The quartermaster's depot at Gate City was little more than a big
corral, with a double row of low, wooden sheds for the storing of
clothing, camp and garrison equipage. There was a blacksmith and wagon
repair shop, and a brick office building. Some cottage quarters for the
officer in charge and his clerks, corral master, etc., stood close at
hand, while most of the employees lived in town outside the gates. A
single-track spur connected the depot with the main line of the Union
Pacific only five hundred yards away, and the command at Fort Emory, on
the bluff above the rapid stream, furnished, much to its disgust, the
necessary guard. A much bigger "plant" was in contemplation near a
larger post and town on the east side of the great divide, and neither
Fort Emory nor its charge--the quartermaster's depot--was considered
worth keeping in repair, except such as could be accomplished "by the
labor of troops," which was why, when he wasn't fighting Indians, the
frontier soldier of that day was mainly occupied in doing the odd jobs
of a day laborer, without the recompense of one, or his privilege of
quitting if he didn't like the job. That he should know little of drill
and less of parade was, therefore, not to be wondered at.
But what he didn't know about guard duty was hardly worth knowing. He
had prisoners and property of every conceivable kind--Indians, horse
thieves, thugs and deserters, magazines and medicines, mules and
munitions of war. Everything had to be guarded. The fort lay a mile to
the west of and two hundred feet higher than the railway hotel in the
heart of the town. It looked down upon the self-styled city, and most of
its womenkind did the same on the citizens, who were, it must be owned,
a rather mixed lot. The sudden discovery of gold in the neighboring
foothills, the fact that it promised to be the site of the division car
shops and roundhouse, that the trails to the Upper Platte, the
Sweetwater, the Park country to the south, and the rich game regions of
the Medicine Bow all centered there, and that stages left no less than
twice a week for some of those points, and the whole land was alive with
explorers for a hundred miles around--all had tended to give Gate City a
remarkable boom. Cheyenne and Laramie, thriving frontier towns with
coroners' offices in full blast from one week's end to the other, and a
double force on duty Sundays, confessed to and exhibited pardonable
jealousy. Yet there was wisdom in the warning of an old friend and
fellow frontiersman, who said to Folsom, "You are throwing yourself and
your money away, John. There's nothing in those gold stones, there's
nothing in that yawp about the machine shops; all those yarns were
started by U. P. fellows with corner lots to sell. The bottom will drop
out of that place inside of a year and leave you stranded."
All the same had Folsom bought big blocks and built his home there. It
was the nearest town of promise to Hal Folsom's wild but beautiful home
in the hills, and, almost as he loved Nell, his bonny daughter, did the
old trader love his stalwart son. Born a wild Westerner, reared among
the Sioux with only Indians or army boys for playmates, and precious
little choice in point of savagery between them, Hal had grown up a
natural horseman with a love for and knowledge of the animal that is
accorded to few. His ambition in life was to own a stock farm. All the
education he had in the world he owed to the kindness of loving-hearted
army women at Laramie, women who befriended him when well-nigh
broken-hearted by his mother's death. Early he had pitched his tent on
the very spot for a ranchman's homestead, early he had fallen in love
with an army girl, who married the strapping frontiersman and was now
the proud mistress of the new and promising stock farm nestling in the
valley of the Laramie, a devoted wife and mother. The weekly stage to
the railway was the event of their placid days except when some of the
officers and ladies would come from either of the neighboring posts and
spend a week with her and Hal. From being a delicate, consumptive child,
Mrs. Hal had developed into a buxom woman with exuberant health and
spirits. Life to her might have some little monotony, but few cares;
many placid joys, but only one great dread--Indians. John Folsom, her
fond father-in-law, was a man all Indians trusted and most of them
loved. Hal Folsom, her husband, had many a trusted and devoted friend
among the Sioux, but he had also enemies, and Indian enmity, like Indian
love, dies hard. As boy he had sometimes triumphed in games and sports
over the champions of the villages. As youth he had more than once found
favor in the dark eyes that looked coldly on fiercer, fonder claimants,
and one girl of the Ogallallas had turned from her kith and kin, spurned
more than one red lover to seek the young trader when he left the
reservation to build his own nest in the Medicine Bow, and they told a
story as pathetic as that of the favorite daughter of old Sintogaliska,
chief of the Brule Sioux, who pined and died at Laramie when she heard
that the soldier she loved had come back from the far East with a
pale-faced bride. There were red men of the Ogallallas to whom the name
of Hal Folsom was a taunt and insult to this day, men whom his father
had vainly sought to appease, and they were Burning Star, the lover, and
two younger braves, the brothers of the girl they swore that Hal had
lured away.
