The Sweetwater Valley spread out under the late sunshine of a March day was rimmed about by low hills. Beyond these, again, were the Plains, the same monotony of earth beneath and sky above, the two meeting away and away in an amethyst fold of mist around the world's far bound. There were touches of green in the brown valley, but the hill slopes and all the spread of land about them were gray and splotched and dull against a blue-gray sickly sky. The hours went by slowly to each anxious soldier, for endurance was almost at its limit. More heavily still they must have dragged for the man on whom the burden of command rested. High noon, and then the afternoon interminably long and dull, and by and by came the sunset on the Sweetwater Valley, and a new heaven and a new earth were revealed to the sons of men. Like a chariot of fire, the great sun rolled in all its gorgeous beauty down the west. The eastern sky grew radiant with a pink splendor, and every brown and mottled stretch of distant landscape was touched with golden light or deepened into richest purple, or set with a roseate bound of flame. Somewhere far away, a feathery gray mist hung like a silvery veil toning down the earth from the noonday glare to the sunset glory. Down in the very middle of all this was a band of a thousand men; their faded clothing, their uncertain step, their knotted hands, and their great hungry eyes told the price that had been paid for the drama this sunset hour was to bring. Slowly the moments passed as when in our little sanctuary above the pleasant parks at Fort Sill I had watched the light measured out. And then the low hills began to rise up and shut out the crimson west as twilight crept toward the Sweetwater Valley.