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of the water for his
horses, and the hemming in of his rifle-ranges by rail right of way,
Uncle Sam declared Fort Reynolds no longer tenable for cavalry. The
regiment had been sent elsewhere, and only a quartermaster-sergeant
and a squad of men remained.
Yet Reynolds stood in the midst of thriving industries and swarming
men. The First National Bank in town had now a marble front and a
thousand depositors. The town was now a city and a railway centre, and
the backbone of its business was no longer cattle, but mines and mining,
full of fabulous wealth for those "on the inside," but of dark and
devious measures for those "on the outside" or away, and of these were
half a dozen army officers who had been dazzled by the easily acquired
dollars of the earliest arrivals, and of these officers was one of the last
men his friends thought possible to mislead--shrewd, calculating,
cautious, canny old "Sawny" Graham, post surgeon at Fort Reynolds in
the late eighties.
Yet prospectors and explorers ten years earlier had declared gold would
be found up the banks of Silver Run. In the glorious park country back
of Squaw Cañon, where Geordie and Bud had camped and fished and
hunted as boys, the signs of the restless scouts of the great army of
miners were to be seen at every hand. And then finally, in the very
September that followed the return of Graham and Connell to take up
the last half of their course at the Academy, there came sudden and
thrilling announcement of "big finds" along Lance Creek, the upper
tributary of Silver Run; then even finer indications on the Run itself,
and the West went wild. All of a sudden the mountain-sides bristled
with armed men and their burros. Camps sprang up in a night and
shafts were sunk in a day. Yampah County, from primeval wilderness,
leaped to renown, with a population of ten thousand. Gold and silver
came "packed" down the trails to the First National. Then, faster than

the precious metal came down, costly machinery, and prices, went up.
Fortunes were declared in a week. Officers and men at Reynolds caught
the craze.
Many an old sergeant took his discharge and his savings and went to
the mines; and young troopers without discharges took their lead and
followed suit, and the colonel wired the War Department that if the
regiment wasn't ordered away there wouldn't be anything left to order
in the spring. Luckily, heavy snow-storms came and blocked the trails,
and there was a lull at the mines, but unluckily, not before the few
officers at Reynolds who had saved a dollar had invested every cent of
their savings in the shares of the Golconda, the White Eagle, the
Consolidated Denver, and especially the Silver Shield, and the man
who, through frugality and good management, had the most to invest,
and who had invested all, was Major Graham. When he left there for
West Point the August following he had refused four times what he
paid for his shares, and saw fortune smiling on his pathway to the
Hudson. Now, less than ten months thereafter, on the borders of the
Hudson, he saw ruin staring him in the face.
For there had been assessments, and he had borrowed to meet them.
There had come rumors of "leaks" and he had kept them to himself.
McCrea, his boy's best friend in the regiment, had consulted him only
ten days back as to whether it were not wise to realize on a portion at
least of their holdings, and Graham, dreading a "bear" movement on the
market, had said, "Hold fast."
And now McCrea had turned back. He must go at once, he said, to the
telegraph office. So Graham, his sorrowing wife, and his silent boys
went on. She led him into their cheery quarters, and seated him in his
old arm-chair and came and nestled beside him.
"What is there to grieve about, dear?" she pleaded. "What does it really
matter to us? We have health, home, our boys, each other--quite
enough to live on--Why should it so distress you? Indeed, I almost
cried aloud, 'Is that all?' when you showed me the message. I feared so
much worse. Why, think, Graeme, in all the gay crowd that comes here
every day, is there a woman half as happy as I am? Is there one of them

really as rich as we are--we who have so many blessings?"
"It's for 'Bud' I'm thinking most now," was the mournful answer.
"There can be no Columbia for him. I've borrowed money to meet the
assessments, and the money's got to be paid. This isn't like having one's
house burned, or his ranch blown away, his herds scattered, by the