"An' what did ye fetch to bring him to wid?" asked the corporal. Hart touched lightly the breast of his coat, then clucked to his team. "Faith, there's more than wan way of tappin' it then," said Quirk, but the cavalcade moved on.

The crescent moon had long since sunk behind the westward range, and trailing was something far too slow and tedious. They spurred, therefore, for the nearest ranch, five miles down stream, making their first inquiry there. The inmates were slow to arise, but quick to answer. Blakely had neither been seen nor heard of. Downs they didn't wish to know at all. Indians hadn't been near the lower valley since the "break" at the post the previous week. One of the inmates declared he had ridden alone from Camp McDowell within three days, and there wasn't a 'Patchie west of the Matitzal. Hart did all the questioning. He was a business man and a brother. Soldiers, the ranchmen didn't like—soldiers set too much value on government property.

The trail ran but a few hundred yards east of the stream, and close to the adobe walls of the ranch. Strom, the proprietor, got out his lantern and searched below the point where the little troop had turned off. No recent hoof-track, southbound, was visible. "He couldn't have come this far," said he. "Better put back!" Put back they did, and by the aid of Hart's lantern found the fresh trail of a government-shod horse, turning to the east nearly two miles toward home. Quirk said a bad word or two; borrowed the lantern and thoughtfully included the flask; bade his men follow in file and plunged through the underbrush in dogged pursuit. Hart and his team now could not follow. They waited over half an hour without sign or sound from the trailers, then drove swiftly back to the post. There was a light in the telegraph office, and thither Hart went in a hurry. Lieutenant Doty, combining the duties of adjutant and officer of the day, was up and making the rounds. The sentries had just called off three o'clock.

"Had your trouble for nothing, Hart," hailed the youngster cheerily. "Where're the men?"

"Followed his trail—turned to the east three miles below here," answered the trader.

"Three miles below! Why, man, he wasn't below. He met them up Beaver Creek, an' brought 'em in."

"Brought who in?" asked Hart, dropping his whip. "I don't understand."

"Why, the scouts, or runners! Wren sent 'em in. He's had a sharp fight up the mountains beyond Snow Lake. Three men wounded. You couldn't have gone a mile before Blakely led 'em across No. 4's post. Ahorah and another chap—'Patchie-Mohaves. We clicked the news up to Prescott over an hour ago."

The tin reflector at the office window threw the light of the glass-framed candle straight upon Hart's rubicund face, and that face was a study. He faltered a bit before he asked:

"Did Blakely seem all right?—not used up, I mean?"

"Seemed weak and tired, but the man is mad to go and join his troop now—wants to go right out with Ahorah in the morning, and Captain Cutler says no. Oh, they had quite a row!"

They had had rather more than quite a row, if truth were told. Doty had heard only a bit of it. Cutler had been taken by surprise when the Bugologist appeared, two strange, wiry Apaches at his heels, and at first had contented himself with reading Wren's dispatch, repeating it over the wires to Prescott. Then he turned on Blakely, silently, wearily waiting, seated at Doty's desk, and on the two Apaches, silently, stolidly waiting, squatted on the floor. Cutler wished to know how Blakely knew these couriers were coming, and how he came to leave the post without permission. For a moment the lieutenant simply gazed at him, unanswering, but when the senior somewhat sharply repeated the question, in part, Blakely almost as sharply answered: "I did not know they were coming nor that there was wrong in my going. Major Plume required nothing of the kind when we were merely going out for a ride."



This nettled Cutler. He had always said that Plume was lax, and here was proof of it. "I might have wanted you—I did want you, hours ago, Mr. Blakely, and even Major Plume would not countenance his officers spending the greater part of the night away from the post, especially on a government horse," and there had Cutler the whip hand of the scientist, and Blakely had sense enough to see it, yet not sense enough to accept. He was nervous and irritable, as well as tired. Graham had told him he was too weak to ride, yet he had gone, not thinking, of course, to be gone so long, but gone deliberately, and without asking the consent of the post commander. "My finding the runners was an accident," he said, with some little asperity of tone and manner. "In fact, I didn't find them. They found me. I had known them both at the reservation. Have I your permission, sir"—this with marked emphasis—"to take them for something to eat. They are very hungry,—have come far, and wish to start early and rejoin Captain Wren,—as I do, too."

"They will start when I am ready, Mr. Blakely," said Cutler, "and you certainly will not start before. In point of fact, sir, you may not be allowed to start at all."

It was now Blakely's turn to redden to the brows. "You surely will not prevent my going to join my troop, now that it is in contact with the enemy," said he. "All I need is a few hours' sleep. I can start at seven."

"You cannot, with my consent, Mr. Blakely," said the captain dryly. "There are reasons, in fact, why you can't leave here for any purpose unless the general himself give contrary orders. Matters have come up that—you'll probably have to explain."

And here Doty entered, hearing only the captain's last. At sight of his adjutant the captain stopped short in his reprimand. "See to it that these runners have a good supper, Mr. Doty," said Cutler. "Stir up my company cook, if need be, but take them with you now." Then, turning again on Blakely, "The doctor wishes you to go to bed at once, Mr. Blakely, and I will see you in the morning, but no more riding away without permission," he concluded, and thereby closed the interview. He had, indeed, other things to say to, and inquire of, Blakely, but not until he had further consulted Graham. He confidently expected the coming day would bring instructions from headquarters to hold both Blakely and Trooper Downs at the post, as a result of his dispatches, based on the revelation of poor Pat Mullins. But Downs, forewarned, perhaps, had slipped into hiding somewhere—an old trick of his, when punishment was imminent. It might be two or three days before Downs turned up again, if indeed he turned up at all, but Blakely was here and could be held. Hence the "horse order" of the earlier evening.

It was nearly two when Blakely reached his quarters, rebuffed and stung. He was so nervous, however, that, in spite of serious fatigue, he found it for over an hour impossible to sleep. He turned out his light and lay in the dark, and the atmosphere of the room seemed heavily charged with rank tobacco. His new "striker" had sat up, it seems, keeping faithful vigil against his master's return, but, as the hours wore on, had solaced himself with pipe after pipe, and wandering about to keep awake. Most of the time, he declared, he had spent in a big rocking chair on the porch at the side door, but the scent of the weed and of that veteran pipe permeated the entire premises, and the Bugologist hated dead tobacco. He got up and tore down the blanket screen at the side windows and opened all the doors wide and tried his couch again, and still he wooed the drowsy god in vain. "Nor poppy nor mandragora" had he to soothe him. Instead there were new and anxious thoughts to vex, and so another half hour he tossed and tumbled, and when at last he seemed dropping to the borderland, perhaps, of dreams, he thought he must be ailing again and in need of new bandages or cooling drink or something, for the muffled footfalls, betrayed by creaking pine rather than by other sound, told him drowsily that the attendant or somebody, cautioned not to disturb him, was moving slowly across the room. He might have been out on the side porch to get cool water from the olla, but he needn't be so confoundedly slow and cautious, though he couldn't help the creaking. Then, what could the attendant want in the front room, where were still so many of the precious glass cases unharmed, and the Bugologist's favorite books and his big desk, littered with papers, etc.? Blakely thought to hail and warn him against moving about among those brittle glass things, but reflected that he, the new man, had done the reshifting under his, Blakely's, supervision, and knew just where each item was placed and how to find the passage way between them. It really was a trifle intricate. How could he have gone into the spare room at Captain Wren's, and there made his home as—she—Mrs. Plume had first suggested? There would not have been room for half his plunder, to say nothing of himself. "What on earth can Nixon want?" he sleepily asked himself, "fumbling about there among those cases? Was that a crack or a snap?" It sounded like both, a splitting of glass, a wrenching of lock spring or something. "Be careful there!" he managed to call. No answer. Perhaps it was some one of the big hounds, then, wandering restlessly about at night. They often did, and—why, yes, that would account for it. Doors and windows were all wide open here, what was to prevent? Still, Blakely wished he hadn't extinguished his lamp. He might then have explored. The sound ceased entirely for a moment, and, now that he was quite awake, he remembered that the hospital attendant was no longer with him. Then the sounds must have been made by the striker or the hounds. Blakely had no dogs of his own. Indeed they were common property at the post, most of them handed down with the rest of the public goods and chattels by their predecessors of the ——th. At all events, he felt far too languid, inert, weak, indifferent or something. If the striker, he had doubtless come down for cool water. If the hounds, they were in search of something to eat, and in either case why bother about it? The incident had so far distracted his thoughts from the worries of the night that now, at last and in good earnest, he was dropping to sleep.

