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A Terrible Night on the Picket Line

By Sergeant Hiram Ellis, 2nd U.S Cavalry

In October 1863, after the great flanking march of the Army of the Potomac, the regiment which I belonged, the 2d U.S. Cavalry, was sent into Maryland to get necessary supplies and to relieve our horses from the hardships of the campaign which had rendered them almost useless. We passed through Leesburg, crossed the Potomac at Young’s Island, followed the tow path down to Seneca Locks, under the canal through the culvert and went into camp near the main or river road. We had hardly got settled for the night when the patrol that was always marching up and down on the tow path, reported that an important post of the picket a few miles down the river was without guard. And it was afterwards found that the patrol on its downward march had reported the same to the Scots 900, a regiment stationed a few miles further down. Upon receipt of this report our colonel issued the following order:

"Send a company to that point to guard it for the night, to place one sentinel at the mouth of the culvert and two others at his discretion.”

At that time I was first sergeant and temporarily in command of the company. The sergeant-major brought the order to me, saying that my company was detailed for that duty, and gave me directions how to find the place. We saddled up and set out, arriving at the place just after dark, and posted the sentinels according to orders. In order to make my story clear I will make this explanation.

From the main, or river, road to the canal, it was about twenty rods by a small road or by-path, surrounded with sparsely growing shrubs and small pines. This path had a slight rise for about half the distance, then fell off sharply to the bottom of a ravine, this ravine running parallel with the river. The path here made a slight turn to the right, continuing to the bed of a stream that flowed through the culvert, beyond which was a ford of the river. Directly across the ravine, on a slight bluff, stood a block house, or “bomb proof,” and I must describe this, as it has much to do with my story. It was built by setting two rows of timber like a stockade, one outside the other about seven feet apart, and the space between filled with earth, the top covered with heavy timbers and then with earth to a depth of about seven feet. The only entrance to this block house was through a hole so small that only one man could get through at a time, and on hands and knees at that. While the sentinels were being posted, some of the men investigated the hole, got inside and built a small fire so that the inside of the place could be seen. It looked like a good place to spend the night. Our horses were ranged along the bottom of the ravine and fastened to trees and bushes that grew plentifully on one side.

Upon getting inside the block house it was found that while a good place to spend the night, it would be a bad place in case of attack, because one man with a picked stick would hold us all prisoners or starve us to death. It was therefore ordered that if attacked every man should get out and get to his horse as soon as possible. I will say here, that I had posted sentinels as follows: One at the mouth of the culvert, on a bank of the canal further down the stream, and one at the highest point of the by-path already mentioned. We had hardly got ready to spend the night in the block house when the sentinel posted up the road, challenged, and called out the guard. We got out through that unfortunate hole as quick as we could into line and after a parley allowed one of the party to approach and give the countersign. It was then found to be a company of the “Scots 900” sent there with orders almost identical with mine. It was under command of a lieutenant who at once took command of the whole. He looked at my orders and together we rode around and visited my sentinels, who challenged sharply and required the countersign in good style.

He approved of what I had done and suggested that as his orders required him to post sentinels he would take two men from his company and for relief he would take three men from my company and two from his and so on till morning. One of these men was posted south of the block house, on high ground, and the others to the north on what would be a continuation of the ravine, or what we supposed was a cropping ledge slightly higher than the surrounding intervale. It was afterward found on a direct line with the culvert. These sentinels were posted without saying anything about it to the others. Then our troubles began. I will say that the night was very dark, the stars could be dimly seen through the haze, and the atmosphere was in condition to transmit sound to a long distance. No wind was perceptible. We had scarcely got inside the block house when a shot was fired, immediately followed by others, and a general uproar outside. We all made a dive for that confounded hole and got out, and there was trouble enough. The sentinels on the low ground were chasing each other, challenging and shooting right and left, and those on the high ground were firing and calling out the guard. And then all made a break for the block house. After much confusion order was restored and as no enemy was found, the sentinels were returned to their posts. Then the lieutenant and myself investigated. We found that the last sentinel posted had fired first and he explained that he had heard something and seen something move, and had challenged and threatened and then fired, but since returning to his rest had seen nothing. I had posted Frank Kelley at the mouth of the culvert, as good a man as I had. He explained that he had heard men talking at the further end of the culvert and after a few pistol shots had been fired, a whole battery of artillery fired, and seeing the flash of a gun up in the field felt sure we were attacked, and made all the noise he could. A further investigation showed that the echo in the culvert would account for all the noise he had heard.

