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But youth and elasticity triumph. The danger is passed. She lies now, very white and still, listening to the sweet strains of the band trooping down the line this soft June evening. Her mother, worn with watching, is resting on the lounge. It is Miriam Stanley who hovers at the bedside. Presently the bugles peal the retreat; the sunset gun booms across the plain; the ringing voice of the young adjutant comes floating on the southerly breeze, and, as she listens, Nannie follows every detail of the well-known ceremony, wondering how it could go on day after day with no Mr. Pennock to read the orders; with no “big Burton” to thunder his commands to the first company; with no Philip Stanley to march the colors to their place on the line. “Where is he?” is the question in the sweet blue eyes that so wistfully seek his sister’s face; but she answers not. One by one the first sergeants made their reports; and now–that ringing voice again, reading the orders of the day. How clear it sounds! How hushed and still the listening Point!

“Head-quarters of the Army,” she hears. “Washington, June 15, 187-. Special orders, Number–.

“First. Upon his own application, First Lieutenant George Romney Lee, –th Cavalry, is hereby relieved from duty at the U. S. Military Academy, and will join his troop now in the field against hostile Indians.

“Second. Upon the recommendation of the Superintendent U. S. Military Academy, the charges preferred against Cadet Captain Philip S. Stanley are withdrawn. Cadet Stanley will be considered as graduated with his class on the 12th instant, will be released from arrest, and authorized to avail himself of the leave of absence granted his class.”

Nannie starts from her pillow, clasping in her thin white fingers the soft hand that would have restrained her.

“Miriam!” she cries. “Then–will he go?”

The dark, proud face bends down to her; clasping arms encircle the little white form, and Miriam Stanley’s very heart wails forth in answer,–

“Oh, Nannie! He is almost there by this time,–both of them. They left to join the regiment three days ago; their orders came by telegraph.”

Another week, and Uncle Jack is again with them. The doctors agree that the ocean voyage is now not only advisable, but necessary. They are to move their little patient to the city and board their steamer in a day or two. Will has come to them, full of disgust that he has been assigned to the artillery, and filling his mother’s heart with dismay because he is begging for a transfer to the cavalry, to the –th Regiment,–of all others,–now plunged in the whirl of an Indian war. Every day the papers come freighted with rumors of fiercer fighting; but little that is reliable can be heard from “Sabre Stanley” and his column. They are far beyond telegraphic communication, hemmed in by “hostiles” on every side.

Uncle Jack is an early riser. Going down for his paper before breakfast, he is met at the foot of the stairs by a friend who points to the head-lines of the Herald, with the simple remark, “Isn’t this hard?”

It is brief enough, God knows.

“A courier just in from Colonel Stanley’s camp brings the startling news that Lieutenant Philip Stanley, –th Cavalry, with two scouts and a small escort, who left here Sunday, hoping to push through to the Spirit Wolf, were ambushed by the Indians in Black Canyon. Their bodies, scalped and mutilated, were found Wednesday night.”

Where, then, was Romney Lee?

CHAPTER VII.

BLACK CANYON.

The red sun is going down behind the line of distant buttes, throwing long shadows out across the grassy upland. Every crest and billow of the prairie is bathed in crimson and gold, while the “breaks” and ravines trending southward grow black and forbidding in their contrasted gloom. Far over to the southeast, in dazzling radiance, two lofty peaks, still snow-clad, gleam against the summer sky, and at their feet dark waves of forest-covered foot-hills drink in the last rays of the waning sunshine as though hoarding its treasured warmth against the chill of coming night. Already the evening air, rare and exhilarating at this great altitude, loses the sun-god’s touch and strikes upon the cheek keen as the ether of the limitless heavens. A while ago, only in the distant valley winding to the south could foliage be seen. Now, all in those depths is merged in sombre shade, and not a leaf or tree breaks for miles the grand monotony. Close at hand a host of tiny mounds, each tipped with reddish gold, and some few further ornamented by miniature sentry, alert and keen-eyed, tell of a prairie township already laid out and thickly populated; and at this moment every sentry is chipping his pert, querulous challenge until the disturbers of the peace are close upon him, then diving headlong into the bowels of the earth.