"Larrabee," he said. "Good. Read this."
He held out a sheet of the yellow message paper the Signal Corps used, written over in the operator's round hand. Larrabee took it to the window.
Fort Keogh, Nov. 14, 1879. No. 4. To Commanding Officer, Fort Custer. District Commander directs that the train of Ashdown and Company, contractors, now at your post with annuity goods for the Crow Agency, be put on the road for the agency without delay under escort of one officer and twenty men of the Second Cavalry, Lieutenant Larrabee preferred. Reliable report of Sioux war party crossing Yellowstone below Pompey's Pillar moving southwest. Goods must be through before. Acknowledge. By command. Then the name of the district adjutant, which Larrabee knew, and under it, in a different and shakier hand, in pencil: Approved and forwarded, the officer named will comply at once. R. Bayne, Capt. 11th Inf. Comdg.
He read it twice. The second time he read it more slowly, because the first time his eye had gone straight to Lieutenant Larrabee preferred and stuck there, the way an eye will on its own name.
"Bayne signed this?"
"Bayne's in bed with a lung fever and a mustard plaster," Gaskell said. "I read it to him and he signed it. The surgeon wouldn't let me stay above two minutes. He says Bayne's to see no one till Monday."
"Why preferred?"
"I don't know why preferred. Because you've been over the road to the Stillwater twice and nobody else in the battalion has been over it once. Because somebody at Keogh remembers your name." Gaskell lifted his hand and let it fall. "It's a compliment, Jonas. Take it as one. The wagons are in the quartermaster corral, nine of them, Ashdown's own outfit, and they're ready. You can be over the river and on the bench before dark and make Sage Hen Creek by nine. That's twelve miles behind you before morning."
"Before dark," Larrabee said.