hung
about the post was lifting up his voice to bay the autumn moon. Even
those easily-started night trumpeters, the big Missouri mules, sprawled
about their roomy, sand-floored stables and drowsed in placid comfort,
wearied with their musical efforts of the earlier hours of the night and
gathering impetus for the sonorous braying with which they should
presently salute the dawn.

Beyond the guard-house, at the edge of the plateau overlooking the
westward flats, but invisible from the flagstaff bluff, stood the big
wooden edifice known as the store, with its card and billiard room for
the officers on the southern side, another for the enlisted men upon the
northern, the bar and general merchandise establishment compressed
between them. Southward, farther still, surrounded by crude greenhouses
abounding in potted plants and beds of vine and vegetables, was the big
and somewhat pretentious house of the post trader himself, his own
stables and corral being half way down the slope and well away from
those of the garrison. "Out of sight," muttered Webb, "but by no means
out of mind," for it was safe to say the thoughts of more than half the
men and women making up the social element of Fort Frayne had been
centering within the last few days beneath the roof that gave shelter to
that brilliant, fascinating beauty Nanette Flower.

Ten days a denizen of the fort, it seemed as though she had been there
as many weeks, so completely had she accepted the situation and
possessed herself of the ins and outs of garrison life. The women had
called, of course, and gone away filled with unwilling admiration, for
the girl's gowns and graces were undeniable. The married men, as was the
army way, had called with their wives on the occasion of the first
visit. The bachelors, from Webb down to the junior subaltern, had called
in little squads at first; afterwards, except the major, they sought to
see Miss Flower when other fellows were not present. Even Hartley and
Donovan, the two whose devotions to Esther Dade had been carried to the
verge of oppression, and who were on terms of distant civility only when
compelled to appear together in the presence of women or their other
superiors, had been moved to more than one visit at the Hays', but
Hartley speedily returned to his undesired siege at the quarters of
Captain Dade, while Donovan joined forces with two other youngsters,
Bruce and Putney, because it gave them comfort to bother Field; wh