Warrior Gap. Charles King
CHAPTER II.
Promotion was rapid in the cavalry in those days, so soon after the war. Indians contributed largely to the general move, but there were other causes, too. Dean had served little over a year as second lieutenant in a troop doing duty along the lower Platte, when vacancies occurring gave him speedy and unlooked-for lift. He had met Mr. Folsom only once. The veteran trader had embarked much of his capital in business at Gate City beyond the Rockies, but officers from Fort Emory, close to the new frontier town, occasionally told him he had won a stanch friend in that solid citizen.
"You ought to get transferred to Emory," they said. "Here's the band, half a dozen pretty girls, hops twice a week, hunts and picnics all through the spring and summer in the mountains, fishing ad libitum, and lots of fun all the year around." But Dean's ears were oddly deaf. A classmate let fall the observation that it was because of a New York girl who had jilted him that Dean had forsworn society and stuck to a troop in the field: but men who knew and served with the young fellow found him an enthusiast in his profession, passionately fond of cavalry life in the open, a bold rider, a keen shot and a born hunter. Up with the dawn day after day, in saddle long hours, scouting the divides and ridges, stalking antelope and black-tail deer, chasing buffalo, he lived a life that hardened every muscle, bronzed the skin, cleared the eye and brain, and gave to even monotonous existence a "verve" and zest the dawdlers in those old-time garrisons never knew.
All the long summer of the year after his graduation, from mid-April until November, he never once slept beneath a wooden roof, and more often than not the sky was his only canopy. That summer, too, Jessie spent at home, Pappoose with her most of the time, and one year more would finish them at the reliable old Ohio school. By that time Folsom's handsome new home would be in readiness to receive his daughter at Gate City. By that time, too, Marshall might hope to have a leave and come in to Illinois to welcome his sister and gladden his mother's eyes. But until then, the boy had said to himself, he'd stick to the field, and the troop that had the roughest work to do was the one that best suited him, and so it had happened that by the second spring of his service in the regiment no subaltern was held in higher esteem by senior officers or regarded with more envy by the lazy ones among the juniors than the young graduate, for those, too, were days in which graduates were few and far between, except in higher grades. Twice had he ridden in the dead of winter the devious trail through the Medicine Bow range to Frayne. Once already had he been sent the long march to and from the Big Horn, and when certain officers were ordered to the mountains early in the spring to locate the site of the new post at Warrior Gap, Brooks's troop, as has been said, went along as escort and Brooks caught mountain fever in the Hills, or some such ailment, and made the home trip in the ambulance, leaving the active command of "C" Troop to his subaltern.
With the selection of the site Dean had nothing to do. Silently he looked on as the quartermaster, the engineer, and a staff officer from Omaha paced off certain lines, took shots with their instruments at neighboring heights, and sampled the sparkling waters of the Fork. Two companies of infantry, sent down from further posts along the northern slopes of the range, had stacked their arms and pitched their "dog tents," and vigilant vedettes and sentries peered over every commanding height and ridge to secure the invaders against surprise. Invaders they certainly were from the Indian point of view, for this was Indian Story Land, the most prized, the most beautiful, the most prolific in fish and game in all the continent. Never had the red man clung with such tenacity to any section of his hunting grounds as did the Northern Sioux to this, the north and northeast watershed of the Big Horn Range. Old Indian fighters among the men shook their heads when the quartermaster selected a level bench as the site on which to begin the stockade that was to enclose the officers' quarters and the barracks, storehouse and magazine, and ominously they glanced at one another and then at the pine-skirted ridge that rose, sharp and sudden, against the sky, not four hundred yards away, dominating the site entirely.
"I shouldn't like the job of clearing away the gang of Indians that might seize that ridge," said Dean, when later asked by the engineer what he thought of it, and Dean had twice by that time been called upon to help "hustle" Indians out of threatening positions, and knew whereof he spoke.
"I shouldn't worry over things you're never likely to have to do," said the quartermaster, with sarcastic emphasis, and he was a man who never yet had had to face a foeman in the field, and Dean said nothing more, but felt right well he had no friend in Major Burleigh.
They left the infantry there to guard the site and protect the gang of woodchoppers set to work at once, then turned their faces homeward. They had spent four days and nights at the Gap, and the more the youngster saw of the rotund quartermaster the less he cared to cultivate him. A portly, heavily built man was he, some forty years of age, a widower, whose children were at their mother's old home in the far East, a business man with a keen eye for opportunities and investments, a fellow who was reputed to have stock in a dozen mines and kindred enterprises, a knowing hand who drove fast horses and owned quite a stable, a sharp hand who played a thriving game of poker, and had no compunctions as to winning. Officers at Emory were fighting shy of him. He played too big a game for their small pay and pockets, and the men with whom he took his pleasure were big contractors or well-known "sports" and gamblers, who in those days thronged the frontier towns and most men did them homage. But on this trip Burleigh had no big gamblers along and missed his evening game, and, once arrived at camp along the Fork, he had "roped in" some of the infantry officers, but Brooks and the engineer declined to play, and so had Dean from the very start.
"All true cavalrymen ought to be able to take a hand at poker," sneered Burleigh, at the first night's camp, for here was a pigeon really worth the plucking, thought he. Dean's life in the field had been so simple and inexpensive that he had saved much of his slender pay; but, what Burleigh did not know, he had sent much of it home to mother and Jess.
"I know several men who would have been the better for leaving it alone," responded Dean very quietly. They rubbed each other the wrong way from the very start, and this was bad for the boy, for in those days, when army morals were less looked after than they are now, men of Burleigh's stamp, with the means to entertain and the station to enable them to do it, had often the ear of officers from headquarters, and more things were told at such times to generals and colonels about their young men than the victims ever suspected. Burleigh was a man of position and influence, and knew it. Dean was a youngster without either, and did not realize it. He had made an enemy of the quartermaster on the trip and could not but know it. Yet, conscious that he had said nothing that was wrong, he felt no disquiet.
And now, homeward bound, he was jogging contentedly along at the head of the troop. Scouts and flankers signaled "all clear." Not a hostile Indian had they seen since leaving the Gap. The ambulances with a little squad of troopers had hung on a few moments at the noon camp, hitching slowly and leisurely that their passengers might longer enjoy their post prandial siesta in the last shade they would see until they reached Cantonment Reno, a long day's ride away. Presently the lively mule teams would come along the winding trail at spanking trot. Then the troop would open out to right and left and let them take the lead, giving the dust in exchange, and once more the rapid march would begin.
It was four P. M. when the shadows of the mules' ears and heads came jerking into view beside him, and, guiding his horse to the right, Dean loosed rein and prepared to trot by the open doorway of the stout, black-covered wagon. The young engineer officer, sitting on the front seat, nodded cordially to the cavalryman. He had known and liked him at the Point. He had sympathized with him in the vague difference with the quartermaster. He had had to listen to sneering things Burleigh was telling the aide-de-camp about young linesmen in general and Dean in particular, stocking the staff officer with opinions which he hoped and intended should reach the department commander's ears. The engineer disbelieved, but was in no position to disprove. His station was at Omaha, far from the scene of cavalry exploits in fort or field. Burleigh's office and depot were in this new, crowded, bustling frontier town, filled with temptation to men so far removed from the influences of home and civilization, and Burleigh doubtless saw and knew much to warrant his generalities.