ttle
confidence had waned, and doubt and dread replaced it. Some, probably,
had been earlier shot by the storm of centring bullets; some, possibly,
had sent their last shot into the reeling brain,--death by one's own
hand being better at least than by slow and fiendish torture; and at
last, probably just at dusk, the triumphant savages were able to close
in upon their helpless prey and reap their reward of scalps and plunder
and wreak their fury on a mute and defenceless foe.

But in a search of full an hour not a sign had Warren's best scouts
discovered of Davies or his companion. The Indian trail, that of a
war-party of at least fifty or sixty braves, led away southward again,
into and through the timber in the distant river bottom, and there it
became scattered, most of the party seeming to have ridden on towards
the reservation in the darkness of the night, while others turned
up-stream, and their pony-tracks led towards the point where Warren's
battalion had bivouacked. These were probably the causes of the flitting
shadows Sanders had detected far out on the prairie,--these the owls and
coyotes whose weird cries had at intervals disturbed the silence of the
night. Solemnly, sadly, now, the burial-parties labored. The soil was
comparatively soft in the neighboring ravine,--much more so than higher
up the slopes where the two crack shots had fallen earlier in the
afternoon,--and here, with picket-pins and a spade or two which happened
to be with the pack-train, a trench was scooped out, into which the poor
remains were lowered and then covered with stones, dragged from the
depths of the neighboring _coulee_. It took some hours to finish the sad
duty, and meanwhile sharp-eyed scouts were busily occupied striving to
determine what had become of Davies and Sergeant McGrath.

In this work the major himself took the lead, and here Devers's
statements had to be drawn upon. Old Indian-fighters pointed out many a
significant sign to sustain the theory that the fight must have lasted
full an hour,--the trampled condition of the turf,--the quantities of
shells lying behind every little hummock or ridge in the surrounding
prairie that commanded the position of the defence or afforded shelter
from its fire. Down in the very ravine in which the bodies were buried,
full four hundred yards from the scene of their desperate stand, the
soft, sandy soil was pawed and trodden by waiting war-ponies, whose
riders, lying flat on their s