Morning dawned over the bivouacs along the stream in hilarity unknown for previous weeks. The sun that for a fortnight had refused his face, and sent wet skies to weep in sympathy with the hungering column, now that the troopers no longer cared a rap whether he sulked or shone, came forth in all his glory to surround and beam upon and shower congratulation as do mundane friends who hold aloof when days are dark and troublous, yet swarm like bees when dazzling and unexpected prosperity bursts upon the lately fallen. Merrily rang the reveille as "jocund day" came riding o'er the misty mountain-tops. With joke and song and laughter answered the war-worn men, scores of whom had alternately dozed and cooked and eaten and drunk all the live-long night. Vain were counsels of captains and doctors. Soldier stomachs that could tackle mule and horse meat could stand any load, said the boys, and loaded accordingly. Cheer and laughter and merry-making, fun and chaff and jollity, ran through the ranks, where all, but another sun agone, was silence and despond. The rough campaign was practically over. Only scattered bands of hostiles remained, in this part of the country at least. Rest and recuperation for those "tatterdemalions" would be the enforced order of the day for a month to come, for while they might readily and speedily build up, it would take many a week to remount the column or restore such horses as remained. Here among the Cottonwoods, with fire and water and food at hand, the men could have loafed in comfort and content a month, if need be; but here was no grass, and barely a nibble of oats could be distributed for each surviving horse from the scanty supply hurried forward the previous day. Before noon, therefore, after another morning devoted principally to breakfasting, the trumpets were sounding "boots and saddles." No need to sound "The General" with its stirring summons to "Strike your tents and march away," for tents had long months before been struck—by the pen of the commander—from the list of camp equipage to be taken to the field. "We were only waiting for Warren to come on," explained an aide of the general to a regimental commander, "and we've sent him word to meet us on the Birchwood farther up among the hills. We'll camp there to-night. What kept him, do you suppose?"

But the colonel couldn't imagine. Away down the valley to the eastward Warren's men had slept, as they had marched, much later,—those of them who could sleep at all, for all through the night there had been cause of disturbance to more than a few of the command. It was late before the demands of hunger were appeased. Little fires blazed all through the timber, and men cooked and ate until they could eat and drink and cook no more. Then the luxury of tobacco kept many awake. Then came advanced troopers to say Devers was coming in, and despite the fact that two good and gallant comrades would no more gather with them about the camp-fire, there went up a cheer of welcome, and many men ran to meet the worn arrivals, to take their horses to feed and water so that the masters might be fed at once, and the major's first thought had been to welcome his subordinate and fill him with comfort before requiring of him detailed account of the day's doings. "I hardly expected you so soon," he said; "but here's coffee all ready, baker's bread fresh in town yesterday,—think of it!—and bacon and flapjacks. Your men must be pretty tired."

"They're about used up," said Devers; "but of course when we got your instructions to come on we came."

"Oh, I didn't mean you to come on if you were in camp for the night. Our men would rather eat than sleep and we thought yours would; but here—swallow this," said he, hospitably. "This is no time for business. I haven't tasted anything so good as that coffee in years."

"Thanks," said Devers, pulling gratefully at the steaming tin. "That is good. I'm glad, for my part, you told us to come along," he went on, reverting again to the subject of the major's note. "We shouldn't have done anything of the kind, of course, otherwise,—especially with Davies still out."

"What! Isn't Davies with you?" asked Warren, with sudden anxiety and suspicion. "Why, I thought——"

"Well, we couldn't wait for him, you know, in face of your directions," said the captain, his eyes glancing quickly, almost furtively, from one to another of the bearded faces about him, for Truman, Hastings, Calvert, and all the officers of the little command had gathered. "Of course, I sent couriers right out to guide him——"

"Why—what I meant was for you to bring him along," said the major, gravely, yet not unkindly. "I felt sure, of course, you were within communicating distance at least, even if he hadn't come in. What did that smoke turn out to be when you got a closer look at it?"

