oastings of the Indians, were
heard of again.

"It is a treacherous truce, I tell you," said Folsom, with grave,
anxious face, to the colonel commanding Fort Emory. "I have known Red
Cloud twenty years. He's only waiting a few weeks to see if the
government will be fool enough to send them breech-loaders. If it does,
he'll be all the better able to fight a little later on. If it doesn't
he will make it his _casus belli_."

And the veteran colonel listened, looked grave, and said he had done his
utmost to convince his superiors. He could do no more.

It was nearly three hundred miles by the winding mountain road from Gate
City to Warrior Gap. Over hill and dale and mountain pass the road ran
to Frayne, thence, fording the North Platte, the wagon trains, heavily
guarded, had to drag over miles of dreary desert, over shadeless slopes
and divides to the dry wash of the Powder, and by roads deep in alkali
dust and sage brush to Cantonment Reno, where far to the west the grand
range loomed up against the sky--another long day's march away to the
nearest foothills, to the nearest drinkable water, and then, forty miles
further still, in the heart of the grand pine-covered heights, was the
rock-bound gateway to a lovely park region within, called by the Sioux
some wild combination of almost unpronounceable syllables, which, freely
translated, gave us Warrior Gap, and there at last accounts,
strengthened by detachments from Frayne and Reno, the little command of
fort builders worked away, ax in hand, rifle at hand, subjected every
hour to alarm from the vedettes and pickets posted thickly all about
them, pickets who were sometimes found stone dead at their posts,
transfixed with arrows, scalped and mutilated, and yet not once had
Indians in any force been seen by officers or man about the spot since
the day Red Cloud's whole array passed Brooks's troop on the Reno trail,
peaceably hunting buffalo. "An' divil a sowl in in the outfit," said old
Sergeant Shaughnessy, "that hadn't his tongue in his cheek."

For three months that hard-worked troop had been afield, and the time
had passed and gone when its young first lieutenant had hoped for a
leave to go home and see the mother and Jess. His captain was still
ailing and unfit for duty in saddle. He could not and would not ask for
leave at such a time, and yet at the very moment when he was most
earnestly and faithfully doing his whole duty at the front, slander was
busy with his