n a winter campaign in Montana.

Denny went to the company quarters in high glee and soon had his kit all
packed. Some weeks before he had been out repairing the line and when he
returned to the post he had left a small pocket instrument and a few
feet of office wire in his haversack. He saw these things and was about
to remove them, when something impelled him to take them along. What
this was no one ever knew. Perhaps premonition.

The next morning just as the first dim shadows of early dawn stole over
the snow-clad earth, the gallant old 29th, five hundred strong, swung
out of Fort Flint, on its long tramp. From out of half-closed blinds on
the officer's line gazed many a tear-stained face, and up on "Soapsuds
Row" many an honest-hearted laundress was bemoaning the fates that
parted her from her "ould mon."

The weather turned bitter cold and after seven days of the hardest kind
of marching they reached and crossed the Red Bud just below the junction
of the two forks. A strong position was taken and every disposition made
to prevent surprise. The expected re-enforcement would surely come soon
and then all would be safe.

The next day dawned and passed, but not a sign of that re-enforcement.
That night queer looking red glows were seen at stated intervals on the
horizon--North, West and East on the north side of the river, and to the
South on the other bank did they gleam and glow. Colonel Clarke was old
and tried in Indian warfare and well did he know what those fires
meant--Indians--and lots of them all around his command. His hope now
was that the two northern regiments would strike them in the rear while
he smashed them in front.

The next morning, first one, two, three, four, an hundred, a thousand
figures mounted on fleet footed ponies appeared silhouetted against the
clear sky, and it wasn't long before that little command of sturdy
bluecoats was surrounded by a superior force of the wildest red devils
that ever strode a horse or fired a Winchester rifle. Slowly they drew
their lines closer about the troops like the clinging tentacles of some
monster devilfish, and about eleven o'clock, _Bang!_ and the battle was
on.

"Husband your fire, men. Don't shoot until you have taken deliberate
aim, and can see the object aimed at," was the word passed along the
line by Colonel Clarke.

Behind hastily constructed shelter trenches the soldiers fought off that
encircling band of Indians, with a desperation and val