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wished they were back there again, the finest station the --th had ever
had, he declared, and "so near the mines!"
"Just think, Geordie," he cried, "if we were all at Reynolds we could
run up the range to the Silver Shield any day, and watch them dragging
out gold."
"You haven't lost faith in the Shield, then?" asked Mrs. Graham,
smilingly. She thought and cared so little herself. She knew that several
officers at Reynolds, her husband and McCrea among them, had
invested their scant savings in that most promising venture. She knew
that McCrea had vowed it would make them all rich if not famous one
of these days, and that her methodical, cautious "canny Scot" of a
husband had figured, pondered, and consulted long before he, too, had
become convinced. She knew their holdings had been quoted far above

what was paid for them, but what of all that? She had her boys, her
husband, her army home, her health, and high content. What was
wealth to her?
"I own I was thinking more of the hunting and fishing, the scenery, and
the splendid range," said Geordie, "but no matter where 'E' Troop goes,
I want to be with it."
"If the Shield pans out according to promise," said McCrea, with a
laugh, "the regiment won't see me for many a day after I realize. I'm
going in for a year's leave--and Europe."
They had reached the front of Grant Hall by this time and were strolling
slowly along, their voices hushed for the moment by the cheery hum of
boyish talk and the clatter of mess furniture, as the Corps sat at their
late supper. Then several officers, gathered about the steps of the club
rooms in the south end, lifted their caps to Mrs. Graham and smiled
greeting to the party.
"Come back, Geordie!" was the cheery hail. "We want to wet that
assignment in cavalry fashion." But Graham laughed and shook his
head.
"Can't break away just now," said he. "I'll look in later."
"What I can't understand," said McCrea, "is that we got no word. With
Freeman and Blake both on duty in Washington, one would think
they'd have wired if they knew."
"It's coming now," said the doctor, pointing to the telegraph orderly
turning away from the steps of his quarters and coming swiftly toward
them, brown envelope in hand. Just in front of the hospital gateway he
met the party, saluted, and tendered the uppermost of two or three
despatches to the doctor.
"Freeman, I'm betting," said McCrea, as the doctor tore it open and read.
They walked on slowly, expectant, but he did not speak. Then Mrs.
Graham turned, gave one look, dropped Geordie's arm and clasped that

of her husband. The rugged, weather-beaten face had grown suddenly
gray.
"George! husband!" she cried. "What's gone wrong?"
For answer he simply handed her the paper.
"Designate proxy; meeting Monday. Fear everything lost. Come if
possible."
"Mac," said the old doctor, solemnly, "it's Silver Shield that's melted
away. Everything we had in the world."
CHAPTER II
THE FIRST CALL
Fort Reynolds, as has been told in the earlier story of George Graham's
cadet days, lay among the eastward foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains,
with a bustling little frontier city only six miles away down the winding
valley of what was, in the early eighties, a clear, cold, and beautiful
mountain stream that shone in the sun like molten silver.
Silver Run it was called when Uncle Sam built the picturesque frontier
fort of hewn logs and unseasoned pine soon after the Civil War. Silver
Run, cold, pure, and glistening, it remained when Fort Reynolds
became an important military post. Then the --th Cavalry took station at
Reynolds, and there Geordie Graham found them when, with his father
and mother and "Bud," he had come from cold Montana to the finest
station they yet had known, and to the firmest friends, many of whom
they had met before, when Geordie, as a little boy, was "Corporal
Pops" to every man at old Camp Sandy.
But Silver Run, though it ran more silver than it ever knew before, was
beautiful no longer. Mines of remarkable value, mines of gold and
silver, had been discovered twenty and thirty miles back in the
mountains. Mining towns had sprung up along the steep and rocky
banks. Mining methods had turned a limpid stream into a turbid torrent.

Two railways had run their lines, hewing, blasting, boring, and
tunnelling up the narrow valley, first to reach the mines and finally to
merge in a "cut-off" to the great Transcontinental, so that now huge
trains of Pullmans went straining slowly up-grade past the site of old
Fort Reynolds, or came coasting down with smoking tires and
fire-spitting brake-shoes, and between the loss