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Updated: June 8, 2025
He wasted no further time, but hurried to his store, a saddle-roofed building farther along the street. Before it paced a Fort Lincoln officer. Lounsbury stopped him for news. "You ought to be chuck full of it," returned the officer, pumping the storekeeper's arm; "just in from New York." "The redskins?" "Daytime sortie on us yesterday." "Pretty sassy. How about Brannon?"
Along with this came self-arraignment: After all, he should have told Lancaster that a man who claimed the quarter-section on the peninsula had been called from Dodge City. Lounsbury had been certain that Matthews could not reach Fort Brannon before the spring. But it had never occurred to him that the section-boss would leave his girls alone!
Her step was light. Her cheek was pink. Her eyes were happy. The corners of her mouth were turned upward smilingly. About her warbled the blackbirds. She mingled her tune with theirs. Piercing its shrill way through the heavy mist that hung above the Missouri, came a strange, new trumpet-call from Brannon.
Soon the long sumach leaves on the coulée edge were drooping under a crystalline weight, the black plowed strip was blending with the unplowed prairie, and the shock head of the cottonwood shack was donning a spotless night-cap. And so heavy and ceaseless was the downfall that, at supper-time, the sweet trumpet notes of "retreat" were wafted out from Brannon across a covered plain.
"You git you' clothes on," he ordered roughly, "an' rustle us some breakfas'." She retreated, ready for tears. Dallas walked up to him, gave him his crutches, and put a hand on his shoulder. "Dad," she said firmly, "don't take out your mad on Marylyn. Keep it all for him." She nodded south toward Brannon. "That's where it belongs." "Dallas, you plumb disgus' me," he retorted.
"And if they do, a shot'll bring help." He was in the doorway, now. "W'y," he cried, "here's thet fool Norwegian goin' t' th' landin'. Wal, he is pritty shy on sand!" "We'll be killed if the Indians come, Dallas." It was Marylyn, whispering up fearfully to her sister. "We'll be careful, honey. Keep away from the coulée after this. Walk toward Brannon, always."
With cool enterprise, Brannon was hastening toward recovery. There was other mending that was less rapid: In the stockade, where one nursed an arrow, another a bullet, wound; in the garrison hospital, where Kippis and a comrade stumped about on swathed feet; and on the Oliver gallery, where Lounsbury lay, his face not the usual fulness, and a trifle white.
Thirty poles, their tops lashed together so as to leave a smoke-hole, their bases spread to form a generous circle, supported a covering of tanned buffalo hides seamed with buckskin thongs. Here, barely an hour after Matthews' arrival at Fort Brannon, Squaw Charley entered hastily and thrust some red coals under a stick-pile at the centre of the lodge.
While Lounsbury thus alternately tortured and eased his mind, he had passed the sombre clump of cottonwoods where the Indian dead were lashed, and was fast covering the miles that lay between the burial boughs and Fort Brannon. When the ten minutes he had allotted were past, Matthews made a great show of putting away his watch and took a last pull at the whisky flask.
Just before dawn, the second morning, he turned with the river, crossed the coulée, and reined upon the yellowing bend. To his left, a black dot, stood the shack. Three smaller dots were near it Simon and the mule team. South, on the opposite bank, were the low, whitewashed buildings of Fort Brannon. He bared his dust-powdered head in thanksgiving. The cayuse was warm and dripping.
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