We then returned to the block house and the lieutenant decided to relieve the guard then and start new so as to avoid any further trouble. The detail was made and we crawled out of that miserable hole and made the rounds systematically, relieving the guard and leaving everything in good order. As the night was chilly, the lieutenant and myself crawled inside once more and had scarcely got in when shots were fired and all hands got outside of that infernal hole and found that the shots we heard were from some party up in the main road, and that a regular battle was going on up there. We felt sure that the enemy was around and made a disposition to give him a warm reception as soon as he came within range. Our whole force was drawn up across the path at the bottom of the ravine. Our carbines were fully charged and every man was instructed just what to do. Soon the firing died out and we could hear a parley going on and after considerable loud talk the whole party seemed to be coming towards us. The lieutenant placed one of his best men at the post on the top of the hill with positive orders to challenge before he fired. True to his instructions, when the party got near enough, he sung out “Who comes there?” fired, and then scampered down the hill to where we stood in line of battle. The forces approaching, then knowing that it was the enemy, opened up on us with everything they could, and we knowing it was the enemy, returned the compliment in kind and together we filled the sky full of bullets for a short time. But our fire soon slackened and the enemy appeared to have retreated. We began to look around to see if any of our men were hurt, when a voice was heard asking what troops we were.

After a long parley he was allowed to come in, and we found that he belonged to our regiment and that the whole crowd were United States troops sent to our relief. It seems that when we had our first scrimmage the noise we made was heard up to our camp and reported to the colonel that Sergeant Ellis was attacked, and he at once ordered out a company to our relief. The noise was also heard down to the camp of the Scots nine hundred, and a company was ordered out to their relief. These two companies meeting where they had no right to expect any troops, naturally mistook each other for the enemy and pitched into each other, and had a regular fight; but after a while found out their mistake and joined together, but were unable to account for the first firing they had heard. They approached our position, and the reception we gave them led them to believe that the picket was in the hands of the enemy, and had therefore opened on us with all their might. About this time it began to grow light, so the pickets were called in and each party prepared to return to camp and report; but first the ranking officers wanted to find out how the row began.

The man who fired the first shot was found and taken to the place where he was posted to explain how it was. He insisted that he had seen and heard something that would not answer his challenge; and sure enough on the low ground, right in front of where he stood lay an old cow — dead, the blood still oozing froma bullet wound. We then started for camp. When we got up in sight of the main road we saw down on the right a line of skirmishers and upon the left a line of skirmishers, all coming towards us, and all wore the blue; and behind each was the rest of their regiment in all the pomp and circumstance of war.

As soon as we were near enough to understand the case each line involuntarily halted and looked at each other. Then the commander of each regiment, seeming to comprehend, rode to the front between the lines and went at each other, and if you never heard a wordy war you would have heard one then. It did seem as if blood would be spilt then, if not before. But their ammunition was soon expended, and more explanations followed, when it was found that when our second and third fights were going on it was reported to our colonel, “Sergeant Ellis is having another fight down there,” and to the colonel of the Scots 900, “They are at it again up there.” Then each colonel called in all the force he could raise and came to the rescue as I have described. After the investigation had all been gone over again without much satisfaction to any one, each regiment started for its own camp, when a broad smile came over all that had not actually been engaged, but to us who were there, it was a serious affair. We were all badly frightened and much ammunition had been expended but the only thing wounded or killed was that old cow.

#us cavalry #american cavalry #american dragoons #american civil war #us dragoons #union cavalry

A Cavalry Veteran

By Joseph Mills Hanson

This sabre-cut on my forehead scored? I picked it up at Beverly Ford The day we turned “Jeb” Stuart’s flank And hurled him from the river bank. It was parry and thrust with a hearty will As we fought for the guns on Fleetwood Hill, While over the fields and through the pines Backward and forward surged the lines; Twelve thousand men in a frenzied fray; Charge and rally and mad melee — Oh, the crash and roar as the squadrons met, The cheers and yells — I can hear them yet! But we’d forced the fords, so our work was done, And we galloped away ere set of sun.

