"Laramie;" Or, The Queen of Bedlam. A Story of the Sioux War of 1876King, Charles
General
"Laramie;" Or, The Queen of Bedlam. A Story of the Sioux War of 1876
King, Charles
Dakota Indians -- Wars, 1876 -- Fiction
Meantime, there being nowhere else to go, the Forrests had moved into
"Bedlam" in the same hall-way with the family of Lieutenant Post, also
refugees from Robinson; but while the Posts occupied rooms on the lower
floor, the Forrests took the four chambers overhead. Two young cavalry
officers were the occupants up to the outbreak of the campaign, but
all their furniture and "traps" were summarily moved over to the
quartermaster's storehouse by order of the commanding officer,--and one
trip of one wagon did the entire job,--for the emergency was one that
called for action, and Major Miller was a man to meet it. The Forrests
and the Posts, therefore, were now sole occupants of the south end of
"Bedlam," and Lieutenant McLean's two rooms were on the ground-floor of
the north end. The hall-ways ran entirely through from east to west,
giving on the west side into court-yards separated from each other by a
high board fence and completely enclosed by one of similar make. On the
east side, fronting the roadway, were broad verandas on both first and
second floors, and these were common property of the occupants of both
halls. By the rear or west door they could not pass from one hall to
the other, on account of the intervening fence. By the east door the
veranda on either story formed a convenient thoroughfare. McLean
occupied the two rooms on the north side of this hall, and a brother
infantryman, also a bachelor, occupied the two above him. The opposite
rooms on both floors were the garrison homes of married officers now in
the fields with their commands, and their doors were kept locked by the
quartermaster. The Forrests and Posts, with the Bedouin-like ease of
long experience on the frontier, had established a dining-room in
common on the ground-floor of the south end, and the temporary kitchen
was knocked up in the back yard. The south division, therefore,
contained a lively colony of women and children; the north halls, only
empty rooms and two lone bachelors.
This very May-day afternoon on which our story opens, as Lieutenant
McLean and Miss Bayard started forth on their stroll, Miss Forrest,
with a shawl hugged woman-fashion around her shapely form, was taking a
constitutional up and down the upper gallery. She came to the railing
and bent down, beaming, smiling, and kissing her hand to them,--and a
winsome smile she had,--then, as they passed out along the walk by the
old ordnance storehouse, she stood for a time looking after them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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