wrapped in a bright new red
blanket. We looked at each other steadily.

"You are in my land now. This isn't Springvale." There was still that
French softness in his voice that made it musical, but the face was
cruel with a still relentless, deadly cruelty that I had never seen
before even in his worst moods.

The Baronets are not cowardly by nature, but something in Jean always
made me even more fearless. To his taunting words, "This isn't
Springvale," I replied evenly, "No, but this is Phil Baronet still."

He gave me a swift searching look, and turning, disappeared in the
shadows beyond the tents.

"I owe him a score for his Arickaree plans," I said to myself, "and his
scalp ought to come off to O'mie for his attempt to murder the boy in
the Hermit's Cave. Oh, it's a grim game this. I hope it will end here
soon."

As I turned away I fell against Hard Rope, chief of the Osage scouts. I
had seen little of him before, but from this time on he shadowed my
pathway with a persistence I had occasion to remember when the soldier
life was forgotten.

The beginning of the end was nearer than I had wished for. All about
Fort Sill the bluffy heights looked down on pleasant little valleys.
White oak timber and green grass made these little parks a delight to
the eye. The soldiers penetrated all the shelving cliffs about them in
search of game and time-killing leisure.

The great lack of the soldier's day is seclusion. The mess life and tent
life and field life may develop comradeship, but it cannot develop
individuality. The loneliness of the soldier is in the barracks, not in
the brief time he may be by himself.

Beyond a little brook Bud and I had by merest chance found a small cove
in the low cliff looking out on one of these valleys, a secluded nook
entered by a steep, short climb. We kept the place a secret and called
it our sanctuary. Here on the winter afternoons we sat in the warm
sunshine sheltered from the winds by the rocky shelf, and talked of home
and the past; and sometimes, but not often, of the future. On the day
after I saw Jean at the door of Satanta's tent, Bud stole my cap and
made off to our sanctuary. I had adorned it with turkey quills, and made
a fantastic head-gear out of it. Soldiers do anything to kill time; and
jokes and pranks and child's play, stale and silly enough in civil life,
pass for fun in lieu of better things in camp.

It was a warm afternoon in February, and the soldiers were sca