ping them into the
river; squaws were thatching the roofs of the scouts' shanties; and
hammers were ringing on new structures for Clothes-Pin Row. With cool
enterprise, Brannon was hastening toward recovery.

There was other mending that was less rapid: In the stockade, where one
nursed an arrow, another a bullet, wound; in the garrison hospital,
where Kippis and a comrade stumped about on swathed feet; and on the
Oliver gallery, where Lounsbury lay, his face not the usual fulness, and
a trifle white.

The storekeeper, however, was lending entertainment, as hospitality and
his popularity demanded.

"The idea of you little apes asking for stories," he was saying to his
audience, "when such popping good ones are happening right under your
nose!"

Felicia was the youngest of the seven. She gave back at him, prancing up
and down insistently. "But we don't want stories of things around here,"
she cried wilfully. "We want lords and ladies, and you _gim_ 'em to us."

"Lords and ladies," sniffed Lounsbury. "Well, Felicia, stop that
jumping-jack business and I'll begin."

A chorus of delight--then, the five disposed themselves, the boys (there
were two) astride the storekeeper; the girls draping the swinging net at
either side.

"Once upon a time," commenced Lounsbury, "in the middle of a gre-a-a-t,
wi-i-i-de, fla-a-a-t country----"

"Now," interrupted James, who came next to Felicia. His inflection was
rising and suspicious.

"Now," chimed in the others. They, too, did not fancy such familiar
topography.

"Look here," said the narrator, "don't get it into your precious noddles
that this Territory's the only flat country under the sun. There are
other spots upon this green earth where you can see hundreds of miles in
any direction."

"Go on, then, go on!"

"Well, this was such a place--great, wide, flat place. The lord lived
there. He was called the Lord Harry--got his name from the way he acted;
he was always making forced marches----"

Again suspicion, which Lounsbury ignored.

"And violent demands. Oo! my shin!" (This to James, whose heels were
curled up under him.) "Violent demands, I said. And so he had the
cheek--um--the impudence to love, to _love_----" He shut his eyes in
silent rhapsody.

"What uz her name?"

"Ah!" Lounsbury threw up his well hand helplessly. "_No_ name was
splendid enough for her--not one. But he called her--for want of a
better, mind you--he called her the Rose of the South."