It was no pleasant assignment to duty which greeted First Lieutenant Donald Brant, commanding Troop N, Seventh Cavalry, when that regiment came once more within the environs of civilization, from its summer exercises in the field. Bethune had developed into a somewhat important post, socially as well as from a strictly military standpoint, and numerous indeed were the attractions offered there to any young officer whose duty called him to serve the colors on those bleak Dakota prairies. Brant frowned at the innocent words, reading them over again with gloomy eyes and an exclamation of unmitigated disgust, yet there was no escaping their plain meaning. Trouble was undoubtedly brewing among the Sioux, trouble in which the Cheyennes, and probably others also, were becoming involved. Every soldier patrolling that long northern border recognized the approach of some dire development, some early coup of savagery. Restlessness pervaded the Indian country; recalcitrant bands roamed the "badlands"; dissatisfied young warriors disappeared from the reservation limits and failed to return; while friendly scouts told strange tales of weird dances amid the brown Dakota hills. Uneasiness, the spirit of suspected peril, hung like a pall over the plains; yet none could safely predict where the blow might first descend. Brant was not blind to all this, nor to the necessity of having in readiness selected bodies of seasoned troops, yet it was not in soldier nature to refrain from grumbling when the earliest detail chanced to fall to him. But orders were orders in that country, and although he crushed the innocent paper passionately beneath his heel, five hours later he was in saddle, riding steadily westward, his depleted troop of horsemen clattering at his heels. Up the valley of the Bear Water, slightly above Glencaid,--far enough beyond the saloon radius to protect his men from possible corruption, yet within easy reach of the military telegraph,--they made camp in the early morning upon a wooded terrace overlooking the stage road, and settled quietly down as one of those numerous posts with which the army chiefs sought to hem in the dissatisfied redmen, and learn early the extent of their hostile plans.