er hand, a smile of no little significance on her lips.
"Now, Mr. Dean, will you tell me what you think of that for a pappoose?"

And with wonderment in his eyes the young officer stood and held it and
gazed.

There stood Pappoose, to be sure, but what a change! The little maiden
with the dark braids of hair hanging far below her waist had developed
into a tall, slender girl, with clear-cut, oval face, crowned by a mass
of dark tresses. Her heavy, low-arching brows spanned the thoughtful,
deep, dark-brown eyes that seemed to speak the soul within, and the
beautiful face was lighted up with a smile that showed just a peep of
faultless white teeth, gleaming through the warm curves of her soft,
sensitive lips. The form was exquisitely rounded, yet supple and erect.

"Hasn't Jessie written you of how Nell has grown and improved?" said
Mrs. Hall, with a woman's quick note of the admiration and surprise in
Dean's regard.

"She must have," was the answer, "I'm sure she has, but perhaps I
thought it schoolgirl rhapsody--perhaps I had too many other things to
think of."

"Perhaps you'll find it superseding these too many things, Mr. Soldier
Boy," was Mrs. Hal's mental comment. "Now, sir, if you've gazed enough
perhaps you'll tell me your plans," and she stretched forth a reclaiming
hand.

But he hung on to the prize. "Let me keep it a minute," he pleaded.
"It's the loveliest thing I've seen in months."

And, studying his absorbed face, she yielded, her eyebrows arching, a
pretty smile of feminine triumph about her lips, and neither noticed the
non-commissioned officer hurrying within the gate, nor that half the men
in "C" Troop at their bivouac along the stream were on their feet and
gazing to northeast, that far down the valley a horseman was speeding
like the wind, that little puffs of smoke were rising from the crests of
the grand landmark of the range and floating into the blue of the
heavens. Both started to their feet at the abrupt announcement.

"Lieutenant, there are smoke signals on Lar'mie Peak."

CHAPTER VII.

Lieutenant Dean's orders required that he should march his troop without
unnecessary delay to Fork Emory, there to take station relieving Troop
"F," ordered to change to Frayne, which meant, in so many words, to take
the field. Captain Brooks, still wrestling with the fever, had retired
to his quarters at the old frontier fort that stood so long on the
bluffs overlooking the fords of the Plat