The remainder of the company was almost out of sight as we rounded the shoulder of the gorge. The afternoon sunlight dazzled me. Lifting my eyes just then I saw a strange vision. What I had thought to be only a piece of brown rock, above and beyond me, slowly rose to almost a sitting posture before my blinking eyes, and a man, no, two men, seemed to gaze a moment after our retreating line of blue-coats. It was but an instant, yet I caught sight of two faces. Stillwell was glancing backward at that moment and did not see anything. At the sound of our horses' feet on the gravel the two figures changed to brown rock again. In the moment my eye had caught the merest glint of sunlight on an artillery bugle, a gleam, and nothing more. "What's the matter, Baronet? You're white as a ghost. Are you scared or sick?" Stillwell spoke in a low voice. We didn't do any shouting in those trying days. "Neither one," I answered, but I had cause to wonder whether I was insane or not. As I live, and hope to keep my record clear, the two figures I had seen were not strangers to me. The smaller of the two had the narrow forehead and secretive countenance of the Reverend Mr. Dodd. In his hand was an artillery bugle. Beyond him, though he wore an Indian dress, rose the broad shoulders and square, black-shadowed forehead of Father Le Claire. "It is the hallucination of this mirage-girt land," I told myself. "The Plains life is affecting my vision, and then the sun has blinded me. I'm not delirious, but this marching is telling on me. Oh, it is at a fearful price that the frontier creeps westward, that homes are planted, and peace, blood-stained, abides with them." So I meditated as I watched the sun go down on that September night on the far Colorado Plains by the grassy slopes and yellow sands and thin, slow-moving currents of the Arickaree. CHAPTER XVII IN THE VALLEY OF THE ARICKAREE A blush as of roses Where rose never grew! Great drops on the bunch grass. But not of the dew! A taint in the sweet air For wild bees to shun! A stain that shall never Bleach out in the sun! --WHITTIER.