“Soon the big gray wolves came, and hung around, and you could hear them snarl, and snap at each other, but you couldn’t see anything of them except their eyes, which shone in the dark like sparks and stars.  The Lieutenant-General said, ’If I had the Rocky Mountain Rangers here, we would make those creatures climb a tree.’  Then she made believe that the Rangers were in hearing, and put up her bugle and blew the ‘assembly’; and then, ‘boots and saddles’; then the ‘trot’; ‘gallop’; ‘charge!’ Then she blew the ‘retreat,’ and said, ‘That’s for you, you rebels; the Rangers don’t ever retreat!’

“The music frightened them away, but they were hungry, and kept coming back.  And of course they got bolder and bolder, which is their way.  It went on for an hour, then the tired child went to sleep, and it was pitiful to hear her moan and nestle, and I couldn’t do anything for her.  All the time I was laying for the wolves.  They are in my line; I have had experience.  At last the boldest one ventured within my lines, and I landed him among his friends with some of his skull still on him, and they did the rest.  In the next hour I got a couple more, and they went the way of the first one, down the throats of the detachment.  That satisfied the survivors, and they went away and left us in peace.

“We hadn’t any more adventures, though I kept awake all night and was ready.  From midnight on the child got very restless, and out of her head, and moaned, and said, ‘Water, water—­thirsty’; and now and then, ‘Kiss me, Soldier’; and sometimes she was in her fort and giving orders to her garrison; and once she was in Spain, and thought her mother was with her.  People say a horse can’t cry; but they don’t know, because we cry inside.

“It was an hour after sunup that I heard the boys coming, and recognized the hoof-beats of Pomp and Caesar and Jerry, old mates of mine; and a welcomer sound there couldn’t ever be.

Buffalo Bill was in a horse-litter, with his leg broken by a bullet, and Mongrel and Blake Haskins’s horse were doing the work.  Buffalo Bill and Thorndike had lolled both of those toughs.

“When they got to us, and Buffalo Bill saw the child lying there so white, he said, ‘My God!’ and the sound of his voice brought her to herself, and she gave a little cry of pleasure and struggled to get up, but couldn’t, and the soldiers gathered her up like the tenderest women, and their eyes were wet and they were not ashamed, when they saw her arm dangling; and so were Buffalo Bill’s, and when they laid her in his arms he said, ’My darling, how does this come?’ and she said, ’We came to save you, but I was tired, and couldn’t keep awake, and fell off and hurt myself, and couldn’t get on again.’  ’You came to save me, you dear little rat?  It was too lovely of you!’ ’Yes, and Soldier stood by me, which you know he would, and protected me from the wolves; and if he got a chance he kicked the life out of some