"I reckon we're still alone, old girl," he said quietly, a bit of Southern
drawl in the voice. "We'll try for the trail, and take it easy."

He swung stiffly out of the saddle, and with reins dangling over his
shoulder, began the slower advance on foot, the exhausted horse trailing
behind. His was not a situation in which one could feel certain of safety,
for any ridge might conceal the wary foemen he sought to avoid, yet he
proceeded now with renewed confidence. It was the Summer of 1868, and the
place the very heart of the Indian country, with every separate tribe
ranging between the Yellowstone and the Brazos, either restless or openly
on the war-path. Rumors of atrocities were being retold the length and
breadth of the border, and every report drifting in to either fort or
settlement only added to the alarm. For once at least the Plains Indians
had discovered a common cause, tribal differences had been adjusted in war
against the white invader, and Kiowas, Comanches, Arapahoes, Cheyennes,
and Sioux, had become welded together in savage brotherhood. To oppose
them were the scattered and unorganized settlers lining the more eastern
streams, guarded by small detachments of regular troops posted here and
there amid that broad wilderness, scarcely within touch of each other.

Everywhere beyond these lines of patrol wandered roaming war parties,
attacking travellers on the trails, raiding exposed settlements, and
occasionally venturing to try open battle with the small squads of armed
men. In this stress of sudden emergency--every available soldier on active
duty--civilians had been pressed into service, and hastily despatched to
warn exposed settlers, guide wagon trains, or carry despatches between
outposts. And thus our rider, Jack Keith, who knew every foot of the
plains lying between the Republican and the Canadian Rivers, was one of
these thus suddenly requisitioned, merely because he chanced to be
discovered unemployed by the harassed commander of a cantonment just