South of the Platte, as it rolled past Frayne and Laramie, those Indians
were bound by treaty not to go. North of the Platte Hal Folsom was
warned never again to venture. These were stories which were well known
to the parents of the girl he wooed and won, but which probably were not
fully explained to her. Now, even behind the curtain of that sheltering
river, with its flanking forts, even behind the barrier of the mountains
of the Medicine Bow, she often woke at night and clutched her baby to
her breast when the yelping of the coyotes came rising on the wind.
There was no woman in Wyoming to whom war with Red Cloud's people bore
such dread possibility as to Hal Folsom's wife.
And so when Marshall Dean came riding in one glad June morning, bronzed,
and tanned, and buoyant, and tossed his reins to the orderly who trotted
at his heels, while the troop dismounted and watered at the stream, Mrs.
Folsom's heart was gladdened by his confident and joyous bearing. Twice,
thrice he had seen Red Cloud and all his braves, and there was nothing,
said he, to worry about. "Ugly, of course they are; got some imaginary
grievances and talk big about the warpath. Why, what show would those
fellows have with their old squirrel rifles and gas-pipe Springfields
against our new breech-loaders? They know it as well as we do. It's all
a bluff, Mrs. Folsom. You mark my words," said he, and really the boy
believed it. Frequent contact in the field with the red warriors
inspires one with little respect for their skill or prowess until that
contact becomes hostile, then it's time to keep every sense on guard and
leave no point uncovered.
"But what if the Indian Bureau should let them have breech-loaders?" she
anxiously asked. "You know that is Red Cloud's demand."
"Oh," said Dean, with confidence born of inexperience in the Bureau
ways, "they couldn't be such fools. Besides, if they do," he added
hopefully, "you'll see my troop come trotting back full tilt. Now, I'm
counting on a good time at Emory, and on bringing your sister and mine
up here to see you."
"It will be just lovely," said Mrs. Hal, with a woman's natural but
unspoken comparison between the simplicity of her ranch toilet and the
probable elegancies of the young ladies' Eastern costumes. "They'll find
us very primitive up here in the mountains, I'm afraid; but if they like
scenery and horseback riding and fishing there's nothing like it."
"Oh, they're coming sure. Jessie's letters tell me that's one of the big
treats Mr. Folsom has promised them. Just think, they should be along
this week, and I shall be stationed so near them at Emory--of all places
in the world."
"How long is it since you have seen Elinor--'Pappoose,' as your sister
calls her," asked Mrs. Hal, following the train of womanly thought then
drifting through her head, as she set before her visitor a brimming
goblet of buttermilk.
"Two years. She was at the Point a day or two the summer of our
graduation," he answered carelessly. "A real little Indian girl she was,
too, so dark and shy and silent, yet I heard Professor M----'s daughters
and others speak of her later; she pleased them so much, and Jessie
thinks there's no girl like her."
"And you haven't seen her since--not even her picture?" asked Mrs. Hal,
rising from her easy-chair. "Just let me show you the one she sent Hal
last week. I think there's a surprise in store for you, young man," was
her mental addition, as she tripped within doors.
The nurse girl, a half-breed, one of the numerous progeny of the French
trappers and explorers who had married among the Sioux, was hushing the
burly little son and heir to sleep in his Indian cradle, crooning some
song about the fireflies and and Heecha, the big-eyed owl, and the
mother stooped to press her lips upon the rounded cheek and to flick
away a tear-drop, for Hal 2d had roared lustily when ordered to his
noonday nap. Away to the northward the heavily wooded heights seemed
tipped by fleecy, summer clouds, and off to the northeast Laramie Peak
thrust his dense crop of pine and scrub oak above the mass of snowy
vapor that floated lazily across that grim-visaged southward scarp. The
drowsy hum of insects, the plash of cool, running waters fell softly on
the ear. Under the shade of willow and cottonwood cattle and horses were
lazily switching at the swarm of gnats and flies or dozing through the
heated hours of the day. Out on the level flat beyond the corral the
troopers had unsaddled, and the chargers, many of them stopping to roll
in equine ecstasy upon the turf, were being driven out in one big herd
to graze. Without and within the ranch everything seemed to speak of
peace and security. The master rode the range long miles away in search
of straying cattle, leaving his loved ones without thought of danger.
