eans at hand. The coyotes would paw up the bodies,
sure, before we'd gone five miles. Better carry them along on these led
horses by the shortest route to the river. We're bound to find plenty of
rocks there that the wolves can't roll away." It wasn't the first time
the sad little command had had to "pack" their dead and wounded, and in
a quarter of an hour, with perhaps thirty men trailing along behind him,
Devers, instead of obeying his original instructions, was striking
straight across country for the river. And so it happened as nightfall
approached there were four parties of cavalry, widely dispersed, in the
gathering gloom of the desolate prairie. The major with about one
hundred men was still hurrying far to the southwest on the trail of the
Indians, hoping before dark to find them in sufficient force to halt and
show fight. Calvert with his invalid corps followed three miles in their
wake, and losing ground with every minute; then Devers, with about
thirty men in saddle and two dead on their _travois_, was slowly
plodding southward towards the stream. Davies's little squad, halted as
ordered, was now isolated from all, far over on the east side of the
jagged spur, over whose crest their lieutenant had just disappeared from
their sight, with Murray in attendance, riding wearily back to find his
captain, disturbed by contradictory orders and dishearted to see him in
march full a mile farther away than he supposed, and diverging from the
point of direction of his own party with every step. Time and again had
Devers, still fuming with nervous tension and mingled wrath and
pain,--hungry and savage, too, it must be borne in mind,--given vent to
some petulant expression because of the non-arrival of the young officer
whom he saw fit to hold responsible for the loss of his men; and when at
last Mr. Davies neared them, riding diagonally towards the troop from
the low divide to the east, Devers did not change the direction of his
little column so as to meet him half-way, but held on sullenly
southward. Observance of the major's orders would have carried him along
the trail of Davies's party until well across that ridge or spur, then
having gone the designated mile he should now be marching southward
along the ridge where he could, frequently at least, see both Davies's
squad and their distant objective-point,--that smouldering fire in the
valley. Marching as he was he could see neither.

Presently coming to the head of on