Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 14, 2025
He wore a little derby hat, such as the cowpunchers despised, and the trappings of his horse proclaimed him as a newcomer to that country. He inquired loudly of the road to Fort Shakie, and Macdonald shouted back the necessary directions, moving a step away from his open door. The stranger put his hand to his ear and leaned over. "Which?" said he.
Fort Shakie was on its downhill way in those days, and almost at the bottom of the decline. It was considered a post of penance by enlisted men and officers alike, nested up there in the high plateau against the mountains in its place of wild beauty and picturesque charm.
But natural beauty and Indian picturesqueness do not fill the place in the soldierly breast of fair civilian lady faces, nor torrential streams of cold mountain water supply the music of the locomotive's toot. Fort Shakie was being crept upon by civilization, true, but it was coming all too slow for the booted troopers and belted officers who must wear away the months in its lonely silences.
He was a testy little old man, charged for instant explosion, and it was generally understood by everybody but the colonel himself that the department had sent him off to Fort Shakie to get him out of the way.
The post at Fort Shakie had been the nearest neighbor in those days, and it remained the nearest neighbor still, with the exception of one usurper and outcast homesteader, Alan Macdonald by name, who had invaded the land over which Chadron laid his extensive claim.
"Where was you aimin' to go so early?" asked one of them, laying hand on her bridle. "I'm the daughter of Colonel Landcraft, commanding officer at Fort Shakie, and I'm going home," she answered, as placidly and good-humoredly as if it might be his regular business to inquire.
Saul Chadron and his daughter Nola came riding out of the Fort Shakie road, their horses in that tireless, swinging gallop which the animals of that rare atmosphere can maintain for hours. As he rode, Chadron swung his quirt in unison with the horse's undulations, from side to side across its neck, like a baton. He sat as stiff and solid in his saddle as a carved image.
But Mark Thorn did not appear to be abroad in that part of the country. Until sundown Macdonald walked unchallenged, when he struck the highway a short distance south of the point where the trail leading to Fort Shakie branched from it.
"I am not under the obligation of explaining my authority to enter this house to any man," said he, "but for your satisfaction, madam, and in deference to you, Miss Chadron, I will tell you that I was recalled by the department on my way to Washington and sent back to resume command of Fort Shakie." Chadron was biting his mustache like an angry horse mouthing the bit.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking