“What did the Indians say to that?” asked Sue, eagerly.
“They said little, but waited. Up this way, there were Sioux, and Arapahoes. South were the Cheyennes, and west the friendly Crows. They called them Upserokas, then, ‘from the land of the crows.’ And in 1866, these tribes all met at Laramie to hold a council with the government commission about the road. They seemed to be acting in good faith, and willing for the country to be opened up. Forts were established, and posts here and there, but in December of that same year, without warning, the Indians decoyed three officers and over seventy men into ambush, and killed them. And for years after that, it is one long story of brave men trying to hold point after point against odds, with long delays in government relief, until finally General Grant ordered the forts demolished for lack of troops to keep them up. Think of that, girls.”
“But there was Custer,” Polly broke in.
“Indeed there was, Polly,” agreed Jean, warmly. “You want to hear Sandy tell of Custer. He was one of his scouts. Custer gave his heart to Wyoming, and his life. I think that Sandy always feels he was most unjustly treated by fate because he did not go with Custer on his last journey, when the Sioux killed the entire command on Little Big Horn River.”
“All of them?” asked Ted, in almost a whisper, her gray eyes wide and startled.
“All, dear. So you see why Wyoming seems to me like the girl state. She is so young and so willing and eager, and she has suffered greatly. We who have been born here, and know her, realize her growth in the past twenty years. There, I see Don waving to us from the corral, now. Who wants to ride?”
“Riding skirts, girls, first,” Polly cried, and away they went down the path to the cabin to change for the first ride. It had been Jean’s first warning to them, the riding skirts. Out west, side saddles were a thing of the past, she told the girls. There must be divided skirts, made very much like their regular outing skirts of khaki, but giving perfect freedom in the saddle.
“I must remember and show you my buckskin skirt that Archie made for me when I was about your age,” she had said. “It was my first riding skirt, and I felt like a real squaw in it.”
Don had five ponies ready for them when they returned to the corral, and Jean’s own broncho besides. Saddled and bridled they waited, and Mrs. Murray came down from the main cabin to see the first try-out. Even Sally watched them from her cook-house, and smiled in her stolid, close-lipped way as Polly and Ted took the lead, and mounted their ponies.
Isabel and Ruth hesitated, but Sue followed the others, and Jean last of all, on Ginger.