its stirrups. These, with more than necessary care, he hid away upon
the highest shelf of the shop, while from the lower shelves he
snatched a rubber poncho and a red kerchief. For a moment, as he
unbarred the door, the post-trader paused and cast a quick glance
before and behind him, and then the door closed and there was
silence. A minute later it was broken by the hoofs of a horse
galloping swiftly along the trail to Kiowa City.




PART II


That winter Miss Post had been going out a great deal more than was
good for her, and when the spring came she broke down. The family
doctor recommended Aiken, but an aunt of Miss Post's, Mrs. Truesdall,
had been at Farmington with Mrs. "Colonel" Bolland, and urged
visiting her instead. The doctor agreed that the climatic conditions
existing at Fort Crockett were quite as health-giving as those at
Aiken, and of the two the invalid decided that the regimental post
would be more of a novelty.

So she and her aunt and the maid changed cars twice after leaving St.
Louis and then staged it to Kiowa City, where, while waiting for
"Pop" Henderson's coach to Fort Crockett, they dined with him on
bacon, fried bread, and alkali water tinged with coffee.

It was at Kiowa City, a city of four hundred houses on blue-print
paper and six on earth, that Miss Post first felt certain that she