idges, stalking antelope and black-tail deer, chasing buffalo, he lived
a life that hardened every muscle, bronzed the skin, cleared the eye and
brain, and gave to even monotonous existence a "verve" and zest the
dawdlers in those old-time garrisons never knew.

All the long summer of the year after his graduation, from mid-April
until November, he never once slept beneath a wooden roof, and more
often than not the sky was his only canopy. That summer, too, Jessie
spent at home, Pappoose with her most of the time, and one year more
would finish them at the reliable old Ohio school. By that time Folsom's
handsome new home would be in readiness to receive his daughter at Gate
City. By that time, too, Marshall might hope to have a leave and come in
to Illinois to welcome his sister and gladden his mother's eyes. But
until then, the boy had said to himself, he'd stick to the field, and
the troop that had the roughest work to do was the one that best suited
him, and so it had happened that by the second spring of his service in
the regiment no subaltern was held in higher esteem by senior officers
or regarded with more envy by the lazy ones among the juniors than the
young graduate, for those, too, were days in which graduates were few
and far between, except in higher grades. Twice had he ridden in the
dead of winter the devious trail through the Medicine Bow range to
Frayne. Once already had he been sent the long march to and from the Big
Horn, and when certain officers were ordered to the mountains early in
the spring to locate the site of the new post at Warrior Gap, Brooks's
troop, as has been said, went along as escort and Brooks caught mountain
fever in the Hills, or some such ailment, and made the home trip in the
ambulance, leaving the active command of "C" Troop to his subaltern.

With the selection of the site Dean had nothing to do. Silently he
looked on as the quartermaster, the engineer, and a staff officer from
Omaha paced off certain lines, took shots with their instruments at
neighboring heights, and sampled the sparkling waters of the Fork. Two
companies of infantry, sent down from further posts along the northern
slopes of the range, had stacked their arms and pitched their "dog
tents," and vigilant vedettes and sentries peered over every commanding
height and ridge to secure the invaders against surprise. Invaders they
certainly were from the Indian point of view, for this was Indian Story
Land, the most