ne hundred yards, and the little hill blazed and sputtered
half a minute with a rapid discharge that sent leaden messengers
whistling through the burning wagon-covers and humming about the ears
of the revellers.

Fifteen minutes later, Hatton resolved on a bold move. Mounting his
wounded men on mules, and leading his little party, soldiers,
teamsters, and quadrupeds, he slipped away from the hillock, and,
keeping well to the east of the road, groped through the darkness back
to the high range overlooking the valleys of "Old Woman's Fork" of the
South Cheyenne and Hat Creek to the eastward; and morning found him
bivouacked at a little spring not ten miles from the stockade. Thither,
of course, the Indians trailed and followed at daybreak. There again
they attacked and besieged and were repulsed, again and again; and
there at dawn on the second day, after an all-night march, the trumpets
of the cavalry rang the signal of rescue, and the charging troopers
sent the Sioux whirling in scattered bands over the bold and beautiful
upland. The little detachment was safe, but its brave commander was
prostrate with a rifle-bullet through the thigh and another in the
shoulder. Dr. Weeks declared it impossible to attempt to move him back
to Laramie; and in a litter made with lariats and saddle-blankets the
men carried their wounded leader back to the stockade at the head of
Sage Creek, and there, wrote Weeks, he might have to remain a month,
and there, unless otherwise ordered, the other wounded men would remain
with him, Weeks himself attending them in his improvised
field-hospital.

Major Miller and Dr. Bayard, after brief consultation, had decided that
the young surgeon's ideas were sound. The stockade was well guarded and
provisioned. Medical and surgical supplies were promptly forwarded
under strong cavalry escort, and that same day the entire cavalry
battalion struck its tents and moved away northward over the route
Hatton had taken. Once more was Laramie left with only a handful of men
and hardly a company officer for duty.

Old Bruce turned out, despite his rheumatics, and announced that he was
game for any garrison service under the circumstances. Roswell Holmes,
who had stowed a box of wine and several boxes of cigars in the
supply-wagons, with his compliments to Dr. Weeks and his patients, and
who had remained at Laramie instead of going to the front solely
because of an odd turn in local events, now declared that he mu