Dawn found them only three miles away from their starting place. A hollow bank overhung with long, dry grasses, and fronted with rank sunflowers, gave them a place of concealment through the daylight hours. Again on the second night they hurried cautiously forward. The second morning they were near an Indian village. Their only retreat was in the tall growth of a low, marshy place. Here they crouched through another long day. The unsuspecting squaws, hunting fuel, tramped the grasses dangerously near to them, but a merciful Providence guarded their hiding-place.
On the third night they pushed forward more boldly, hoping that the next day they need not waste the precious hours in concealment. In the early morning they saw coming down over the prairie the first guard of a Cheyenne village moving southward across their path. The Plains were flat and covertless. No tall grass, nor friendly bank, nor bush, nor hollow of ground was there to cover them from their enemies. But out before them lay the rotting carcass of an old buffalo. Its hide still hung about its bones. And inside the narrow shelter of this carcass the two concealed themselves while a whole village passed near them trailing off toward the south.
Insufficient food, lack of sleep, and poisonous water from the buffalo wallows brought nausea and weakness to the faithful men making their way across the hostile land to bring help to us in our dire extremity. It is all recorded in history how these two men fared in that hazardous undertaking. No hundred miles of sandy plain were ever more fraught with peril; and yet these two pressed on with that fearless and indomitable courage that has characterized the Saxon people on every field of conquest.
Meanwhile day crept over the eastern horizon, and the cold chill of the shadows gave place to the burning glare of the September sun. Hot and withering it beat down upon us and upon the unburied dead that lay all about us. The braves that had fallen in the strife strewed the island's edges. Their blood lay dark on the sandy shoals of the stream and stained to duller brown the trampled grasses. Daylight brought the renewal of the treacherous sharpshooting. The enemy closed in about us and from their points of vantage their deadly arrows and bullets were hurled upon our low wall of defence. And so the unequal struggle continued. Ours was henceforth an ambush fight. The redskins did not attack us in open charge again, and we durst not go out to meet them. And so the thing became a game of endurance with us, a slow wearing away of ammunition and food, a growing fever from weakness and loss of blood, a festering of wounds, the ebbing out of strength and hope; while putrid mule meat and muddy water, the sickening stench from naked bloated bodies under the blazing heat of day, the long, long hours of watching for deliverance that came not, and the certainty of the fate awaiting us at last if rescue failed us—these things marked the hours and made them all alike. As to the Indians, the passing of Roman Nose had broken their fighting spirit; and now it was a mere matter of letting us run to the end of our tether and then—well, Jean had hinted what would happen.
On the third night two more scouts left us. It seemed an eternity since Stillwell and his comrade had started from the camp. We felt sure that they must have fallen by the way, and the second attempt was doubly hazardous. The two who volunteered were quiet men. They knew what the task implied, and they bent to it like men who can pay on demand the price of sacrifice. Their names were Donovan and Pliley, recorded in the military roster as private scouts, but the titles they bear in the memory of every man who sat in that grim council on that night, has a grander sound than the written records declare.
"Boys," Forsyth said, lifting himself on his elbow where he lay in his sand bed, "this is the last chance. If you can get to the fort and send us help we can hold out a while. But it must come quickly. You know what it means for you to try, and for us, if you succeed."
The two men nodded assent, then girding on their equipments, they gave us their last messages to be repeated if deliverance ever came to us and they were never heard of again. We were getting accustomed to this now, for Death stalked beside us every hour. They said a brief good-bye and slipped out from us into the dangerous dark on their chosen task. Then the chill of the night, with its uncertainty and gloom, with its ominous silences broken only by the howl of the gray wolves, who closed in about us and set up their hunger wails beyond the reach of our bullets; and the heat of the day with its peril of arrow and rifle-ball filled the long hours. Hunger was a terror now. Our meat was gone save a few decayed portions which we could barely swallow after we had sprinkled them over with gunpowder. For the stomach refused them even in starvation. Dreams of banquets tortured our short, troubled sleep, and the waking was a horror. A luckless little coyote wandered one day too near our fold. We ate his flesh and boiled his bones for soup. And one day a daring soldier slipped out from our sand pit in search of food—anything—to eat in place of that rotting horseflesh. In the bushes at the end of the island, he found a few wild plums. Oh, food for the gods was that portion of stewed plums carefully doled out to each of us.
Six days went by. I do not know on which one the Sabbath fell, for God has no holy day in the Plains warfare. Six days, and no aid had come from Fort Wallace. That our scouts had failed, and our fate was decreed, was now the settled conclusion in every mind.
On the evening of this sixth day our leader called us about him. How gray and drawn his face looked in the shadowy gray light, but his eyes were clear and his voice steady.
"Boys, we've got to the end of our rope, now. Over there," pointing to the low hills, "the Indian wolves are waiting for us. It's the hazard of war; that's all. But we needn't all be sacrificed. You, who aren't wounded, can't help us who are. You have nothing here to make our suffering less. To stay here means—you all know what. Now the men who can go must leave us to what's coming. I feel sure now that you can get through together somehow, for the tribes are scattering. It is only the remnant left over there to burn us out at last. There is no reason why you should stay here and die. Make your dash for escape together to-night, and save your lives if you can. And"—his voice was brave and full of cheer—"I believe you can."