CHAPTER XI.
THE GUARD OF HONOR.
After a month’s stay at the fort, under the plea of his wound unfitting him for service, for it was still troublesome, Lieutenant Fallon resigned his commission, feeling that he had been vindicated in having won it, unaided, and, with his daughter, went eastward, and thence to Texas, to his old ranch home.
In a short time there was a wedding at the ranch, for thither had gone Lieutenant Walter Worth to claim his bride. Shortly after the lieutenant’s departure, Buffalo Bill set forth upon a new mission which promised a harvest of adventures.
Having been appointed, for a special purpose, chief of scouts of the Tenth United States Cavalry, a regiment of black troopers, Cody rode off on one of his lone trails to reach the command at its frontier post.
He loved the adventure and danger attending this new mission, yet sought it also for the benefit he could bring to those who dwelt upon the advance borderland, and depended upon just such men as himself to protect them from the redskins of the wild West.
The noted scout had been ordered to Fort Aspen for his special duty, as the commandant, Major Armes, had made the request that he should be, on account of the threatened hostility of the Indians, and, also, as Buffalo Bill was the man who knew that country better than any other frontiersman.
Major Armes also had been much troubled by the lawless bands of gold hunters who had sought to invade the Indian country, risking massacres, and keeping the redskins constantly worried over the determination of these palefaces to get a foothold in their hunting grounds and then force them farther toward the “Land of the Setting Sun.”
Many bands of lawless invaders of the beautiful country had recklessly penetrated the mountain and valley recesses in search of the precious yellow metal, and they had thus avoided the chain of soldiers the government had put there to keep them out.
One band after another had met its doom in the forbidden land, and been wiped out utterly by the Indians, who had left not one of them to tell the story of the massacre.
They had taken their lives in their own hands, and, against all warnings and efforts of the soldiers, had broken through the military barrier and penetrated the Indian country, to meet there quick death.