hostiles"
hemmed between converging columns and sure of capture, his hand was
held by orders from the East. At the very moment when the warriors at
the reservation should have been watched and guarded against exhorters
from without, the latter got within, and a powerful band stampeded up
the Red Rock country and were gone. The news reached Archer toward
eleven, one winter's night, and at dawn he, in person, with Harris and
'Tonio and twenty scouts and barely thirty mounted men, was climbing
the rugged trail from the head of the Beaver in pursuit, leaving Bella
and Lilian, brave, silent, yet tearful, at the post.

It was nothing new, this going forth of veteran division and brigade
commanders of the war days, with a handful of soldiery, to cope with a
band of savages on their chosen ground. Barely two years before the
Modocs had asked for a talk with the general commanding and killed him.
Only the year previous the Cheyennes lured out a lieutenant-colonel,
with but a lieutenant's command, and picked him off. And so, two nights
later, there was weeping at old Sandy, for a runner was in long hours
after sundown with the tidings that there had been a sharp and sudden
skirmish among the rocks, that brave old Archer had been the first to
fall, and that 'Tonio had been desperately wounded in the effort to
save the veteran's life.

They started them homeward within the week, Archer calm, conscious,
suffering much, but as, the skilled surgeons told the wife and daughter
who had rested not until they reached him, with good hope of recovery.
It was 'Tonio for whom they felt the keenest apprehension. 'Tonio had
received a bullet meant for the soldier who had once decreed his death,
and Archer's anguish was more for him. With them, on the slow homeward
way around by the old Wingate road, was Harris, sleepless from anxiety
and distress, watching night and day by the side of his two heroes,
filling all with wonderment at his endurance; and with Harris, much of
the time, by the side of both father and father's self-devoted savior,
was Lilian.

They brought them back to Sandy. They nursed the general back to life
and partial strength. But age and wounds and sorrows all had told on
the Mohave chieftain, and slowly he sank, despite their every effort
and the doctor's skill. They had pitched a little tent fly for him--he
would not be borne within doors--and shaded it with brush and willow,
yet left the southward view open so that he cou