The copper country evening news. [volume] (Calumet, Mich.) 18??-1907, 1897-03-13
CHAPTER LII.

CHAPTER Ill
All this was but part and parcel of
the story of the old Wyoming fort Long
years had it served as refuge and resting
place for the emigrants in the days be-
fore the Union Pacific was built, when
the overland stage route followed the
Platte to the Sweetwater and then past
the DEVILS Gate and Independence
Rock, old landmarks of the Mormons.
and on to the backbone of the continent,
where the mountain streams, springing
from rocky beds not long pistol shot
apart, flowed ripping away, the one to
the Missouri ard the gulf Of Mexico,
the other TO the Colorado and that Of
California. Frayne was but a hage
stockade in the early days Of the civil
war, but the government found ii i'm
portant from strategical point of
view even after the railway spauned
the Rockies and the emigrant and the
settler no longer trudGcd the weary trail
that, bordering the Sioux country, be-
came speedily road Of fire and bloc,
second only in its terrors to the Smoky
Hill route through bleeding Kansas. 4"
Once it was the boast of the Dakotas,
as it has been for generations of their
enemies, the Absarakas. OF Crows, that
they had never shed the blood of
white man. Settlers of the old days
used TO tell how the Sioux had followed
them for long, long marches, not to
murder and pillage, but to restore to
them items lost alorg the trail or ami
mails strayed from their little herds.
But there came an end to all this
when resisting an unjust demand, the
Sioux being fired upon, retaliated. From
the day of the Grattan massacre beyond
old Laramie there had been no real
peace with the lords of the northwest.
They are quiet only when subdued by
force. They have broken the crust of
their environment time and again and
burst forth in the seething flame of a
volcano that is ever bubbling and boil
ing beneath the feet of the frontiersman
TO this day.
And so Frayne was maintained as q
military post for years, first as a stock
ade, then as a subdepot of supplies, gar
risoned by four companies Of infantry
and four of cavalry, the former to hold
the fort, the latter to scour the neigh
boring country. Then, as time wore on
and other posts were built farther up in
the Big Horn, Frayne's garrison dwin-
died, but there stood upon its command
ing bluff the low rows of wooden bar
racks, the parallel rows of double sets
of broad piazzaed quarters where dwelt
the officers, the long, low, log riveted
walls Of the corrals and cavalry stables
on the fat below. Here, oddly enough,
the Twelfth had spent lively year or
two before it went to Arizona. Here it
learned the Sioux country and the Sioux
SO we'll that when, few years back,
the ghost dance craze swept over the
plains and mountains like the plague,
the old regiment was hurried from its
sunshiny stations in the south and mus
tered once again, four troops at least,
within the very walls that long before
had echoed to its trumpets. Here we
found them in the midst of the Christ
mas preparations that were turned sc
suddenly into summons to the field, and
here again, three years later STILL head
quarters and six troops now. the proud
old regiment is still at Frayne, and
Fenton, "vice Farrar, killed i'll action
with hostile Indians" holds the COM
mand.
A good soldier is Fenton, brave fell
low, a trifle rough at times, like the
simple plains bred dragon he is, but a
gentleman, with q gentle heart in his
breast for all the stern exterior. Wom-
en- said of him that all he needed to
make him perfect was polish, and all he
needed to give him polish was wife,
for at "a the grizzled colonel was a
bachelor. But Fenton had had his ro-
nance in early youth. He had loved
with all his big heart, so said tradition,
a New York belle and beauty whom he
knew in his cadet days, and who, so
rumor said, preferred another, whom
she married before the war, and many
garrison belle had since set her cap
for Fenton and found him faithful to
his early love. But, though the ladies
often speculated as to the identity Of
the woman who had held the colonel's
heart in bondage all these years and
blocked the way for all successors. no
one of their number had ever heard her
name or ever knew the truth One on