suggestive
of neither respect nor esteem.

"Come, tumble up, captain; we're all wanted; Davies has been cut off and
massacred."

Already his orderly had led up the captain's horse, pricking his ears
and sniffing excitedly around him, and with trembling hands the young
German was dragging out from among the blankets the captain's saddle,
the hot tears falling as he stooped. His own brother was of Davies's
party. Devers was on his feet in an instant, dismayed, and, buckling on
his revolver, he went striding through the trees to where Warren stood,
pale and distressed, questioning a haggard trooper,--one of the
couriers sent on for Davies the previous evening. Devers burst in with
interrupting words, and was instantly coolly checked.

"Never mind now, captain. Mount at once and get your men in saddle." Nor
would Warren see or speak with him, as with a hundred troopers at his
heels--all whose horses were even moderately fit for a ten-mile
trot--the major led the way down the valley, a few eager scouts
cantering on before. All Devers could learn as they jogged along was
that Tate, one of the couriers, had ridden in at seven on an exhausted
mule to say that not until after dawn had they found Davies's
party,--seven of them,--stone dead, stripped, scalped, gashed, mutilated
almost beyond recognition, far out on the slopes east of that fatal spur
over which the September sun had risen before he came, leaving his
stunned comrade trailing hopelessly behind.

CHAPTER IX.

The prairie sod was torn by the hoofs of a hundred ponies. That was
evident. All around a little sink in the surface at a distance of
several hundred yards the warriors must have dashed and circled for full
an hour. Here along the rim of the shallow basin, each behind the
bloated and stiffening carcass of his horse,--each surrounded by
threescore copper shells, showing that he had fought till hope and
ammunition both were gone,--lay the poor remains of the gallant boys who
had ridden silently away in obedience to their orders on the previous
afternoon,--recognizable now only by their teeth or some still ungashed
body mark. How long they had pluckily, cheerily held out, confident of
the speedy coming of the comrades from over that westward spur, and
therefore less miserly of their lead and eager to stretch some of their
yelling foes upon the sward, could now only be conjectured. Little by
little their fierce, defiant fire had slackened. Little by li