h a worse
experience, and it was the last blow to his budding passion for
sparkling-eyed Nina.

It was nearly tattoo, and a dark night, when Chester suddenly came in:

"Rollins, you remember my telling you I was sure some of the men had
been getting liquor in from the shore down below the station and
'running it' that way? I believe we can nab the smuggler this evening.
There's a boat down there now. The corporal has just told me."

Smuggling liquor was one of Chester's horrors. He surrounded the post
with a cordon of sentries who had no higher duty, apparently, than that
of preventing the entrance of alcohol in any form. He had run a
"red-cross" crusade against the post-trader's store in the matter of
light wines and small beer, claiming that only adulterated stuff was
sold to the men, and forbidding the sale of anything stronger than "pop"
over the trader's counter. Then, when it became apparent that liquor was
being brought on the reservation, he made vigorous efforts to break up
the practice. Colonel Maynard rather poohpoohed the whole business. It
was his theory that a man who was determined to have a drink might
better be allowed to take an honest one, _coram publico_, than a
smuggled and deleterious article; but he succumbed to the rule that only
"light wines and beer" should be sold at the store, and was lenient to
the poor devils who overloaded and deranged their stomachs in
consequence. But Chester no sooner found himself in command than he
launched into the crusade with redoubled energy, and spent hours of the
day and night trying to capture invaders of the reservation with a
bottle in their pockets. The bridge was guarded, so was the crossing of
the Cloudwater to the south, and so were the two roads entering from the
north and west; and yet there was liquor coming in, and, as though "to
give Chester a benefit," some of the men in barracks had a royal old
spree on Saturday night, and the captain was sorer-headed than any of
the participants in consequence. In some way he heard that a rowboat
came up at night and landed supplies of contraband down by the
river-side out of sight and hearing of the sentry at the
railway-station, and it was thither he hurriedly led Rollins this Monday
evening.

They turned across the railway on reaching the bottom of the long
stairs, and scrambled down the rocky embankment on the other side,
Rollins following in reluctant silence and holding his sword so that it
would not ra