The story of Fort Frayne Author:Charles King 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 II. At noon that bright December day the barracks and quarters of Fort Frayne were resounding with song and laughter, and all "the good-natured, soldi... more »erly noise " with which the garrison was busily preparing for the blithe festivities of Christmas. Two hours later, though the scene was unchanged, the preparations were for war. '' Leave the band to guard the post, but take every available trooper," were the injunctions that accompanied the General's brief orders to Colonel Farrar. "Strike when you find—and wherever you find—Kill Eagle's Band." Tearful eyes along officers' row, watching the silent group at headquarters, told all too plainly with what dread the tidings had been received. With the wires down, the railway blockaded, the stage road deep in snow, there was only one means of communication left, and two Indian scouts on their hardy ponies, leaving the field column at dawn the previous day, had made their unerring way through the trackless maze of snow-clad ridge, ravine, divide and coulee, through a labyrinth of Bad Lands, bad enough in midsummer, and across many a frozen creek, until at last they struck the northern shore of the swollen Platte, and followed on up stream until opposite old Fort Frayne. And now, indeed, was the road to the ferry broken and plowed and speedily trodden hard, for hosts of stalwart men had rushed to the river side, and out from its winter hiding place they dragged one of the huge pontoon boats ar.d launched it in the ice-whirling flood, and the sweeps were manned by brawny arms in blue, and with boat hooks driving at the ice cakes and the foam flying from the oar blades and from under the blunt and sloping prow, cheered from the southern shore, they fought their way to where, like black, silent statues, the riders waited at ...« less