An amazed and delighted mess room looked on. For Fraser, the tender-hearted, Fraser, the pink-cheeked "mamma's darling," was battering the interpreter hammer and tongs! From the doorway the captain's voice interrupted the battle, and the two men were pulled apart. Matthews fell to wiping at his stained lips, which had magically puffed to proportions suggesting those of the colonel's black cook. While the lieutenant was panting, and struggling wildly to get free. Oliver thrust the latter behind him and addressed the interpreter. "I'm not stopping this boy because I don't think you need a sound thrashing," he said. "I'd like to see you walloped within an inch of your life. But I can't have this kind of thing going on." "I wasn't goin' to tech them gals," lisped Matthews. "I ain't no city tough." "We shan't need _your_ services at Brannon any longer. You light out." After that, mess went merrily on. "Didn't know you had it in you, Fraser," marvelled one officer. "By crackey!" added a second. "How you _can_ slug!" The surgeon sighed. "No one has ever understood Robert," said he, "but women, critters, and kids." And now Matthews' blood was up, and under his sloping forehead the grey-matter was bubbling and boiling like the soup in the sutler's pot. He hurled out terrible oaths--against the shack, against Captain Oliver, against Fraser, against the old pilot. Dallas Lancaster had made a cheap spectacle of him; the commanding officer had ordered him to leave Brannon; the "unlicked calf" of a lieutenant had whipped him out of hand; and the man most ready to guzzle his liquor had gone through the barracks a-blabbing. He hurried to his room to pack his belongings. "I'll fix 'em, I'll fix 'em," he raged. "I'll git even with the hull crowd." He halted at a window and looked across the Missouri at the little shack. "When the reds go to the reservation, that'll do for _you_," he said. "But--how can I soak them damned shoulder-straps?" It was then that a change in his plan came to his mind. Why wait until the Indians were sent, if---- The more he thought of the change, the better he liked it. "One deal, and everybody fixed. Land'll be mine, and there'll be some court-martiallin'." He determined to get into the stockade for a last talk with the hostages. If they approved what he proposed, he would promise them his services. Yes, he would. The value of the quarter-section had made him fight for the Bend. But this was a horse of another colour. His pride had been outraged--for that he would have his quits. His conduct earlier in the day, and the fight at the sutler's, gave place, that afternoon, to other and more direful news. A steamer touched on its way down the river and told of the Custer massacre. Not a trooper at Brannon but had lost a friend; not an officer but had lost several. Gloom settled upon the post, and Matthews was forgotten.