There was no set pattern for the layout of a frontier army post.  Only the earliest ones possessed any kind of a stockade.  There was a central parade ground with the various buildings grouped about it to form a rectangle.  Outside this, as if looking over the shoulders of the inner buildings, were others, in no sort of formation.  Further away, about five hundred yards in this case, was Hog Town, as it was called.

Along one side of the parade ground were the officers quarters, a row of frame, stone, or adobe houses that faced the enlisted men's barracks across the way.  At the north end, Headquarters, a T-shaped building of stone, looked down the length of the parade ground.  To the east was the commissary storehouse, also built of stone; to the west the hospital.

At the south of the parade ground was the long, low store of the sutler, or post trader; behind this the stables, corrals, and hay corrals.  Behind the barracks were the blacksmith shop, laundry, and a varied assortment of small buildings.

There was always a Hog Town at all the camps on the frontier.  There a soldier could find whatever he wanted - women, gambling, and whiskey predominating.  Operating the Hog Town here was Iron Dave Sproul, a man whose reputation had started far back along the line.  Iron Dave was big, tough, and mean.  He had operated such places in a dozen towns before this.

Iron Dave had come off the streets of lower New York, had served a rugged apprenticeship as a prize fighter of sorts, a gang fighter and strong-arm man before coming west to what promised to be richer fields.  As a boy in the streets he had had opportunities to study the origins of power, and more than that, the applications of power.  He had also learned that more money was to be had, and less risk, by managing the fighter rather than fighting himself.

At first he ran gambling houses and saloons, then owned some of each; but what he was looking for was the right man.  What he wanted was a man through whom he could make money; and secondly, a man who would be a means to political power.  He believed he had found both.

Iron Dave, so-called because of his iron-hard fists, knew five Indian dialects and was an expert at sign language.  He needed no interpreter in talking to Indians.  He also knew where and how to dispense favors; and so during the course of his wandering from army post to army post he had given away a blanket here, a rifle there, and occasionally a bottle of whiskey.  And he gave them to warriors.

Making no outward show of friendship with the Indians, he still managed to become known among them as a friend.  Finally, and discreetly, he began trading in whiskey and rifles, always selling to those he knew personally, always careful to let no other white man know of his activities.

And then he met Medicine Dog.

Medicine Dog was a man consumed by hatred for the white man, and particularly for the horse soldiers.  He had been born of a Sioux warrior and a Bannock woman; his parents had come together in the vicinity of Bozeman when the Bannocks, numbering about five lodges, had drifted back to their ancient hunting grounds for a few weeks in the spring.