But in less than twenty minutes he was broad awake again, with sudden start—gasping, suffocating, listening in amaze to a volley of snapping and cracking, half-smothered, from the adjoining room. He sprang from his bed with a cry of alarm and flung himself through a thick, hot veil of eddying, yet invisible, smoke, straight for the communicating doorway, and was brought up standing by banging his head against the resounding pine, tight shut instead of open as he had left it, and refusing to yield to furious battering. It was locked, bolted, or barred from the other side. Blindly he turned and rushed for the side porch and the open air, stumbling against the striker as the latter came clattering headlong down from aloft. Then together they rushed to the parlor window, now cracking and splitting from the furious heat within. A volume of black fume came belching forth, driven and lashed by ruddy tongues of flame within, and their shouts for aid went up on the wings of the dawn, and the infantry sentry on the eastward post came running to see; caught one glimpse of the glare at that southward window; bang went his rifle with a ring that came echoing back from the opposite cliffs, as all Camp Sandy sprang from its bed in answer to the stentorian shout "Fire! No. 5!"



CHAPTER XIII

WHOSE LETTERS?

There is something about a night alarm of fire at a military post that borders on the thrilling. In the days whereof we write the buildings were not the substantial creations of brick and stone to be seen to-day, and those of the scattered "camps" and stations in that arid, sun-scorched land of Arizona were tinder boxes of the flimsiest and most inflammable kind.

It could hardly have been a minute from the warning shot and yell of No. 5—repeated right and left by other sentries and echoed by No. 1 at the guard-house—before bugle and trumpet were blaring their fierce alarm, and the hoarse roar of the drum was rousing the inmates of the infantry barracks. Out they came, tumbling pell-mell into the accustomed ranks, confronted by the sight of Blakely's quarters one broad sheet of flame. With incredible speed the blaze had burst forth from the front room on the lower floor; leaped from window to window, from ledge to ledge; fastened instantly on overhanging roof, and the shingled screen of the veranda; had darted up the dry wooden stairway, devouring banister, railing, and snapping pine floor, and then, billowing forth from every crack, crevice, and casement of the upper floor streamed hissing and crackling on the blackness that precedes the dawn, a magnificent glare that put to shame the feeble signal fires lately gleaming in the mountains. Luckily there was no wind—there never was a wind at Sandy—and the flames leaped straight for the zenith, lashing their way into the huge black pillar of smoke cloud sailing aloft to the stars.

Under their sergeants, running in disciplined order, one company had sped for the water wagon and were now slowly trundling that unwieldy vehicle, pushing, pulling, straining at the wheels, from its night berth close to the corrals. Rushing like mad, in no order at all, the men of the other company came tearing across the open parade, and were faced and halted far out in front of officers' row by Blakely himself, barefooted and clad only in his pyjamas, but all alive with vim and energy.

"Back, men! back for your blankets!" he cried. "Bring ladders and buckets! Back with you, lively!" They seemed to catch his meaning at the instant. His soldier home with everything it contained was doomed. Nothing could save it. But there stood the next quarters,—Truman's and Westervelt's double set,—and in the intense heat that must speedily develop, it might well be that the dry, resinous woodwork that framed the adobe would blaze forth on its own account and spread a conflagration down the line. Already Mrs. Truman, with Norah and the children, was being hurried down to the doctor's, while Truman himself, with the aid of two or three neighboring "strikers," had stripped the beds of their single blanket and, bucketing these with water, was slashing at the veranda roof and cornice along the northward side.

Somebody came with a short ladder, and in another moment three or four adventurous spirits, led by Blakely and Truman, were scrambling about the veranda roof, their hands and faces glowing in the gathering heat, spreading blankets over the shingling and cornice. In five minutes all that was left of Blakely's little homestead was gone up in smoke and fierce, furious heat and flame, but the daring and well-directed effort of the garrison had saved the rest of the line. In ten minutes nothing but a heap of glowing beams and embers, within four crumbling walls of adobe, remained of the "beetle shop." Bugs, butterflies, books, chests, desk, trunks, furniture, papers, and such martial paraphernalia as a subaltern might require in that desert land, had been reduced to ashes before their owner's eyes. He had not saved so much as a shoe. His watch, lying on the table by his bedside, a silk handkerchief, and a little scrap of a note, written in girlish hand and carried temporarily in the breast pocket, were the only items he had managed to bring with him into the open air. He was still gasping, gagging, half-strangling, when Captain Cutler accosted him to know if he could give the faintest explanation of the starting of so strange and perilous a fire, and Blakely, remembering the stealthy footsteps and that locked or bolted door, could not but say he believed it incendiary, yet could think of no possible motive.

It was daybreak as the little group of spectators, women and children of the garrison, began to break up and return to their homes, all talking excitedly, all intolerant of the experiences of others, and centered solely in the narrative of their own. Leaving a dozen men with buckets, readily filled from the acequia which turned the old water wheel just across the post of No. 4, and sending the big water wagon down to the stream for another liquid load, the infantry went back to their barracks and early coffee. The drenched blankets, one by one, were stripped from the gable end of Truman's quarters, every square inch of the paint thereon being now a patch of tiny blisters, and there, as the dawn broadened and the pallid light took on again a tinge of rose, the officers gathered about Blakely in his scorched and soaked pyjamas, extending both condolence and congratulation.

"The question is, Blakely," remarked Captain Westervelt dryly, "will you go to Frisco to refit now, or wait till Congress reimburses?" whereat the scientist was observed to smile somewhat ruefully. "The question is, Bugs," burst in young Doty irrepressibly, "will you wear this rig, or Apache full dress, when you ride after Wren? The runners start at six," whereat even the rueful smile was observed to vanish, and without answer Blakely turned away, stepping gingerly into the heated sand with his bare white feet.

"Don't bother about dousing anything else, sergeant," said he presently, to the soldier supervising the work of the bucket squad. "The iron box should be under what's left of my desk—about there," and he indicated a charred and steaming heap, visible through a gap in the doubly baked adobe that had once been the side window. "Lug that out as soon as you can cool things off. I'll probably be back by that time." Then, turning again to the group of officers, and ignoring Doty—Blakely addressed himself to the senior.

"Captain Cutler," said he, "I can fit myself out at the troop quarters with everything I need for the field, at least, and wire to San Francisco for what I shall need when we return. I shall be ready to go with Ahorah at six."

There was a moment of silence. Embarrassment showed plainly in almost every face. When Cutler spoke it was with obvious effort. Everybody realized that Blakely, despite severe personal losses, had been the directing head in checking the progress of the flames. Truman had borne admirable part, but Blakely was at once leader and actor. He deserved well of his commander. He was still far from strong. He was weak and weary. His hands and face were scorched and in places blistered, yet, turning his back on the ruins of his treasures, he desired to go at once to join his comrades in the presence of the enemy. He had missed every previous opportunity of sharing perils and battle with them. He could afford such loss as that no longer, in view of what he knew had been said. He had every right, so thought they all, to go, yet Cutler hesitated. When at last he spoke it was to temporize.

"You're in no condition for field work, Mr. Blakely," said he. "The doctor has so assured me, and just now things are taking such shape I—need you here."

"You will permit me to appeal by wire, sir?" queried Blakely, standing attention in his bedraggled night garb, and forcing himself to a semblance of respect that he was far from feeling.

"I—I will consult Dr. Graham and let you know," was the captain's awkward reply.

Two hours later Neil Blakely, in a motley dress made up of collections from the troop and trader's stores—a combination costume of blue flannel shirt, bandanna kerchief, cavalry trousers with machine-made saddle piece, Tonto moccasins and leggings, fringed gauntlets and a broad-brimmed white felt hat, strode into the messroom in quest of eggs and coffee. Doty had been there and vanished. Sick call was sounding and Graham was stalking across the parade in the direction of the hospital, too far away to be reached by human voice, unless uplifted to the pitch of attracting the whole garrison. The telegraph operator had just clicked off the last of half a dozen messages scrawled by the lieutenant—orders on San Francisco furnishers for the new outfit demanded by the occasion, etc., but Captain Cutler was still mured within his own quarters, declining to see Mr. Blakely until ready to come to the office. Ahorah and his swarthy partner were already gone, "started even before six," said the acting sergeant major, and Blakely was fuming with impatience and sense of something much amiss. Doty was obviously dodging him, there could be no doubt of that, for the youngster was between two fires, the post commander's positive orders on one hand and Blakely's urgent pleadings on the other.

