and Arapahoe Cattle Company. But I lacked authority to send
it, and the next morning at the meeting, the New England blood that
had descended from the Puritan Fathers was again in the saddle,
shouting the old slogans of no compromise while they had God and right
on their side. Major Hunter and I both keenly felt the rebuke,
but personal friends prevented an open rupture, while the more
conservative ones saw brighter prospects in the political change of
administration which was soon to assume the reins of government.
A number of congressmen and senators among our stockholders were
prominent in the ascendant party, and once the new regime took charge,
a general shake-up of affairs in and around Fort Reno was promised.
I remembered the old maxim of a new broom; yet in spite of the
blandishments that were showered down in silencing my active partner
and me, I could almost smell the burning range, see the horizon
lighted up at night by the licking flames, hear the gloating of our
enemies, in the hour of their victory, and the click of the nippers of
my own men, in cutting the wire that the cattle might escape and live.

I left Washington somewhat heartened. Major Hunter, ever inclined
to look on the bright side of things, believed that the crisis had
passed, even bolstering up my hopes in the next administration. It was
the immediate necessity that was worrying me, for it meant a summer's
work to gather our cattle on Red River and in the intermediate
country, and bring them back to the home range. The mysterious absence
of any report from my foreman on my arrival at the Grove did not
mislead me to believe that no news was good news, and I accordingly
hurried on to the front. There was a marked respect shown me by the
civilians located at Fort Reno, something unusual; but I hurried on
to the agency, where all was quiet, and thence to ranch headquarters.
There I learned that a second attempt to burn the range had been
frustrated; that one of our boys had shot dead a white man in the act
of cutting the east string of fence; that the same night three fires
had broken out in the pasture, and that a squad of our men, in riding
to the light, had run afoul of two renegade Cheyennes armed with
wire-nippers, whose remains then lay in the pasture unburied. Both
horses were captured and identified as not belonging to the Indians,
while their owners were well known. Fortunately the wind veered
shortly after the fires started, driving the