Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV It was the fashion of the time and place to be zealous in flattering the Indian's sense of importance, and the hospitality of the fort was constantly asserted in plying the delegation with small presents. Shortly after, nightfall the quarter-master-sergeant went out to the Indian huts with some tobacco and pipes, and tafia, and the compliments of the commandant. He returned with the somewhat significant information that they needed no tafia. A few, he stated, were sober, but saturnine and grave. Others were blind drunk. The most troublesome had reached the jovial stage. From where they lay recumbent they had caught the soldier by one leg and then by the other, tumbled him on the floor, and tripped him again and again as he sought to rise; finally, he made his way by scrambling on all fours out into the snow, and running for the gate with two or three of the staggering braves at his heels. "Faix, if the commandant has any more compli- mints to waste on thim Injun gossoons," he remarked, as he stood, panting and puffing, under the archway while the guard clustered at gaze in the big door of the guard-house, "by the howly poker, he may pursint them in person! For the divil be inivery fut I've got if I go a-nigh them cu'rus bogies agin! They ain't human. Wait, me b'ye, till I git me breath, an' I'll give ye the countersign, if I haven't forgot ut. I'm constructively on the outside yit, seein' ye cannot let me in till I gives ye the countersign." There was a low-toned murmur. "Pass, friend," said the sentinel. "Thankin' ye fur nothin'," the quarter-master- sergeant rejoined as he paused under the archway to gaze back over the snow. "If Robin Dorn ain't a frog or a tadpole to grow a new laig if one is pulled off," he remarked, "he'll hardly make the fort to-... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.