dropped her like a hot brick. By the Eternal, Rollins, he hasn't gotten
off with _that_ old love yet, you mark my words. There's Indian blood in
her veins, and a look in her eye that makes me wriggle, sometimes. I
watched her last night at parade when she drove out here with that
copper-faced old squaw, her mother. For all her French and Italian
education and her years in New York and Paris, that girl's got a wild
streak in her somewhere. She sat there watching him as the officers
marched to the front, and then _her_, as he went up and joined Miss
Renwick; and there was a gleam of her white teeth and a flash in her
black eyes that made me think of the leap of a knife from the sheath.
Not but what 'twould serve him right if she did play him some devil's
trick. It's his own doing. Were any people out from town?" he suddenly
asked.

"Yes, half a dozen or so," answered Mr. Rollins, who was pulling off his
boots and inserting his feet into easy slippers, while old "Crusty"
tramped excitedly up and down the floor. "Most of them stayed out here,
I think. Only one team went back across the bridge."

"Whose was that?"

"The Suttons', I believe. Young Cub Sutton was out with his sister and
another girl."

"There's another damned fool!" growled Chester. "That boy has ten
thousand a year of his own, a beautiful home that will be his, a doting
mother and sister, and everything wealth can buy, and yet, by gad! he's
unhappy because he can't be a poor devil of a lieutenant, with nothing
but drills, debts, and rifle-practice to enliven him. That's what brings
him out here all the time. He'd swap places with you in a minute. Isn't