Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1901-03-29
CHAPTER vi.


for the storing Of clothing, camp and
garrison equipage. There was black
smith and wagon repair. shop, and
brick Office building. Some cottage
quarters for the officer in charge and
his clerks, corral master, ETC., stood
close at hand, while most of the en-
ployes lived in town outside the gates.
A single-track spur connected the de-
pot with the main line of the Union
Pacific, only 500 yards away, and the
command at Fort Emory, on the bluff
above the rapid stream, furnished,
much to it's disgust, the necessary
guard. A much bigger "plant" was in
contemplation near larger post and
town ON the east side of the great di-
vide, and neither Fort Emory nor its
charge-the 1uartermaster's depot
was considered worth keeping in re-
pair, except such as could be accom-
plished ''by the labor of troops" which
was why, when he wasn't fighting In
dams, the frontier soldier OF that day
was mainly occupied in doing the odd
jobs of day laborer, without the 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, maya
zines and medicines, mules and muni-
tions of war. Everything had to be
guarded. The fort lay mile to the
west of and 200 feet higher than the
railway hotel in the heart of the town.
1t looked down upon the self-styled
city, and most of it's womenlSind did
the same on the citizens, who were, it
must be owned, rather mixed lot. The
sudden discovery Of gold in the neigh
boring foothills, the fact that it prom
Used to be the site of the division car
shops and roundhouse, that the trails
to the Upper Platte, the Sweetwater,
the park country to the south and the
rich game regions of the Medicine Cow
all centered there, and that stages left
no less than twice week for some of
those points, and the whole land was
alive with explorers for a hundred
miles around-all had tended to give
Gate City a remarkable boom. Chey-
towns, with coroners' offices in full
blast from one weeks end to the other,
and double force on duty Sundays,
confessed to and exhibited pardonable
jealousy. Yet 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. P.
fellows with corner lots to sell. The
bottom will drop out of that place in
side of 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
westerner, reared among the Sioux
with only Indians or army boys for
playmates, and precious little choice
in point of savagery 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
| farm. All the education he had had in
| the world he owed to the kindness OF
| loving-hearted army women at Lara
ME. women who befriended him when
| well-nigh broken-hearted by his
| mothers death. Early he had pitched
his tent on the very spot for 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 nesting 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 a week with her and
Hal. From being delicate, consump-
tive child, Mrs. Hal had developed into
| buXom woman with eXuberant
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,
her fond father-in-law, was a man all
the Indians trusted and most of them
loved. Hal Folsom, her husband, had
| many o 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 fiercer, fonder claimants
and one girl of the Ogauallas 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 q