The Project Gutenberg EBook of Warrior Gap, by Charles King

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Title: Warrior Gap
A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68.

Author: Charles King

Release Date: December 10, 2006 [EBook #20082]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Warrior Gap

A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68.

BY GENERAL CHARLES KING, U. S. A.

AUTHOR OF "Fort Frayne," "An Army Wife," "Trumpeter Fred," "Found in the
Philippines," "A Wounded Name," "Noble Blood and a West Point Parallel,"
"A Garrison Tangle," etc., etc.

THE HOBART COMPANY,
New York City.

Copyrighted 1898, by
F. Tennyson Neely.

Copyrighted, 1901, by
The Hobart Company.

WARRIOR GAP.

1.

Riding at ease in the lazy afternoon sunshine a single troop of cavalry
was threading its way in long column of twos through the bold and
beautiful foothills of the Big Horn. Behind them, glinting in the
slanting rays, Cloud Peak, snow clad still although it was late in May,
towered above the pine-crested summits of the range. To the right and
left of the winding trail bare shoulders of bluff, covered only by the
dense carpet of bunch grass, jutted out into the comparative level of
the eastward plain. A clear, cold, sparkling stream, on whose banks the
little command had halted for a noontide rest, went rollicking away
northeastward, and many a veteran trooper looked longingly, even
regretfully, after it, and then cast a gloomy glance over the barren and
desolate stretch ahead. Far as the eye could reach in that direction the
earth waves heaved and rolled in unrelieved monotony to the very sky
line, save where here and there along the slopes black herds or
scattered dots of buffalo were grazing unvexed by hunters red or white,
for this was thirty years ago, when, in countless thousands, the bison
covered the westward prairies, and there were