ss now. No foolishness. A lot of
us around here are going down to Harker to enlist. Will you go with us,
Baronet? It's no boys' play. The safety of our homes is matched against
the cunning savagery of the redskins. We paid fifteen million dollars
for this country west of the Mississippi. If these Indians aren't driven
out and made to suffer, and these women's wrongs avenged, we'd better
sell the country back to France for fifteen cents. But it's no easy
piece of work. Those Cheyennes know these Plains as well as you know the
streets of Springvale. They are built like giants, and they fight like
demons. Don't underestimate the size of the contract. I know John
Baronet well enough to know that if his boy begins, he won't quit till
the battle is done. I want you to go into this with your eyes open.
Whoever fights the Indians must make his will before the battle begins.
Forsyth's company will be made up of soldiers from the late war,
frontiersmen, and scouts. You're not any one of these, but--" he
hesitated a little--"when I heard your speech at Topeka I knew you had
the right metal. Your spirit is in this thing. You are willing to pay
the price demanded here for the hearthstones of the West."

My spirit! My blood was racing through every artery in leaps and bounds.
Here was a man calmly setting forth the action that had been my very
dream of heroism, and here was a call to duty, where duty and ideal
blend into one. And then I was young, and thought myself at the
beginning of a new life; pain of body was unknown to me; the lure of the
Plains was calling to me--daring adventure, the need for courage, the
patriotism that fires the young man's heart, and, at the final analysis,
my loyalty to the defenceless, my secret notions of the value of the
American home, my horror of Indian captivity, a horror I had known when
my mind was most impressible--all these were motives driving me on. I
wondered that my companion could be so calm, sitting there in the dim
twilight explaining carefully what lay before me; and yet I felt the
power of that calmness building up a surer strength in me. I did not
dream of home that night. I chased Indians until I wakened with a
scream.

"What's the matter, Baronet?" Morton asked.

"I thought the Cheyennes had me," I answered sleepily.

"Don't waste time in dreaming it. Better go to sleep and let 'em alone,"
he advised; and I obeyed.

The next morning we were joined by half a dozen settlers of tha