Sunday noon
`` Get to work there , you , Brannan , '' growled Sergeant Haney before Cranston was out of hearing . `` No more palavering with officers out of your own troop this day unless you want double trouble in it , -- and be damned to you , '' he added , in low and cautious tone , his eyes furtively following the captain , now twenty yards away . And Cranston was riding home to don his winter field rig and to a parting that he dreaded beyond all description , for now , more than for many a long year , had Margaret need of all her husband 's love and encouragement and devotion . Sunday noon the detachment from Scott was across the railway and first on march to the beleaguered agency . Sunday night they camped in the breaks of the big divide , some fifteen miles north of Braska , and still no tidings came from beyond the Niobrara . Restoring the telegraph line as they went , digging it out from under the snow , the infantry trudged along all day Monday , following the trail of their mounted comrades who left them at dawn , and early Monday morning an ambulance drawn by six spanking big brown mules whipped by them along the road , and the kindly twinkling eyes of their old friend and fellow-campaigner , the general , peered out at them . Away he went to overtake the foremost riders , with just brief word or two and cordial grasp of the hand to the few officers who hastened alongside .