This welt of a bullet across my arm? It’s a scratch I caught at McPherson’s farm That morning our outposts chanced to strike Hill’s solid corps on the Cashtown pike. Hour by hour or thin ranks stood Stubbornly holding each fence and wood, Till, down the road where the wheat-fields grew And the spires of Gettysburg pierced the blue, WE saw a column of dust arise, A welcome sight to our anxious eyes, And into the hell of the battle’s roar Reynolds marched with the old First Corps; But the field where the rebel flood was stayed Was held by the stand that Buford made.

This limp I got as my horse went down When Fitz Lee ran us through Buckland town. Out of the woods with a spurt of flame, Driving backward our van, he came. Custer struggled to turn the thrust, But they whirled him off like a fleck of dust; Davies, shattered in front and flanks, Took to the fields with flying ranks, And off we scampered, like boys at play, Over the hills and far away. Crack! A shot through my good steed’s knee; Down he tumbled on top of me, And I crawled to a thicket, right glad to lie Till the jubilant rebels had thundered by.

This scar on my neck was a bayonet blow From a stalwart Johnnie sat Waynesboro, Where we routed Early from hill to hill And tossed him over to Charlottesville, Clearing the valley, all seamed and scored By waste and pillage and fire and sword, Down we galloped like Attila’s Huns, Capturing trenches and flags and guns, Bagging the foe ere the fight began. I seized a flag, but the color guard Passed my parry and thrust me hard — Though we made it up and were friends for aye When I shared my rations with him next day!

#us cavalry #american cavalry #american dragoons #american civil war #us dragoons #union cavalry

By the Beard of Saint Crispin

Story by James Warner Bellah

Image: The Lost Dispatches by Charles Schreyvogel

As ephemeral as an old love, those frontier days. Letters tied in sandalwood. A sprig of lavender pressed between the brittling pages of Phillip St. George Cooke's Cavalry Tactics. A bronze campaign medal on its frayed ribbon, green with verdigris.

And then, like a carbine shot in a narrow defile, the reality of a blue forage cap in an attic trunk, with crossed and tarnished sabers over the cracked visor. Pull it down sharply and to the right, and the insolent rake of it above the grinning eyes and the yellow hair echoes in the eyes and the yellow hair of the portrait above-

"Mister Topliff, sir, new Officer of the Day. Have you any special orders for me?"

Major Lydacker turned his head to avoid meeting eyes and looked out the window.

"Yes-ah-Mister Topliff-ah." He was a negative man, Lydacker, carried at the will of the world and held in authority now by his shoulder straps alone, unburnished by personal respect. Out by the flagpole, the trumpeter was sounding 'watering call', and the brassy scream echoed across the packed dirt parade ground of Fort Starke as the Omaha Stage circled in and swept up to the Quartermaster's corral and came to a full stop in the choking backdraft of its own dust cloud, dry axels shrieking.

The mail and the latest numbers of the Army and Navy Chronicle and a bottle of Rowland Kalydan and Mrs. Brittles' Rhenish Cologne, S.T. Taylor's Monthly Fashion Report - the last six copies - and a box of Holman's Liver Pads for Major Lydacker. The purple silk moiré matinee for Jennifer Berrien, and Mister Topliff's Bascomb Boots from London.

"I want you to relieve Captain Babbage with the surveying detail, Mister Topliff. On the Paradise River, Mister Topliff." Major Lydacker's dampish eyes blinked.

Through the window and across the parade ground he could see the ladies of his household crossing across the Quartermaster's corral - the large boned woman of his youth, grown stonily against him. His stolid-faced daughters, and the lovely dark head of their guest from St. Louis , Jennifer Berrien, who had gone to school with Olivia Lydacker.

Mister Topliff saw them, too, out of the corners of his eyes, as he stood forward on his toes, vibrant with suppressed anxiety, hoping back frantically inside him that the Major had not said it, but knowing that he had. Mister Topliff was the senior Lieutenant at Fort Starke. As Adjutant to Lydacker, he had been thrown constantly with Olivia and Henrietta until Jennifer Berrien had arrived at Fort Starke for a summer's lark with the Army. Pretty Jennifer Berrien, with the pick of all the blades in old St. Louis. So he had been relieved as Adjutant and sent back to line duty to keep him away from the Lydacker quarters except on invitation. But that was not going to be enough now, for there were still the picnics, the rides, and the cotillions. So then, to the Paradise River with the surveying detail, in utter banishment.

