under fire,--a long way
from under, said satirical subalterns of a command that sustained some
losses,--but so scientifically did the captain handle his men that not a
trooper or horse was scratched. Mr. Davies on this occasion commanded a
platoon, dismounted on the skirmish line. It was his first affair, and
he kept his appropriate thirty paces in rear of his dispersed men to
watch and direct their fire, expecting that the enemy would charge or
attack or do something, he didn't know just what. He simply behaved as
he had been taught at skirmish drill at the Point,--was ready to do his
full duty, but having no experience in Indian battle, thought it his
business to wait orders, which was precisely what Differs had told him
to do, until attacked. All the same, when others twitted Devers on the
fact that his troop "didn't seem to get in," that officer did not
hesitate to respond that they'd have to settle that with their
admiration, Mr. Davies, who was commanding the fighting line, but
probably wasn't done saying his prayers. There was a lively, rattling
skirmish next morning between the rear-guard and the Indians, and at one
time things looked as though the thinned battalion of their comrades of
the --th might be cut off, and some of Devers's regiment thought the
rearmost troops ought to be deployed in support of the fellows who were
fighting off the warriors, who came charging after them over wave after
wave of prairie. But Devers couldn't see it in that light. He was
bringing up the rear of his own regiment. Indeed, not until the fatal
day of their _debouchement_ from the Bad Lands and sighting the broad
valley of the Ska had Devers's men felt the sting of Indian lead, and
then he was not with them.

And now while the worn and ragged commands lay basking day after day in
the warm October sunshine at Camp Recovery, and men for the time had
nothing to do but eat and sleep and discuss the events of the late
campaign, the Eleventh was in turmoil over the tragedy of Antelope
Springs.

When Davies was finally found that morning by Warren's scouts, he was
lying in a depression of the prairie at least a mile to the west of the
point where that long--that fatally long--curtaining ridge sank into the
general level of the valley, and therefore full four and a half or five
miles away from the point where his little detachment had died fighting,
and very nearly two miles south, or west of south, of the point where he
and McGrath