The trail of Red Hatchet was followed at a pace which Lieutenant Kit Carey hoped would bring him up with the Sioux chief, and then and there Captain Wallace and the other gallant soldiers of the Seventh would have been avenged, or another one would have fallen a victim to the cunning and desperate fugitive.
But Red Hatchet had been bent upon escaping, for the blow he had struck must be followed up quickly and cruelly. So he rode at a pace that defied pursuit with the start he had of several miles.
Finding as he came to a ridge that gave him a view a long distance ahead, that no dust was in sight to mark the presence of the Sioux chief, Kit Carey determined not to punish his own and his two red comrades' horses by pressing them so hard, so he drew rein.
He had, in his short interview with Colonel Forsythe, been told to notify the other commanders of the fight at Wounded Knee, the treacherous act of the Indians.
So he rode at once for the nearest of his red sentinels' camps, and, arriving by night, at once dispatched couriers with hastily penciled reports of the affair, dispatching them to the various commanders who were tightening the line around the retreat of the hostiles.
There was another red courier sent also on a mission, but not to a military commander.
His destination was the Bernard ranch, and he bore the following note, hastily written:
"In Camp of Red Skin Scouts,
"Near Bad Lands, Dec. 29, 1890.