very
diligently. Then, something or other, picked up early that morning, had
been sent to the colonel, for it came with his mail; and the adjutant
and the orderly heard his exclamation, saw the consternation in his
face, and the orderly told of it--told Kathleen at the doctor's; then
had to tell other girls or take the consequences. Then there were these
drives up the valley and the meetings at the cottonwoods. People who
called to ask after the presumably lonely mistress of the house began
asking after something Felicie had hoped no one had noticed.

For in upbraiding Inez, his wife, Major Dwight not once had mentioned
her meetings near Minneconjou with Lieutenant Ray, who, as all this was
going on at the post, stood facing a condition that called for the
exercise of all his nerve and pluck and common sense. The Indian
leaders, three days after his coming, had mustered their force and
demanded the instant withdrawal of himself and his men, leaving all
horses and arms and certain of their charges behind them.

CHAPTER XXIV

CRISIS

There had been frequent communication with the agency by courier and by
telephone. Ray held the fort, he said, and though there had been some
bluster and swagger on part of a few Indians, the agent seemed relieved,
reassured. They no longer crowded, bullying, about his office. "They are
obviously," wrote the agent (not Ray), "impressed by the firm stand I
have taken, and now I shall proceed to arrest the ring-leaders in the
recent trouble, employing the lieutenant and his troopers for the
purpose, in order that the Indian police may see that I am entirely
independent of them." Stone received this by mounted messenger about
nine o'clock of a Wednesday night, and Mrs. Stone knew the moment his
lips began to purse up, as she expressed it, and to work and twist, that
he much disliked the letter. "I'll have to go over to the
quartermaster's," said he, "and call up Ray by 'phone. This agency man
will be making mischief for us, sure as--sure as the reds are making
medicine." But the last words were muttered to himself, as he took his
cap, and leave.

Stone had served many a year on the plains, and knew the Indian, and had
his opinion as to the value of civil service in dealing with him. Stone
had served two years in the South in the so-called reconstruction days,
and in his mind there was marked similarity between a certain few of the
Indian agents he had met and an uncertain number o