"Do you mean for me to leave at once, sir? Or will tomorrow be time enough? I have just gone on duty as Officer of the Day. Is someone to hold the belt for me - to relieve me - or am I to finish the tour of duty?"

Major Lydacker meant at once - for there was the cotillion tonight. He meant Mister Cohill to hold the belt. He said, "Finish the tour, Mister Topliff; tomorrow will be time enough."

Isaac Lydacker looked like "Cump" Sherman. Not the black-and-white impersonality of the school books, but the man who burned the heart out of Georgia himself. Thinning red hair combed wide and wet across the broad skull, drying quickly into lifeless wig hair. Fair skin, freckle-blotched on the full-domed forehead and looking almost pocked with the bite of the prairie sun. And the short beard, chopped ragged to the chin above the flowing collar and flat bow of black satin. Black eyes. Connemara black, but with no fire left in them. At Willard's once - on Fourteenth Street in Washington - a tippler had shouted, "Make way for General Sherman!" and the crowd had turned for a moment. But the resemblance was on the surface only, for Lydacker's wife commanded, not the Major, and those things show.

Sergeant Shattuck's bull howl tore the air as Mister Topliff stepped out and closed the Old Man's door. "Haid dup! Neck tight t' th' collar! Eyes on the levul! Don't look at the horse and don't look at the ground! Shoulders back and down! Chest up and stummick in! Elbows close to the body! Forward... walk... haow!"

"Good morning, Miz Lydacker; your servant, ma'am. ...Miss Olivia, Miss Henrietta, Miss Jennifer." What is it exactly that betrays a man for what he is; that exposes the gentle years of his breeding?

Not the superficiality of schools, nor manners that can be sedulously imitated. Intonation possibly. The voice of Mister Topliff was pleasant and well turned. In his gloved left hand he held the scabbard blade of his badge of duty exactly parallel to the yellow stripe of his booted left leg, but with the same negligent deftness he brought to the teacups - the same passive balance of potential strength. In Mister Topliff's case, the people of the United States had not, at the public expense, imposed a surface patina of manner upon a roughly bred yokel. Mister Topliff had been born a gentleman. West Point in this case had merely to make him an Officer, with no attempt at the impossible.

The sun was on the brilliant gold of his hair. His smile was eager.

"Oh, it's Mister Topliff, m'maw," Olivia Lydacker giggled.

"Indeed is it? I thought you would have been gone by now, Mister Topliff." Mrs. Lydacker nodded curtly.

"Gone, ma'am?"

"To the Paradise River. Captain Babbage is coming in. The decision was made to relieve him, I believe, yesterday evening. He's been promoted and transferred out."

To the Paradise River?" Jennifer Berrien turned quickly, her dark head up, her wide eyes full on D'Arcy Topliff. "You're not going to the Paradise?"

D'Arcy was acutely conscious of the heavy displeasure of Mrs. Lydacker. It was almost as tangible as a hand pushed against his shoulder. She stood there, a solid-limbed pillar of ambitious womanhood, frowning upon him from the social pinnacle of Fort Starke. The Commanding Officer's lady at bay, with two plain girls to marry off and a lovely visitor loose in the corral with every Lieutenant's eyes upon her.

"Tomorrow, Miss Jennifer." D'Arcy said.

"But it's over a hundred miles. You'll stay out there?" Jennifer's eyes were wide.

"I shall stay. I'm taking over the surveying detail." Mister Topliff said. "But at least there will be the cotillion tonight. I shan't miss that, Miss Jennifer!"

"But you were supposed to go today!" Mrs. Lydacker insisted, "It was decided Captain Babbage was to come in."

D'Arcy Topliff turned to her and brought his spurred heels together. And he bowed to her, for he hated her now with black unholiness, and he dared not show his face where it was written.

"But I'm leaving for St. Louis in four days, Mister Topliff! I'm going home!" Jennifer's voice was shrill.

