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“Reinforcements is it, Mr. Albumblatt?”

“The howitzer, Captain.”

“Good. And G troop?”

“For my double flank movement I–“

“Perhaps you’d like H troop as reserve?”

“Not reserve, Captain. I should establish–“

“This is your duty, Mr. Albumblatt. Perform it as you can, with what force you need.”

“Thank you, sir. It is not exactly a battle, but with a, so-to-speak, intrenched–“

“Take your troops and go, sir, and report to me when you have arrested your man.”

Then Duane went to the hospital, and out with the ambulance, hoping that the soldier might not be dead. But the wholesome irony of life reckons beyond our calculations; and the unreproachful, sunny face of his Sergeant evoked in Duane’s memory many marches through long heat and cold, back in the rough, good times.

“Hit twice, I thought they told me,” said he; and the steward surmised that one had missed.

“Perhaps,” mused Duane. “And perhaps it went as intended, too. What’s all that fuss?”

He turned sharply, having lost Augustus among his sadder thoughts; and here were the operations going briskly. Powder-smoke in three directions at once! Here were pickets far out-lying, and a double line of skirmish- ers deployed in extended order, and a mounted reserve, and men standing to horse–a command of near a hundred, a pudding of pompous, incompetent, callow bosh, with Augustus by his howitzer, scientifically raising and lowering it to bear on the lone white tepee that shone in the plain. Four races were assembled to look on–the mess Chinaman, two black laundresses, all the whites in the place (on horse and foot, some with their hats left behind), and several hundred Indians in blankets. Duane had a thought to go away and leave this galling farce under the eye of Starr for the officers were at hand also. But his second thought bade him remain; and looking at Augustus and the howitzer, his laugh would have returned to him; but his heart was sore for Casey.

It was an hour of strategy and cannonade, a humiliating hour, which Fort Brown tells of to this day; and the tepee lived through it all. For it stood upon fifteen slender poles, not speedily to be chopped down by shooting lead from afar. When low bullets drilled the canvas, the chief suggested to Augustus that Ute Jack had climbed up; and when the bullets flew high, then Ute Jack was doubtless in a hole. Nor did Augustus contrive to drop a shell from the howitzer upon Ute Jack and explode him–a shrewd and deadly conception; the shells went beyond, except one, that ripped through the canvas, somewhat near the ground; and Augustus, dripping, turned at length, and saying, “It won’t go down,” stood vacantly wiping his white face. Then the two chiefs got his leave to stretch a rope between their horses and ride hard against the tepee. It was military neither in essence nor to see, but it prevailed. The tepee sank, a huge umbrella wreck along the earth, and there lay Ute Jack across the fire’s slight hollow, his knee-cap gone with the howitzer shell. But no blood had flown from that; blood will not run, you know, when a man has been dead some time. One single other shot had struck him–one through his own heart. It had singed the flesh.

“You see, Mr. Albumblatt,” said Duane, in the whole crowd’s hearing, “he killed himself directly after killing Casey. A very rare act for an Indian, as you are doubtless aware. But if your manoeuvres with his corpse have taught you anything you did not know before, we shall all be gainers.”

“Captain,” said Mrs. Starr, on a later day, “you and Ute Jack have ended our fun. Since the Court of Inquiry let Mr. Albumblatt off, he has not said Germany once–and that’s three months to-morrow.”