By the time Hampton swung up the coulée, he had dismissed from his
attention everything but the business that had brought him there. No
lingering thought of Naida, or of the miserable Murphy, was permitted
to interfere with the serious work before him. To be once again with
the old Seventh was itself inspiration; to ride with them into battle
was the chief desire of his heart. It was a dream of years, which he
had never supposed possible of fulfilment, and he rode rapidly forward,
his lips smiling, the sunshine of noonday lighting up his face.
He experienced no fear, no premonition of coming disaster, yet the
reawakened plainsman in him kept him sufficiently wary and cautious.
The faint note of discontent apparent in Brant's concluding
words--doubtless merely an echo of that ambitious officer's dislike at
being put on guard over the pack-train at such a moment--awoke no
response in his mind. He possessed a soldier's proud confidence in his
regiment--the supposition that the old fighting Seventh could be
defeated was impossible; the Indians did not ride those uplands who
could do the deed! Then there came to him a nameless dread, that
instinctive shrinking which a proud, sensitive man must ever feel at
having to face his old companions with the shadow of a crime between.
In his memory he saw once more a low-ceiled room, having a table
extending down the centre, with grave-faced men, dressed in the full
uniform of the service, looking at him amid a silence like unto death;
and at the head sat a man with long fair hair and mustache, his proud
eyes never to be forgotten. Now, after silent years, he was going to
look into those accusing eyes again. He pressed his hand against his
forehead, his body trembled; then he braced himself for the interview,
and the shuddering coward in him shrank back.
He had become wearied of the endless vista of desert, rock, and plain.
Yet now it strangely appealed to him in its beauty. About him were
those uneven, rolling hills, like a vast storm-lashed sea, the brown
crests devoid of life, yet with depressions between sufficient to
conceal multitudes. Once he looked down through a wide cleft in the
face of the bluff, and could perceive the head of the slowly advancing
pack-train far below. Away to the left something was moving, a dim,
shapeless dash of color. It might be Benteen, but of Reno's columns he
could perceive nothing, nor anything of Custer's excepting that broad
track across the prairies marked by his horses' hoofs. This track
Hampton followed, pressing his fresh mount to increased speed,
confident that no Indian spies would be loitering so closely in the
rear of that body of cavalry, and becoming fearful lest the attack
should occur before he could arrive.