Lanier is a persecuted saint and I
am an abandoned sinner, but just as soon as I can reach Omaha this case
shall be laid before a general court-martial, and meanwhile I waste no
more words defending my actions."

Whereupon, with formal "Good-night, sir," from Stannard and Sumter, and
a grumpy dismissal from the indignant commander, the ill-starred
conference broke up. Snaffle, pouring balm into Button's ready ear, as
he saw him home, went in and drank his health at the well-stocked
sideboard, and then started straightway across the parade to his troop
quarters, and, late as it was, called for his first sergeant.

The men were mostly in bed, as they should be at such an hour, but there
had been an informal dance, and many of the sergeants were still at the
hop room. Beyond this brightly lighted building, and about in the rear
of the infantry barracks at the westward end, was the slide into the
creek valley, whereat so many of the officers' children had been
coasting early in the evening, and where now--nearly eleven
o'clock--half a hundred young people of both sexes, wives and daughters
of quartermaster's employees and of the elder sergeants, attended by
their gallants from the garrison, were having a merry time of it. The
moon shone in brilliance. The night air, frosty and still, was full of
exhilaration. The officer-of-the-guard, merely cautioning the revellers
to control their impulse to shout, had gone on his way with implied
permission to keep up the fun, and presently other officers appeared
upon the brow of the bluff, interested observers. One of them, the
junior medical officer of the post, was known to all, for his duty it
was to attend the families of the soldiery resident in the little
village of their own, just west of the quartermaster's corral, and
sheltered by the long line of bluffs from the northerly gale. Deep in
snowdrifts lay the snug little cabins, cottages and shacks, wherein
dwelt these blithe-hearted folk--many of the girls as pretty, and to the
full as coquettish, as their sisters of the official circle in the big
"fort" enclosure above. Still farther to the west lay three little
houses on the level "bench," by the swift-running stream--the homes of
the corral-master, the wagon-master and the veterinarian--civilians all,
as then ordained, yet men who had lived their lives with the army on the
frontier.

And it was one of these, the veterinary surgeon, a gray-haired man of
nearly sixty, who pr