It is a recorded fact that Silver Shield was reorganized within the summer, to the end that the controlling interest passed from Colorado to Chicago.
It is a recorded fact that, from afar out in the Rockies, there came to Lieutenant Colonel Hazzard, Commandant of Cadets, a "wire" that puzzled him not a little until he laid it before his clear-headed wife, who gave him a delighted kiss and scurried away to show it to Mrs. Graham. It read:
"You win. I lose; and, losing, am a heavy winner."
For Bonner had supplied the money that paid for much of that costly plant, most of which would have gone up in smoke and down in ruin could the mob have had its way. Bonner himself had rushed out to Denver at news of the trouble. Bonner sent for Cawker and Nolan, and others of the employés, and learned for himself how things had been going, and was not too civil to Stoner and his Denver colleagues. Bonner, a director in the Transcontinental, heard from Anthony and Cullin all about the young fireman they spirited up to the mines, and the elder Breifogle had to hear how that young fireman cared for the battered son and heir, after his "beating up" at the fists and feet of the rioters, and if Breifogle bore no love for the Grahams, he at least loved his own.
It is a recorded fact that old Shiner got well of his wound after many long weeks, and his brave boy in much shorter time, and that both were handsomely rewarded. Cawker came in for a good thing by way of a raise, but it was Long Nolan whom Bonner and the magnates set on a pinnacle—Long Nolan, and, as Nolan would have it, Nolan's young commander.
It is a matter of record that when Captain Lee went back to the regiment he congratulated Lane, for one thing, on having held on to his stocks—almost the only one at Reno who did—and, for another, on having such a youngster for second lieutenant. "He has won his spurs," said Lee, "before ever he donned his uniform." And there was rejoicing in the regiment over Lee's description of events, for five of the younger officers, graduated within three years, knew "Pops" in his cadet days and remembered him well; and all of the old officers who had served at Camp Sandy and at Fort Reynolds knew him in babyhood, or boyhood, or both. So did most of the veteran troopers.
And it is a matter of record that, on the eastward way again, both McCrea and Geordie dined with Mr. Bonner at the Chicago Club, and the new major-general commanding the military division graciously accepted Bonner's bid to be one of the dinner-party, and took Geordie aside after coffee had been served, noting that the silent young fellow neither smoked nor touched his wine, and asked him a few questions about the Point and many about the mines, and at parting the general was so good as to express the wish that when Geordie came out to join in September he would stop and see him, all of which was very flattering to a young fellow just out of cadet gray, and Geordie, as in duty bound, said that he certainly would, little dreaming how soon—how very soon—he and the old regiment would be riding hard under the lead of that hard-riding leader, and facing a foe led by warriors true and tried—a foe any ten of whom could have made mince-meat of ten times their number of such foemen as Graham had met at the mines.
How could they, the brave young class, have dreamed, that exquisite June day of their graduation, that within six months some of their number were destined to do desperate battle with a desperate band of the braves of the allied Sioux in the Bad Lands of South Dakota?
For it is also a matter of record that Lieutenant and Quartermaster McCrea made application, as he had promised, for six months' leave of absence, with permission to go beyond sea, and with every intention of spending most of the winter in sunny Italy. But he spent it in saddle and snowdrift, in scout and skirmish, and in at least one sharp, stinging, never-to-be-forgotten battle with the combined bands of the Sioux, and came within an ace of losing his life as well as his leave, for many a brave soldier and savage warrior fell in that bitter fight—Geordie Graham's maiden battle. Little wonder he hopes he may never see another like it.
And it all came about as such affairs have so often occurred in the past. Unheeded warnings, unnoted threats, unpunished outbreaks, that experienced soldiers about the reservation could readily understand, and foretell what was coming, and make their own individual preparations for the inevitable. But nothing they could report to superiors would shake the serene confidence of the Department of the Interior in the pacific purposes of its red children, the wards of the nation. All along in the summer and the early autumn the "ghost-dance" had been spreading from tribe to tribe, the war drum had been thumping in the villages, the Indian messiah, a transparent fraud, as all might see, wandered unrebuked from band to band—half a dozen messiahs, in fact—and along in September, instead of Geordie Graham's best-loved chum and classmate, Connell, of the Engineers, there came to the Point a letter from that young officer, that Graham received with rejoicing, read with troubled eyes, and for the first time in his life kept from his mother. There came a time, later still, when there were many letters to be kept from her, but those sorrowful days were not as yet. This letter, however, he could not bring himself to show her, for it told of things she had been dreading to hear ever since the papers began telling of the ghost-dancing on the plains. It read: