mething, decided to
ask no more questions inviting more lies, but to wait and report the
affair to the captain after breakfast. This time the sergeants did not
overlook the lance corporal in the distribution of coffee and rations.
Davies found that Miss Loomis had just finished dressing and bandaging
the wound when he returned to the sleeper shortly after they resumed
the journey. The soldier looked gratefully into her face as he turned
away, and murmured something the young officer could not hear. "Yes, I
understand," said Miss Loomis in reply.

A moment later she accosted him. "I'm going to ask you something that
may sound very strange," she said, and her color heightened and the lids
swept quickly over her eyes, "yet--I believe you won't misunderstand. I
want you to do something--or rather _not_ to do something--for me. You
were going to tell Captain Tibbetts about that affair of last
night,--that other soldier's coming in here, were you not?"

"I certainly was."

"Well--please don't."

CHAPTER V.

A week later, with additional detachments of horse, foot, and recruits,
Mr. Davies found himself in camp on the sandy, sage-covered flats to the
west of old Fort Fetterman. Here, too, were gathered wagons and mules
laden with ammunition and supplies for the big column already in the
field far to the northward. Officers hurrying to the front from leave of
absence which they had promptly relinquished, newspaper correspondents,
packers, teamsters, scouts and would-be scouts, soldiers old and
soldiers new,--it was a strange and motley array, all awaiting the
coming of the cavalry command, which was to be their escort through the
Indian-infested region that lay between them and the main supply camp
beyond Cloud Peak. Between them and the barren slopes to the northward
rolled the swollen Platte, its shallowest fords breast-deep. At rare
intervals, with his life in his hands and his despatches done up in
oil-skin, some solitary courier came galloping down to the opposite bank
and was hauled over by the rope ferry, the only means of dry
communication between the shores. One day, strongly guarded, there
arrived a little procession of ambulances and _travois_, bearing such of
the wounded as could stand such rude transportation,--but this was while
Davies with his recruits was still on his foot tramp through the passes
of the Medicine Bow,--and among these wounded was Captain Cranston, now
comfortably housed in the quar