Tell
anybody who comes I've gone to the flagstaff." With that the major
stalked from the room, followed by the Irishman's adoring eyes. A moment
later he stood by the tall white staff at the edge of the northward
bluff, at whose feet the river swept by in musical murmurings. There he
quickly focussed his glass, and gazed away westward up the Platte to
where but the evening before a score of Indian lodges dotted the other
bank, perhaps two miles away. The September moon was at its full and, in
that rare, cloudless atmosphere, flooding the valley with its soft,
silvery light so that close at hand, within the limits of the garrison,
every object could be almost as distinctly seen as in broad day-light,
but, farther away, over the lowlands and the river bottom and the
rolling prairie stretching to the northern horizon, the cottonwoods
along the stream or in the distant swales made only black blotches
against the vague, colorless surface, and the bold bluffs beyond the
reservation limits south of the flashing waters, the sharp, sawlike edge
of the distant mountain range that barred the way to the west, even the
cleancut outlines of Eagle Butte, the landmark of the northward prairie,
visible for fifty miles by day, were now all veiled in some intangible
filament that screened them from the soldier's searching gaze.
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