them,
far more numerous and powerful, who are planning, preaching war this
minute. Watch Red Cloud, Red Dog, Little Big Man. Double, treble your
garrisons at the posts along the Big Horn; get your women and children
out of them, or else abandon the forts entirely. I know those warriors
well. They outnumber you twenty to one. Reinforce your garrisons without
delay or get out of that country, one of the two. Draw everything south
of the Platte while yet there is time."

But wiseacres at Washington said the Indians were peaceable, and all
that was needed was a new post and another little garrison at Warrior
Gap, in the eastward foothills of the range. Eight hundred thousand
dollars would build it, "provided the labor of the troops was utilized,"
and leave a good margin for the contractors and "the Bureau." And it was
to escort the quartermaster and engineer officer and an aide-de-camp on
preliminary survey that "C" Troop of the cavalry, Captain Brooks
commanding, had been sent on the march from the North Platte at Frayne
to the headwaters of the Powder River in the Hills, and with it went its
new first lieutenant, Marshall Dean.

CHAPTER II.

Promotion was rapid in the cavalry in those days, so soon after the war.
Indians contributed largely to the general move, but there were other
causes, too. Dean had served little over a year as second lieutenant in
a troop doing duty along the lower Platte, when vacancies occurring gave
him speedy and unlooked-for lift. He had met Mr. Folsom only once. The
veteran trader had embarked much of his capital in business at Gate City
beyond the Rockies, but officers from Fort Emory, close to the new
frontier town, occasionally told him he had won a stanch friend in that
solid citizen.

"You ought to get transferred to Emory," they said. "Here's the band,
half a dozen pretty girls, hops twice a week, hunts and picnics all
through the spring and summer in the mountains, fishing _ad libitum_,
and lots of fun all the year around." But Dean's ears were oddly deaf. A
classmate let fall the observation that it was because of a New York
girl who had jilted him that Dean had forsworn society and stuck to a
troop in the field: but men who knew and served with the young fellow
found him an enthusiast in his profession, passionately fond of cavalry
life in the open, a bold rider, a keen shot and a born hunter. Up with
the dawn day after day, in saddle long hours, scouting the divides and
r