Over at "C" Troop's quarters was the lieutenant's saddle, ready packed with blanket, greatcoat, and bulging saddle-bags. Over in "C" Troop's stables was Deltchay—the lieutenant's bronco charger, ready fed and groomed, wondering why he was kept in when the other horses were out at graze. With the saddle kit were the troop carbine and revolver, Blakely's personal arms being now but stockless tubes of seared and blistered steel. Back of "C" Troop's quarters lolled a half-breed Mexican packer, with a brace of mules, one girt with saddle, the other in shrouding aparejo—diamond-hitched, both borrowed from the post trader with whom Blakely's note of hand was good as a government four per cent.—all ready to follow the lieutenant to the field whither right and duty called him. There, too, was Nixon, the new "striker," new clad as was his master, and full panoplied for the field, yet bemoaning the loss of soldier treasures whose value was never fully realized until they were irrevocably gone. Six o'clock, six-thirty, six-forty-five and even seven sped by and still there came no summons to join the soldier master. There had come instead, when Nixon urged that he be permitted to lead forth both his own troop horse and Deltchay, the brief, but significant reply: "Shut yer gab, Nixon. There's no horse goes till the captain says so!"

At seven o'clock, at last, the post commander came forth from his doorway; saw across the glaring level of the parade the form of Mr. Blakely impatiently pacing the veranda at the adjutant's office, and, instead of going thither, as was his wont, Captain Cutler turned the other way and strode swiftly to the hospital, where Graham met him at the bedside of Trooper patient Patrick Mullins. "How is he?" queried Cutler.

"Sleeping—thank God—and not to be wakened," was the Scotchman's answer. "He had a bad time of it during the fire."

"What am I to tell Blakely?" demanded Cutler, seeking strength for his faltering hand. "You're bound to help me now, Graham."

"Let him go and you may make it worse," said the doctor, with a clamp of his grizzled jaws. "Hold him here and you're sure to."

"Can't you, as post surgeon, tell him he isn't fit to ride?"

"Not when he rides the first half of the night and puts out a nasty fire the last. Can't you, as post commander, tell him you forbid his going till you hear from Byrne and investigate the fire?" If Graham had no patience with a frail woman, he had nothing but contempt for a weak man. "If he's bound to be up and doing something, though," he added, "send him out with a squad of men and orders to hunt for Downs."

Cutler had never even thought of it. Downs was still missing. No one had seen him. His haunts had been searched to no purpose. His horse was still with the herd. One man, the sergeant of the guard, the previous day, had marked the brief farewell between the missing man and the parting maid—had seen the woman's gloved hand stealthily put forth and the little folded packet passed to the soldier's ready palm. What that paper contained no man ventured to conjecture. Cutler and Graham, notified by Sergeant Kenna of what he had seen, puzzled over it in vain. Norah Shaughnessy could perhaps unravel it, thought the doctor, but he did not say.

Cutler came forth from the shaded depths of the broad hallway to face the dazzling glare of the morning sunshine, and the pale, stern, reproachful features of the homeless lieutenant, who simply raised his hand in salute and said: "I've been ready two hours, sir, and the runners are long gone."

"Too long and too far for you to catch them now," said Cutler, catching at another straw. "And there is far more important matter here. Mr. Blakely, I want that man Downs followed, found, and brought back to this post, and you're the only man to do it. Take a dozen troopers, if necessary, and set about it, sir, at once."

A soldier was at the moment hurrying past the front of the hospital, a grimy-looking packet in his hand. Hearing the voice of Captain Cutler, he turned, saw Lieutenant Blakely standing there at attention, saw that, as the captain finished, Blakely still remained a moment as though about to speak—saw that he seemed a trifle dazed or stunned. Cutler marked it, too. "This is imperative and immediate, Mr. Blakely," said he, not unkindly. "Pull yourself together if you are fit to go at all, and lose no more time." With that he started away. Graham had come to the doorway, but Blakely never seemed to see him. Instead he suddenly roused and, turning sharp, sprang down the wooden steps as though to overtake the captain, when the soldier, saluting, held forth the dingy packet.

"It was warped out of all shape, sir," said he. "The blacksmith pried out the lid wid a crowbar. The books are singed and soaked and the packages charred—all but this."

It fell apart as it passed from hand to hand, and a lot of letters, smoke-stained, scorched at the edges, and some of them soaking wet, also two or three carte de visite photographs, were scattered on the sand. Both men bobbed in haste to gather them up, and Graham came hurriedly down to help. As Blakely straightened again he swayed and staggered slightly, and the doctor grasped him by the arm, a sudden clutch that perhaps shook loose some of the recovered papers from the long, slim fingers. At all events, a few went suddenly back to earth, and, as Cutler turned, wondering what was amiss, he saw Blakely, with almost ashen face, supported by the doctor's sturdy arm to a seat on the edge of the piazza; saw, as he quickly retraced his steps, a sweet and smiling woman's face looking up at him out of the trampled sands, and, even as he stooped to recover the pretty photograph, though it looked far younger, fairer, and more winsome than ever he had seen it, Cutler knew the face at once. It was that of Clarice, wife of Major Plume. Whose, then, were those scattered letters?



CHAPTER XIV

AUNT JANET BRAVED

Nightfall of a weary day had come. Camp Sandy, startled from sleep in the dark hour before the dawn, had found topic for much exciting talk, and was getting tired as the twilight waned. No word had come from the party sent in search of Downs, now deemed a deserter. No sign of him had been found about the post. No explanation had occurred to either Cutler or Graham of the parting between Elise and the late "striker." She had never been known to notice or favor him in any way before. Her smiles and coquetries had been lavished on the sergeants. In Downs there was nothing whatsoever to attract her. It was not likely she had given him money, said Cutler, because he was about the post all that day after the Plumes' departure and with never a sign of inebriety. He could not himself buy whisky, but among the ranchmen, packers, and prospectors forever hanging about the post there were plenty ready to play middleman for anyone who could supply the cash, and in this way were the orders of the post commander made sometimes abortive. Downs was gone, that was certain, and the question was, which way?

A sergeant and two men had taken the Prescott road; followed it to Dick's Ranch, in the Cherry Creek Valley, and were assured the missing man had never gone that way. Dick was himself a veteran trooper of the ——th. He had invested his savings in this little estate and settled thereon to grow up with the country—the Stannards' winsome Millie having accepted a life interest in him and his modest property. They knew every man riding that trail, from the daily mail messenger to the semi-occasional courier. Their own regiment had gone, but they had warm interest in its successors. They knew Downs, had known him ever since his younger days when, a trig young Irish-Englishman, some Londoner's discharged valet, he had 'listed in the cavalry, as he expressed it, to reform. A model of temperance, soberness, and chastity was Downs between times, and his gifts as groom of the chambers, as well as groom of the stables, made him, when a model, invaluable to bachelor officers in need of a competent soldier servant. In days just after the great war he had won fame and money as a light rider. It was then that Lieutenant Blake had dubbed him "Epsom" Downs, and well-nigh quarreled with his chum, Lieutenant Ray, over the question of proprietorship when the two were sent to separate stations and Downs was "striking" for both. Downs settled the matter by getting on a seven-days' drunk, squandering both fame and money, and, though forgiven the scriptural seventy times seven (during which term of years his name was changed to Ups and Downs), finally forfeited the favor of both these indulgent masters and became thereafter simply Downs, with no ups of sufficient length to restore the average—much less to redeem him. And yet, when eventually "bobtailed" out of the ——th, he had turned up at the old arsenal recruiting depot at St. Louis, clean-shaven, neat, deft-handed, helpful, to the end that an optimistic troop commander "took him on again," in the belief that a reform had indeed been inaugurated. But, like most good soldiers, the commander referred to knew little of politics or potables, otherwise he would have set less store by the strength of the reform movement and more by that of the potations. Downs went so far on the highroad to heaven this time as to drink nothing until his first payday. Meantime, as his captain's mercury, messenger, and general utility man, moving much in polite society at the arsenal and in town, he was frequently to be seen about Headquarters of the Army, then established by General Sherman as far as possible from Washington and as close to the heart of St. Louis. He learned something of the ins and outs of social life in the gay city, heard much theory and little truth about the time that Lieutenant Blakely, returning suddenly thereto after an absence of two months, during which time frequent letters had passed between him and Clarice Latrobe, found that Major Plume had been her shadow for weeks, her escort to dance after dance, her companion riding, driving, dining day after day. Something of this Blakely had heard in letters from friends. Little or nothing thereof had he heard from her. The public never knew what passed between them (Elise, her maid, was better informed). But Blakely within the day left town again, and within the week there appeared the announcement of her forthcoming marriage, Plume the presumably happy man. Downs got full the first payday after his re-enlistment, as has been said, and drunk, as in duty bound, at the major's "swagger" wedding. It was after this episode he fell utterly from grace and went forth to the frontier irreclaimably "Downs." It was a seven-days' topic of talk at Sandy that Lieutenant Blakely, when acting Indian agent at the reservation, should have accepted the services of this unpromising specimen as "striker." It was a seven-weeks' wonder that Downs kept the pact, and sober as a judge, from the hour he joined the Bugologist to the night that self-contained young officer was sent crashing into his beetle show under the impact of Wren's furious fist. Then came the last pound that broke the back of Downs' wavering resolution, and now had come—what? The sergeant and party rode back from Dick's to tell Captain Cutler the deserter had not taken the Cherry Creek road. Another party just in reported similarly that he had not taken the old, abandoned Grief Hill trail. Still another returned from down-stream ranches to say he could not have taken that route without being seen—and he had not been seen. Ranchman Strom would swear to that because Downs was in his debt for value received in shape of whisky, and Strom was rabid at the idea of his getting away. In fine, as nothing but Downs was missing, it became a matter of speculation along toward tattoo as to whether Downs could have taken anything at all—except possibly his own life.

