A PERILOUS MOMENT
When he returned to his comrades the teamsters had brought their wagons down the hill, the mounted men had formed up and were unsaddling. The wagons made a second line in their rear, and a rope was stretched from wheel to wheel, to which each trooper tied his horse before the teams were unharnessed.
Three of the men had chosen a spot by some bushes where an iron bar was set on a pair of uprights five feet apart, and before the sound of the axes had ceased in the bush three full kettles were swinging over a roaring fire.
A bell tent was pitched for the officer in command; the horses were watered, groomed, and fed, then at a merry call from the bugle there was a dash to the wagons for plates and cups, while knives were whipped from belt or bootleg ready for a general assault on fried bacon, hard biscuit, and scalding tea.
After the meal, when the men were beginning to cut up their plug tobacco and load their pipes, Sergeant Silk gathered some food into a blanket and filled a flagon with hot tea. His chums watched him, curious concerning his preparations.
"You going out on scout duty then, Sergeant?" one of them inquired.
"This grub isn't for myself," he explained, nodding in the direction of Maple Leaf's camp beyond a projecting corner of the ravine. "I'm taking it to a girl bivouacking alone farther up the cañon."
"Alone?" one of them exclaimed in surprise. "Must be an Indian. No white girl would camp out all alone in a place like this."
"That's so," nodded Silk. "She's just an Indian—the chore girl from Rattlesnake Ranch, daughter of The Moose That Walks. Guess you know her, most of you. She once saved me from being scalped and roasted. I owe her some special attention."
"Say, Sergeant," suggested a trooper from the far side of the fire, "mightn't you have brought her into camp? We'd have fixed up a nice, homelike, comfortable room for her in one of the wagons. And I'd have mounted guard outside to keep away the mosquitoes. No mosquito'll go near any one else while I'm around."