rs were
assured that the stampede of the cattle was now regarded as inadvertent,
and although it had occasioned an immense deal of vexatious trouble to
the ranchmen, all were now well rounded up and restored to the cow-pens
as of yore. And the ranchmen in turn received a thousand thanks for
their neighborly kindness in the restoration of the horses of the Blue
Lick Stationers, who knew that the animals had not been decoyed off by
the herders, as a malicious report sought to represent, but had merely
returned to their "old grass," according to their homing propensities.
And both parties loved the British soldiers, who had reinforced them,
and intended to go a-scouting with the military expedition; and the
soldiers earnestly reciprocated by assisting in the preparations for the
defense of the station. Especially active and efficient was the only
artilleryman among them, and the paradisaic peace amidst all the
preparations for war was so complete that his acrid scorn of that pride
of the settlement, the little swivel gun, and of the stationers' methods
of handling it, occasioned not even a murmur of resentment.

Peninnah Penelope Anne, although restored to private life and the
maternal domicile, having retired from statecraft and the functions of
linguister to the embassy, did not altogether escape public utility in
these bellicose preparations. The young gunner, who had had the
opportunity of observing her during the march hither, shortly applied to
her for assistance in his professional devoir. He wanted a deft-handed
young person to construct the cartridge-bags for the ammunition which he
was fixing for the little piece and the two coehorns. And thus it
chanced that she found herself in the blockhouse, cheek by jowl with the
little cannon, its grisly muzzle now looking out of the embrasure where
she herself had once been fond of taking observations of the stockade
entrance; the men came and went and speculated upon the chances of the
scouting quest, now about to set forth, while spurs clanking, ramrods
rattling down into gun-barrels, voices lifted in argument or joyous
resonance, made the whitewashed walls ring anew. The gunner, seated at a
table carefully and accurately measuring out the powder, now and again
urged strict cautions against the lighting of pipes or striking of
sparks from gun-flints. When he applied himself briskly to the cutting
out of more bags from flannel for his cartridges, he looked very
harmless a