Three wounded men are up and away; they're running hard for their lives, While bloody corses of riders and horses are quivering under the knives. Some troopers watch from a distant hill with hope that never tires; [Illustration: 0034] There's a reeling dance on the river's edge; its echoes fill the night; In the valley dim its shadows swim on a lengthening pool of light. The scattered troops of Reno look and listen with bated breath, While bugle strains on lonely plains are searching the valley of death. [Illustration: 0035] "What's that like tumbled grave-stones on the hilltop there ahead?" Said the trooper peering through his glass, "My God! sir, it's the dead! "How white they look! How white they look! they've killed 'em--every one! "An' they're stripped as bare as babies an' they're rotting in the sun." And Custer--back of the tumbled line on a slope of the ridge we found him; And three men deep in a bloody heap, they fell as they rallied 'round him. The plains lay brown, like a halted sea held firm by the leash of God; In the rolling waves we dug their graves and left them under the sod. WHISPERIN' BILL So ye 're runnin' fer Congress, mister? Le 'me tell ye 'bout my son-- Might make you fellers carefuller down there in Washington-- He clings to his rifle an' uniform--folks call him Whisperin' Bill; An' I tell ye the war ain't over yit up here on Bowman's Hill. This dooryard is his battle-field--le's see, he was nigh sixteen When Sumter fell, an' as likely a boy as ever this world has seen; An' what with the news o' battles lost, the speeches an' all the noise, I guess ev'ry farm in the neighborhood lost a part of its crop o' boys. 'T was harvest time when Bill left home; ev'ry stalk in the fields o' rye Seemed to stan' tiptoe to see him off an' wave him a fond good-bye; His sweetheart was here with some other gals--the sassy little miss! An' purtendin' she wanted to whisper 'n his ear, she give him a rousin' kiss. Oh, he was a han'some feller! an' tender an' brave an' smart, An' though he was bigger 'n I was, the boy had a woman's heart. I couldn't control my feelin's, but I tried with all my might, An' his mother an' me stood a-cryin' till Bill was out o' sight. His mother she often tol' him, when she knew he was goin' away, That God would take care o' him, maybe, if he didn't fergit to pray; An' on the bloodiest battle-fields, when bullets whizzed in the air, An' Bill was a-fightin' desperit, he used to whisper a prayer. Oh, his comrades has often tol' me that Bill never flinched a bit