Cutler was now desirous of questioning Blakely at length, and obtaining his views and theories as to Downs, for Cutler believed that Blakely had certain well-defined views which he was keeping to himself. Between these two, however, had grown an unbridgeable gulf. Dr. Graham had declared at eight o'clock that morning that Mr. Blakely was still so weak that he ought not to go with the searching parties, and on receipt of this dictum Captain Cutler had issued his, to wit, that Blakely should not go either in search of Downs or in pursuit of Captain Wren. It stung Blakely and angered him even against Graham, steeling him against the post commander. Each of these gentlemen begged him to make his temporary home under his roof, and Blakely would not. "Major Plume's quarters are now vacant, then," said Cutler to Graham. "If he won't come to you or to me, let him take a room there." This, too, Blakely refused. He reddened, what is more, at the suggestion. He sent Nixon down to Mr. Hart's, the trader's, to ask if he could occupy a spare room there, and when Hart said, yes, most certainly, Cutler reddened in turn when told of it, and sent Lieutenant Doty, the adjutant, to say that the post commander could not "consent to an officer's occupying quarters outside the garrison when there was abundant room within." Then came Truman and Westervelt to beg Blakely to come to them. Then came a note from Mrs. Sanders, reminding him that, as an officer of the cavalry, it would be casting reflections on his own corps to go and dwell with aliens. "Captain Sanders would never forgive me," said she, "if you did not take our spare room. Indeed, I shall feel far safer with a man in the house now that we are having fires and Indian out-breaks and prisoners escaping and all that sort of thing. Do come, Mr. Blakely." And in that blue flannel shirt and the trooper trousers and bandanna neckerchief, Blakely went and thanked her; sent for Nixon and his saddle-bags, and with such patience as was possible settled down forthwith. Truth to tell it was high time he settled somewhere, for excitement, exposure, physical ill, and mental torment had told upon him severely. At sunset, as he seemed too miserable to leave his room and come to the dining table, Mrs. Sanders sent for the doctor, and reluctantly Blakely let him in.

That evening, just after tattoo had sounded, Kate Sanders and Angela were having murmured conference on the Wrens' veranda. Aunt Janet had gone to hospital to carry unimpeachable jelly to the several patients and dubious words of cheer. Jelly they absorbed with much avidity and her words with meek resignation. Mullins, she thought, after his dreadful experience and close touch with death, must be in receptive mood and repentant of his sins. Of just what sins to repent poor Pat might still be unsettled in his mind. It was sufficient that he had them, as all soldiers must have, said Miss Wren, and now that his brain seemed clearing and the fever gone and he was too weak and helpless to resist, the time seemed ripe for the sowing of good seed, and Janet went to sow.

But there by Mullins's bed, all unabashed at Janet's marked disapprobation, sat Norah Shaughnessy. There, in flannel shirt and trooper trousers and bandanna neckerchief, pale, but collected, stood the objectionable Mr. Blakely. He was bending over, saying something to Mullins, as she halted in the open doorway, and Blakely, looking quickly up, went with much civility to greet and escort her within. To his courteous, "Good-evening, Miss Wren, may I relieve you of your basket?" she returned prompt negative and, honoring him with no further notice, stood and gazed with Miss Shaughnessy at the focus—Miss Shaughnessy who, after one brief glance, turned a broad Irish back on the intruder at the doorway and resumed her murmuring to Mullins.

"Is the doctor here—or Steward Griffin?" spoke the lady, to the room at large, looking beyond the lieutenant and toward the single soldier attendant present.

"The doctor and the steward are both at home just now, Miss Wren," said Blakely. "May I offer you a chair?"

Miss Wren preferred to stand.

"I wish to speak with Steward Griffin," said she again. "Can you go for him?" this time obviously limiting her language to the attendant himself, and carefully excluding Mr. Blakely from the field of her recognition. The attendant dumbly shook his head. So Aunt Janet tried again.

"Norah, you know where the steward lives, will you—" But Blakely saw rebellion awake again in Ireland and interposed.

"The steward shall be here at once, Miss Wren," said he, and tiptoed away. The lady's doubtful eye turned and followed him a moment, then slowly she permitted herself to enter. Griffin, heading for the dispensary at the moment and apprised of her visit, came hurrying in. Blakely, pondering over the few words Mullins had faintly spoken, walked slowly over toward the line. His talk with Graham had in a measure stilled the spirit of rancor that had possessed him earlier in the day. Graham, at least, was stanch and steadfast, not a weathercock like Cutler. Graham had given him soothing medicine and advised his strolling a while in the open air—he had slept so much of the stifling afternoon—and now, hearing the sound of women's voices on the dark veranda nearest him, he veered to the left, passed around the blackened ruin of his own quarters and down along the rear of the line just as the musician of the guard was sounding "Lights Out"—"Taps."

And then a sudden thought occurred to him. Sentries began challenging at taps. He was close to the post of No. 5. He could even see the shadowy form of the sentry slowly pacing toward him, and here he stood in the garb of a private soldier instead of his official dress. It caused him quickly to veer again, to turn to his right, the west, and to enter the open space between the now deserted quarters of the permanent commander and those of Captain Wren adjoining them to the north. Another moment and he stopped short. Girlish voices, low and murmurous, fell upon his ear. In a moment he had recognized them. "It won't take me two minutes, Angela. I'll go and get it now," were the first words distinctly heard, and, with a rustle of skirts, Kate Sanders bounded lightly from the piazza to the sands and disappeared around the corner of the major's quarters, going in the direction of her home. For the first time in many eventful days Blakely stood almost within touch of the girl whose little note was even then nestling in an inner pocket, and they were alone.

"Miss Angela!"

Gently he spoke her name, but the effect was startling. She had been reclining in a hammock, and at sound of his voice struggled suddenly to a sitting posture, a low cry on her lips. In some strange way, in the darkness, the fright, confusion,—whatever it may have been,—she lost her balance and her seat. The hammock whirled from under her, and with exasperating thump, unharmed but wrathful, the girl was tumbled to the resounding floor. Blakely sprang to her aid, but she was up in the split of a second, scorning, or not seeing, his eager, outstretched hand.

"My—Miss Angela!" he began, all anxiety and distress, "I hope you're not hurt," and the outstretched hands were trembling.

"I know I'm not," was the uncompromising reply, "not in the least; startled—that's all! Gentlemen don't usually come upon one that way—in the dark." She was panting a bit, but striving bravely, angrily, to be calm and cool—icy cool.

"Nor would I have come that way," then, stupidly, "had I known you were—here. Forgive me."

