The Project Gutenberg eBook, Lanier of the Cavalry, by Charles King, Illustrated by Frank McKernan

Title: Lanier of the Cavalry

or, A Week's Arrest

Author: Charles King

Release Date: October 9, 2006 [eBook #19507]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LANIER OF THE CAVALRY***

E-text prepared by Martin Pettit
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net/)
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive/American Libraries
(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)

LANIER OF THE CAVALRY

"Tell Him That I'd Like an Extension of Arrest."
Page 143

Lanier of the Cavalry

or

A Week's Arrest

By

General CHARLES KING

Author of "The Colonel's Daughter," "Marion's Faith,"
"Captain Blake," "Foes in Ambush,"
"Under Fire," etc.

With illustrations by

FRANK McKERNAN

Philadelphia & London

J. B. Lippincott Company

1909

Copyright, 1909
BY
J. B. Lippincott Company

Published April, 1909

Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company
The Washington Square Press, Philadelphia, U. S. A.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LANIER OF THE CAVALRY

I

The sun was sinking low beyond the ford of the foaming Platte. The distant bluffs commanding the broad valley of the Sweetwater stood sharp and clear against the westward skies. The smoke from the camp-fires along the stream rose in misty columns straight aloft, for not so much as a breath of breeze had wafted down from the far snow fields of Cloud Peak, or the sun-sheltered rifts of the Big Horn. The flag at the old fort, on the neighboring height, clung to the staff with scarcely a flutter, awaiting the evening salute of the trumpets and the roar of the sunset gun.

The long June day had seemed unusually unconscionably long to the young girl flitting restlessly about the vine-covered porch of the roadside cottage. She laid the big binocular aside, for perhaps the twentieth time within the hour, with a sigh of impatience, a piteous quiver about the pretty, rosebud mouth, a wistful, longing look in the dark and dreamy eyes. Ever since stable call, and her father's departure to his never-neglected duty, she had hovered about that shaded nook, again and again searching the northward slopes and ridges. The scouts had been in three hours ago, reporting the squadron only a mile or so behind. It should have dismounted, unsaddled, fed, watered, and groomed by this time, and Rawdon should have been here at her side—Rawdon, whom she had not seen for three mortal