Cranston reminded him how scattered troops of the —th, his own regiment, had found each other by night the previous year; how Truscott announced the coming of his relieving column to Wayne's beleaguered squadron; and Chrome slowly found his legs and faculties, but wouldn't believe his subordinates. He demanded the evidence of his own senses, and unwillingly accompanied them to the point beyond the lines, Cranston's trumpeter sleepily following. It was full five minutes before again the call was heard, and then it seemed farther away than before, too far away for Chrome, who still could not believe it.
"Let my trumpeter hail them," urged Cranston, "then they'll answer." But Chrome said that wouldn't do; it would wake up or startle everybody in camp, and so declined.
"It's all your fancy," he said. "There are none of our fellows with Tintop, and——"
"But he knows you, with at least two troops of the —th, are somewhere out here, sir, and he takes a regimental way of trying to communicate with you. I beg you to listen one moment more. There!" And this time even Chrome was convinced, and the next instant guards and pickets, sleeping troopers, and drowsing steeds all came staggering to their feet, roused by the shrill blast from Cranston's trumpet sounding "Forward!"
And half an hour later there came jogging wearily into camp, guided for a time only by the call, and finally met and escorted by the picket, a sergeant and trumpeter from old Tintop himself, and the letter they bore put an end even to Chrome's inertness. In brief, terse words it told the story. He and his command had had a sharp, stubborn fight with a big force of hostiles that very day, with considerable loss to both. "If you had been here with your men," Tintop said, "I believe we could have cleaned them out entirely." The main body, however, had retired toward the agency at the head of Spirit River, but a band of Uncapapas and Minneconjous, that had cut loose from all, had gone on down the Ska, making for a junction with some of Red Dog's people at the confluence of the streams. Tintop held that Chrome must be there by this time, but if detained from any cause this was to tell him to strike, strike hard and instantly with every man at his back, and that he, Winthrop, would support as soon as possible.
Fording the Ska above the narrows of the valley, the faithful messengers had plunged into the open country to the east, so as to keep well in rear of the fleeing Indians, then sounding officers' call, the night signal of the —th, as they came, rode eastward through the starlight, scouring the broad prairies for the comrade column.
Half an hour later the command was saddling. Coffee had been hurriedly served. The packers were lashing their bulky sacks and boxes to the apparejos and turning loose the patient little burden-bearers. Old Thunder Hawk, grave and dignified, had been standing in consultation with Chrome and his troop commanders. He knew the point where the hostiles were probably in camp, and placed it, as did Tintop's scouts, close to the confluence of the Wakpa Wakon and the Ska. Thunder Hawk was of the Ogallallas, therefore not a tribesman of the renegades, but he was a Sioux, and therefore a brother. He had counselled peace to his people, and they had rewarded him with taunts and jeers. He had accompanied the column, formally enrolled as a scout, and he would be guide and adviser to the white chief, yet shrank from personal part in the coming battle. He had been asked how many miles it was to the forks and replied fifteen, "but," said he, "it is much farther by the way the chief should go."
"We want to go the shortest way," was Chrome's short reply. "The quickest way to reach and strike them."
Already Cranston seemed to divine what the old Indian meant to counsel,—"The longest way round is the shortest way home," in fact, as Hawk calmly explained. They knew the white soldiers were coming from Ogallalla. They expected them from the southeast,—had seen them coming from that direction and, falling back to the stream before them, were watching for their coming on the following morn. Their scouts could not be more than a few miles in front of them now. They would be up and away the moment they heard of the near approach of the column. Then it would be a stern chase into the heart of the hills, and there, reinforced by renegades from all sides, they might be able to turn upon and overwhelm their pursuers. There was only one likely way of striking them where they were, and that was by making wide circuit to the north, fording the Ska far behind their camp, and then, turning up-stream, attack them from the north or northeast. Chrome saw the point and yielded. When at 1.30 the little command mounted and moved away it was at brisk, steady walk, "column half right," with the pole star high aloft but straight ahead. Ten minutes out and they struck the trot. "Bedad!" said Trooper Riley, at the rear of column, "Old Chrome Teller's had his nap out at last."
Many's the time a cavalry column, after an all-night march, finds itself jaded and drowsy just as a blithe young world is waking up to hail the coming day. Far different is the feeling when, refreshed by a few hours' sound and dreamless sleep, warmed with that soldier comfort, coffee, and thrilled by the whispered news of "fight ahead," the troop pricks eagerly on. Then the faint blush of the eastern sky, the cool breath of the morning breeze, the dim gray light that steals across the view, all are hailed with bounding pulse and kindling eyes. It was just at the peep of day, after a glorious burst over the bounding turf, that Chrome's little battalion, some two hundred and forty strong, riding in broad column of fours, and guided by old Thunder Hawk himself, turned squarely to the left at the head of a long, dark, winding ravine, and, diminishing front to two abreast, and steadying down to the walk again, dove out of sight among the tortuous depths. Thirty minutes more and the Ska was foaming about the horses' bellies as they boldly forded the stream, every man whipping out and raising carbine as his steed plunged in. Then, turning southwestward, close under the bluffs of the Indian shore, they rode within the reservation lines at last, with the dawn no longer at the sabre hand, but at the bridle. Peering out through the dim ghostly light, long miles to the south, were the Uncapapa scouts, watching for the first sign of the coming of the column that, slipping away from before them in the darkness of midnight, had ridden in wide circuit around and across their front, burrowed into the earth at the first blush of the morning sky, reappeared dripping on the left bank of the bordering stream, the Rubicon of the reservation, and now was swiftly bearing down upon the devoted village from a quarter utterly unsuspected.