"All right, sir."
To get back to his men was a matter of a few minutes. Rapidly he gave his orders:
"Trumpeter, the 'Fall In'—look sharp. Quartermaster, follow up with the pack-mules. Sergeant-Major, detail an escort. 'Tion! Number—"
The trumpeter rattled out the call. The men fell in, their horses plunging. The scouts swept off in front. Then, in single file, their scarlet-coated leader at their head, Hector's dashing frontier cavalry circled the camp at full gallop, tore through the ranks of yelling infantry, waved a hand in farewell and thundered down the slope and away.
VII
In a wide and desolate expanse of open country patched with sloughs, Hector's men, after twenty hours of unceasing pursuit, were suddenly and definitely checked. They had lost the trail.
Gaining touch with the enemy soon after the start, they had maintained it all through the night, through the grey hours of the morning and so on till nearly noon. The night's pursuit had been fierce, wild work, like some mad vision of a disordered brain, fierce, wild work at a furious pace, over ridge and hill, round lake and wood, through brawling river, down broad valley and deep ravine and full of fearful, unforgettable sights and sounds: scouts on their knees, like ape-men in the gloom, feeling the ground for telltale tracks left by the rebels; the rattle of sliding stones as the cavalry plunged along the steep face of a gully; distant shouts of the scattered enemy, trying to keep touch; loud shouts, near at hand, of warning—fear—command; strings of horsemen, glimpsed for an instant, gigantic and pitch black against the lighter blackness of sky; the faraway drum of many galloping hoofs, sensed rather than heard; the flash of rifles, darting from rock to rock; the swift glare of light on the face of a rebel scout, firing his last round home; horse and man dashed for a breathless moment in a sudden blaze, like a man and horse of living flame, as the nearest cowboy answered surprising shot with shot; and now and then, cleaving the darkness from some unknown source, the unearthly scream of a wounded animal, expressive of the hate and terror of it all.
Daylight found the pursuit still hanging on, though reduced in numbers and still pressing the rebels hotly, though splashed and drenched from head to heel, parched with thirst, racked with hunger, worn out and running short of ammunition. By that time the battlefield of yesterday and Colonel Stern's column were alike far behind and they were alone on the verge of the great lake district to the north. But Hector drove his men tirelessly forward, with a merciless 'Push on!'—'Push on!'
And now the trail had been utterly lost for over an hour and they were checked, willynilly, for good and all.
With a little party to cover the operation, the scouts were working on a cast, in a wide circle, like questing hounds. Hector had with him some of the best scouts in the North-West and he was among the best of them himself; but they could not find the trail and all hands were near despair.