“P. S.—I am as well as can be expected, but my baby, my darling, darling little Willie, is very weak. O, God! help him! Save him, kind friend, even if you can not save me. Again, good-by.” • • • • • Mrs. Blynn passed her time in drudgery, hoping against hope up to the morning of the battle, when General Sheridan’s gallant soldiers, under the command of General Custer, came charging with loud huzzahs upon the village. Black Kettle’s camp was the first attacked, though all the village was, of course, aroused. The heart of Mrs. Blynn must have beat wildly, mingling with hope and dread, when she heard the noise and firing, and saw the United States soldiers charging upon her captors. Springing forward, she exclaimed: “Willie, Willie, saved at last!” but the words were scarce on her lips, ere the tomahawk of the revengeful Santana was buried in her brain; and in another instant little Willie was in the grasp of the monster, and his head dashed against a tree; then, lifeless, he was thrown upon the dying mother’s breast, whose arms instinctively closed around the dead baby boy, as though she would protect him to the last moment of her life. General Sheridan and his staff, in searching for the bodies of Major Elliott and his comrades, found these among the white soldiers, and they were tenderly carried to Fort Cobb, where, in a grave outside the stockade, mother and child lie sleeping peacefully, their once bruised spirits having joined the loved husband and father in the land where captivity is unknown. Surely, if heaven is gained by the sorrows of earth, this little family will enjoy the brightest scenes of the celestial world. CHAPTER XXVII. MOVE TO WYOMING—FALSE FRIENDS—THE MANUSCRIPT OF MY NARRATIVE TAKEN BY ANOTHER PARTY AND PUBLISHED—I GO TO WASHINGTON. Mr. Kelly’s sudden death, my own sickness, and the scourge of cholera, all coming at one time, proved disastrous to me in a pecuniary way. I was defrauded in every way, even to the robbing of my husband’s body of the sum of five hundred dollars the day of his death. However, I finally disposed of the remnant of property left, and started for Wyoming, where lived the only persons beside myself who survived the attack on our train. They had prospered, and in a spirit of kindness, as I then thought, invited and prevailed on me to share their home. It proved a most disastrous move for me. My leisure hours, since my release from captivity, had been devoted to preparing for publication, in book form, a narrative of my experience and adventures among the Indians, and it was completed. The manuscript was surreptitiously taken, and a garbled, imperfect account of my captivity issued as the experience of my false friend, who, by the aid of an Indian, escaped after a durance of only one day and night. [Illustration: Red Cloud, the Orator Sioux Chief.]