And there it was again - but what was it? It struck vitally into the bachelor despair of D'Arcy Topliff. Soft white lawn with black velvet ribbons at the wrist and neck. A tiny slipper tip and the breath of gardenias. Her waist so small that, thumb balls to fingertips, he was sure he could encompass it in his two hands. And he was in agony of soul. But with it all there came some faint warning, for suddenly, with that shrill timbre in her voice, he couldn't see her in his mother's withdrawing room with the portraits and the Lamerie silver. There would be some slight pretension that his aunts and sisters would feel at once - some thread of shoddy in the silk.

"You are deserting me, Mister Topliff! And the tiny slipper tapped once in anger. Her fine eyes were clouded. And she turned her back.

And in his own life? Sun and alkali dust and hard water. Rough quarters and babies dead of the smallpox.

"Desertion, Miss Jennifer, is a harsh word." But she was so very lovely, and youth is forever youth.

No one like Jennifer had ever come to Starke before; no one like her would ever come again. And the future is always so very far away. Tonight at the cotillion then, when the moon was high, he would take the step that would hold her forever. It was impossible now for him to breathe. In a moment more he would drop of suffocation. Silver spurs in the moonlight, the warmth of her fingertips. "Jennifer, will you be my wife?" Tonight then - tonight! But she was not looking at him any longer. Her head was turned in the morning sunlight.

"There is that nice, Mister Cohill, isn't it? She said.

Mrs. Lydacker clucked up her brood. "Come, girls... Come, Jennifer. Come." A harsh female voice on the pleasent morning air, and they swept on, leaving Mister Topliff standing there in the inarticulate misery of the soul.

But only for a brief second, for heels clicked behind him with the sound of a shot fired from a revolving pistol, and there was Breech, his dog robber, with a great wooden boot case from London on his shoulder with his breath a rusty blade in sunlight.

"Beg pardon, sir; the boots!"

D'Arcy Topliff looked at the man. "Breech..." He said. "Just how drunk are you this morning? We leave for the Paradise tomorrow to take over the surveying detail. Can you pack?"

"Drunk, sir? Me drunk?" Breech looked hurt.

"How did you smash the side of the box?" D'Arcy asked him.

"That ain't smashed, sir; that's shot. The Stage had a nine-mile running fight with Comanches just east of Black Cloud Agency. Killed the military courier and tore the right elbow clean out of the relief driver's arm. Clean out. Burned the axles almost through. All the baggage is shot up."

Topliff pushed open the door to his quarters and stepped inside.

"Molly and Captain both go with us." He said. "You ride Molly, Breech. We'll be gone six weeks. Take both my Remingtons and a hundred rounds of ammunition each. I want some buffalo robes for Christmas presents."

Breech took off his forage cap and unbuttoned his jacket. "With the luck y've got, y'll be a Gen'ril yet, sir."

"And what's lucky about the Paradise?"

"Ladies." Said Breech. "Don't mix with cava'ry. They dismount a man, to fight on foot. And that;s the defensive. And cava'ry ain't too good on the defensive, it says here in the book. Well, there ain't no ladies in the Paradise. It could've been Mister Cohill, or Mister Aisquith, or Mister Sitterding, or Mister McKimmie sent out to relieve Captain Babbage, couldn't it?" Breech took the wood axe to the boot box and levered a corner open. "But you had the luck, Mister Topliff, so it was you."

"Drunk or sober..." Topliff said. "I'm familiar with your broken heart and your philosophy of love. Spare me a repetition of the details."

"Broken head, rather," Breech said. "If I hadn't got to the corner before she saw which way I turned, I never would've made the Recruiting Officer, what with her with the coal shovel in one hand and a hand axe in the other. That were twenty year ago, sir, in Lynn, Massachusetts, and I haven't regretted a day of it! Not a day! Ah, love! What's th' uniformand what time's reveille tomorrow? Has the Commanding Officer's wife decided?"

Mister Topliff turned, his face flaming. "I'll have you tried someday, Breech! Where's the bottle? Hand it over!"

"You're an uncommon hard man, sir. It's in the lean-to."

"Hand it over, damn your soul, or stay behind! It's an order!"

"No need to hand it over." Breech shook his head. "It's empty. You can look, if you don't believe me. Out here, with whiskey, I don't take chances... What's so good about English boots, sir?" He had the case open and stood now looking down into it.

