"Just 4.15," said Cranston, glancing at his watch as soon as it was possible to see. "How do you feel, Davies?"
"Better than I have for a month, though tired. I told Burroughs no harm could result. That scratch is almost entirely healed. How far ahead are they supposed to be, captain? It'll be broad daylight, even in this deep valley, in a quarter of an hour."
Sanders, acting as Chrome's adjutant, came riding back from the head of column at the very moment and reined about alongside his own troop commander. "I'd rather be here in my old place, sir, and you're in big luck to have it, Parson. The major says he wants to capture their whole pony herd, if it takes three troops to do it, and 'C' is to charge the village and rout out the bucks."
It so happened that Cranston's troop was bringing up the rear of column,—only the pack-mules and their guard being behind,—a long distance behind at the moment, for the pace had been trot or lope for ten miles until the command reached the shelter of the ravine.
"I was in hopes there was no village," said Cranston; "that we'd only strike the wickyups of a war-party. Do you mean village, Sanders?"
"Thunder Hawk says he's afraid so, sir. He thinks the Uncapapas and Minneconjous who were rounded up last fall really want to get away and join the bulk of their tribe who are summering in Canada with Sitting Bull. If so this was their chance, and they've got their women and children with them."
Cranston's face seemed to grow paler in the gray gathering light. "There's no help for it, then," he said; "but I hate that sort of thing. How near are we?"
"Within two or three miles," Hawk says. "He and Bear and two others have galloped out ahead. We'll know by the time we've reached that bluff yonder." And he pointed to a magnificent rose-tipped palisade of rock that jutted out across their path. "That's Good Heart Butte, and the Wakon comes in just around it. It's ten to one we'll find them right there. Where're you going, Cullen?" he called to a trooper who came cantering back past the flank of the column.
"To hurry up the pack-train, sir. It's the major's orders," sung out the trooper, only momentarily checking his horse. It always annoys the officers of a marching column to have messengers galloping up and down along their flanks, but this was the major's own orderly, and no man might rebuke but the chief himself.
"Reckon I'd better get up to the front again," said Sanders, as he spurred away and left the friends together. Cranston looked back at his leading four. His veteran first sergeant was commanding a platoon, and it was a junior sergeant who rode with the head of column, and next him a stunted little Irish corporal, for by the inexorable rule of the cavalry the shorter men rode at the flanks of the troop. Midway down the column the guidon-bearer was just unfurling and shaking out its silken folds, but without raising it so as to attract the attention of possible spies. Forward, in the ranks of the two companies of the —th, uniforms were rare and no guidons visible;—long campaigning in Arizona had taught the uselessness of both in Indian warfare, but the Eleventh had their traditions, as had the Seventh, and rode into action with a certain old-fashioned style and circumstance that lent inspiration to the scene. Turning out of column for a moment the captain rode slowly alongside, looking over his men as they passed him by. There was always something trim, elastic, jaunty about his troop, and they knew it, and even on long marches in hard campaigns the men would instinctively "brace up" and raise their heads and square their dusty shoulders when they felt the captain's eye upon them. He couldn't help seeing how eagerly and with what trust and faith in their leader many of his sixty glanced at him as though to question what work he might have in hand for them to-day. Side by side with the guidon-bearer rode Corporal Brannan. "Another chance for our prodigy," smiled Cranston to himself. "I wonder if it will be as warm in Chicago as it promises to be here. More than one mother there will be kneeling little dreaming, even as she prays for his safety, what scenes her boy may be battling through this day." The thought sent a lump into his throat and softened the soldier light in his eye. "You'd rather be here than at the agency guard, I fancy, Brannan?"