How could she, after that? She had no wish to see him, so she had schooled herself. She would decline to see him, were he to ask for her at the door; but, not for an instant did she wish to hear that he did not wish to see her, yet he had haplessly, brusquely said he wouldn't have come had he known she was there. It was her duty to leave him, instantly. It was her desire first to punish him.

"My aunt is not at home," she began, the frost of the Sierras in her tone.

"I just left her, a moment ago, at the hospital," said he, steadfastly ignoring her repellent tone. Indeed, if anything, the tone rejoiced him, for it told a tale she would not have told for realms and empires. He was ten years older and had lived. "But—forgive me," he went on, "you are trembling, Miss Angela." She was, and loathed herself, and promptly denied it. He gravely placed a chair. "You fell heavily, and it must have jarred you. Please sit down," and stepping to the olla, "let me bring you some water."

She was weak. Her knees, her hands, were shaking as they never shook before. He had seen her aunt at the hospital. He had left her aunt there without a moment's delay that he might hasten to see her, Angela. He was here and bending over her, with brimming gourd of cool spring water. Nay, more, with one hand he pressed it to her lips, with the other he held his handkerchief so that the drops might not fall upon her gown. He was bending over her, so close she could hear, she thought, the swift beating of his heart. She knew that if what Aunt Janet had told, and her father had seen, of him were true, she would rather die than suffer a touch of his hand. Yet one hand had touched her, gently, yet firmly, as he helped her to the chair, and the touch she loathed was sweet to her in spite of herself. From the moment of their first meeting this man had done what no other man had done before—spoken to her and treated her as a grown woman, with a man's admiration in his fine blue eyes, with deference in word and chivalric grace in manner. And in spite of the mean things whispered about him—about him and—anybody, she had felt her young heart going out to him, her buoyant, joyous, healthful nature opening and expanding in the sunshine of his presence. And now he had come to seek her, after all the peril and excitement and trouble he had undergone, and now, all loverlike tenderness and concern, was bending over her and murmuring to her, his deep voice almost as tremulous as her hand. Oh, it couldn't be true that he—cared for—was interested in—that woman, the major's wife! Not that she ought to care one way or another, except that it was so despicable—so unlike him. Yet she had promised herself—had virtually promised her father—that she would hold far aloof from this man, and here he stood, so close that their heart-beats almost intermingled, and he was telling her that he wished she had kept and never returned the little butterfly net, for now, when it had won a value it never before had known, it was his fate to lose it. "And now," he said, "I hope to be sent to-morrow to join your father in the field, and I wish to tell you that, whenever I go, I shall first come to see what you may have to send to him. Will you—be here, Miss Angela?"

For a moment—silence. She was thinking of her duty to her father, of her implied promise, of all that Janet had told her, and so thinking could not for the moment answer—could not meet his earnest gaze. Dark as it was she felt, rather than saw, the glow of his deep blue eyes. She could not mistake the tenderness of his tone. She had so believed in him. He seemed so far above the callow, vapid, empty-headed youngsters the other girls were twittering about from morn till night. She felt that she believed in him now, no matter what had been said or who had said it. She felt that if he would but say it was all a mistake—that no woman had crossed his threshold, all Camp Sandy might swear to the truth of the story, and she would laugh at it. But how could she ask such a thing of him? Her cheeks took fire at the thought. It was he who broke the silence.

"Something has happened to break your faith in me, Miss Angela," said he, with instant gravity. "I certainly had it—I know I had it—not a week ago"; and now he had dropped to a seat in the swaying hammock, and with calm strength and will bent toward her and compelled her attention. "I have a right to know, as matters stand. Will you tell me, or must I wait until I see your father?" With that Neil Blakely actually sought to take her hand. She whipped it behind her at the instant. "Will you tell me?" he repeated, bending closer.

From down the line, dancing along the wooden veranda, came the sound of swift footfalls—Kate Sanders hurrying back. Another moment and it would be too late. The denial she longed to hear from his lips might never be spoken. If spoken at all it must be here and now, yet how could she—how could she ask him?

"I will tell you, Mr. Blakely." The words came from the window of the darkened parlor, close at hand. The voice was that of Janet Wren, austere and uncompromising. "I got here in time to hear your question—I will answer for my niece—"

"Aunt Janet—No!"

"Be quiet, Angela. Mr. Blakely, it is because this child's father saw, and I heard of, that which makes you unworthy the faith of a young, pure-hearted girl. Who was the—the creature to whom you opened your door last Wednesday midnight?"

Kate Sanders, singing softly, blithely, came tripping along the major's deserted veranda, her fresh young voice, glad, yet subdued, caroling the words of a dear old song that Parepa had made loved and famous full ten years before:

"And as he lingered by her side, In spite of his comrade's warning The old, old story was told again At five o'clock in the morning."

Then came sudden silence, as springing to the sandy ground, the singer reached the Wrens' veranda and saw the dim form of Mr. Blakely, standing silently confronting a still dimmer form, faintly visible at the side window against the soft, tempered light of the hanging lamp in the hall.

"Who was the creature?" I repeat, were the strange words, in Miss Wren's most telling tone, that brought Kate Sanders to a halt, startled, silent.

Then Blakely answered: "Some day I shall tell Miss Angela, madam, but never—you. Good-night."



CHAPTER XV

A CALL FOR HELP

That night the wire across the mountains to Prescott was long alive with news, and there was little rest for operator, adjutant, or commanding officer at Sandy. Colonel Byrne, it seems, had lost telegraphic touch with his chief, who, quitting Camp McDowell, had personally taken the field somewhere over in the Tonto Basin beyond the Matitzal Range, and Byrne had the cares of a continent on his hands. Three of the five commands out in the field had had sharp encounters with the foe. Official business itself was sufficiently engrossing, but there were other matters assuming grave proportions. Mrs. Plume had developed a feverish anxiety to hie on to the Pacific and out of Arizona just at a time when, as her husband had to tell her, it was impossible for him, and impolitic for her, to go. Matters at Sandy, he explained, were in tangled shape. Mullins partially restored, but still, as Plume assured her, utterly out of his head, had declared that his assailants were women; and other witnesses, Plume would not give names, had positively asserted that Elise had been seen along the sentry post just about the time the stabbing occurred. Everything now, said he, must depend on Captain Wren, who was known to have seen and spoken to Elise, and who could probably testify that she returned to their roof before the tragic affair of the night. But Wren was now away up in the mountains beyond Snow Lake and might be going far over through Sunset Pass to the Colorado Chiquito. Meantime he, Plume, was responsible for Elise, in duty bound to keep her there to face any accuser. In her nervous, semi-hysterical state the wife could not well be told how much she, too, was involved. It was not necessary. She knew—all Fort Whipple, as Prescott's military post was called, knew all about the fire that had destroyed the "beetle shop" and Blakely's belongings. Elise, in wild excitement, had rushed to her mistress with that news and the further information that Downs was gone and could not be found. This latter fact, indeed, they learned before Plume ever heard of it—and made no mention of it in his presence.

"I shall have to run down to Sandy again," said Byrne, to Plume. "Keep up your heart and—watch that Frenchwoman. The jade!" And with the following day he was bounding and bumping down the stony road that led from the breezy, pine-crested heights about headquarters to the sandy flats and desert rocks and ravines fifty miles to the east and twenty-five hundred feet below. "Shall be with you after dark," he wired Cutler, who was having a bad quarter of an hour on his own account, and wishing all Sandy to the devil. It had transpired that Strom's rival ranchman, a little farther down the valley, was short just one horse and set of horse equipments. He had made no complaint. He had accused nobody. He had never failed in the past to appear at Sandy with charge of theft and demand for damages at the expense of the soldiery whenever he missed an item, big or little—and sometimes when he didn't miss a thing. But now he came not at all, and Cutler jumped at the explanation: he had sold that steed, and Downs, the deserter, was the purchaser. Downs must have had money to aid in his escape. Downs must have received it from someone eager to get him out of the way. It might well be Elise, for who else would trust him? and Downs must be striking for the south, after wide detour. No use now to chase him. The wire was the only thing with which to round him up, so the stage stations on the Gila route, and the scattered army posts, were all notified of the desertion, and Downs's description, with all his imperfections, was flashed far and wide over the Territory. He could no more hope to escape than fly on the wings of night. He would be cut off or run down long before he could reach Mexico; that is, he would be if only troopers got after him. The civil list of Arizona in 1875 was of peculiar constitution. It stood ready at any time to resolve itself into a modification of the old-day underground railways, and help spirit off soldier criminals, first thoughtfully relieving them of care and responsibility for any surplus funds in their possession.