"On leave." Mister Topliff said. " After a round dozen whiskey punches at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, when the salesman is glib, they present themselves to the imagination as the ultimate goal of all living. That's all I remember."

"I can make boots as well as saddles." Breech said. "And anything else made of leather, and there's no Englishman can outdo me, by the Beard of Saint Crispin!"

"Whose beard?"

"The patron saint of shoemakers, sir, and he frowns at the McKay stitching machines and splitting machines and dieing-out machines. The lapstones, sir, and chewin' is the only way. Chewin's the secret of all of it!"

"Chewing what?"

"The leather itself - in your teeth. Chewin' it soft - soft as chammy, soft as Canton flannel, soft for fine waxed thread and a thin needle, so you can't hardly see the stitch line."

"What's wrong with those boots?"

Breech lifted them from the case. "Nothing wrong with the boots, sir; only with the tips." He set them down on the hearthstone, side by side. Their polished symmetry was alive with quiet elegance - all but the tips. There were splintered pompoms on the tips, blossoming there like small cauliflowers, and the room was alive with aromatic insistence of Mrs. Brittles' Rhenish Cologne. "All them ocean miles from the old country!" -Breech shook his head- "And two months' prairie pay in the cavalry! What a powerful lot of damage a fifty-four caliber slug can do to leather. Fancy having one dead center in your liver."

Mister Topliff swore. Mister Topliff was a civilized man turned professional soldier. His swearing, on occasion, was magnificent. Constructive and, by association and contrast, completely ingenuous. "Throw them out, Breech! Get them out of here! I don't ever want to see them again!"

"They could be fixed." Breech said. "If we could only get calf kip. But out here I misdoubt we can get it fine enough. Maybe, if I could tan it myself. All it needs is a tiny piece for each retipping, but this is beautiful leather and it has to be matched with leather as fine - a piece from the buttocks of a recruit would do it. They'd be bluchers then, not Wellingtons, but they'd still be the best boots west of Omaha."

Spurred feet at the double raced down the clattering duckboards and turned in and stopped. A sharp knock.

"Mister Topliff, sir, the Commanding Officer wants you at once!"

Major Lydacker's hands were trembling. The ripped pouch lay on one end of the table, blackened and stiff with the courier's blood; the official mail strewn before him, its letters touched and smeared. One he picked up and held for a second and put down again, folding his hands under the table to hide their trembling.

"The Comanches are up, Mister Topliff. East of Black Cloud. And the Inspector General!" He nodded to the letter. "Left Elkhorn on the seventeenth, traveling without escort as usual, in a paymaster's wagon. The damned old fool!"

Mister Topliff coughed with ingrained discretion.

Lydackerhad risen from his chair and stepped furiously toward the window behind him. He turned at D'Arcy Topliff's cough, and there was, strangely enough, the memory of old fire in his eyes now.

"I said a damned fool and an old fool, Mister Topliff! I was at the Academy with Gideon Bew, and I've served with him twice since, God save his brevet tank of Major-General! His senatorial father-in-law got him the Eleventh Corps in Eighteen Sixty-three, and had command just long enough to be relieved for abysmal incompetence, but he wrote a book about himself anyway. He always travels without escort. For the same reason, he dyes his hair and wears a belly corset. It makes him feel you. But with the Comanches up - I won't have a Major-General's scalp ifted in my territory, even if he couldn't command an Army Corps!"

"No, sir."

"I don't want you surveying on the Paradise, Mister Topliff. I can trust your diplomacy, and you're the best junior Officer I have. I'm losing Captain Babbage through promotion and transfer, but Cohill can relieve him. Not you. Take half of 'F' that was left here, and get out toward Black Cloud Agency. Get out casually and lay across the Comanche trail. Estimate and send in a report. Hang to it, but under no circumstances fight unless you are forced to it. General Bew may be on the stage route or he may cross the East Branch at Sudro's Fording. Fall in with him. I don't aim to flatter his vanity with any suggestion of a guard of honor. Fall in with him casually and diplomatically, and keep the hair on his pompous head until he gets here. Well?"

"No questions, sir."

"That's at once this time, not tomorrow, Mister Topliff. Move out."

