s he 'lost his nerve' when they met Red Cloud's big band. A
boy might be excused for that so long as he didn't misbehave. It was big
responsibility for a young lieutenant. But these people, as you speak of
them out at the fort, really know very little about Dean. Burleigh says
he's in a position that enables him to know so much more about the
character and habits of the young officers."

"Surely he can say nothing against Mr. Dean!" exclaimed Pappoose,
looking up with quick indignation in her brown eyes. "No one knows how
good and generous he has been to Jessie and his mother."

They were standing at the moment in the corner of the library farthest
from the doorway. The front windows opened to the north, giving a fine
view of the rolling hills rising higher and higher and looking down upon
the grass-grown slopes spread out at their feet, criss-crossed and
traversed by hard-beaten roads and trails. Immediately in front of the
house Folsom had seeded and watered and coaxed into semblance of a lawn
the best turf to be had in that section of Wyoming, and inclosed it in a
spick and span white picket fence. The main road between the fort and
the railway station passed directly in front of his gate. The side
window of the cozy room looked out to the west over the valley of a
rushing stream, once rich in trout, but now much infested by the mules
from Burleigh's corral, which lay half a mile away to the southeast, out
of sight of Folsom's house except from the upper windows. Eager to stock
the library with standard works against his daughter's coming, the old
trader had consulted a friend among the officers and had sent a lavish
order to a house in Chicago. Books, therefore, were there in plenty on
the handsome shelves, and they were not ill-chosen either, but it was
Mrs. Fletcher who pointed out how stiff and angular everything looked,
who introduced the easy lounge, the soft rugs, the heavy hanging
portieres of costly Navajo blankets. It was her deft touch that draped
the curtains at the windows and softened and beautified the lines the
hand of man would have left crude and repellent. And that library had
been her favorite haunt; but since the coming of the girls Mrs. Fletcher
had seemed to retire to her own room aloft, and to spend no time below
stairs that was not demanded by her household duties. Now as the father
and daughter were talking earnestly together, they heard Mrs. Fletcher
moving about overhead as though looking