"Did you see Red Cloud while you were a prisoner among them?" asked Perkins.
"I did not see anybody," replied Cyrus. "They kept themselves to themselves, and all they had to do was to bring me out and release me. I tell you, boys, we are going to see some fun right here, and the Colonel says it will begin to-morrow."
"The massacre?" asked all the boys at once.
"Yes, sir. We must have some wood, and about the time that the train and its escort get ready to march out, you will hear the war whoop."
"Well, let it come," said Perkins. "They will find that American soldiers are not the men to run just because they hear a whoop. We enlisted to fight, and now we are going to see what sort of a beginning we can make at it."
The other boys did not say anything, but the expression on their faces said that they were ready for anything the Sioux had to spring upon them. Cyrus's move toward his bunk was a hint that he had not got all the sleep he should have had, and after asking a few more unimportant questions, they left the quarters, Guy going toward his room to finish his nap and the others to attend to various duties about the Fort. But slumber was a thing that Guy could not court just then. He was too busily thinking. He heard everything that passed outside his room, and when the Orderly softly entered and told him that "supper was on," he got up without having closed his eyes.
The watch from six o'clock until midnight was a long and tedious one to Guy, though he, of course, had the officer of the day to talk to. Guy was thinking of what Winged Arrow told him—that if he ever saw one Indian battlefield he never would want to see another—and every chance he got he asked Mr. Kendall about it.
"You could not have been in the war of the Rebellion, for that happened when you were a child," said Mr. Kendall; "but I saw seven of them, and I tell you they were all I wanted to see. The men were not mutilated, of course, but there was no need of that. I don't want to talk about it."
"But did they never make an attack on our folks on a dark night like this, sir?" asked Guy.