Then came
the inevitable end. The red waves surged completely across the crest,
no white man left alive upon the field. They had fought a good fight;
they had kept the faith.
Two days later, having relieved Reno from his unpleasant predicament in
the valley, Terry's and Gibbons's infantry tramped up the ravine, and
emerged upon the stricken field. In lines of motionless dead they read
the fearful story; and there they found that man we know. Lying upon a
bed of emptied cartridge-shells, his body riddled with shot and
mutilated with knives, his clothing torn to rags, his hands grasping a
smashed and twisted carbine, his lips smiling even in death, was that
soldier whom the Seventh had disowned and cast out, but who had come
back to defend its chief and to die for its honor,--Robert Hampton
Nolan.
CHAPTER X
THE CURTAIN FALLS
Bronzed by months of scouting on those northern plains, a graver, older
look upon his face, and the bars of a captain gracing the shoulders of
his new cavalry jacket, Donald Brant trotted down the stage road
bordering the Bear Water, his heart alternating between hope and dread.
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