in the very night before.
A scouting party of an officer and twenty troopers rode forth that
morning with orders to look over the Chugwater and the intervening
country around Eagle's Nest. If Mr. Holmes were in a hurry to get back
to business, here was excellent opportunity of driving half the way to
Cheyenne under escort. But Mr. Holmes, who had been somewhat emphatic
in his announcement that he could only stay one day, was apparently
well content with his comfortable quarters under the doctor's roof. He
might now stay longer, he said, for while up in that part of the
country he might just as well look over some mines in the Black Hills,
provided there were a chance of getting thither alive. Except for
heavily guarded trains, all communication was at an end between the
scattered settlements of the Hills and the posts along the Platte and
the Union Pacific Railway. The Indians swarmed out from the
reservations, attacking everything that appeared along the road, and
sometimes capturing the entire "outfit"; after plundering and scalping
their victims they built lively fires of the wagons, and cheerfully
roasted alive such of their prisoners as had the ill-luck not to be
killed in the first place. The road to the Black Hills, either from
Sidney or by way of Fort Laramie, was lined with the ashes of burned
wagons, and, in lieu of mile-posts, was staked with little, rude,
unpainted crosses, each marking the grave of some victim of this savage
warfare; and Mr. Holmes was quite right in his theory that it would be
far safer and pleasanter to stay at Laramie until some big party went
up to the Hills. The doctor was most hospitable in his pressing
invitation for him to make his house a home just as long as it might
please him. Nellie was glad to win her beloved father's praise by doing
what she could to make the army homestead attractive to his guest; the
guest himself was courteous, well-bred and cordial in manner, readily
winning friends all over the garrison; and the only man to whom his
protracted visit became a matter of serious disquietude was poor
Randall McLean. With a lover's intuition he saw that the wealthy
Chicagoan was deeply interested in sweet Nellie Bayard, and that her
father eagerly favored the suit.

Up to the hour of Mr. Holmes's arrival, there was not a day on which
the young fellow had not enjoyed a walk or one or more delightful chats
with the doctor's pretty daughter. He had no rivals; there were at the