For answer Jerrold fumbled in his pocket a moment and drew forth two letters: 

“I wrote these last night, and it was my intention to see that you had them before it grew very hot.  One is addressed to you, the other to Miss Beaubien.  You had better take them now,” he said, wearily.  “There may be no time to talk after this.  Send hers after it’s over, and don’t read yours until then.”

“Why, I don’t understand this, exactly,” said Armitage, puzzled.  “Can’t you tell me about the picture?”

“No.  I promised not to while I lived; but it’s the simplest matter in the world, and no one at the colonel’s had any hand in it.  They never saw this one that I got to show Sloat.  It is burned now.  I said ’twas given me.  That was hardly the truth.  I have paid for it dearly enough.”

“And this note explains it?”

“Yes.  You can read it to-morrow.”

XIX.

And the morrow has come.  Down in a deep and bluff-shadowed valley, hung all around with picturesque crags and pine-crested heights, under a cloudless September sun whose warmth is tempered by the mountain-breeze, a thousand rough-looking, bronzed and bearded and powder-blackened men are resting after battle.

Here and there on distant ridge and point the cavalry vedettes keep vigilant watch, against surprise or renewed attack.  Down along the banks of a clear, purling stream a sentry paces slowly by the brown line of rifles, swivel-stacked in the sunshine.  Men by the dozen are washing their blistered feet and grimy hands and faces in the cool, refreshing water; men by the dozen lie soundly sleeping, some in the broad glare, some in the shade of the little clump of willows, all heedless of the pestering swarms of flies.  Out on the broad, grassy slopes, side-lined and watched by keen-eyed guards, the herds of cavalry horses are quietly grazing, forgetful of the wild excitement of yester-even.  Every now and then some one of them lifts his head, pricks up his ears, and snorts and stamps suspiciously as he sniffs at the puffs of smoke that come drifting up the valley from the fires a mile away.  The waking men, too, bestow an occasional comment on the odor which greets their nostrils.  Down-stream where the fires are burning are the blackened remnants of a wagon-train:  tires, bolts, and axles are lying about, but all wood-work is in smouldering ashes; so, too, is all that remains of several hundred-weight of stores and supplies destined originally to nourish the Indians, but, by them, diverted to feed the fire.

There is a big circle of seething flame and rolling smoke here, too,—­a malodorous neighborhood, around which fatigue-parties are working with averted heads; and among them some surly and unwilling Indians, driven to labor at the muzzle of threatening revolver or carbine, aid in dragging to the flames carcass after carcass of horse and mule, and in gathering together and throwing on the pyre an array of miscellaneous soldier garments, blouses, shirts, and trousers, all more or less hacked and blood-stained,—­all of no more use to mortal wearer.