starting a
relief column upon a night march for the hill, when at nine o'clock one
of his sentries challenged a dark figure laboring in.

"Halt! Who goes there?"

"Amigo, amigo (Friend, friend)!"

'Twas the Indian boy. He had arrived first. The sentry called the
sergeant of the guard, the sergeant of the guard took the boy to the
officer of the guard, and the officer took him at once to the commodore.

The Indian was still telling his story in breathless Spanish, when
another of the couriers arrived--carried by two marines. He was
Lieutenant Beale, unable to walk.

Away trudged the relief party; the Indian and the lieutenant were
placed in bed and the surgeon was summoned. The lieutenant had grown
delirious--babbled and tossed and moaned. His boy lay twitching with
pain and weariness, but uttered never a sound.

Where was Kit Carson? He staggered in about three o'clock in the
morning. Had been obliged to wander and hide before he struck a way
through. He had chosen for himself the longest and the hardest route.
That was like him, and that was proper for the oldest and the most
experienced. Now he, too, needed a surgeon. The bandy-legged,
long-bodied, toughly-sinewed little Kit Carson who had faced many a
scrape and "scrimmage" on plains and mountains, was "all in."

After this night we do not know what became of the Indian. His name
never was recorded; he has been forgotten; all of which is a pity,
because he risked his life to serve a new people and a new flag.

In the morning Lieutenant Beale was transferred aboard the _Congress_,
and placed in the sick-bay. He was invalided for more than a year--did
not really recover until after he resigned from the navy in 1852; he
rose to be brigadier general in the Civil War, was United States
minister to Vienna in 1876, and while ranching on two hundred and
seventy-six thousand acres of land in California died, aged
seventy-one, in 1893.

Through several days the surgeon thought that he would have to cut off
Kit Carson's feet. But he saved them, and the plucky Kit marched north
to Los Angeles with the rescued Kearny column.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE HOTTEST CHASE ON RECORD (1864)

TWO IN AN ARMY WAGON

When in the eastern part of the United States the Civil War flamed up,
another war broke out in the western part. The Indians of the Plains
saw their chance. While the white men, who had been busy forcing peace
upon the red men, were foolishly kil