There is an obsenity in men's souls that fights their fear. And only those men are sensitive to it who know deep fear. The obsenity lies in the uncertain fascination of death, and a man will still ride toward that fascination, glassy-eyed and dry-throated, even though he knows by spiritual instinct that his number is up.

A company of cavalry at full strength is fifty men. 'F' was down to forty. Mister Topliff had seventeen men behind him, four of them recruits. But he had Sergeant Shattuck and he had Sergeant Tyree and he had Breech. Best of all, he had himself and his educated brain and his willful youth, tempered and controlled by seven years on frontier station - which engenders an unholy respect for the Indian as a light cavalryman, a suicidal fear of his tigerish cruelty and an inexorable knowledge that your command is it, no matter how large or small it is. Once action is joined, there will be no reserve to commit as the textbooks would like, for west of the Paradise there is no reserve.

Miles back down the trail, the violins were tuning for the schottische, but Mister Topliff was bivouacked under the sky with the lost-soul wail of the coyote weaving the air raucously beyond the night, grazing area.

"Sergeant Shattuck, reveille is at three-thirty. The trumpeter will not sound calls until further orders." He was young, Mister Topliff, so he didn't feel his exultation for obscenity. He felt it for the high wine of stimulation because youth knows it will never die in action or in any other way. Youth's immortality keeps youth immune from dying or growing old.

And Mister Topliff commanded. A subaltern of hussars, schooled craftily in his fledgling years by good Captains and good Sergeants. Alone now with a wide continent about him to win his little bit of empire. The sole representative before God and man of the sovereign dignity of the United States.

"Breech! Turn to. Get coffee on. It's three o'clock."

Two days later and eleven miles east of Black Cloud Agency, they crossed the Comanche trace.

"Ho up!" Sergeant Shattuck, with the point, threw himself off and knelt down, bending close to the ground.

"Unshod ponies!" He called. "Don't dismount! Pass the word back to Mister Topliff at the gallop! Here's the war party!"

Burr Shattuck and D'Arcy Topliff stood there by the trail side, looking at each other and looking off across the horizon where the red and yellow haze of distance hid the secret. Shattuck's eyes were water blue and sunbleached. D'Arcy's were still dark, but beginning to pale off. He went over the thinking, for both of them.

"They come up from the south and they cross the stagecoach trail before they know they're crossing it. They know it only when they see the coach. That's why it was a running fight, and not a fixed ambush. Do you agree with me, Sergeant?"

Shattuck nodded. "So far, so good, sir."

"Now they've recrossed the trail at this point and headed south again, for Sudro's fording-"

"They got someone with'em knows our alternate stage routes? Is that it? They think the next stage out will go the south route... to avoid them? That is it! They don't aim to miss the next stage."

"I don't give a damn what they aim to do." Mister Topliff said. "But the Inspector General, General Bew, left Elkhorn on the seventeenth. If he was on this route, we'd have met him by now. But we haven't met him, so he must be on the south route, crossing at Sudro's. I'm going overland by compass, Sergeant." - D'Arcy snapped open his hunting case watch - "Because I don't feel I've got much time left. Stand to horse!"

Mister Topliff lost out by only fifty minutes. Fifty minutes in a sixteen-hour forced march. Sergeant Tyree saw the long and stringy dust clouds from the last ridge line, with the black paymaster's wagon streaking ahead of them, its glass windows flashing in the sun like the mirrors of a distant heliograph. Then it went over on its side and the dust clouds closed up on it like a flung riding cloak and stopped still, rising high in the air above it, and above what was happening there.

The Indians were still at it, screaming around it, when D'Arcy Topliff hit them. Orders or no orders, and to high hell with the Indian Bureau. Dismounted and rancid with fresh blood, the Comanches were tearing and strewing the driver spread-eagled to a rear wheel of the paymaster's wagon, his eyelids gone, his tongue gone, his-

"As foragers! At the gallop!"

Down the trail, like the devil before dawn! Get'em like partridges! Between'em and their ponies. Cut'em off! Hamstring the ponies! Tent-peg'em, the sons! They aren't men! They're God's travesty of men. Look at the driver- look at him! Go on, vomit. Dortmunder, your horse is gutted; he's trailing'em! And he was, in gleaming white ropes of the dust.

