on their way up to the front and
many more were expected, but there still remained only the two infantry
companies to "hold the fort." At the earliest intimation of trouble
there had come back from the East, where he had been spending the first
long leave he had enjoyed in some years of service, a stalwart young
lieutenant by the name of McLean. Border warfare had no more charm for
him than it had for any other soldier who remembered that it was one in
which the Indian had everything to win and nothing to lose. He had seen
not a little of it, with hard marching, scouting, and suffering,
through winter's cold and summer's heat, in more than one campaign in
the recent past. It was hard to give up the leave, but harder to have
his regiment take the field without him. It was with a sense of having
been defrauded in some measure, therefore, that he found himself
retained at the fort, simply because his own company happened to be
kept back on guard. The column had gone when he succeeded in reaching
the post, and his chagrin was bitter when he found that, so far from
following and overtaking them on the trail to the Big Horn, he was
ordered to assume command of his company in the place of Captain Bruce,
who, though present at the fort, was rapidly breaking down with
rheumatic trouble that confined him to his quarters. McLean went to the
major commanding, he also wrote to his colonel and telegraphed to the
adjutant, but all to no purpose. There must be an officer with each
company, even though it be only a post-guard, and it was his ill-luck
to have to be the man.

And yet, three weeks after his return, Mr. McLean was by no means the
disgusted and unhappy subaltern he declared himself, and it was a fact
patent to all the garrison that Nellie Bayard was the source of comfort
which reconciled him to the situation.

The fort was crowded with officers' families at the time. A large force
had been maintained here during the winter, and when the troops took
the field in March the ladies and children remained,--a sacred charge
for Major Miller and his two companies of "foot." Not only was this the
case, but such was the threatening and truculent bearing of all the
Sioux and Cheyenne Indians remaining at the agency on White River to
the north-east, that a few of the officers on duty at Fort Robinson
(the post established there to overlook and overawe (?) the savages)
had sent their families back to Laramie under escort, and those gent