—­ROBERT W. SERVICE.

However darkly the sun may go down on hope and love, the real sun shines on, day after day, with its inexorable call to duty.  In less than a week after I had left Eloise and the vague hope of a home of my own under the big elm-trees of Burlingame, Governor Crawford of Kansas sent forth a call for a battalion of four companies of soldiers, and I heard the call and answered it.

It was to be known as the Eighteenth Kansas Cavalry, with Col.  Horace L. Moore, a veteran soldier of tried mettle, at the head.  We were to go at once to Fort Harker, in the valley of the Smoky Hill River, to begin a campaign against the Indians, who were laying waste the frontier settlements and attacking wagon-trains on the Sante Fe Trail.

On the evening before I left home I sat on the veranda of the Clarenden house, waiting for Uncle Esmond to join me, when suddenly Beverly Clarenden strode over the edge of the hill.  The sunny smile and the merry twinkle of his eye were Bev’s own, and there wasn’t a line on his face to show whether it belonged to the happy lover or the rejected suitor.  I thought I could always read his moods when he had any.  He had none to-night.

“I just got in from Burlingame.  At what hour do you leave to-morrow?  I’m going along to chaperon you, as usual,” he declared.

“Why, Beverly Clarenden, I thought you were fixed at Burlingame, selling molasses and calico by the gallon,” I exclaimed, but my real thought was not given to words.

“And let the Cheyennes, and Kiowas, and Arapahoes, and other desperadoes of the plains gnaw clear into the heart of us?  Not your uncle Esmond Clarenden’s nephew.  And, Gail, this won’t be anything like we have had since those six Kiowas staked you out on Pawnee Rock once.  The thoroughbred Indians are bad enough, but there is a half-breed leader of a band of Dog Indians that’s worst of all.  He’s of the yellow kind, with wolf’s fangs.  A Mexican on the trail told me that this half-breed ties up with the worst of every tribe from the Coast Range mountains to Tecumseh, Kansas,” Beverly declared.

“I remember that Mexican.  I saw him at the well in Burlingame,” I replied, turning to look at the Kaw winding far away, for the memory of everything in Burlingame was painful to me.

Aunty Boone’s huge form appearing around the corner of the house shut off my view of the river just then.  Her face was glistening, but her eyes were dull as she looked us over.

“You stainin’ your hands again,” she purred.  “Yes, Aunty.  We are going to lick the redskins into ribbons,” Beverly replied.

“You never get that done.  Lickin’ never settles nobody.  You just hold ’em down till they strong enough to boost you off their heads again, and up they come.  Whoo-ee!”

The black woman gave a chuckle.

“Well, I’d rather sit on their heads than have them sitting on mine, or yours, Aunty Boone,” Beverly returned, laughingly.