had last been seen by their comrades,--just at dusk,--just
at what looked to be the comb or crest of the ridge from the point where
Devers had halted his troop and made the dramatic display of his dead.
But what looked to be the crest from the west was in point of fact not
the crest at all. Invisible to the halted command, there lay still
farther over to the eastward, where the spur seemed to broaden
considerably, a wave that overtopped the westward edge by a dozen feet
or more. Supposing from Devers's account that the trail of his command
could be found distinctly marked along the westward slope and close
under the crest, Warren was searching there with his scouts when
attracted by the signals two miles to the south announcing probably
important discoveries. He had found some Indian pony tracks, also those
of one shod horse, but dropped everything else to go at once in answer
to the signals. Then they had borne the unconscious officer
southeastward toward the clump of trees at the Springs, placed him in
the ambulance, and then came a courier from the general himself
directing Major Warren to report to him in person at Birchwood, thirty
miles away, and the major went, the ambulance following. And so, to his
unspeakable relief, Captain Devers was left once more the senior officer
on the ground to continue the search for McGrath, and in the conduct of
this he took excellent care that only himself and one or two of his
chosen should search any portion of the prairie that might involve
running over the trail west of the ravine which he had made the previous
day. The scouts and searching parties were kept in the valley and in the
timber along the river, not on the back track. _That_ search Devers
conducted in person, and made a rough topographical sketch of the
neighborhood as it appeared in his eyes and as he wished it to appear in
those of others. Just before dusk, sounding the rally far up the spur,
he rode to the point where his two hunters had met their fate, and
there assembled his men, gathering some fifty troopers, and thence led
them in column of twos southward close under the spur and well to the
east of the ravine which on the previous day had partially caused his
wide departure from the line of direction indicated to him by the major.
It was therefore very late, and his men were very tired,--much too tired
to sit up and talk,--when they got to camp.

Pursuing its homeward march, the main column under the general