CHAPTER IX--SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS AGAIN



"Well, this is the way it happened. We did the escort duty; then
we came back and struck for the plain and put the Rangers through a
rousing drill--oh, for hours! Then we sent them home under
Brigadier-General Fanny Marsh; then the Lieutenant-General and I
went off on a gallop over the plains for about three hours, and
were lazying along home in the middle of the afternoon, when we met
Jimmy Slade, the drummer-boy, and he saluted and asked the
Lieutenant-General if she had heard the news, and she said no, and
he said:

"'Buffalo Bill has been ambushed and badly shot this side of
Clayton, and Thorndike the scout, too; Bill couldn't travel, but
Thorndike could, and he brought the news, and Sergeant Wilkes and
six men of Company B are gone, two hours ago, hotfoot, to get Bill.
And they say--'

"'GO!' she shouts to me--and I went."

"Fast?"

"Don't ask foolish questions. It was an awful pace. For four
hours nothing happened, and not a word said, except that now and
then she said, 'Keep it up, Boy, keep it up, sweetheart; we'll save
him!' I kept it up. Well, when the dark shut down, in the rugged
hills, that poor little chap had been tearing around in the saddle