E-text prepared by Al Haines
A Story of the Plains
by
Author of The Covered Wagon, 54-40 or Fight, North of 36, etc.
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers New York
1900
The band major was a poet. His name is lost to history, but itdeserves a place among the titles of the great. Only in the soul of apoet, a great man, could there have been conceived that thought bywhich the music of triumph should pass the little pinnacle of humanexultation, and reach the higher plane of human sympathy.
Forty black horses, keeping step; forty trumpeters, keeping unison;this procession, headed by a mere musician, who none the less was apoet, a great man, crossed the field of Louisburg as it lay dotted withthe heaps of slain, and dotted also with the groups of those who soughttheir slain; crossed that field of woe, meeting only hatred anddespair, yet leaving behind only tears and grief. Tears and grief, itis true, yet grief that knew of sympathy, and tears that recked ofother tears.
For a long time the lines of invasion had tightened about the old cityof Louisburg, and Louisburg grew weaker in the coil. When the clank ofthe Southern cavalry advancing to the front rang in the streets, manywere the men swept away with the troops asked to go forward to silencethe eternally throbbing guns. Only the very old and the very youngwere left to care for the homes of Louisburg, and the number of thesegrew steadily less as the need increased for more material at thefront. Then c