wice, I thought they told me," said he; and the steward surmised
that one had missed.

"Perhaps," mused Duane. "And perhaps it went as intended, too. What's
all that fuss?"

He turned sharply, having lost Augustus among his sadder thoughts; and
here were the operations going briskly. Powder-smoke in three directions
at once! Here were pickets far out-lying, and a double line of
skirmishers deployed in extended order, and a mounted reserve, and men
standing to horse--a command of near a hundred, a pudding of pompous,
incompetent, callow bosh, with Augustus by his howitzer, scientifically
raising and lowering it to bear on the lone white tepee that shone in
the plain. Four races were assembled to look on--the mess Chinaman, two
black laundresses, all the whites in the place (on horse and foot, some
with their hats left behind), and several hundred Indians in blankets.
Duane had a thought to go away and leave this galling farce under the
eye of Starr for the officers were at hand also. But his second thought
bade him remain; and looking at Augustus and the howitzer, his laugh
would have returned to him; but his heart was sore for Casey.

It was an hour of strategy and cannonade, a humiliating hour, which Fort
Brown tells of to this day; and the tepee lived through it all. For it
stood upon fifteen slender poles, not speedily to be chopped down by
shooting lead from afar. When low bullets drilled the canvas, the chief
suggested to Augustus that Ute Jack had climbed up; and when the bullets
flew high, then Ute Jack was doubtless in a hole. Nor did Augustus
contrive to drop a shell from the howitzer upon Ute Jack and explode
him--a shrewd and deadly conception; the shells went beyond, except one,
that ripped through the canvas, somewhat near the ground; and Augustus,
dripping, turned at length, and saying, "It won't go down," stood
vacantly wiping his white face. Then the two chiefs got his leave to
stretch a rope between their horses and ride hard against the tepee. It
was military neither in essence nor to see, but it prevailed. The tepee
sank, a huge umbrella wreck along the earth, and there lay Ute Jack
across the fire's slight hollow, his knee-cap gone with the howitzer
shell. But no blood had flown from that; blood will not run, you know,
when a man has been dead some time. One single other shot had struck
him--one through his own heart. It had singed the flesh.

"You see, Mr. Albumblatt," said Duane, in the whole cr