And with Downs gone one way, Wren's troop gone another, and Blakely here clamoring to follow, Cutler was mentally torn out of shape. He believed it his duty to hold Blakely at least until the colonel came, and he lacked the "sand" to tell him so.

From Wren not another word had been received direct, but Bridger at the agency had sent word that the Indians there were constantly in receipt of news from the hostiles that filled them with excitement. Wren, at last accounts, had gone into the mountains south of Sunset Pass toward Chevlon's Fork, and his trail was doubtless watched to head off couriers or cut down stragglers. Blakely's appeal to be allowed to follow and join his troop had been declared foolish, and the attempt foolhardy, by Captain Cutler. This and not the real reason was given, coupled of course, with the doctor's dictum. But even Graham had begun to think Blakely would be the better for anything that would take him away from a station where life had been one swift succession of ills and mishaps.

And even Graham did not dream how sorely Blakely had been hit. Nor could he account for the access of nervous irritability that possessed his patient all the livelong day, while waiting, as they all were, for the coming of Colonel Byrne. Mrs. Sanders declared to Mrs. Graham her private impression that he was on the verge of prostration, although, making an effort, Blakely had appeared at breakfast after an early morning walk, had been most courteous, gentle, and attentive to her and to her wholesome, if not actually homely, Kate. How the mother's heart yearned over that sweet-natured, sallow-faced child! But after breakfast Blakely had wandered off again and was out on the mesa, peering through a pair of borrowed glasses over the dreary eastward landscape and up and down the deep valley. "How oddly are we constituted!" said Mrs. Sanders. "If I only had his money, I'd never be wearing my heart out in this desert land." She was not the only army wife and mother that should have married a stockbroker—anything rather than a soldier.

The whole post knew by noon that Byrne was coming, and waited with feverish impatience. Byrne was the power that would put an end to the doubts and distractions, decide who stabbed Pat Mullins, who set fire to the "beetle shop," where Epsom Downs had gone, and could even settle, possibly, the long-doubtful question, "Who struck Billy Patterson?" Sandy believed in Byrne as it did in no one since the days of General Crook. With two exceptions, all Sandy society was out on the parade, the porticoes, or the northward bluff, as the sun went down. These two were the Misses Wren. "Angela," said Miss Janet, "is keeping her room to-day, and pretending to keep her temper"—this to Kate Sanders, who had twice sought admission, despite a girlish awe of, if not aversion to, this same Aunt Janet.

"But don't you think she'd like to see me just a little while, Miss Wren?" the girl inquired, her hand caressing the sleek head of one of the big hounds as she spoke. Hounds were other objects of Miss Wren's disfavor. "Lazy, pilfering brutes," she called them, when after hours of almost incredible labor and ingenious effort they had managed to tear down, and to pieces, a haunch of venison she had slung to the rafters of the back porch. "You can come in, Kate, provided you keep out the dogs," was her ungracious answer, "and I'll go see. I think she's sleeping now, and ought not to be disturbed."

"Then I won't disturb her," was Miss Sanders's prompt reply, as she turned away and would have gone, but the elder restrained her. Janet did not wish the girl to go at all. She knew Angela had asked for her, and doubtless longed to see her; and now, having administered her feline scratch and made Kate feel the weight of her disapproval, she was quite ready to promote the very interview she had verbally condemned. Perhaps Miss Sanders saw and knew this and preferred to worry Miss Wren as much as possible. At all events, only with reluctance did she obey the summons to wait a minute, and stood with a pout on her lips as the spinster vanished in the gloom of the hallway. Angela could not have been asleep, for her voice was audible in an instant. "Come up, Kate," she feebly cried, just as Aunt Janet had begun her little sermon, and the sermon had to stop, for Kate Sanders came, and neither lass was in mood to listen to pious exhortation. Moreover, they made it manifest to Aunt Janet that there would be no interchange of confidences until she withdrew. "You are not to talk yourselves into a pitch of excitement," said she. "Angela must sleep to-night to make up for the hours she lost—thanks to the abominable remarks of that hardened young man." With that, after a pull at the curtain, a soothing thump or two at Angela's pillow, and the muttered wish that the coming colonel were empowered to arrest recalcitrant nieces as well as insubordinate subs, she left them to their own devices. They were still in eager, almost breathless chat when the crack of whip and sputter of hoofs and wheels through gravelly sands told that the inspector's ambulance had come. Was it likely that Angela could sleep until she heard the probable result of the inspector's coming?

He was closeted first with Cutler. Then Dr. Graham was sent for, and the three walked over to the hospital, just as the musicians were forming for tattoo. They were at Mullins's bedside, with the steward and attendants outside, when taps went wailing out upon the night. There were five minutes of talk with that still bewildered patient. Then Byrne desired to see Mr. Blakely at once and alone. Cutler surrendered his office to the department inspector, and thither the lieutenant was summoned. Mrs. Sanders, with Mrs. Truman, was keeping little Mrs. Bridger company at the moment, and Blakely bowed courteously to the three in passing by.

"Even in that rough dress," said Mrs. Sanders reflectively, as her eyes followed the tall, straight figure over the moonlit parade, "he is a most distinguished looking man."

"Yes," said Mrs. Bridger, still unappeased. "If he were a Sioux, I suppose they'd call him 'Man-In-Love-With-His-Legs.'" Blakely heard the bubble of laughter that followed him on his way, and wished that he, too, felt in mood as merry. The acting sergeant major, a clerk, and young Cassidy, the soldier telegraph operator, seated at the westward end of the rough board porch of the adjutant's office, arose and saluted as he entered. Byrne had sent every possible hearer out of the building.

Five minutes the conference lasted, no sound coming from within. Cutler and Graham, with Captain Westervelt, sat waiting on the porch of the doctor's quarters, Mrs. Graham being busy with her progeny aloft. Others of the officers and families were also on the piazzas, or strolling slowly up and down the pathway, but all eyes wandered from time to time toward the dim light at the office. All was dark at the barracks. All was hushed and still about the post. The sentry call for half-past ten was still some minutes' distant, when one of the three seated figures at the end of the office porch was seen to rise. Then the other two started to their feet. The first hastened to the door and began to knock. So breathless was the night that over on the verandas the imperative thumping could be distinctly heard, and everyone ceased talk and listened. Then, in answer to some query from within, the voice of young Cassidy was uplifted.

"I beg pardon, sir, but that's the agency calling me, and it's hurry."

They saw the door open from within; saw the soldier admitted and the door closed after him; saw the two men waiting standing and expectant, no longer content to resume their chat. For three minutes of suspense there came no further sound. Then the door was again thrown open, and both Byrne and Blakely came hurrying out. In the memory of the earliest inhabitant never had Sandy seen the colonel walk so fast. Together they came striding straight toward Cutler's, and the captain arose and went to meet them, foreboding in his soul. Graham and Westervelt, restrained by discipline, held back. The women and younger officers, hushed by anxiety, gazed at the swift-coming pair in dread and fascination. There was a moment of muttered conference with the commanding officer, some hurried words, then Blakely was seen to spring away, to be recalled by Cutler, to start a second time, only to be again recalled. Then Cutler, shouting, "Mr. Doty, I need you!" hurried away toward the office, and Blakely, fairly running, sped straight for the barracks of Wren's troop. Only Byrne was left to answer the storm of question that burst upon him all at once, women thronging about him from all along the line.

"We have news from the agency," said he. "It is from Indian runners, and may not be reliable—some rumor of a sharp fight near Sunset Pass."

"Are there particulars, colonel—anybody killed or wounded?" It was Mrs. Sanders who spoke, her face very pale.

"We cannot know—as yet. It is all an Indian story. Mr. Blakely is going at once to investigate," was the guarded answer. But Mrs. Sanders knew, as well as a dozen others, that there were particulars—that somebody had been killed or wounded, for Indian stories to that effect had been found singularly reliable. It was Wren's troop that had gone to Sunset Pass, and here was Wren's sister with question in her eye, and at sight of her the colonel turned and hurried back to headquarters, following the post commander.

