Free War on the Cimarron by Luke; Short Page A

him to get Frank out of the way. The Reservation Cattle Company, rather than carry on a feud which was liable to bring the army down on them, might have chosen this easier and more subtle way to defeat him. Or Corb might have done it. It was one of these two.
    The Reservation Cattle Company would have had time to do it after Puckett met with Frank’s refusal, and Corb would not have had time to do it since last night’s brush. On the other hand, Corb had the whisky to plant and the loyalty of an Indian who would lie for him.
    Before they reached Reno Frank had given up trying to guess. At the garrison half the platoon was dismissed, and Frank was escorted through the garrison and across the river to Darlington. The arrest, he concluded, was an agency affair carried out by the reservation authorities, with the army serving as an augmented police force. He was sure of it when he was ushered into a building on Darlington’s main street which was the headquarters of the Indian police. The agent, a Mr. Coe, was summoned and, acting as a judge, held a hurried preliminary hearing, advised by the judge advocate from the garrison, and Frank was held under five thousand dollars’ bond for trial in the next term of court in Kansas.
    He was put into a neat, strongly barred cell of steel in the upper story of the building. His jailer clanged the door shut, locked it, hung the lantern on a nail by the corridor window and informed him pleasantly enough that supper was on its way, afterward leaving him alone.
    Frank sank to the cot and put his head in his hands. Red was right. Five thousand dollars’ bail was out of his reach, and the next term of court was in the fall. They had put him safely away and, for their purposes, just as safely as Morg Wheelon had been put away.
    Red Shibe, wise in the ways of this country, did not stir from his position across the street from the police office when he saw the Cheyenne come out of the preliminary hearing, mount his horse and ride off east toward the Cheyenne camp in the twilight. He was an old enough hand to know that the handful of Indians constantly loafing about the stores in Darlington knew his identity and would wrongly interpret his getting his horse and following the Cheyenne out of town. Chances were he would wind up with a broken head and a shot in the back if he was so rash as to try it.
    But there were other ways. He drifted across the street to the Murphy Hotel and took a chair in the darkest part of the porch and waited for the after-supper crowd to come out for their evening cigar and talk. He would have preferred the bar at Reno, but he was barred from that.
    Presently, after darkness had come, the diners filed out, their talk slow and peaceful after the day’s work. They were mostly freighters, a sprinkling of agency employees and an odd traveling man. According to their rather sensible ritual they took chairs on the porch, lighted cigars or pipes and talked over the meager news of the post and agency.
    Sooner or later they were bound to come around to the arrest of Frank Christian for whisky peddling. It didn’t take them long. A man strolled across the dirt street, greeted the porch sitters and announced that Christian had been held in five-thousand-dollar bail.
    â€œA hell of a note,” one freighter growled. “Mebbe he peddles whisky, I dunno. But I know they ain’t ever arrested the Big Augur around here that peddles it. They jump the little fella and let the big one off.”
    â€œThey’re afraid of him,” someone said cynically. They talked around and around the subject, and someone finally asked the inevitable question: “Who turned him up?”
    â€œA wild young buck by the name of Grey Horse. He’s Stone Bull’s nevvy, but the chief has kicked him out. He’s camped out with that bunch of horse-stealin’ black sons up on the Salt Fork.”
    That was all Red wanted to know, and he slipped