odd intervals during the night seem to have slunk
away before the coming of the morning's sun and sought the shelter of
their lurking-spots. Here on the bleak ridge, where three men, wrapped
in cavalry overcoats, are lying prone, not a sound of any kind beyond
an occasional muffled word is to be heard. Three hundred yards behind
them, down in the valley, some thirty shadowy steeds are cropping at
the dense buffalo-grass, while their riders, dismounted now, are
huddled together for warmth. The occasional stamp of a hoof and the
snort of some impatient charger break the silence here, but cannot be
heard out at the front where the picket is lying. Another sound,
soothing, monotonous, ceaseless, falls constantly upon the ear of the
waking soldiers,--the rush of the swollen Platte over the rocks and
gravel of the ford a quarter-mile away, the only point below the fort
where the renegade Sioux can recross without swimming, and they are not
yet here to try it. When they come they will find Captain Terry, with
young McLean and thirty troopers, lurking behind the covering ridge,
ready and willing to dispute the passage. Through the darkness of the
night those good gray steeds, flitting like ghosts along the shore,
have come speeding down the Platte to land their riders first at the
goal, and once here, and satisfied by scrutiny of the south entrance to
the ford that no Indian pony has appeared within the last twenty-four
hours, Terry has posted his lookouts on the ridge, and then, having
hoppled and "half-lariated" his horses, has cautioned the men to rest
on their arms and not to throw off belt or spur. "There is no telling,"
he says, "what moment they may come along."

McLean, with his long Springfield rifle, has gone up to the ridge to
join the outlying picket. A keen-eyed fellow is this young soldier and
a splendid shot, and the Indians who succeed in crossing that next
ridge a mile farther south and approaching them unobserved will have
to wear the cap of the "Invisible Prince." He has come out on this
scout full of purpose and ambition. Things have not gone happily with
him during the past few days. Profoundly depressed in spirits at the
millstone of debt suddenly saddled upon him as the result of
peculations of the deserting sergeant, he has the added misery of
seeing the sweet-faced girl with whom he has fallen so deeply in love
practically withdrawn from his daily life and penned up within her
father's house for the ev