prized, the most beautiful, the most prolific in fish and
game in all the continent. Never had the red man clung with such
tenacity to any section of his hunting grounds as did the Northern Sioux
to this, the north and northeast watershed of the Big Horn Range. Old
Indian fighters among the men shook their heads when the quartermaster
selected a level bench as the site on which to begin the stockade that
was to enclose the officers' quarters and the barracks, storehouse and
magazine, and ominously they glanced at one another and then at the
pine-skirted ridge that rose, sharp and sudden, against the sky, not
four hundred yards away, dominating the site entirely.

"I shouldn't like the job of clearing away the gang of Indians that
might seize that ridge," said Dean, when later asked by the engineer
what he thought of it, and Dean had twice by that time been called upon
to help "hustle" Indians out of threatening positions, and knew whereof
he spoke.

"I shouldn't worry over things you're never likely to have to do," said
the quartermaster, with sarcastic emphasis, and he was a man who never
yet had had to face a foeman in the field, and Dean said nothing more,
but felt right well he had no friend in Major Burleigh.

They left the infantry there to guard the site and protect the gang of
woodchoppers set to work at once, then turned their faces homeward. They
had spent four days and nights at the Gap, and the more the youngster
saw of the rotund quartermaster the less he cared to cultivate him. A
portly, heavily built man was he, some forty years of age, a widower,
whose children were at their mother's old home in the far East, a
business man with a keen eye for opportunities and investments, a fellow
who was reputed to have stock in a dozen mines and kindred enterprises,
a knowing hand who drove fast horses and owned quite a stable, a sharp
hand who played a thriving game of poker, and had no compunctions as to
winning. Officers at Emory were fighting shy of him. He played too big a
game for their small pay and pockets, and the men with whom he took his
pleasure were big contractors or well-known "sports" and gamblers, who
in those days thronged the frontier towns and most men did them homage.
But on this trip Burleigh had no big gamblers along and missed his
evening game, and, once arrived at camp along the Fork, he had "roped
in" some of the infantry officers, but Brooks and the engineer declined
to play, and so had D