Two days later, having relieved Reno from his unpleasant predicament in the valley, Terry's and Gibbons's infantry tramped up the ravine, and emerged upon the stricken field. In lines of motionless dead they read the fearful story; and there they found that man we know. Lying upon a bed of emptied cartridge-shells, his body riddled with shot and mutilated with knives, his clothing torn to rags, his hands grasping a smashed and twisted carbine, his lips smiling even in death, was that soldier whom the Seventh had disowned and cast out, but who had come back to defend its chief and to die for its honor,—Robert Hampton Nolan.
CHAPTER X
THE CURTAIN FALLS
Bronzed by months of scouting on those northern plains, a graver, older look upon his face, and the bars of a captain gracing the shoulders of his new cavalry jacket, Donald Brant trotted down the stage road bordering the Bear Water, his heart alternating between hope and dread. He was coming back as he had promised; yet, ardently as he longed to look into the eyes of his beloved, he shrank from the duty laid upon him by the dead.
The familiar yellow house at the cross-roads appeared so unattractive as to suggest the thought that Naida must have been inexpressibly lonely during those months of waiting. He knocked at the sun-warped door. Without delay it was flung open, and a vision of flushed face and snowy drapery confronted him.
"Why, Lieutenant Brant! I was never more surprised in my life. Do, pray, come right in. Yes, Naida is here, and I will have her sent for at once. Oh, Howard, this is Lieutenant Brant, just back from his awful Indian fighting. How very nice that he should happen to arrive just at this time, is n't it?"
The young officer, as yet unable to discover an opportunity for speech, silently accepted Mr. Wynkoop's extended hand, and found a convenient chair, as Miss Spencer hastened from the room to announce his arrival.
"Why 'just at this time'?" he questioned.
Mr. Wynkoop cleared his throat. "Why—why, you see, we are to be married this evening—Miss Spencer and myself. We—we shall be so delighted to have you witness the ceremony. It is to take place at the church, and my people insist upon making quite an affair out of the occasion—Phoebe is so popular, you know."