Major Stickney and others
who were playing bridge were considerably annoyed. Ranson then
demanded that everyone present should drink his health in champagne
for the reason that it was his birthday and that he was glad he was
alive, and wished everyone else to feel the same way about it. "Or,
for any other reason why," he added generously. This frontal attack
upon the whist-players upset the game entirely, and Ranson, enthroned
upon the piano-stool, addressed the room. He held up a buckskin
tobacco-bag decorated with beads.
"I got this down at the Indian village to-night," he said. "That old
squaw, Red Wing, makes 'em for two dollars. Crosby paid five dollars
for his in New Mexico, and it isn't half as good. What do you think?
I got lost coming back, and went all the way round by the buttes
before I found the trail, and I've only been here six months. They
certainly ought to make me chief of scouts."
There was the polite laugh which is granted to any remark made by the
one who is paying for the champagne.
"Oh, that's where you were, was it?" said the post-adjutant,
genially. "The colonel sent Clancey after you and Crosby.
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