st, my love. Providence has been tempted at last. The wholesome
irony of life is about to function."

"Frank, don't tease so! And where are you rushing now before the cakes?"

"To set our Augustus a little military problem, dearest. Plain living
for to-day, and high thinking be jolly well--"

"Frank, you're going to swear, and I must know!"

But Frank had sworn and hurried out to the right to the Adjutant's
office, while his Catherine flew to the left to the fence.

"Ella!" she cried. "Oh, Ella!"

Mrs. Bainbridge, instantly on the other side of the fence, brought
scanty light. A telegram had come, she knew, from the Crow Agency in
Montana. Her husband had admitted this three nights ago; and Captain
Duane (she knew) had given him some orders about something; and could
it be the Crows? "Ella, I don't know," said Catherine. "Frank talked all
about Providence in his incurable way, and it may be anything." So the
two ladies wondered together over the fence, until Mrs. Duane, seeing
the Captain return, ran to him and asked, were the Crows on the
war-path? Then her Frank told her yes, and that he had detailed
Albumblatt to vanquish them and escort them to Carlisle School to learn
German and Beethoven's sonatas.

"Stuff, stuff, stuff! Why, there he does go!" cried the unsettled
Catherine. "It's something at the Agency!" But Captain Duane was gone
into the house for a cigar.

Albumblatt, with Sergeant Casey and a detail of six men, was in truth
hastening over that broad mile which opens between Fort Brown and the
Agency. On either side of them the level plain stretched, gray with
its sage, buff with intervening grass, hay-cocked with the smoky,
mellow-stained, meerschaum-like canvas tepees of the Indians, quiet as a
painting; far eastward lay long, low, rose-red hills, half dissolved in
the trembling mystery of sun and distance; and westward, close at hand
and high, shone the great pale-blue serene mountains through the vaster
serenity of the air. The sounding hoofs of the troops brought the
Indians out of their tepees to see. When Albumblatt reached the Agency,
there waited the agent and his two chiefs, who pointed to one lodge
standing apart some three hundred yards, and said, "He is there." So
then Augustus beheld his problem, the military duty fallen to him from
Providence and Captain Duane.

It seems elementary for him who has written of "The Contact Squadron."
It was to arrest one Indian. This man, Ute Jack, had