are warned, and I suppose you'll
be joining somewhere on the way. But the row, when it comes,
will break out north of the Niobrara, and the --th may not get
there in time.

"Stone says if you want a taste of the real thing, to apply for
orders to report for duty to the commanding officer at Fort
Niobrara until the arrival of your regiment. I have begged the
Chief of Engineers to let me have a few weeks in the field with
General Miles, and am assured that the general will apply for
me. Not that I can be of any value as Engineer Officer, but
just to get the experience, and perhaps see what we've been
reading of a dozen years--a real Indian campaign. Now, old man,
you know that country. You were there as a boy. _You_ could be
of use. Why not ask for orders at once? Then we can push out
via Sioux City together. I know how the mother will protest,
especially since she was robbed of three precious weeks in
July; but, isn't it the chance of a lifetime? Isn't this what
we are for, after all? Wire decision. Yours as ever,

"CONNELL."

"Good old Badger," murmured Geordie. "He always was right." Then that
letter went to an inner pocket, and for the first time in his life,
with something to conceal from her, George Graham turned to his mother.

It was a beautiful September evening. The gray-and-white battalion had
just formed for parade. The throng of spectators lined the roadway in
front of the superintendent's quarters, and with that proud mother
clinging as usual to his arm, with that ominous letter in the breast of
his sack-coat, so close that her hand by a mere turn of the wrist could
touch it, George Graham stood silently beside her as she chatted
happily with Mrs. Hazzard. Not ten feet distant, leaning on a cane, was
an officer lamed for life and permanently retired from service because
of a desperate wound received in savage warfare. With him, eagerly
talking, was a regimental comrade who had survived the bloody day on
the Little Big Horn, and he was telling of things he had seen and men
whom he had met, men whose names were famous among the Sioux and were
now on the lips of the nation at large. Foremost of these was the
old-time enemy of every white man, long the leader of the most powerful
band that ever disputed the dominion of the West, Tatanka
Iyotanka--Sitting Bull.

Not fifty miles from Stand