Warrior Gap | Page 5

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