n
through such peril and distress has restored his loved ones, unharmed,
unstained, to his rejoicing heart.

XII.

It is a sultry day, early in July, and the sun is going westward
through a fleet of white, wind-driven clouds that send a host of deep
shadows sweeping and chasing over the wide prairie. Northwards the
view is limited by a low range of bluffs, destitute of tree or
foliage, but covered thickly with the summer growth of bunch-grass.
Southward, three miles away at least, though it seems much less, a
similar range, pierced here and there with deep ravines, frames the
picture on that side. Midway between the two ridges and fringed with
clumps of cottonwood and willow, a languid stream flows silently
eastward and is lost, with the valley, in the dim distance. Out to the
west in long, gradual curve the southward range veers around and spans
the horizon. Midway across this monotone of landscape, cutting the
stream at right angles, a hard prairie road comes twisting and turning
out of one of the southern ravines and, after long, gradual dip to the
ford among the cottonwoods, emerges from their leafy shade and goes
winding away until lost among the "breaks" to the north. It is one of
the routes to the Black Hills of Dakota,--the wagon road from the
Union Pacific at Sidney by way of old Fort Robinson, Nebraska, where a
big garrison of some fourteen companies of cavalry and infantry keep
watch and ward over the Sioux Nation, which, one year previous, was in
the midst of the maddest, most successful, war it ever waged against
the white man. That was the Centennial year--'76. This is another
eventful year for the cavalry,--'77; for before the close of the
summer even the troops so far to the southeast are destined to be
summoned to the chase and capture of wary old Chief Joseph,--the
greatest Indian general ever reared upon the Pacific slope,--and even
now, on this July day, here are cavalrymen at their accustomed task,
and though it is five years since we saw them under the heat and glare
of the Arizona sun, there are familiar faces among these that greet
us.

All along under the cottonwoods below the crossing the bivouac
extends. Long before sunrise these hardy fellows were in saddle and,
in long column, have come marching down from the north,--four strong
troops,--a typical battalion of regular cavalry as they looked and
rode in those stirring days that brought about the subjugation of the
Sioux. Out on t