccasins and leggins. Their hair
hung in braids Indian fashion. Their haggard faces and sad eyes told
only the beginning o