“Let go, Tobey. Get on your horse. All ready? Mr. Dyer, there is no other way to do.”
Riddle is pale, but cool and collected. He says, “I’m a-goin’ a-foot; I don’t want no horse to bother me.” The Indian woman embraces her boy again and again, and mounts her horse. Meacham, Dyer, Riddle, and his wife are starting.
Fairchild says, “Meacham, you had better take my pistol. I would like to go with you, but I s’pose I can’t.”
“No; I won’t take it. Good-by. Keep your promise.”
“Good-by, Maj. Thomas. Cranston, good-by. Good-by, Col. Wright. Be ready to come for us; we’ll need you.”
“Don’t go off feeling that way. I wouldn’t go if I felt as you do,” says one.
“We will have an eye out for you,” says another.
They are gone, and we will follow. Canby and Thomas are just rising out of a rocky chasm near the council tent. Meacham and his party are going around by the horse trail. Words can never tell the thoughts that pass through their minds on that ride. The soldier who goes to battle takes even chances in the line of his profession; the criminal may march with steady nerve up the steps that lead him to the gallows; but who can ever tell in words the thoughts, feelings, and temptations of these men, going to meet a people under a flag of truce that had been dishonored by their own race within sight of the spot where they are to meet these people, after the earnest warning they had received?