ith the house darkened, the early supper eaten and Marylyn
asleep in her bed before the hearth, the elder girl still kept on the
alert. A nervousness born of loneliness had taken possession of her. If
the doorlatch rattled, she raised herself, listening. If Simon rubbed
himself against the warm outer stones of the fireplace, she sprang up, a
startled sentinel, with wide eyes and clenched hands.

But an hour passed. The wind lulled. Simon lay down. She fell to
thinking of the storekeeper. She felt surer than ever, now, that he did
not covet the bend. Setting aside the fact that he had brought them good
news, she was glad he had come. It gave them a neighbour. And, yes, she
forgave him the smile that had provoked her resentment. After all, the
name Dallas did sound Texas.

With morning, and the rising of the sun, she was up and doing the few
chores about lean-to and shack. But when the surveyors arrived, making
short work of their last few miles, she and Marylyn shut themselves in
and escaped being seen. The engineers gone toward Clark's, Dallas again
took up her watch.

Twice before night she was rewarded. The mail-sergeant passed, bringing
a batch of letters to a grateful post; and, late in the afternoon, an
Indian runner came into sight from up the Missouri. Scorning to use the
ferry, he dropped into the river, where the coulee emptied, and swam
across.

The arrival of the scout Dallas associated instinctively with the
expected return of the troopers, and felt a relief that she would not
have cared to confess to her father. The unusual bustle that marked the
next three days at Brannon seemed to justify her belief. Below the
barracks, on the level bottom-land, men were busy erecting a strange
structure. Tall cottonwoods were hauled from the river and set on end in
the sandy ground. As time passed, these came to form a tight, circular
pen.

The night of the third day there was activity on the other bank of the
Missouri. Unknown to shack and fort, the squalid line of shanty saloons
that stretched itself like a waiting serpent along a high bench opposite
the new stockade, sprang into sudden life. Two wagons filled with men
and barrels crossed the bend and emptied themselves into the dilapidated
buildings. And far into the early hours, loud laughter, the click of
chips and the clink of glasses disturbed the quiet of the night. At
dawn, an officer, standing, field-glass in hand, on the gallery at
headquarters, saw two