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It o hundred and eighteen miles, as the crow flies, between old

Fort Bethune and the rock ford crossing the Bear Water, every foot of

that dreary, treeless distance Indian-haunted, the favorite

skulking-place and hunting-ground of the restless Sioux Winter and

summer this wide expanse had to be suspiciously patrolled by nuarding the

uncertain whereabouts of wandering bands and the purposes of

malecontents, or else drawn hither and thither by continually shifting

rumors of hostile raids upon the cah, difficult service, with small meed of honor attached, while

never had soldiers before found trickier foehters more worthy of their steel

One such company, composed of a dozen mounted infantrymen, accompanied

by three Cree trailers, rode slowly and wearily across the brown

exposed uplands down into the longer, greener grass of the wide valley

bottoed upon a barely perceptible trail which wound

away in snake-like twistings, toward those high, barren hills whose

blue ainst the western sky Upon

every side of them extended the treeless wilderness, the desolate

loneliness of bare, brown prairie, undulating just enough to be

baffling to the eyes, yet so dull, barren, gri heat rose and fell in great