“Take them out, Lieutenant Troup—it’s your luck, and maybe—ah, well, you can’t tell how many there are, you know, and half a company is mighty few after sending out three troops. Leave your trinkets, men, and any message you may wish to send home. Yes, it’s a nasty bit of a fight you’ll be having, likely, and I wish it had been my luck to be in it. I have been in service a little longer, you know, perhaps the Lieutenant might—”
But the Lieutenant only smiled and saluted again.
“I’ll do my best, Captain—war is on and it’s my time, you know.”
The Captain pressed his hand as the Company filed out of the fort.
And all the time the Lieutenant kept thinking of the half-dead man who kept saying even in his delirium: “An’ my little gal—God knows—I seed her cut for a dug-out—”
The Lieutenant was young—very young—and he was romantic. He could see the little girl—of course she was about sixteen—all settlers called their grown girls little. Perhaps—well—if she hadn’t been killed—
The troup wanted to gallop, but the Lieutenant brought them to a steady trot:
“It’s all right, men, and ten miles an hour is fast enough. We may need our horses for all that’s in them. We’ll be there by midnight as it is.”
The moon arose and drifted higher and higher and still the troopers struck grimly across the plain. The wind brought the howl of wolves—big greys—and the yelp of coyotes, but the troopers turned neither to the right nor left, and the Lieutenant rode at their head, and all the time he was wondering what had become of the pretty girl—helpless—alone. “An’ my little gal—God knows—I seed her cut for a dug-out!”