So the colonel's wife put her on a paper
spread over a leather trunk.

When the two families started for the sod church, she was carried by the
admiring biggest brother, and on each side of her walked her mother and
the colonel's wife, the others following. She kept turning around to
look at the colonel's son as they went along, and so did not see the
church until she was close to it.

It made a quaint picture in the warm June sunlight as the little
procession neared it. The rude cross surmounting the gable above its
entrance was twined with morning-glory vines that had found their way to
it after hiding the low, thick, black walls beneath; and surrounding the
building was a fence of scantlings--built every spring by the chaplain
to keep the troop horses and the commissary's cows from grazing off its
sides, and stolen every fall by the half-breeds when the first frosts
came--that served as a hitching-post for raw-boned army mounts and
scraggy Indian ponies. Beyond this circle were wagons and big, clumsy,
box-topped carts from far-lying farms, with oxen tied to their wheels
and swaying their weary necks under heavy yokes.

The church still wore its wedding decorations of cat-tails and
willow-boughs when the door swung open to admit the christening party,
and over the step that led up to the altar hung a golden bell of
heart-leaved buttercups. As the little girl crossed the threshold, she
looked on the crowded, waiting congregation with eager, half-frightened
eyes. On each side of the aisle, filling the rear benches, were Indians
and half-breeds, the gay government blankets of the men and the bright
calico dresses, striped shawls, and gayer blankets of the women setting
off their wide, stolid faces; here and there among them, in greasy
breeches and flannel shirts, were rough cattlemen and trappers; and the
troop's famous scout, the half-breed Eagle Eye, sat in the midst of
them, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of her. Instead of the red
handkerchief that he wore about his forehead to keep his black hair out
of his eyes, he had tied, in honor of the occasion, a strip of bleached
muslin, and under it his eyes sparkled and his teeth gleamed as he
smiled at the white papoose.

When the biggest brother started toward the altar, the little girl
hurriedly smoothed the christening robe and put out the white kid shoes
so that everybody might see them. And when they passed the frontier
families and came in line with the ari