Another moment and Blakely, in the broad light streaming suddenly from the office room of Wren's troop, came speeding straight across the parade again in the direction of Sanders's quarters, next to the last at the southward end of the row. They sought, of course, to intercept him, and saw that his face was pale, though his manner was as composed as ever. To every question he had but one thing to say: "Colonel Byrne and the captain know all that I do—and more. Ask them." But this he said with obvious wish to be questioned no further,—said it gently, but most firmly,—and then, with scant apology, passed on. Five minutes more and Nixon was lugging out the lieutenant's field kit on the Sanders's porch, and Blakely, reappearing, went straight up the row to Wren's. It was now after 10.30, but he never hesitated. Miss Janet, watching him from the midst of her friends, saw him stride, unhesitatingly, straight to the door and knock. She followed instantly, but, before she could reach the steps, Kate Sanders, with wonder in her eyes, stood faltering before him.

"Will you say to Miss Angela that I have come as I promised? I am going at once to—join the troop. Can I see her?" he asked.

"She isn't well, Mr. Blakely. She hasn't left her room to-day." And Miss Sanders began herself to tremble, for up the steps came the resolute lady of the house, whom seeing, Mr. Blakely honored with a civil bow, but with not a word.

"I will hear your message, Mr. Blakely," said Miss Wren, pallid, too, and filled with wordless anxiety, but determined none the less.

"Miss Sanders has heard it, madam," was the uncompromising answer. "Will you see Miss Angela, please?" This again to Kate—and, without another word, she went.

"Mr. Blakely," began the lady impressively, "almost the last thing my brother said to me before leaving the post was that he wished no meetings between you and Angela. Why do you pursue her? Do you wish to compel me to take her away?"

For a moment he was silent. Then, "It is I who must go, Miss Wren," was the answer, and she, who expected resentment, looked at him in surprise, so gentle, so sorrowing was his tone. "I had hoped to bear her message, but shall intrude no more. If the news that came to-night should be confirmed—and only in that event—say to her, if you please, that I shall do my best to find her father."



CHAPTER XVI

A RETURN TO COMMAND

With but a single orderly at his back, Mr. Blakely had left Camp Sandy late at night; had reached the agency, twenty miles up stream, two hours before the dawn and found young Bridger waiting for him. They had not even a reliable interpreter now. Arahawa, "Washington Charley," had been sent to the general at Camp McDowell. Lola's father, with others of her kin, had taken Apache leave and gone in search of the missing girl. But between the sign language and the patois of the mountains, a strange mixture of Spanish, English, and Tonto Apache, the officers had managed, with the aid of their men, to gather explanation of the fierce excitement prevailing all that previous day among the Indians at the agency. There had been another fight, a chase, a scattering of both pursuers and pursued. Most of the troops were at last accounts camping in the rocks near Sunset Pass. Two had been killed, several were wounded, three were missing, lost to everybody. Even the Apaches swore they knew not where they were—a sergeant, a trumpeter, and "Gran Capitan" himself—Captain Wren.

In the paling starlight of the coming day Blakely and Bridger plied the reluctant Indians with questions in every form possible with their limited knowledge of the sign language. Blakely, having spent so many years on staff duty, had too little knowledge of practical service in the field. Bridger was but a beginner at best. Together they had decided on their course. A wire was sent to Sandy saying that from all they could gather the rumors were probably true, but urging that couriers be sent for Dick, the Cherry Creek settler, and Wales Arnold, another pioneer who had lived long in Apache land and owned a ranch on the little Beaver. They could get more out of the Indians than could these soldiers. It would be hours after dawn before either Dick or his fellow frontiersman could arrive. Meanwhile Sandy must bear the suspense as well as it might. The next wire came from Bridger at nine o'clock:

Arnold arrived hour ago. Examined six. Says stories probably true. Confident Wren not killed.

For answer Byrne wired that a detachment of a dozen men with three packers had marched at five o'clock to report to Blakely for such duty as he might require, and the answer came within the minute:

Blakely gone. Started for Snow Lake 4.30. Left orders detachment follow. Took orderly and two Apache Yuma scouts.

Byrne, Cutler, and Graham read with grave and anxious faces, but said very little. It was Blakely's way.

And that was the last heard of the Bugologist for as much as a week.

Meantime there was a painful situation at Fort Whipple, away up in "the hills." Major Plume, eager on his wife's account to get her to the seashore—"Monterey or Santa Barbara," said the sapient medical director—and ceaselessly importuned by her and viciously nagged by Elise, found himself bound to the spot. So long as Mullins stuck to his story Plume knew it would never do for him to leave. "A day or two more and he may abate or amend his statement," wrote Graham. Indeed, if Norah Shaughnessy were not there to prompt—to prop—his memory, Graham thought it like enough that even now the soldier would have wavered. But never a jot or tittle had Mullins been shaken from the original statement.

"There was two women," he said, "wid their shawls over their heads," and those two, refusing to halt at his demand, had been overtaken and one of them seized, to his bitter cost, for the other had driven a keen-bladed knife through his ribs, even as he sought to examine his captive. "They wouldn't spake," said he, "so what could I do but pull the shawl from the face of her to see could she be recognized?" Then came the fierce, cat-like spring of the taller of the two. Then the well-nigh fatal thrust. What afterwards became of the women he could say no more than the dead. Norah might rave about its being the Frenchwoman that did it to protect the major's lady—this he spoke in whispered confidence and only in reply to direct question—but it wouldn't be for the likes of him to preshume. Mullins, it seems, was a soldier of the old school.

Then came fresh and dire anxiety at Sandy. Four days after Blakely's start there appeared two swarthy runners from the way of Beaver Creek. They bore a missive scrawled on the paper lining of a cracker box, and it read about as follows:

CAMP IN SUNSET PASS, November 3d.

COMMANDING OFFICER, CAMP SANDY:

Scouting parties returning find no trace of Captain Wren and Sergeant Carmody, but we shall persevere. Indians lurking all about us make it difficult. Shall be needing rations in four days. All wounded except Flynn doing fairly well. Hope couriers sent you on 30th and 31st reached you safely.

The dispatch was in the handwriting of Benson, a trooper of good education, often detailed for clerical work. It was signed "Brewster, Sergeant."

Who then were the couriers, and what had become of them? What fate had attended Blakely in his lonely and perilous ride? What man or pair of men could pierce that cordon of Indians lurking all around them and reach the beleaguered command? What need to speculate on the fate of the earlier couriers anyway? Only Indians could hope to outwit Indians in such a case. It was madness to expect white men to get through. It was madness for Blakely to attempt it. Yet Blakely was gone beyond recall, perhaps beyond redemption. From him, and from the detachment that was sent by Bridger to follow his trail, not a word had come of any kind. Asked if they had seen or heard anything of such parties, the Indian couriers stolidly shook their heads. They had followed the old Wingate road all the way until in sight of the valley. Then, scrambling through a rocky labyrinth, impossible for hoof or wheel, had made a short cut to the head waters of the Beaver. Now Blakely, riding from the agency eastward slowly, should have found that Wingate trail before the setting of the first day's sun, and his followers could not have been far behind. It began to look as though the Bugologist had never reached the road. It began to be whispered about the post that Wren and his luckless companions might never be found at all. Kate Sanders had ceased her song. She was now with Angela day and night.

One hope, a vague one, remained beside that of hearing from the baker's dozen that rode on Blakely's trail. Just as soon as Byrne received the Indian story concerning Wren's disappearance, he sent runners eastward on the track of Sanders's troop, with written advice to that officer to drop anything he might be doing along the Black Mesa and, turning northward, to make his way through a country hitherto untrod by white man, between Baker's Butte at the south and the Sunset Mountains at the north. He was ordered to scout the canon of Chevlon's Fork, and to look for sign on every side until, somewhere among the "tanks" in the solid rock about the mountain gateway known as Sunset Pass, he should join hands with the survivors of Webb's troop, nursing their wounded and guarding the new-made graves of their dead. Under such energetic supervision as that of Captain Sanders it was believed that even Apache Yuma scouts could be made to accomplish something, and that new heart would be given Wren's dispirited men. By this time, too, if Blakely had not fallen into the hands of the Apaches, he should have been joined by the intended escort, and, thus strengthened, could either push on to the pass, or, if surrounded, take up some strong position among the rocks and stand off his assailants until found by his fellow-soldiers under Sanders. Moreover, Byrne had caused report of the situation to be sent to the general via Camp McDowell, and felt sure he would lose no time in directing the scouting columns to head for the Sunset country. Scattered as were the hostile Apaches, it was apparent that they were in greater force northward, opposite the old reservation, than along the Mogollon Range southeast of it. There was hope, activity, animation, among the little camps and garrisons toward the broad valley of the Gila as the early days of November wore away. Only here at Sandy was there suspense as well as deep despond.

