SOME ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS Lounsbury was stretched in the hammock on Captain Oliver's gallery, his bandaged head on a pillow, his left arm resting in a sling. Leaping about, almost upon him, and imperilling the stout ropes that swung the hammock, were five of the captain's seven. Twenty-four hours were gone since, having lashed four Indian dead among the branches of the burial trees, troopers, Sioux, and rescued had returned to a post that was half in ashes. Now, guards tramped the high board walk as before, keeping strict watch of their sulky prisoners; the ramshackle ferry-boat, dragged away from the bar that had halted her, was tied up at her landing again; across the upper end of the parade, grey tents had replaced the barracks; while, farther on, teams and scrapers were clearing away smoking ruins and dumping them into the river; squaws were thatching the roofs of the scouts' shanties; and hammers were ringing on new structures for Clothes-Pin Row. With cool enterprise, Brannon was hastening toward recovery. There was other mending that was less rapid: In the stockade, where one nursed an arrow, another a bullet, wound; in the garrison hospital, where Kippis and a comrade stumped about on swathed feet; and on the Oliver gallery, where Lounsbury lay, his face not the usual fulness, and a trifle white. The storekeeper, however, was lending entertainment, as hospitality and his popularity demanded. "The idea of you little apes asking for stories," he was saying to his audience, "when such popping good ones are happening right under your nose!" Felicia was the youngest of the seven. She gave back at him, prancing up and down insistently. "But we don't want stories of things around here," she cried wilfully. "We want lords and ladies, and you _gim_ 'em to us." "Lords and ladies," sniffed Lounsbury. "Well, Felicia, stop that jumping-jack business and I'll begin." A chorus of delight--then, the five disposed themselves, the boys (there were two) astride the storekeeper; the girls draping the swinging net at either side. "Once upon a time," commenced Lounsbury, "in the middle of a gre-a-a-t, wi-i-i-de, fla-a-a-t country----" "Now," interrupted James, who came next to Felicia. His inflection was rising and suspicious. "Now," chimed in the others. They, too, did not fancy such familiar topography. "Look here," said the narrator, "don't get it into your precious noddles that this Territory's the only flat country under the sun. There are other spots upon this green earth where you can see hundreds of miles in any direction." "Go on, then, go on!" "Well, this was such a place--great, wide, flat place. The lord lived there. He was called the Lord Harry--got his name from the way he acted; he was always making forced marches----" Again suspicion, which Lounsbury ignored.