"We—didn't get any closer look," answered Devers, in apparent surprise. "You ordered me to bury my dead and then go on. We had just buried them when your next orders reached us,—to join you at once. These, of course, superseded the others."

There was profound silence. The major stood by the camp-fire, his hands clasped behind his back, looking full in the face of the troop commander, all the old sayings that he had ever heard with regard to Devers crowding upon him now. When promoted to the regiment only just in time to join it on this hard campaign, and when assigned to the command of this battalion in which Devers was senior captain, the colonel himself had said, "Be on your guard with Devers. He's the trickiest of subordinates." Old Riggs, lieutenant-colonel commanding the Twelfth, had remarked, "So Devers is in your battalion, is he? Well, when you want him to do anything you stand over him while he's at it, or else do it yourself." An intimate friend and classmate whom he had not seen for years had given the new major this significant pointer: "There's a man who could be one of the most valuable officers in service if he devoted to obeying an order one-tenth the energy he throws into finding a way of avoiding it." Yet, in the honesty and earnestness of his own character, Warren was slow to suspect a fellow-soldier of disloyalty. The campaign had gone on without special friction, though he remembered that he had heard Hastings swearing sotto voce more than once at Devers's cantankerous ways, and he recalled now two or three incidents—little things—in which Devers claimed to have misunderstood instructions; but this was so glaring, so gross a departure from both the spirit and letter of the orders he had given when face to face with the captain, that for a moment or two he was at a loss what to say. He was indignant, too, but it was a rule of his to control his temper and never speak to a subordinate in wrath. He had broken it that morning and was sorry; so when at last he trusted himself to speak, he said,—

"It must have been more than six hours ago that I told you to bury those two men and then go on. Surely, captain, you could not have taken all this time."

"It was nearly five o'clock, sir, when you ordered me to bury my dead as well as I could, and only a little after eight when we finished it; meantime, we had to march seven or eight miles before we could find a place where we could bury them at all well."

"Why, I meant you to bury them right then and there, just where you were, not go marching in search of a place."

"But we couldn't bury them there; major, I had no tools to dig graves in a hard prairie——"

"Then you mean that you failed to go on after Davies,—failed to support him?—that you haven't seen him since I gave those orders? My heaven, Captain Devers! I told you never to let him out of your sight."

"Oh, he wasn't out of sight until darkness,—that is, he was frequently in sight. I not only saw, but communicated with him until that time."

"Thank God for that, at least! If he wasn't attacked before dark he's probably safe,—Indians are cowards in the dark. He ought to be coming along presently, I suppose. He couldn't have been more than a mile or so east of you."

But to this observation, half query, half self-consolation, Captain Devers made no verbal response. He bowed his head as he took a long swig at his can of coffee, and then a big bite into a ham sandwich of portentous size. The major and one or two others considered it a nod of assent, and ascribed to ravenous hunger the captain's failure to respond by word of mouth. Partially relieved of his anxiety on Davies's account and unwilling to spoil a gentleman's first supper after such long deprivation, the battalion commander turned away, saying,—

"Well, eat and drink till you're comforted, anyhow, captain, then we can hear all about it. I'll take a smoke meantime." Truman and Hastings joined him at a fallen Cottonwood a few yards away, and the three puffed their pipes and thanked Providence for the mercies that had come with the close of the day. And then the officer of the guard appeared to ask a question about the posting of the pickets, and, leaving the others with Devers, the major strode off with the officer through the timber to satisfy himself as to the security of the horses for the night, and when he returned—not having been gone ten minutes—Devers had disappeared.

"I wanted to hear his report," said Warren, "and told him so. I supposed he understood." To which neither of his subordinates made reply. When ten minutes more elapsed and Devers did not come, Hastings, noting the major's impatience, called to the orderly trumpeter sitting at the neighboring fire,—

"Raney, go and see if Captain Devers is over with his troop anywhere,—the major desires to see him." Raney was gone full ten minutes, and when he returned it was to say that Devers's first sergeant said the captain had given orders that all talk must stop so that the worn-out men could rest, and the captain himself, rolled in his blanket, was already sound asleep.

