u!" he cried in alarm, for the
quartermaster was sinking into a chair.

"You can help me!" he gasped. "Get me fresh mules and escort. My God! I
must start for Frayne at once. Some whisky, please." And the letter
dropped from his trembling hands and lay there unnoticed on the floor.

CHAPTER V.

Mid June had come, and there was the very devil to pay--so said the
scouts and soldiers up along the Big Horn. But scouts and soldiers were
far removed from the States and cities where news was manufactured, and
those were days in which our Indian outbreaks were described in the
press long after, instead of before, their occurrence. Such couriers as
had got through to Frayne brought dispatches from the far-isolated posts
along that beautiful range, insisting that the Sioux were swarming in
every valley. Such dispatches, when wired to Washington and "referred"
to the Department of the Interior and re-referred to the head of the
Indian Bureau, were scoffed at as sensational.

"Our agents report the Indians peaceably assembled at their
reservations. None are missing at the weekly distribution of supplies
except those who are properly accounted for as out on their annual
hunt." "The officers," said the papers, "seem to see red Indians in
every bush," and unpleasant things were hinted at the officers as a
consequence.

Indians there certainly were in other sections, and they were
unquestionably "raising the devil" along the Smoky Hill and the Southern
Plains, and there the Interior Department insisted that troops in strong
force should be sent. So, too, along the line of the Union Pacific.
Officials were still nervous. Troops of cavalry camped at intervals of
forty miles along the line between Kearney and Julesburg, and even
beyond. At Washington and the great cities of the East, therefore, there
was no anxiety as to the possible fate of those little garrisons, with
their helpless charge of women and children away up in the heart of the
Sioux country. But at Laramie and Frayne and Emory, the nearest frontier
posts; at Cheyenne, Omaha and Gate City the anxiety was great. When John
Folsom said the Indians meant a war of extermination people west of the
Missouri said: "Withdraw those garrisons while there is yet time or else
send five thousand troops to help them." But people east of the Missouri
said: "Who the devil is John Folsom? What does he know about it? Here's
what the Indian agents say, and that's enough," and people