"Oh, yes!" answered Rayburn with a certain superiority of manner and a quiet sarcasm that provoked the junior officer; "there's no question about Dawson's smartness. One after another every 'plebe' in the regiment starts in with the same enthusiasm about Dawson. I had it myself about eight years ago. But the trouble with him is he isn't a stayer; he can't stand prosperity."
But Blunt preferred to hold to his own views and his faith in the second sergeant of the troop. And so it happened that on this eventful morning he sent Sergeant Graham at once to investigate as to the amounts stolen during the night, and directed that Sergeant Dawson, who was in command of the herd and picket guard, should come to him immediately.
The sun was just rising above the low treeless ridges on the horizon as the lieutenant stood erect and looked about him. Close at hand the Niobrara--"the Running Water"--was brawling over its stony shallows, and the smoke of tiny cook-fires was floating upward into the keen, crisp, morning air. Northward the slopes were bare and treeless, too, but closely carpeted with the dense growth of buffalo grass. Only a few yards out from the bivouac, hoppled and sidelined, the troop horses were cropping the still juicy herbage, and three or four soldiers, carbine in hand and garbed in their light-blue overcoats, were posted well out beyond the herd on every side, watching the valley far and near for any signs of Indian coming. Below the bivouac, and further from the Laramie road, was an old log hut, once used as a ranch and "bar" for thirsty souls traversing the well-worn way to the reservation; but the tide of travel had first shifted to the Sidney route, and then been stemmed entirely, so far as the line to or near the agencies was concerned, and the proprietor had taken himself and his fiery poison to better-paying fields. Far away to the southwest the blue cone of Laramie Peak stood boldly against the sky. Nearer at hand, though a day's ride away, old Rawhide Butte rose sturdily from the midst of surrounding prairie slopes. Upstream, among some sparse cottonwood, a bit of ruddy color among the branches caught the lieutenant's quick eye. Some Indian brave, wrapped in his blanket, had been laid to rest there out of reach of the snarling coyotes, one of whom could be dimly discerned slinking away under the bank, just out of easy rifle range.