d to the big tent
adjoining. In front of this the soldiers in a skirmish line held back
the scurrying outlaws. Within a few moments Sellersville was ablaze
from end to end and its population, including Perry and Rebstock,
driven to the flatboats, were floating with threats and curses down
the muddy current of the Spider Water.

CHAPTER VII

Stanley's next camp was pitched down the river where the overland
telegraph line crossed the Spider Water, and Bucks, installed in a
smart army tent with a cracker-box for a stool and a packing-case for
an instrument table, was, through Dancing's efforts, put in
communication by wire with Medicine Bend and the west country as far
as Sleepy Cat, where the War Department was establishing an army
post.

Stanley, with Bob Scott, now spent a great deal of time in the saddle
between the bridge and the upper tie-camps, and his presence made
itself felt in the renewed energy everywhere apparent among the
contractors and their men. Bucks, chained to a wire, as he expressed
it, found the days dragging again and would much rather have been at
liberty to ride with Scott, who, when free, hunted in the foot-hills.

One day Bucks was sitting alone in his tent, looking for the
hundredth time over a worn copy of _Harper's Weekly_ that he had
picked up at Casement's camp, when a dog put his nose in the tent
door. A glance revealed merely a disconsolate, unpromising cur, yet
Bucks thought he had seen the dog before and was interested. He seemed
of an all-over alkali-brown hue, scant of hair, scant of tail, and
with only melancholy dewlap ears to suggest a strain of nobler blood
in an earlier ancestry. He looked in with the furtive eye of the
tramp, and as if expecting that a boot or a club would most probably
be his welcome.

But Bucks at the moment was lonely--as lonely as the dog himself--and
as the two fixed their eyes intently on each other, Bucks remembered
that this was the tie foreman's dog, Scuffy.

Scuffy had appeared at the psychological moment. Bucks regarded him in
silence, and the dog perceiving no immediate danger of assault stood,
in silence, returning Bucks's stare. Then watching the boy's eye
carefully, the dog cocked his head just the least bit to one side. It
was a mute appeal, but a moving one. Bucks continued, however, his
non-committal scrutiny, recalling that the foreman had said nothing
good of Scuffy, and the homeless cur stood in doubt as to his
reception. But