"Well, I swear!" exclaimed the major. "Didn't you understand me to say I wanted to hear all about his march as soon as he finished supper?"

"I certainly did," replied Captain Truman, with an accent on the I that meant volumes.

"So did I," growled Hastings; but he never could bear Devers, who was persistently distorting or misunderstanding the orders the adjutant was compelled to convey to him.

"Well, let him sleep," said Warren, finally. "I suppose he's tired out, and very probably Davies will speedily come in."

But midnight came and no Davies. Out on the prairie—now dimly lighted by the rays of the waning moon—the pickets at the east had descried no moving objects. Every now and then the yelp of a coyote on one side of camp would be echoed far over at the other. These, with an occasional paw or snort from the side-lined herd, and the murmuring rush of the river over its gravelly bed, were the only sounds that drifted to the night-watchers from the sleeping bivouac. Towards one o'clock the sergeant of the guard came out to take a peep. Later, about two, Lieutenant Sanders, officer of the guard, a plucky little chap of whom the men were especially fond, made his way around the chain of posts and stayed some time peering with his glass over the dim vista of prairie to the eastward.

"I declare I thought I saw something moving out there," he muttered, after long study. "Are you sure you've seen or heard nothing?" he inquired of the silent sentry.

"Not a thing, lieutenant, beyond coyotes or Indian signals, I can't tell which. They keep at respectful distance, whatever they are."

"Well, even if Mr. Davies's horses were too used up to come, the couriers ought to have got back long ago. Tell them to find me as soon as they come in," said he, and went back to his saddle pillow in the heart of the grove. At its edge a solitary figure was standing gazing out into the night.

"That you, Sanders?" hailed a voice in low tone.

"Yes," answered the lieutenant, shortly, for he recognized Devers and he didn't like him.

"Isn't Davies in yet?"

"No, and it's two o'clock."

"Oh, he'll turn up all right," said the captain, in airy confidence. "It was all absurd sending him out to scout a smoke,—as if we hadn't seen and smelled smoke enough this summer to last a lifetime. He's probably camped down the valley somewhere, and they're all waiting for morning. I'm not worrying about him."

"No, I judge not," muttered Sanders to himself, as he trudged on in the dark. "You're simply keeping awake for the fun of the thing." But even Devers got to sleep at last, and when he woke it was with a sudden start, with broad daylight streaming in his eyes, and stir and bustle and low-toned orders and rapid movement among the men, and Hastings was stirring him up with insubordinate boot and speaking in tones suggestive of neither respect nor esteem.

"Come, tumble up, captain; we're all wanted; Davies has been cut off and massacred."

Already his orderly had led up the captain's horse, pricking his ears and sniffing excitedly around him, and with trembling hands the young German was dragging out from among the blankets the captain's saddle, the hot tears falling as he stooped. His own brother was of Davies's party. Devers was on his feet in an instant, dismayed, and, buckling on his revolver, he went striding through the trees to where Warren stood, pale and distressed, questioning a haggard trooper,—one of the couriers sent on for Davies the previous evening. Devers burst in with interrupting words, and was instantly coolly checked.

"Never mind now, captain. Mount at once and get your men in saddle." Nor would Warren see or speak with him, as with a hundred troopers at his heels—all whose horses were even moderately fit for a ten-mile trot—the major led the way down the valley, a few eager scouts cantering on before. All Devers could learn as they jogged along was that Tate, one of the couriers, had ridden in at seven on an exhausted mule to say that not until after dawn had they found Davies's party,—seven of them,—stone dead, stripped, scalped, gashed, mutilated almost beyond recognition, far out on the slopes east of that fatal spur over which the September sun had risen before he came, leaving his stunned comrade trailing hopelessly behind.