Not a word, and it lay now barely a dozen miles away. Tuesday morning, too impatient to wait for coming reinforcements, and confident he could hold his own with the little force at hand, the Gray Fox pushed ahead. All were up and off at the break of the wintry day, and at eight o'clock had neared the top of the divide between the shallow, placid Niobrara and the swift Chasing Water beyond. Little Sanders, trotting far in the advance with three or four light riders, threw himself from his horse, unslung his field-glass, and peered long and anxiously into the northward valley. All seemed desolate and deserted. A smoke was drifting lazily upward from the site of the distant agency; not from peaceful chimney, but rising from a mass of smouldering ruins. The villages of Red Dog, Kills Asleep, Little Big Man, even of Two Lance, had disappeared, and of the Ogallalla Agency not another vestige could be seen but the grim outlines of the stockade.
CHAPTER XX.
When Sanders, with solemn face, turned to meet the general and report his discovery, the difference between the young and the old campaigner was told in their own words.
"I'm afraid we're too late to save 'em, sir. Everything's wiped out but the stockade."
"If the stockade's left, they've saved themselves," was the answer, and the Gray Fox was right. Long before the column reached the lowlands of the valley horsemen could be seen spurring eagerly forward to meet it, and the first-comer was Trooper O'Brien, who saluted the general with all soldierly grace and the rest of the array with a sociable grin.
"We're all right, general,—leastwise most of us is. Two of the boys is killed, and Loot'n't Boynton's wounded,—and four others,—but the women's all safe, and the agent—bad scran to him! Is there a doctor along?" A doctor was along,—Burroughs,—riding with the senior captain commanding the battalion, and Burroughs was hurried forward with Sanders and a squad of men, while O'Brien, proud of his prominence, rode by the general's side and told the story of the sharp and sudden fight.
"They came down on us like a crowd of grasshoppers so soon as it was light enough to see anything, but they couldn't get near us without our bowling over bucks and ponies. The prairie's dotted with the corpses of the poor beggars, sir,—the ponies, that is; they never left an Indian. We stood 'em off first rate. Loot'nant Boynton and Loot'nant Davies was everywhere at once, and after trying two dashes the Indians gave it up and kept at long range. They was a thousand strong at least, and Elk came in with a white flag for a parley, and Mr. Boynton ordered him back, but McPhail let him in. He said we must give up Red Dog or they'd burn the agency over our heads and massacre every man, and McPhail was for letting him go then, but Mr. Boynton and he had words over it, and they kept him. That night was cloudy and the moon was hid, and sure enough at ten o'clock they crawled in on the storehouse side and heaped up timber under them flimsy pine boards, and no one could see them on that side until everything was in a broad blaze. It was when trying to bucket out the fire the lieut'nant was shot, and it was a roaring conflagration in five minutes, and from that it spread to the agency and the other shebangs, and it was all we could do to get the women and children out of the cellars and into the corral, and them bucks firing from every sage brush for a mile around. The whole thing was down by midnight, but it didn't do them no good: we was really better off with less to take care of and more men to do it with, and we had wather in the well and rations for all hands, and the agent and his non-combatants under cover in one corner of the stockade, and Red Dog tied up in another. All Sunday they kept up a long-range fire, and five or six times made as though they was going to charge, but Loot'nant Davies was on all four sides of that square from dawn till dark, sir, and they never got within four hundred yards that we didn't drop them. Sure it was just pie, general. The only trouble was, could they set fire to the stockade at night? The loot'nant had buckets of water all around inside, and every little while a patrol ran round on the outside, and half the fellows kept watch at the loop-holes while the others slept, and Mr. Davies had the office side of the stockade battened up with old wagons and boxes and things to fill the gap. Faith, sir, he never seemed to close an eye night or day until this blessed morning, when the valley was clear of Indians and we knew it meant that the general was coming." And as O'Brien told his tale to attentive ears, others of the little garrison, lately beleaguered, joined the battalion, still steadily in march, and found eager auditors everywhere along the jogging column. Every one sorrowed at hearing of Boynton's serious wound, for he was a soldierly, faithful fellow, albeit a trifle blunt and unsociable, but as man after man spoke in lavish praise of Davies, of his plucky grapple with the most redoubtable chief in the rebellious tribes, of his calm, cool vigilance and skill in the conduct of the defence after the command devolved upon him, Cranston's eyes sparkled, and Hay and Truman joined in the chorus of congratulation.
When at last the battalion unsaddled at the stream and the officers pressed into the stockade to shake hands with the defenders, they found Boynton and the wounded feebly rejoicing in Burroughs's hands and Davies tucked away in a corner under an old wagon, rolled in agency blankets, sleeping the dreamless sleep of a tired child.
"Don't disturb him for anything," said the general, with moistened eyes. "They tell me he hasn't had an hour's rest since Friday. He's behaved like a trump."