"Pecatonica, Wisconsin, September 5th.
"Dear Pops,—I fully intended to be with you to spend a week as promised, before joining at Willett's Point, but you are more likely to be spending that week with me. I am just back from a run to the Black Hills with father. He has some property about Deadwood. Returning, I stopped two days at Fort Niobrara, as the guest of 'Sampson' Stone, whose troop is stationed there, and I tell you it was interesting. He took me up to the reservation, and I had my first look at the Sioux on their native heath, and saw for myself how peaceful they are. Everybody at the agency is scared stiff. Every officer at the fort, from the colonel down, is convinced that war is coming. The governor of Nebraska has been up looking after the settlers and ranch folk and warning them away. General Miles has an officer there watching the situation. From him I heard that your regiment is to be sent to the field at once to march northward; that other troops are warned, and I suppose you'll be joining somewhere on the way. But the row, when it comes, will break out north of the Niobrara, and the —th may not get there in time.
"Stone says if you want a taste of the real thing, to apply for orders to report for duty to the commanding officer at Fort Niobrara until the arrival of your regiment. I have begged the Chief of Engineers to let me have a few weeks in the field with General Miles, and am assured that the general will apply for me. Not that I can be of any value as Engineer Officer, but just to get the experience, and perhaps see what we've been reading of a dozen years—a real Indian campaign. Now, old man, you know that country. You were there as a boy. You could be of use. Why not ask for orders at once? Then we can push out via Sioux City together. I know how the mother will protest, especially since she was robbed of three precious weeks in July; but, isn't it the chance of a lifetime? Isn't this what we are for, after all? Wire decision. Yours as ever,
"Connell."
"Good old Badger," murmured Geordie. "He always was right." Then that letter went to an inner pocket, and for the first time in his life, with something to conceal from her, George Graham turned to his mother.
It was a beautiful September evening. The gray-and-white battalion had just formed for parade. The throng of spectators lined the roadway in front of the superintendent's quarters, and with that proud mother clinging as usual to his arm, with that ominous letter in the breast of his sack-coat, so close that her hand by a mere turn of the wrist could touch it, George Graham stood silently beside her as she chatted happily with Mrs. Hazzard. Not ten feet distant, leaning on a cane, was an officer lamed for life and permanently retired from service because of a desperate wound received in savage warfare. With him, eagerly talking, was a regimental comrade who had survived the bloody day on the Little Big Horn, and he was telling of things he had seen and men whom he had met, men whose names were famous among the Sioux and were now on the lips of the nation at large. Foremost of these was the old-time enemy of every white man, long the leader of the most powerful band that ever disputed the dominion of the West, Tatanka Iyotanka—Sitting Bull.
Not fifty miles from Standing Rock Agency, surrounded by devoted followers, dwelling in Indian ease and comfort, but rejoicing in new opportunities for evil, Sitting Bull, said the spokesman, was holding frequent powwows with the ghost-dancers, urging, exciting, encouraging all, and still the Indian Bureau would not—and the army, therefore, could not—interfere. Everywhere from the Yellowstone to the confines of Nebraska the young braves of the allied bands were swarming forth and holding their fierce and ominous rites, and the autumn air of the Dakotas rang with the death song and war-whoop. The blood craze was upon them and would not down. The messiah had appeared to chief after chief, warning him the time had come to rise and sweep the white invaders from the face of the earth, promising as reward long years of plenty and prosperity, the return of the vanished buffalo, the resurrection of their famous dead, a savage millennium the thought of which was more than enough to array the warriors for battle. "It's coming; it's bound to come!" said the captain, in his decisive way, "and if old Bull isn't choked off speedily we'll have work for a dozen regiments as well as ours."
Graham listened, fascinated, yet praying his mother might not hear. Secure in the possession of her stalwart son, full of joy in their present and pride in his past, she chatted merrily on. Mrs. Frazier, too, had joined them, another woman who had reason to rejoice in Geordie's prowess at Silver Shield. They were so blithely, busily, engaged that he presently managed to slip unobserved away and join the little group about the speaker. Colonel Hazzard, too, was there and held forth a cordial hand to the new-comer. Geordie's father never betrayed half the pride in him that the colonel frankly owned to.
"This must interest you not a little," said he.
"More than I can tell you, sir," was the quick answer. "More than I dare let mother know! But I have come for advice. I've a letter from Mr. Connell. Read it, sir, and tell me how to go about it. Before mother can get wind of it, I want orders to report at Niobrara."