trenchments, is moving upon those of the enemy--creeping silently
into position. In an hour the whole wide valley for miles to left and
right will be all aroar with musketry stricken to seeming silence now and
again by thunder claps of big guns. In the meantime the risen sun has
burned a way through the fog, splendoring a part of the beleaguered city.

"Look at that, General," says an aide; "it is like enchantment."

"Go and enchant Colonel Post," said the general, without taking his
field-glass from his eyes, "and tell him to pitch in as soon as he hears
Smith's guns."

All laughed. But to-day I laugh alone. I am the Sole Survivor.

* * * * *

It would be easy to fill many pages with instances of Sole Survival, from
my own experience. I could mention extinct groups composed wholly (myself
excepted) of the opposing sex, all of whom, with the same exception, have
long ceased their opposition, their warfare accomplished, their pretty
noses blue and chill under the daisies. They were good girls, too, mostly,
Heaven rest them! There were Maud and Lizzie and Nanette (ah, Nanette,
indeed; she is the deadest of the whole bright band) and Emeline and--but
really this is not discreet; one should not survive and tell.

The flame of a camp-fire stands up tall and straight toward the black sky.
We feed it constantly with sage brush. A circling wall of darkness closes
us in; but turn your back to the fire and walk a little away and you shall
see the serrated summit-line of snow-capped mountains, ghastly cold in the
moonlight. They are in all directions; everywhere they efface the great
gold stars near the horizon, leaving the little green ones of the
mid-heaven trembling viciously, as bleak as steel. At irregular intervals
we hear the distant howling of a wolf--now on this side and again on that.
We check our talk to listen; we cast quick glances toward our weapons, our
saddles, our picketed horses: the wolves may be of the variety known as
Sioux, and there are but four of us.

"What would you do, Jim," said Hazen, "if we were surrounded by Indians?"

Jim Beckwourth was our guide--a life-long frontiersman, an old man "beated
and chopped with tanned antiquity." He had at one time been a chief of the
Crows.

"I'd spit on that fire," said Jim Beckwourth.

The old man has gone, I hope, where there is no fire to be quenched. And
Hazen, and the chap with whom I shared my blanket that winter night on