"That's all well enough, sir, so far as it goes," growled Captain Canker, "but where do we come in on this campaign? What will be said of our failure to get into the fight?"
"What a growler you are, Canker! Why, man, in matters of this kind individual ambition must give place to concerted plans. It's the team work, the combinations that tell." And here the silent circle became engrossed in pipes or in whittling, or in the contemplation of the very ground at their feet, though from under the broad brims of their scouting hats veteran campaigners exchanged meaning glances. Canker only growled the more sulkily.
"What I'm afraid of, Major Chrome, is that Colonel Winthrop may have wanted us this very day, and forty miles wouldn't have reached him."
"My heaven!" said Cranston, later that night, tossing upward his clinched fists and nervous straining arms, "I feel like a man in a nightmare. One long winter of incessant friction and undecided clashings with Devers, and now this mad eagerness to be doing something choked and smothered by this incubus at our head. If to-morrow brings no relief I want to quit for good and all."
But the long weeks of indecisive warfare, in camp as in the field, were destined to have their climax at last. Well for the little battalion, perhaps, was it, after all, that officers and men alike were boiling over with repressed, pent-up fury for action, for when the morrow came it called each soldier into line, and gave him giant work to do.
Somewhere towards one o'clock in the morning, under the glitter and sheen of the myriad stars overhead, while, all but the guard, the troopers slept peacefully upon the prairie turf and, all but a few early risers, their chargers, too, were drowsing undisturbed by the occasional querulous yelp of the coyote,—somewhere, far out over the dim, shadowy slopes to the westward, there rose upon the night the faint sound of a trumpet call, seemingly miles away. In his extreme caution Chrome had posted little parties full a mile out from the bivouac, north, east, and west, and it was while slowly riding to the westernmost of these that the officer of the guard first thought he heard the sound. A corporal of Cranston's troop was at his heels. "Yes, sir," he said, in answer to the low, eager question, as the two reined in their horses, "I could almost swear I heard it. I couldn't make out the signal though—could only hear a note or two." They found the picket alert, even excited. They, too, had heard something very like a faint trumpet call very far to the west, and Davies waited no longer. "You remain here, corporal. I'll call the captain." And in a few moments he was bending over Cranston. The latter was awake in a minute, and together they hastened out afoot, past snoring troopers or snorting steeds, and stood some hundred yards outside the inner sentry line.
"Hay left Scott with 'A' and 'I' troops Wednesday, as we know," said Cranston, "but it's impossible he could have caught us yet, though he took the cutoff. That night trumpeting's a trick of the —th. They tried it twice last summer."
"I know, sir, and may not that be some of them trying to find us?"
"Well, hardly. You know Atherton only had one troop left at Russell, the other five were sent up toward the Big Horn ten days ago. Listen! There it goes again!"
Yes, unmistakably, faint, far, but clear, the notes of a cavalry trumpet could be heard, and, while Davies hurried to rouse the major, Cranston stirred up his boy bugler. It took a minute or two to make Chrome comprehend the situation. "Why," said he, "who'd be ass enough to be marching or drilling with trumpet calls this hour of the night and in the midst of a campaign?"