"Ah, there you are, Mr. Graham! We have a horse with us ready for you now!" And lo! it was Captain Lane, with his own troop ("E" of the --th), sent out to lead the general's escort into camp. Leaving the companions of the long, jolting ambulance ride, Geordie sprang to the back of a mettlesome bay, led forward by a muffled-up trooper who steadied the young officer's stirrup before turning aside to remount, while a tall, spare, wiry-looking sergeant sat stiffly in saddle, his fur-covered hand at salute, his long gray mustache and stubbly beard and thin hooked nose being almost all that could be seen of the face; yet the twinkle in his waiting captain's eyes and a twitch in the muscles of the veteran's lips set Geordie to staring, and presently out went his hand and up went his glad young voice: "Nolan! Nolan! _You_ back with us again!" "Couldn't keep out of it, sir, when we got word that the old troop was to have another Indian campaign. No more could Toomey." And lo! it was his friend of the Big Mogul now again bestriding a troop horse, detailed specially to meet him! And Lane, with a wave of his hand and a laugh that was good to hear, left the three cronies of Silver Run to ride in together while he galloped on to his duties. "But the mines, Nolan, and your position?" questioned Geordie, as soon as the greetings were over and he could recover from his amaze. "The mine is as sound as a government bond, sir, and Shiner's holding down my job till I want it again; and Mr. Anthony told me to say that whenever the lieutenant got tired of soldiering to come back with Toomey and take his old trick with the shovel." And so, joyous and laughing, the three friends of old rode down to the thronging camps in the valley, and to the stern duties that so soon awaited them. For there came a day when men's faces went white with the news that Sitting Bull, the great chief (Tatanka-iyo-Tanka), had died in desperate fight with the police sent to arrest him; that Si Tanka and his band, nabbed by "Napa Yahmni," had most unaccountably managed later to elude him, and were now at large, raising the standard of revolt, summoning all the wild warriors far and near to join forces with him. And then, indeed, the frontier blazed with signal-fires by night and burning ranches by day, and there came a week of hard riding for the old regiment, and of sharp campaigning for all--a week in which at last the wily red chief Si Tanka was finally surrounded and, with all his people and ponies, herded on down through the Bad Lands to the breaks of Wounded Knee--fierce, truculent, defiant. For long months he had braved the "Great Father" himself, refusing to submit to any authority; but the sight of those long columns of silent, disciplined "horse soldiers," squadrons white and black, some of them riding along with wonderful little field-guns clinking beside them on wheels, overawed Si Tanka's followers and disheartened his friends.