The tower family, Joe thought with a smile, had never been as well off
as it was right now. Baby Emma had come through her illness, and was
thriving. They hadn't been assigned an orderly, but most of the time
among the soldiers who were off duty, they had from four to fifteen.
Joe's smile widened and his eyes sparkled. Some of the officers and
noncoms had their wives with them and some of the enlisted men had
squaws to whom, Joe presumed, they were married.
But Laramie was an isolated fort. Most of the soldiers were young, out
for a taste of adventure, and they found little enough. Even patrols
into Indian country became monotonous after one made a sufficient number
of them, and winter duty at the fort was routine.
Bringing Barbara among so many lonely youngsters who hadn't expected to
see a girl until emigrant trains started coming through in the spring
created a situation which had all the explosive potentialities of a
match held too near an open powder keg and was, at the same time,
amusing.
Wood was the fuel used at Laramie, but Joe hadn't had to cut or carry
any. The wood box was always filled, and at least five times a day some
youngster who had elected to wear his country's uniform dropped in to
see if the Towers didn't need any more. The water pails invariably
brimmed over, and they were always full because the men of Laramie had
decided that nothing but the freshest water was good enough. When
Barbara went to the sutler's store, she was always attended by an escort
large enough to form a good-sized patrol and she could not carry even
the smallest parcel back. Every evening, until Emma shooed them out,
their quarters overflowed with soldiers eager to do anything at all as
long as they could be near Barbara.
Joe did not worry about her; any soldier who offered an insolent remark,
or even an insolent look, to Barbara, would have been overwhelmed by a
sufficient number of her protectors. But, aside from the fact that Joe
wanted to winter at Snedeker's and not at Laramie, the affair had its
more serious aspects. Only last night Privates Haggerty and Jankoski,
vying for the honor of walking closest to Barbara when she went to the
store, had left each other with blackened eyes and bleeding noses and
they'd promptly been clapped into the guardhouse for their pains.
Probably there would be other fights; Joe understood that Private Brown
did not gaze with a kindly eye on Corporal Lester. Lester had filled the
water pails just as Brown was on his way to do it.
Joe chuckled out loud. Sitting across the breakfast table from him, Emma
raised an inquiring eye.
"I was thinking of those two crazy kids, Haggerty and Jankoski, and the
fight they had over Bobby last night," he explained.
"Sh-h." Emma nodded toward the bedroom in which Barbara still slept.
"She'll hear you."
Joe lowered his voice. "I didn't mean to talk so loud. It looks to me,
if we don't get Bobby out of here, as though the Army will be at war
with itself."
"Yes, dear," Emma smiled abstractedly and Joe saw that her mind was
elsewhere. He leaned back in his chair, looking idly at his empty plate.
Then he rose to get his coat.
"Are you going out?" Emma asked.
"Yes. I'm getting the wagon back into shape."
Emma asked casually, "Joe, do you know anything about this young man,
Hugo Gearey?"