Steaming horse and stricken rider
Found a breathing space at last.

[Illustration: "Fiercer with each flying moment
Drove those scorching blasts of death."]


29

When the morning sun in splendor
Rose upon the blackened plain,
His red beams revealed the lover
Back at Old Man's Bend again.
Waist deep in its soothing waters
Bathing blistered brow and hands;
While near by, in pain a-tremble,
Faithful Zeb impatient stands.
Through the bend he searched and wandered,
But except the furrowed bark,
Of a gnarled and aged elm tree
Which revealed one bullet-mark,
Naught was left save blackened embers;
And the words he "knew in part"--
"Dust to dust and then to ashes"--
Told the story of his heart.


30

Back along the Solomon River,