“Glad am I, dear! What’s the idea of it?”
“Guard of honor for you and Thorndike.”
“Bless—your—heart! I’d rather have it from you than from the Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the United States, you incomparable little soldier!—and I don’t need to take any oath to that, for you to believe it.”
“I thought you’d like it, BB.”
“Like it? Well, I should say so! Now then—all ready—sound the advance, and away we go!”
IX
SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS AGAIN
“Well, this is the way it happened. We did the escort duty; then we came back and struck for the plain and put the Rangers through a rousing drill—oh, for hours! Then we sent them home under Brigadier-General Fanny Marsh; then the Lieutenant-General and I went off on a gallop over the plains for about three hours, and were lazying along home in the middle of the afternoon, when we met Jimmy Slade, the drummer-boy, and he saluted and asked the Lieutenant-General if she had heard the news, and she said no, and he said:
“‘Buffalo Bill has been ambushed and badly shot this side of Clayton, and Thorndike the scout, too; Bill couldn’t travel, but Thorndike could, and he brought the news, and Sergeant Wilkes and six men of Company B are gone, two hours ago, hotfoot, to get Bill. And they say—’
“‘Go!’ she shouts to me—and I went.”
“Fast?”