r place was there? since
you dislike my having soldiers come to the house. Why, Sandy Ray! what
are you thinking of? You don't mean----"

"Hush!" said Sandy. There were footsteps at the front and laughing
voices, and a bang at the gongbell. Minnie, the housemaid, fluttered
through the hallway. "Are the ladies at home?" "Mrs. Stone and Mrs.
Dwight!" stage-whispered Priscilla, but in an instant Sandy Ray had
found his feet and followed his mother, who was interviewing cook at the
kitchen door. "Mrs. Stone and Mrs. Dwight," he echoed, waited until Mrs.
Ray had gone to greet the callers, then bolted through the sacred
precincts of Sarah's own domain and into the afternoon sunshine beyond.
There Minnie presently fetched her young master his broad-brimmed
campaign hat, wondering why he should look so pale. Making wide detour,
Sandy found himself presently within hail of the club. It was but an
hour before sunset. The cavalry people were just coming back from
stables to supper. There were not five officers on the broad veranda,
but among them stood a man in civilian dress, whose back had a strangely
familiar look and whose voice, when he whirled about and shouted
greeting, sent a thrill of astonishment not unmixed with wrath, nerve
racking, through the young soldier's slender frame.

"Hullo, Sandy! Got over being grumpy yet? Come up and see a fellow."

What brought Stanley Foster, of all men, here to Minneconjou now?

CHAPTER VII

THE WOLF IN THE SHEEPFOLD

A week rolled on and matters at Minneconjou had become electric. The
weather was superb. The sun rose in a cloudless sky long hours before
society, as represented at our frontier city and station, followed suit,
shook off the fetters of sleep and began bestirring itself for the day.
And days were long in that northern latitude, long enough for even the
most ambitious and enthusiastic of commanding officers intent on the
instruction and development of the force intrusted to his care. Yet the
days seemed hardly long enough for Oswald Dwight, whose first difference
with the post commander was on the subject of morning gunfire and the
reveille. To the scandal of the cavalry service, let it be recorded that
in the point at issue, without exception the members of Minneconjou's
mounted service sided with the easy-going infantryman at the head of
affairs, and against their own immediate leader--the over-energetic, the
nervously pushing, prodding, spurring, stirring sq