What followed belongs to history.  Over that last intervening rise they went like demons.  The first to gain the crown, to look down into the valley beyond, was Landor.  As he did so, grim Anglo-Saxon as he was, his whole attitude underwent a transformation.  Back to the others he turned his face, and, plain as on canvas thereon was portrayed war, carnage, and the lust of battle.

“They’re there; a hundred, if a single red!” he shouted.  “Come on!” and the rowels of his great spurs dug deep at his horse’s flanks, dug until the blood spurted.

But a few minutes it took to make the run, yet only a fraction of the time that mounted swarm in the valley held their ground.  Outnumbering those who charged many times, it was not in savage nature to face that unformed oncoming motley of howling, bloodthirsty maniacs.  Slowly at first began the retreat; then as, with great swiftness, the others shortened the distance intervening, it became a contagion, a mania, a stampede.  Every brave for himself, stumbling, crowding through the dismantled ruins of what had the day before been a settlement, howling like their pursuers, seeking but one thing, escape, they headed for the thicket surrounding the river bank; the whistle of bullets in their ears, cutting at the vegetation about them.  Into its friendly cover they plunged, as a fish disappears beneath the surface of a lake, and were swallowed from sight.  That is, all but one.  That one, unhorsed by accident, was left to face that oncoming flood. . . .  But why linger.  Like the charge itself, his fate is history.  These men were but human, and thick about them were the ashes from the roof-trees of their friends.

Summer night, dreamy with caress of softest south wind, musical with the drone of myriad crickets, with the boom of frogs from the low land adjoining the river, melancholy with the call of the catbird, with the infrequent note of the whip-poor-will, was upon the land of the Mandans when the score and one, their dripping ponies once more dry, took up the last relay of their journey.  Night had caught them there in the deserted settlement, and Landor had given the word to halt, to wait.  Now, far to the east, apparently from the breast of Mother Earth herself, the face of the full harvest moon, red as frosted maple leaves through the heated air, slowly rising, lit up the level country softly as by early twilight.  Lingeringly, almost reluctantly, Landor got into his saddle.  Just to his left, impassive as the night, well to the front of the company as he had been that mortal dragging day, sat Scotchman McPherson.  Not once since that early morning scene at Fort Yankton had he spoken a word, not once had he been addressed, had another man shown consciousness of his presence.  A pariah, he had so far kept them company; a pariah, he now awaited the end.  A moment, fair in his seat, Landor paused; then that which the watchers had expected for hours came to pass.  Deliberately he crossed over, drew rein beside the other man.