“There’s nothing in Americanism to prevent either inspiration or heroism that I know of,” the General affirmed stoutly, his fine old head up, his eyes gleaming with pride of his profession.

Out through the open doorway, beyond the slapping tent-flap, the keen, gray eyes of the Colonel were fixed musingly on two black points which crawled along the edge of the dulled silver of the distant river—­Miles Morgan and Sergeant O’Hara had started.

“Sergeant!” They were eight miles out now, and the camp had disappeared behind the elbow of Black Wind Mountain.  “There’s something wrong with your horse.  Listen!  He’s not loping evenly.”  The soft cadence of eight hoofs on earth had somewhere a lighter and then a heavier note; the ear of a good horseman tells in a minute, as a musician’s ear at a false note, when an animal saves one foot ever so slightly, to come down harder on another.

“Yessirr.  The Lieutenant’ll remimber ’tis the horrse that had a bit of a spavin.  Sure I thot ’twas cured, and ’tis the kindest baste in the rigiment f’r a pleasure ride, sorr—­that willin’ ’tis.  So I tuk it.  I think ’tis only the stiffness at furrst aff.  ’Twill wurruk aff later.  Plaze God, I’ll wallop him.”  And the Sergeant walloped with a will.

But the kindest beast in the regiment failed to respond except with a plunge and increased lameness.  Soon there was no more question of his incapacity.

Lieutenant Morgan halted his mount, and, looking at the woe-begone O’Hara, laughed.  “A nice trick this is, Sergeant,” he said, “to start out on a trip to dodge Indians with a spavined horse.  Why didn’t you get a broomstick?  Now go back to camp as fast as you can go; and that horse ought to be blistered when you get there.  See if you can’t really cure him.  He’s too good to be shot.”  He patted the gray’s nervous head, and the beast rubbed it gently against his sleeve, quiet under his hand.

“Yessirr.  The Lieutenant’ll ride slow, sorr, f’r me to catch up on ye, sorr?”

Miles Morgan smiled and shook his head.  “Sorry, Sergeant, but there’ll be no slow riding in this.  I’ll have to press right on without you; I must be at Massacre Mountain to-night to catch Captain Thornton to-morrow.”

Sergeant O’Hara’s chin dropped.  “Sure the Lieutenant’ll niver be thinkin’ to g’wan alone—­widout me?” and with all the Sergeant’s respect for his superiors, it took the Lieutenant ten valuable minutes to get the man started back, shaking his head and muttering forebodings, to the camp.

It was quiet riding on alone.  There were a few miles to go before there was any chance of Indians, and no particular lookout to be kept, so he put the horse ahead rapidly while he might, and suddenly he found himself singing softly as he galloped.  How the words had come to him he did not know, for no conscious train of thought had brought them; but they surely fitted to the situation, and a pleasant sense of companionship, of safety, warmed him as the swing of an old hymn carried his voice along with it.