ow heavy and sunken her eyes were; he felt a
dull pity, yet could not sufficiently arouse himself from the lethargy
of exhaustion to speak. His body seemed a leaden weight, his brain a
dull, inert mass; nothing was left him but an unreasoning purpose, the
iron will to press on across that desolate plain, which already reeled
and writhed before his aching eyes.

No one can explain later how such deeds are ever accomplished; how the
tortured soul controls physical weakness, and compels strained sinews
to perform the miracle of action when all ambition has died. Hampton
surely must have both seen and known, for he kept his direction, yet
never afterwards did he regain any clear memory of it. Twice she fell
heavily, and the last time she lay motionless, her face pressed against
the short grass blades. He stood looking down upon her, his head
reeling beneath the hot rays of the sun, barely conscious of what had
occurred, yet never becoming totally dead to his duty. Painfully he
stooped, lifted the limp, slender figure against his shoulder, and went
straggling forward, as uncertain in steps as a blind man, all about him
stretching the dull, dead desolation of the plain. Again and again he
sank down, pillowing his eyes from the pitiless sun glare; only to
stagger upright once more, ever bending lower and lower beneath his
unconscious burden.

CHAPTER IV

ON THE NAKED PLAIN

It was two hundred and eighteen miles, as the crow flies, between old
Fort Bethune and the rock ford crossing the Bear Water, every foot of
that dreary, treeless distance Indian-haunted, the favorite
skulking-place and hunting-ground of the restless Sioux. Winter and
summer this wide expanse had to be suspiciously patrolled by numerous
military scouting parties, anxious to learn more regarding the
uncertain whereabouts of wandering bands and the purposes of
malecontents, or else drawn hither and thither by continually shifting
rumors of hostile raids upon the camps of cattlemen. All this involved
rough, difficult service, with small meed of honor attached, while
never had soldiers before found trickier foemen to contend against, or
fighters more worthy of their steel.

One such company, composed of a dozen mounted infantrymen, accompanied
by three Cree trailers, rode slowly and wearily across the brown
exposed uplands down into the longer, greener grass of the wide valley
bottom, until they emerged upon a barely perceptible trail which w