In column of fours, silent, with not a canteen rattling, with scabbards
thrust under their stirrup leathers, each man sitting his saddle like a
statue, ready carbine flung forward across the pommel, those sunburnt
troopers moved steadily down the broad _coulee_. There was no pomp, no
sparkle of gay uniforms. No military band rode forth to play their
famous battle tune of "Garryowen"; no flags waved above to inspire
them, yet never before or since to a field of strife and death rode
nobler hearts or truer. Troop following troop, their faded, patched
uniforms brown with dust, their campaign hats pulled low to shade them
from the glare, those dauntless cavalrymen of the Seventh swept across
the low intervening ridge toward the fateful plain below. The troopers
riding at either side of Hampton, wondering still at their captain's
peculiar words and action, glanced curiously at their new comrade,
marvelling at his tightly pressed lips, his moistened eyes. Yet in all
the glorious column, no heart lighter than his, or happier, pressed
forward to meet a warrior's death.
CHAPTER IX
THE LAST STAND
However daring the pen, it cannot but falter when attempting to picture
the events of those hours of victorious defeat.
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