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A dun cloud of dust rolls skyward along a well-worn cavalry trail, and is whirled into space by the hoofs of sixty panting chargers trotting steadily south. Sixty sunburned, dust-covered troopers ride grimly on, following the lead of a tall soldier whose kind brown eyes peer anxiously from under his scouting-hat. It is just as they pass the village of the prairie dogs that he points to the low valley down to the front and questions the “plainsman” who lopes along by his side,–

“That Black Canyon down yonder?”

“That’s it, lieutenant: I didn’t think you could make it to-night.”

“We had to,” is the simple reply as again the spur touches the jaded flank and evokes only a groan in response.

“How far from here to–the Springs?” he presently asks again.

“Box Elder?–where they found the bodies?–’bout five mile, sir.”

“Where away was that signal smoke we saw at the divide?”

“Must have been from those bluffs–east of the Springs, sir.”

Lieutenant Lee whips out his watch and peers at the dial through the twilight. The cloud deepens on his haggard, handsome face. Eight o’clock, and they have been in saddle almost incessantly since yesterday afternoon, weighed down with the tidings of the fell disaster that has robbed them of their comrades, and straining every nerve to reach the scene.

Only five days before, as he stepped from the railway car at the supply station, a wagon-train had come in from the front escorted by Mr. Lee’s own troop; his captain with it, wounded. Just as soon as it could reload with rations and ammunition the train was to start on its eight days’ journey to the Spirit Wolf, where Colonel Stanley and the –th were bivouacked and scouring the neighboring mountains. Already a battalion of infantry was at the station, another was on its way, and supplies were being hurried forward. Captain Gregg brought the first reliable news. The Indians had apparently withdrawn from the road. The wagon-train had come through unmolested, and Colonel Stanley was expecting to push forward into their fastnesses farther south the moment he could obtain authority from head-quarters. With these necessary orders two couriers had started just twelve hours before. The captain was rejoiced to see his favorite lieutenant and to welcome Philip Stanley to the regiment. “Everybody seemed to feel that you too would be coming right along,” he said; “but, Phil, my boy, I’m afraid you’re too late for the fun. You cannot catch the command before it starts from Spirit Wolf.”

And yet this was just what Phil had tried to do. Lee knew nothing of his plan until everything had been arranged between the young officer and the major commanding the temporary camp at the station. Then it was too late to protest. While it was Mr. Lee’s duty to remain and escort the train, Philip Stanley, with two scouts and half a dozen troopers, had pushed out to overtake the regiment two hundred miles away. Forty-eight hours later, as the wagon-train with its guard was slowly crawling southward, it was met by a courier with ghastly face. He was one of three who had started from the ruined agency together. They met no Indians, but at Box Elder Springs had come upon the bodies of a little party of soldiers stripped, scalped, gashed, and mutilated,–nine in all. There could be little doubt that they were those of poor Philip and his new-found comrades. The courier had recognized two of the bodies as those of Forbes and Whiting,–the scouts who had gone with the party; the others he did not know at all.

Parking his train then and there, sending back to the railway for an infantry company to hasten forward and take charge of it, Mr. Lee never hesitated as to his own course. He and his troop pushed on at once. And now, worn, weary, but determined, the little command is just in sight of the deep ravine known to frontiersmen for years as Black Canyon. It was through here that Stanley and his battalion had marched a fortnight since. It was along this very trail that Phil and his party, pressing eagerly on to join the regiment, rode down into its dark depths and were ambushed at the Springs. From all indications, said the courier, they must have unsaddled for a brief rest, probably just at nightfall; but the Indians had left little to aid them in forming an opinion. Utterly unnerved by the sight, his two associates had turned back to rejoin Stanley’s column, while he, the third, had decided to make for the railway. Unless those men, too, had been cut off, the regiment by this time knew of the tragic fate of some of their comrades, but the colonel was mercifully spared all dread that one of the victims was his only son.