ntually without coats, collars, or character, none of
them without bruises, some of them not without aid. Stone marveled that
so many of his men turned up in town drunk, helpless, and in the hands
of the local police, with fines imposed by the local magistrates, but
that, too, was presently explained. Skid kept a big, twelve-seated "bus"
that on busy nights, as the soldiers got well fuddled and completely
strapped, he would load up with the drugged and drowsy victims and,
instead of driving them over to the fort, would trundle them to town,
dump them in front of some saloon, there to be run in by a ready police,
and locked up until sober and abject. Then would come their arraignment
and the invariable "Five dollars or thirty days." Then their officers
would be notified. The fines at first were paid, until it dawned upon
Stone that Skid and Silver Hill, both, were in the swindling
combination, that after Skidmore had got the last cent of the men there
was still a way of squeezing more from the officers. As soon as the fort
realized the fact the town ceased to realize the funds, and Skidmore was
told to send no more castaways to Silver Hill, so he simply turned them
out to take their medicine where once they took their comfort--at the
post.

But Skid's was a menace in yet another way, and, so long as his "ranch"
was far over to the southeast, the fort had not felt it. The noble
redman likes liquor, and the low-caste and half-breed crave it. There
were always a shabby lot of hang-dog, prowling, ill-favored
off-scourings of the Sioux lurking about Skid's premises day and night,
bartering when they had anything to barter, but generally begging or
stealing. A drunken soldier, sleeping off his whisky in the willow
patches, was ever fair game, and sometimes now soldiers were found
throttled, and robbed of their very boots and shirts. Serious clashes
had occurred, and were of almost daily happening, to the end that
officers, out fishing or shooting, had been insulted and threatened by
Indians who had sworn vengeance against the soldier, and knew no
discrimination. "We'll have trouble from that yet," Stone had told his
general, and the grave, lined face of the latter showed how seriously he
regarded the possibility. Sandy Ray, riding far out to the southwest one
summer day, had met a brace of young braves who insolently ordered him
to turn back or fight, and this when he had not so much as a pocket
pistol or an inkling that troub