glasses.

In the other room Mary Cahill winked at the major, but that officer
pretended to be both deaf to the clink of the glasses and blind to
the wink. And so the incident was closed. Had it not been for the
folly of Lieutenant Ranson it would have remained closed.

A week before this happened a fire had started in the Willow Bottoms
among the tepees of some Kiowas, and the prairie, as far as one could
see, was bruised and black. From the post it looked as though the sky
had been raining ink. At the time all of the regiment but G and H
Troops was out on a practice-march, experimenting with a new-fangled
tabloid-ration. As soon as it turned the buttes it saw from where the
light in the heavens came and the practice-march became a race.

At the post the men had doubled out under Lieutenant Ranson with wet
horse-blankets, and while he led G Troop to fight the flames, H
Troop, under old Major Stickney, burned a space around the post,
across which the men of G Troop retreated, stumbling, with their ears
and shoulders wrapped in the smoking blankets. The sparks beat upon
them and the flames followed so fast that, as they ran, the blazing
grass burned their lacings, and they kicked their gaiters ahead of
them.

When the regiment arrived it found everybody at Fort Crockett talking
enthusiastically of Ranson's conduct and resentfully of the fact that
he had regarded the fire as one which had been started for his
especial amusement.

"I assure you," said Mrs. Bolland to the colonel, "if it hadn't been