By this time they were far up among the pine-fringed heights, with the broad valley of the Big Horn lying outspread to the west, invisible as the stars above, and neither by ringing shot nor winged arrow had the leaders known the faintest check. It seemed as though the Indians, in their desperate effort to carry off the most important or valued of their charges, were bending all their energies to expediting the retreat. Time enough to turn on the pursuers when once the rocks had closed about them,--when the wounded were safe in the fastnesses, and the pursuers far from supports. But, at the foot of a steep ascent, the two leading scouts,--rival sergeants of rival troops but devoted friends for nearly twenty years,--were seen by the next in column, a single corporal following them at thirty yards' distance, to halt and begin poking at some dark object by the wayside. Then they pushed on again. A dead pony, under a quarter inch coverlet of snow, was what met the eyes of the silently trudging command as it followed. The high-peaked wooden saddle tree was still "cinched" to the stiffening carcass. Either the Indians were pushed for time or overstocked with saddlery. Presently there came a low whistle from the military "middleman" between the scouts and a little advance guard. "Run ahead," growled the sergeant commanding to his boy trumpeter. "Give me your reins." And, leaving his horse, the youngster stumbled along up the winding trail; got his message and waited. "Give this to the captain," was the word sent back by Schreiber, and "this" was a mitten of Indian tanned buckskin, soft and warm if unsightly, a mitten too small for a warrior's hand, if ever warrior deigned to wear one,--a mitten the captain examined curiously, as he ploughed ahead of his main body, and then returned to his subaltern with a grin on his face: "Beauty draws us with a single hair," said he, "and can't shake us even when she gives us the mitten. Ross," he added, after a moment's thought, "remember this. With this gang there are two or three sub-chiefs that we should get, alive or dead, but the chief end of man, so far as 'K' Troop's concerned, is to capture that girl, unharmed."