he team and wagon,
anywhere.

"And no cavalry to send out after them!" said Dade, when he reached the
spot. Old Crabb was called at once, and mustered four semi-invalided
troopers. The infantry supplied half a dozen stout riders and, with a
mixed escort, the general, accompanied by Dade and the aide-de-camp,
drove swiftly to the scene. Six miles away they found the dead pony.
Seven miles away they encountered the second trooper, coming back. He
had followed the trail of the four mule team as far as yonder point,
said he, and there was met by half a dozen shots from unseen foe, and so
rode back out of range. But Dade threw his men forward as skirmishers;
found no living soul either at the point or on the banks of the rocky
ford beyond; but, in the shallows, close to the shore, lay the body of
the second outrider, shot and scalped. In a clump of willows lay another
body, that of a pinto pony, hardly cold, while the soft, sandy shores
were cut by dozens of hoof tracks--shoeless. The tracks of the mules and
wagon lay straight away across the stream bed--up the opposite bank and
out on the northward-sweeping bench beyond. Hay's famous four, and
well-known wagon, contents and all, therefore, had been spirited away,
not toward the haunts of the road agents in the mountains of the
Medicine Bow, but to those of the sovereign Sioux in the fastnesses of
the storied Big Horn.

CHAPTER XVI

NIGHT PROWLING AT FRAYNE

In the full of the September moon the war-bands of the Sioux had defied
agents and peace chiefs, commissioners and soldiers, and started their
wild campaign in northern Wyoming. In the full of the October moon the
big chief of the whites had swept the last vestige of their warriors
from the plains, and followed their bloody trails into the heart of the
mountains, all his cavalry and much of his foot force being needed for
the work in hand. Not until November, therefore, when the ice bridge
spanned the still reaches of the Platte, and the snow lay deep in the
brakes and _coulees_, did the foremost of the homeward-bound commands
come in view of old Fort Frayne, and meantime very remarkable things had
occurred, and it was to a very different, if only temporary, post
commander that Sandy Ray reported them as "sighted." Even brave old Dade
had been summoned to the front, with all his men, and in their place had
come from distant posts in Kansas other troops to occupy the vacant
quarters and strive to feel at home