Gideon Bew lay out from the wagon, sprawled and disordered and tossed aside. They had torn off his uniform frock coat with shoulder straps, and the lawn shirt and his polished boots and trousers. He lay there flattened, as old as he ever would be now, in his belly corset and his drawers, with his life run out at last, and unable to worry about it. But for all that, a white man and a brevet Major-General with his scalp torn off him; his jowls loosened by it until they hung from his cheekbones across his ears like wet pie dough. It's never the man, it's the rank he graces, and the principle of the thing.

Sergeant Shattuck drove up and leaned forward in the saddle. "With the Lieutenant's leave, we'll bivouac on the rising ground across the river." And he pointed. "Shall I pass the order?"

"Good. Pass it. What are the casualties?"

"Dortmunder killed, sir. Nine wounded. The-ah-driver died."

"I understand you, Sergeant. Thank you."

"And we killed every one of them. Every one. The bodies tally even with the ponies." Shattuck looked down at the cooling debris of the Inspector General. "So there will be no one to take back talk of a scapled white chief. There'll be no gossip about it in the tepees, sir."

"There will be no talk of a scapled white chief in the tepees, in the barracks or anywhere, Sergeant Shattuck. I'm taking General Bew's body back in to Fort Starke for burial. Find every item of his uniform. It's around somewhere. I want him properly dressed. And fetch me two ponchos to wrap him in."

"That I can do, but-" Shattuck looked at Mister Topliff. He looked at Breech. He looked at the red mouth on top of General Bew's head that was shrieking with silent laughter.

D'Arcy Topliff said. "Sergeant Shattuck, I won't talk. Breech here won't talk. And you won't talk. None of the three of us will talk, because we all work out here and we know what keeping face means in a thankless job like ours. We have General Bew's scalp. The Comanche who lifted it didn't take it far, because it came apart. Two pieces, Shattuck - the bald scalp and the toupee the General wore to hide it. That's loss of face to an Indian - they'd laugh him out of the wickiups - so he dropped it where he lifted it. Breech is a saddler. There is a jar of pomade in the General's razor case to smooth the job up. The scalp will be in place when we arrive at Fort Starke, and no one will see the stitches. No one will lose face. And Major Lydacker will face no court of inquiry."

"What scalp, sir?" Shattuck sat back and saluted.

The Omaha Stage, with it's escort, wound slowly up the rising slope to the Paradise Divide. Far off to the northward there was a small detachment of unwashed cavalry headed back for Fort Starke. Jennifer Berrien looked from the coach window, but she hadn't the plainswoman's eyes. She saw only a faint and distant flash in the sunlight, like dropped quicksilver. But it was a last gallant gesture of good-by; it was a saber whipped up smartly to the salute and dropped again and sheathed. But she didn't know it for what it was, and she didn't really care. Nor did D'Arcy Topliff care too much, after the first deep hurt was ridden out of him.

Breech pushed open the quarters door. "The Lieutenant's got it, sir."

"I've got what?"

"Company 'F', sir. As replacement for Captain Babbage. The Old Man's given it to you. You take over tonight at Retreat. And I've got'em fixed beautiful for you. Beautiful!" He pushed back the Navajo curtain and brought out the Bascomb boots.

The tips were as smooth and as even as they had been when they left the bootmaker's bench in Ryder Street.

"How in high hell did you do it, Breech?"

"All in the leather, sir. And there's real luck in them boots now, as well as good work. By the beard of Saint Crispin, you'll die a Major-General, for I've sewn the omen into'em - the talisman, the good-luck piece. Calf kip that was good enough, I could not come by, but, beggin' the Captain's pardon, what would a Gen'ral want of his own bald crown in death, if he was so ashamed of it in life as to hide it with a toopay? Nothing, you say? And I say nothing. So he's buried in his toopay alone, with only Saint Gabriel to know, and you've got your Bascomb boots with the tips back on'em, better than calf kip, could make'em, by the Beard of Saint Crispin! ...It's half an hour to retreat, and the bathtub's fill in the lean-to, and there's a lovely blonde filly in on the down Stage they do say is the daughter of the Department Commander - slender in the pasterns, lithe in the flank, and fiery-"

"Breech, remind me to hang you from the tallest tree west of the Paradise, before I die... and lay out my best blouse!"