s
of half the garrison on the bluff. Many of these were women and
children, who gazed through a mist of tears. Ray turned in saddle as the
last of his men went by; looked long at the dim light in the upper
window of his home, where, clasping her children to her heart, his
devoted wife knelt watching them, her fond lips moving in ceaseless
prayer. Dimly she could see the tried leader, her soldier husband,
sitting in saddle at the bank. Bravely she answered the flutter of his
handkerchief in farewell. Then all was swallowed up in the shadows of
the distant prairie, and from the nursery adjoining her room there rose
a querulous wail that told that her baby daughter was waking,
indifferent to the need that sent the soldier father to the aid of
distant comrades, threatened by a merciless foe, and conscious only of
her infantile demands and expectations. Not yet ten years wed, that
brave, devoted wife and mother had known but two summers that had not
torn her husband from her side on just such quest and duty, for these
were the days of the building up of the West, resisted to the bitter
end by the red wards of the nation.

The sun was just peering over the rough, jagged outline of the eastward
buttes, when a quick yet muffled step was heard on the major's veranda
and a picturesque figure stood waiting at the door. Scout, of course, a
stranger would have said at a glance, for from head to foot the man was
clad in beaded buckskin, without sign of soldier garb of any kind.
Soldier, too, would have been the expert testimony the instant the door
opened and the commanding officer appeared. Erect as a Norway pine the
strange figure stood to attention, heels and knees together, shoulders
squared, head and eyes straight to the front, the left hand, fingers
extended, after the precise teachings of the ante-bellum days, the right
hand raised and held at the salute. Strange figure indeed, yet soldierly
to the last degree, despite the oddity of the entire make-up. The
fur-trimmed cap of embroidered buckskin sat jauntily on black and glossy
curls that hung about the brawny neck and shoulders. The buckskin coat,
heavily fringed as to the short cape and the shorter skirt, was thickly
covered with Indian embroidery of bead and porcupine quill; so, too,
were the fringed trousers and leggings; so, too, the moccasins, soled
with thick, yet pliant hide. Keen black eyes shone from beneath heavy
black brows, just sprinkled, as were the thick mousta