camp that night. She was not long in adopting the seemingly desperate
resolution of riding to the Fort and bringing back a nurse and surgeon.

Whispering to her daughter, she informed her of her determination, and
quickly saddling the swiftest and freshest of the horses, she led him
softly out from the camp, and, mounting, set her face southward, and
touched the horse lightly with the whip. The generous beast seemed, by
instinct, to understand his rider's errand, and bounded over the wild plain
with a kind of cheerful alacrity that rendered unnecessary any further
urging.

The sky was overcast, so that she had no stars to guide her course, and was
obliged to guess the route which the party had followed from the Fort.
By-and-by she struck a trail, which she thought she recognized as the one
over which they had come after leaving the Platte River. For four hours she
rode forward, the horse not flagging in his steady gallop. According to her
calculations, she must have made forty miles of her journey, and she was
anticipating that by the break of day she would have made the Fort, when,
turning her eyes upward to the left, she saw--through the clouds that had
rifted for the first time--the great dipper, and knew at once that instead
of riding southward, she had been riding eastward, and must be now at least
seventy miles from the Fort, instead of being within twenty miles of it, as
she had supposed.

Her horse began to show symptoms of fatigue. She slowed him to a walk as
she turned his head to the southwest, and pursued her course sluggishly
across the plains. Erelong the blackness of night faded into gray, and then
came twilight streaks, which showed her the dreary country she was passing
through. It was a vast sandy plain, thinly dotted with sage-bush and other
stunted shrubs. The sun rose bright and hot, and, until ten o'clock, she