The solemn treaty that bound the Sioux to keep to the north of the
Platte stood sole sentinel over his vine and fig tree. True there had
been one or two instances of depredation, but they could be fastened on
no particular band, and all the chiefs, even defiant Red Cloud, and
insolent, swaggering Little Big Man, denied all knowledge of the
perpetrators. Spotted Tail, it was known, would severely punish any of
his people who transgressed, but he could do nothing with the
Ogallallas. Now they were not two hundred miles away to the north, their
ranks swollen by accessions from all the disaffected villages and
turbulent young braves of the swarming bands along the Missouri and
Yellowstone, and if their demands were resisted by the government, or
worse, if they were permitted to have breech-loaders or magazine rifles,
then just coming into use, no shadow of doubt remained that war to the
knife would follow. Then how long would it be before they came charging
down across the Platte, east or west of Frayne, and raiding those new
ranches in the Laramie Valley?
Reassuring as he meant his words to be, Marshall Dean himself looked
anxiously about at the unprotected walls. Not even the customary
"dugout" or underground refuge seemed to have been prepared. Almost
every homestead, big or little, of those days, had its tunnel from the
cellar to a dugout near at hand, stocked with provisions and water and
provided with loopholes commanding the neighborhood, and herein the
besieged could take refuge and stand off the Indians until help should
come from the nearest frontier fort. "The name of Folsom is our
safeguard," said Mrs. Hal, in her happy honeymoon days, but that was
before the mother told her of the threats of Burning Star or the story
of the Ogallalla girl he vainly loved. "All that happened so long ago,"
she murmured, when at last the tale was told. But Hal should have known,
if she did not, that, even when it seems to sleep, Indian vengeance is
but gaining force and fury.
Presently Mrs. Hall came tripping forth again, a little _carte de
visite_ in her hand, a smile of no little significance on her lips.
"Now, Mr. Dean, will you tell me what you think of that for a pappoose?"
And with wonderment in his eyes the young officer stood and held it and
gazed.
There stood Pappoose, to be sure, but what a change! The little maiden
with the dark braids of hair hanging far below her waist had developed
into a tall, slender girl, with clear-cut, oval face, crowned by a mass
of dark tresses. Her heavy, low-arching brows spanned the thoughtful,
deep, dark-brown eyes that seemed to speak the soul within, and the
beautiful face was lighted up with a smile that showed just a peep of
faultless white teeth, gleaming through the warm curves of her soft,
sensitive lips. The form was exquisitely rounded, yet supple and erect.
"Hasn't Jessie written you of how Nell has grown and improved?" said
Mrs. Hall, with a woman's quick note of the admiration and surprise in
Dean's regard.
"She must have," was the answer, "I'm sure she has, but perhaps I
thought it schoolgirl rhapsody--perhaps I had too many other things to
think of."
"Perhaps you'll find it superseding these too many things, Mr. Soldier
Boy," was Mrs. Hal's mental comment. "Now, sir, if you've gazed enough
perhaps you'll tell me your plans," and she stretched forth a reclaiming
hand.
But he hung on to the prize. "Let me keep it a minute," he pleaded.
"It's the loveliest thing I've seen in months."
And, studying his absorbed face, she yielded, her eyebrows arching, a
pretty smile of feminine triumph about her lips, and neither noticed the
non-commissioned officer hurrying within the gate, nor that half the men
in "C" Troop at their bivouac along the stream were on their feet and
gazing to northeast, that far down the valley a horseman was speeding
like the wind, that little puffs of smoke were rising from the crests of
the grand landmark of the range and floating into the blue of the
heavens. Both started to their feet at the abrupt announcement.
"Lieutenant, there are smoke signals on Lar'mie Peak."