"I may not see you again and so I will bid you good-by," said Guy, who felt that he was parting from an older brother. He thrust out his hand, and Cyrus took it and clasped it warmly. Not another word was said. The officer put on his hat and left the quarters.
"Don't I wish that I had half the pluck that that man has?" said he to himself. "If that were all, he would hoodwink the savages in some way; but they are too many for him. Good-by Cyrus. I will never see you again."
It was a long night to Guy Preston and his two companions who were with him—two of them were on duty and they did not see much of them—and when the next day came it was harder than ever, for they were obliged to pretend ignorance of Cyrus's whereabouts. When he got up Guy passed the time until breakfast in attending to such duties as were before him, and then he drew a bee line for the guide's headquarters. He wanted to see if anybody there knew anything of Cyrus.
"You tell where Cyrus is," said Tony, who was taking his after-breakfast smoke. "When I went to bed he lay right there; but when I got up this morning his bunk was empty."
"It is my opinion that he has gone off with the dispatches that we failed to get through with the night we tried it," said Mike, who was Tony's partner on that unsuccessful expedition.
"Good land! He can't get through," exclaimed Tony. "I tell you, Lieutenant, the Sioux are thicker than blackberries in a New England pasture out there. Whichever way we turned we saw something to drive us back. The Kurn knows mighty well that we would have gone on if we had seen the ghost of a chance to get through, because all the men here are in the same fix that we are; but what are you going to do when every tuft of grass you look at turns out to be an enemy?"
"Could you see the Sioux?" asked Guy.
"No; but our horses smelled them, and that was enough for us. Whenever they stopped and looked before them with cocked ears and snorted, we went back and tried some other way; but it was the same all around the camp. But I am mighty sorry to lose Cyrus. He was the best fellow in camp."