The new-comers were two surveyors and a cavalry trooper. They and their horses appeared worn to the bones. The two surveyors dismounted stiffly, to advance to the fire, with a haggard smile and a brave “Good evening.” The trooper led the horses aside, for unsaddling and picketing out.
“Gentlemen, permit me to introduce Mr. Francis Appleton, and Mr. Bane, of the Percy Browne party,” spoke the general. “Mr. Appleton was the assistant engineer; now he is in charge of the party. He brings word of the loss of his chief. Percy Browne, a young engineer already at the top of his profession and one of my right-hand men, has been killed by the Sioux.”
“What! Another—and this time Browne!” gasped Mr. Blickensderfer.
“I sorter felt it,” remarked Sol.
“Where did that happen, and how?” queried General Rawlins.
“Can you tell them about it, Frank?” suggested General Dodge.
Engineer Appleton—he was young, too—sat down and stretched his legs and hands to the blaze.
“It happened about two weeks ago. We were running a line on the main divide, near Separation, about fifty miles west of here, or at survey station 6,801, when Mr. Browne left us, to reconnoiter in the basin country farther west. He’d found the maps of the region were wrong—they did not cover all that territory, especially a new basin that we call the Red Desert. The Salt Lake stage road skirts the edge of it, on the way to the Bitter Creek desert.
“Mr. Browne took eight of the cavalry escort and some pack animals. We were to work on a line at the east edge. It seems that he had almost crossed the Red Desert, when a band of 300 Sioux, who were making south to attack the stage stations, surrounded him and his escort. The men succeeded in fighting their way to a little hill, and there they forted, and held the Sioux off from noon until after dark. Just at dusk a ball had struck Mr. Browne in the stomach, and put him out of action. He knew he was done for, so he ordered the soldiers to leave him and break for safety; but they wouldn’t do it.”
“What! Soldiers leave their officer? Never!” rapped Colonel Mizner. “Not the Second Cavalry men—nor any other men, either.”