Waterbury Democrat., 1900-10-25

I plished ''by the labor of troops which was why, when he wasn't fighting In dians, the frontier soldier of that day was mainly occupied in doing the odd jobs of day laborer, without tho rec ompense of one, or his privilege of quit ting if he didn't like the job. That he should know little of drill and less of | parade was, therefore, not to be won dered at.
 But what he didn't know about guard | duty was hardly worth knowing. He had prisoners and property of every conceivable kind - Indians, horse thieves, thugs and deserters, maga. zines and medicines, mules and muni- tions of war. Everything had to ba guarded. The fort lay mile to the west of and 200 feet higher thnn the railway hotel in the heart of the town. It looked down upon the Self-Styled city, and most Of it's wOmenkind did the same on the citizens, who were, it must be owned, Q rather mixed lot. The sudden discovery of gold in the neigh boring foothills, the fact that it prom iSed to be the site of the division car shops ard roundhouse, that the trails to the Upper Platte, tLc Swee:water, the park country to the south and the rich game regions of tke Medicine Bow all ccntcrcd there, and that stages left no less than twice d week for some ot those points, and the whole land was alive with explorers for hundred miles around-all had tended to give Gate City O remarkable boom. Chey ennc and Laramie, thrivin. frontier towns, with coroncrs' offices in full blast from one weeks end to the other, and @ double force ou duty Sundays confessed to and exhibited parGbnable jealousy. Net there was wisdom in the warning of an old friend and fellow frontiersman, who said to Folsom; 'You are throwing yourself and your money away. John. There's nothing in those gold stories, there's nothing in that yaWp about the machine shops; all those yarns were started by U. r. fellows with corner lots to sell. The bottom will drop out of that place in- side of a year and leave you stranded"
 All the same had Folsom bought big blocks and built his home there. It was the nearest town of promise to Hal Folsom's wild but beautiful home in the hills, and, almost as he loved Nell, his bonny daughter, did the old trader love his stalwart son. Born a wild wcsterner, reared among the Sioux with only Indians or army boys for playmateS, and precious little choice in point of sayagery between them, Hal had grown up natural horSeman with love for and knowledge of the animal that is accorded to few. His ambition in life was to own a stock 8-r ho lo1 brrl in, the world he owed to the kindness of loving g-hearted army women at Lara mic, women who befriended him when Well-ni.h broken hearted by his mothers death. Early he had pitched his tent on the very spot for a ranch mans homestead, early he had fallen in love with an army girl, who married the strapping frontierSman and was now the proud mistress of the promis- | ing stock farm nestling in the valley of the Laramie, a devoted wife and mother. The weekly stage to the rail- way was the event of their placid days except when some of the officers would come from either of the neighboring posts and spend week with her and Hal. From being delicate, consump- tive child, Mrs. Hal had developed into a buXom woman with exuberant l health and spirits. Life to her might have some little monotony, but few cares; many placid joys, but only one great dread-Indians. John Folsom, l her fond father-in-law, was man all the Indians trusted and most of tham loved. Hal Folsom, her husband, had many trusted and devoted friend among the Sioux, but he had also enc mics, and Indian enmity, like Indian love, dies hard. As boy he had some times triumphed in games and sports over the champions of the villages. As youth he had more than once found favor in the dark eyes that looked coldly on fercer, fonder claimants, and one girl of the Ogallallas had turned from her kith and kin and Spurned more than one red lover to seek the young trader when he left the reservation to build his own nest in the Medicine Bow, and they told a story as pathetic as that of the favor ite daughter of old SintogaliSka, chief of the Brule Sioux, who pined and died at Laramie when she heard that the soldier she loved had come back from the far east with pale-faced bride.
 There were red men of the O9allallas
 to whom the name of Hal Folsom was a
 taunt and an insult to this day, men whom his father had vainly sought to
 appeaSe, and they were Burnin. Star,
 the lover, and two younger braves, the
 brothers of the girl they swore that
 Hal had lured away.
 South of the Platte as it rolled past
 Frayue and Laramie, those Indians
 were bound by treaty not to go. North
 of the Platte Hal Folsom was warned
 never again to venture. These were
 the stories which were well known tc
 the parents of the girl he wooed an6
 won, but which probably were not full
 ly explained to her. Now, even behind
 the curtain of that shelterinS river i with it's nanking forts, even behind tho barrier of the mountains of tEe Medi
 cine Bow, she often woke at night anc clutched her baby to her breast whel the yelping of the coyotes came rising
 on the wind. There was no woman il Wyoming to whom war with Rec Clouds people bore such dread possi bility as to Hal Folsonl's wife.