abandoned
characters who were not all half as bad as they were painted, and quite
an array of citizens of high repute who were not all as good as they
looked. As between bad morals and bad manners, society seems to find it
easier to forgive the former, and most of the Eastern men who had come
West to embark in business had charming manners and were welcome
visitors at the fort, welcome companions at every party, picnic, and
dance, most hospitable entertainers in their turn when the fort people
went to town. During the long battle summer Fort Scott was garrisoned by
Colonel "Pegleg," the chaplain, the doctors, the adjutant and
quartermaster, the band, one company of his reliable old corps, the
Fortieth Foot, and the wives and children of pretty much all the rest of
the regiment. Famous campaigners were they of the Fortieth. They hadn't
missed a chance, winter or summer, for ten long years. They had tramped,
scouted, picketed, escorted, explored, surveyed, fought and bled all
over the great Northwest, some of the officers being so incessantly
abroad as to find themselves quite ill at ease at home, many of their
ladies declaring it a difficult matter to know their lords on the rare
occasions of their return, some few, indeed, being accused of having
forgotten them entirely in their absence. These were days the army
little knew before and will never know again,--the decade that followed
the war of the rebellion. Too old to take the field himself, the veteran
colonel at least could take his ease at home, and was quite placid and
content when he had the band to play for him, one company to guard and
"police" the post, and a host of women and children, bereft of their
natural protectors, fluttering about him. When all his companies were
home he had to spend hours at his desk overhauling ration and post and
forage returns, and as he was essentially a "red-tape" soldier,--one
who knew the regulations and recognized nothing else,--he made in busier
times his own life and those of his officers something of a burden. The
summer had been lovely at Scott. Thrice a week on sunshiny afternoons
the band played in its kiosk, and the gallants from town or the
neighboring ranches drove in with their stylish "turnouts" and called on
the ladies at the fort or took them driving over the hard prairie roads,
or danced with them on the waxed floor of the airy assembly-room.
"Really," said some of the ladies, "if it hadn't been for our friends
fr