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An hour later still and the bluffs were throwing long shadows across the valley, and the crack of Indian rifles and occasional loud bark of the carbine close at hand seemed growing more frequent, and watchers at the outskirts became conscious of increasing excitement among the warriors up the valley to the west as well as over to the south, and listening men, laying their ears to earth, declared that there was tremor and vibration, and dull distant thunder of myriad hoofs, and over in the village there was hurrying to and fro and growing clamor of squaws and children, and dusky women could be seen clutching their little ones and speeding away towards the hills down-stream, while others began rapidly tearing down the painted lodges of hide or cloth, and such Indians as had no mount, but were skulking under the banks or among the bluffs across the stream, could be seen leaping and crouching and racing back toward the village, and presently there went up a shout from the lookouts towards the upper Ska: "Big dust-cloud coming.
After an hour or so spent in combing out the birds, the hunters jump in, whirl away in a dust-cloud to another spot two miles away, and "bang-bang-bang" again. After that, a third locality; and so on, covering six or eight times the territory that a man in a buggy, or on foot, could possibly shoot over in the same time! North Dakota has done well, in the passage of that act.
And yet," said the Penitent, warming his hands and casting a look up at the sky, where the dust-cloud had given place to a rolling pall of smoke, "what a treat it is to let the tongue wag at times!" Ruth, her strength refreshed by the few minutes' rest, thanked him and arose to continue her search. "Stay," said the Penitent.
And when the dust-cloud settles on the flats south of the Minneconjou village, only one of "C" Troop remains to greet the eyes of the battalion adjutant, sent back with Major Chrome's impatient query as to why on earth the Eleventh doesn't come on. It is Sergeant Grant, who has toppled out of saddle dead.
At the invitation of Blister Jones I had come from the city's heat to witness the morning "work-outs". For two hours horse after horse had shot by, leaving a golden dust-cloud to hang and drift and slowly settle.
Below him surged the sea of hide and horns which was barely suggestive of the animals as individuals. Out in the corrals the dust-cloud hung low, just as it had hovered every day for more than two weeks; just as it would hover every day for two weeks longer. Across the yards near the big, outer gate Deacon Smith's crew was already beginning to brand.
He did it from love of mankind; because he desired to fulfil the vow he had made to God and himself on the highway as a shivering, starving lad: that if he should ever become rich, he would be to every unfortunate and needy one the hand which had appeared out of the dust-cloud to his relief.
Every one of the group in the lead was a range horse; the Coles mares were hanging in the rear and last of all, obscured by the dust-cloud, Alcatraz ran sulkily. "But you wait!" said Marianne, sitting tensely erect. "Those ponies with their short legs can start fast, but that's all. When the mares begin to run Now, now, now! Oh, you beauties! You dears!"
He came bearing eyes that were like hope's own; and kneeling, kissing her hands, her knees, her hair, he seemed unaware that she was inanimate. There was nothing imaginable in which he could be of use. He was only another dust-cloud of the sultry sameness. She had been expecting a woman, a tempest choral with sky and mountain and valley-hollows, as the overture to Alvan's appearance.
But the dust-cloud came on and on, and all at once the whole six-gun battery six horses to each piece and six to each caisson captain, buglers, guidon, lieutenants, sergeants and drivers in the saddle, cannoneers on the chests swept at full trot, thumping, swaying, and rebounding, up the highway and off it, and, forming sections, swung out upon the field in double column, while the roaring train rolled by it and slowed up to the little frame box of Buerthe's Station with passengers cheering from every window.
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