"Never mind them, Mason," Hector said. "All servants of the Government have to put up with such attacks. We'll just show we're too big to pay attention to them."
But when he realized that these papers were believed infallible by the militia regiments and half the people of Canada, he found it hard to preserve that equanimity.
In a week of desperate work, Hector produced a body of over a hundred scouts drawn from the world's best sources, of no uniformity but fully supplied and able, with its string of pack-mules and extra horses, to move independently of the main body, go anywhere, do anything and fight anyone on earth.
In ten days' time, they received orders to advance. At the head of the column, cheered frantically by hysterical citizens, they swept out of Broncho.
VI
From the naked woods on the rolling brown ridge beyond the valley came the echo of the last lingering shots of the enemy. In the deserted rifle-pits which pocked the hillside lay many motionless forms, dark, dwarfed by distance. Two or three white-faced corpses sprawled on the open ground in front of the pits. One of them wore a red coat, which, in the afternoon sunshine, stood out startlingly, like a blot of blood, the one bit of colour in the entire picture. Near by was a dead horse, legs in air, repulsively grotesque.
Colonel Stern's column had attacked and completely defeated the rebel right wing that morning in a position several hundred miles beyond Broncho. Covered by a weak rearguard, the enemy were now rapidly retiring.
In the distance, out of range, the transport—heavy farm-wagons, light carts and pack-mules—were clustered. With them were Hector's cavalry.
Colonel Stern stood with his staff close behind the firing-line, studying the enemy's country.
Utterly unflustered, he began to talk rapidly to his senior officers. They were all agreed. The time had come for a vigorous pursuit.