Calling Schreiber to his side, as, with
long easy stride their trained mounts went loping swiftly homeward, he
gave instructions the veteran heard with kindling eyes. Then, parting
from him at the corrals, the commander rode on and dismounted at his
quarters just as the trumpeters were forming on the broad, grassy level
of the parade.
Even without a band young Field had managed to make his guard mount a
pretty and attractive ceremony. Frayne was a big post and needed a daily
guard of twenty-four men, with the usual quota of non-commissioned
officers. Cowboys, herders, miners, prospectors, rustlers (those pirates
of the plains) and occasional bands of Indians, Sioux or Arapahoe, were
forever hovering about its borders in search of supplies, solid or
fluid, and rarely averse to the conversion of public property to
personal use. Like many a good citizen of well-ordered municipalities
within the confines of civilization, they held that what belonged to the
government belonged to them, and the fact that some officer would have
to pay for whatsoever they stole, from a horse to a hammer, cut no
figure in their deliberations. Frayne had long been a favorite place for
fitting out depleted stock, animal, vegetable or mineral, and there had
been times when Webb found as many as forty men almost too small a
guard, and so gave it to be understood that sentries whose carbines were
unlawfully discharged at night, without the formality of preliminary
challenge or other intimation of business intentions, would be held
blameless, provided they had something to show for their shot.
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