It was a starlit Sunday morning that Blakely rode away eastward from the agency. It was Wednesday night when Sergeant Brewster's runners came, and never a wink of sleep had they or their inquisitors until Thursday was ushered in. It was Saturday night again, a week from the night Neil Blakely strove to see and say good-by to Angela Wren. It was high time other runners came from Brewster, unless they, too, had been cut off, as must have been the fate of their forerunners. All drills had been suspended at Sandy; all duty subordinated to guard. Cutler had practically abolished the daily details, had doubled his sentries, had established outlying pickets, and was even bent on throwing up intrenchments or at least digging rifle pits, lest the Apaches should feel so "cocky" over their temporary successes as to essay an attack on the post. Byrne smiled and said they would hardly try that, but he approved the pickets. It was noted that for nearly a week,—not since Blakely's start from the agency,—no signal fires had been seen in the Red Rock country or about the reservation. Mr. Truman, acting as post quartermaster, had asked for additional men to protect his little herd, for the sergeant in charge declared that, twice, long-distance shots had come from far away up the bouldered heights to the west. The daily mail service had been abandoned, so nervous had the carrier become, and now, twice each week, a corporal and two men rode the rugged trail, thus far without seeing a sign of Apaches. The wire, too, was undisturbed, but an atmosphere of alarm and dread clung about the scattered ranches even as far as the Agua Fria to the west, and the few officials left at Prescott found it impossible to reassure the settlers, who, quitting their new homes, had either clustered about some favored ranch for general defense or, "packing" to Fort Whipple, were clamoring there for protection with which to return to and occupy their abandoned roofs.

And all this, said Byrne, between his set teeth, because a bumptious agent sought to lay forceful hands upon the daughter of a chief. Poor Daly! He had paid dearly for that essay. As for Natzie, and her shadow Lola, neither one had been again seen. They might indeed have dropped back from Montezuma Well after the first wild stampede, but only fruitless search had the soldiers made for them. Even their own people, said Bridger, at the agency, were either the biggest liars that ever lived or the poorest trailers. The Apaches swore the girls could not be found. "I'll bet Sergeant Shannon could nail them," said Hart, the trader, when told of the general denial among the Indians. But Shannon was far away from the field column, leading his moccasined comrades afoot and in single file long, wearisome climbs up jagged cliffs or through deep canons, where unquestionably the foe had been in numbers but the day before, yet now they were gone. Shannon might well be needed at the far front, now that most of the Apache scouts had proved timid or worthless, but Byrne wished he had him closer home.

It was the Saturday night following the coming of the runners with confirmation of the grewsome Indian stories. Colonel Byrne, with Graham, Cutler, and Westervelt, had been at the office half an hour in consultation when, to the surprise of every soul at Sandy, a four-mule team and Concord wagon came bowling briskly into the post, and Major Plume, dust-covered and grave, marched into the midst of the conference and briefly said: "Gentlemen, I return to resume command."

Nobody had a word to say beyond that of welcome. It was manifestly the proper thing for him to do. Unable, in face of the stories afloat, to take his wife away, his proper place in the pressing emergency was at his post in command.

To Colonel Byrne, who guardedly and somewhat dubiously asked, "How about Mrs. Plume and that—French thing?" the major's answer was prompt:

"Both at Fort Whipple and in—good hands," said he. "My wife realizes that my duty is here, and, though her recovery may be retarded, she declares she will remain there or even join me. She, in fact, was so insistent that I should bring her back with me that it embarrassed me somewhat. I vetoed it, however."

Byrne gazed at him from under his shaggy eyebrows. "H'm," said he, "I fancied she had shaken the dust of Sandy from her shoes for good and all—that she hoped never to come back."

"I, too," answered Plume ingenuously. "She hated the very mention of it,—this is between ourselves,—until this week. Now she says her place is here with me, no matter how she may suffer," and the major seemed to dwell with pride on this new evidence of his wife's devotion. It was, indeed, an unusual symptom, and Byrne had to try hard to look credulous, which Plume appreciated and hurried on:

"Elise, of course, seemed bent on talking her out of it, but, with Wren and Blakely both missing, I could not hesitate. I had to come. Oh, captain, is Truman still acting quartermaster?" this to Cutler. "He has the keys of my house, I suppose."

And so by tattoo the major was once more harbored under his old roof and full of business. From Byrne and his associates he quickly gathered all particulars in their possession. He agreed with them that another day must bring tidings from the east or prove that the Apaches had surrounded and perhaps cut down every man of the command. He listened eagerly to the details Byrne and others were able to give him. He believed, by the time "taps" came, he had already settled on a plan for another relief column, and he sent for Truman, the quartermaster.

"Truman," said he, "how much of a pack train have you got left?"

"Hardly a mule, sir. Two expeditions out from this post swallows up pretty much everything."

"Very true; yet I may have to find a dozen packs before we get half through this business. The ammunition is in your hands, too, isn't it? Where do you keep it?" and the major turned and gazed out in the starlight.

"Only place I got, sir—quartermaster's storehouse," and Truman eyed his commander doubtfully.

"Well, I'm squeamish about such things as that," said the major, looking even graver, "especially since this fire here. By the way, was much of Blakely's property—er—rescued—or recovered?"

"Very little, sir. Blakely lost pretty much everything, except some papers in an iron box—the box that was warped all out of shape."

"Where is it now?" asked Plume, tugging at the strap of a dressing case and laying it open on the broad window-seat.

"In my quarters, under my bed, sir."

"Isn't that rather—unsafe?" asked Plume. "Think how quick he was burned out."

"Best I can do, sir. But he said it contained little of value, mainly letters and memoranda. No valuables at all, in fact. The lock wouldn't work, so the blacksmith strap-ironed it for him. That prevents it being opened by anyone, you know, who hasn't the proper tools."

"I see," said Plume reflectively. "It seems rather unusual to take such precaution with things of no value. I suppose Blakely knows his own business, however. Thank you very much Truman. Good-night."

"I suppose he did, at least, when he had the blacksmith iron that box," thought Truman, as he trudged away. "He did, at any rate, when he made me promise to keep it with the utmost care. Not even you can have it, Major Plume, although you are the post commander."



CHAPTER XVII

A STRANGE COMING

With one orderly and a pair of Apache Yuma scouts, Neil Blakely had set forth in hopes of making his way to Snow Lake, far up in the range to the east. The orderly was all very well,—like most of his fellows, game, true, and tried,—but few were the leaders who had any faith in Apache Yumas. Of those Indians whom General Crook had successively conquered, then turned to valuable use, the Hualpais had done well and proved reliable; the Apache Mohaves had served since '73, and in scout after scout and many a skirmish had proved loyal and worthy allies against the fierce, intractable Tontos, many of whom had never yet come in to an agency or accepted the bounty of the government. Even a certain few of these Tontos had proffered fealty and been made useful as runners and trailers against the recalcitrants of their own band. But the Apache Yumas, their mountain blood tainted by the cross with the slothful bands of the arid, desert flats of the lower Colorado, had won a bad name from the start, and deserved it. They feared the Tontos, who had thrashed them again and again, despoiled them of their plunder, walked away with their young women, insulted and jeered at their young men. Except when backed by the braves of other bands, therefore, the Apache Yumas were fearful and timorous on the trail. Once they had broken and run before a mere handful of Tontos, leaving a wounded officer to his fate. Once, when scaling the Black Mesa toward this very Snow Lake, they had whimpered and begged to be sent home, declaring no enemy was there in hiding, when the peaks were found alive with Tontos. The Red Rock country and the northward spurs of the Mogollon seemed fraught with some strange, superstitious terror in their eyes, and if the "nerve" of a dozen would desert them when ordered east of the Verde, what could be expected of Blakely's two? No wonder, then, the elders at Sandy were sorely troubled!

But the Bugologist had nothing else to choose from. All the reliable, seasoned scouts were already gone with the various field columns. Only Apache Yumas remained, and only the least promising of the Apache Yumas at that. Bridger remembered how reluctantly these two had obeyed the summons to go. "If they don't sneak away and come back swearing they have lost the lieutenant, I'm a gopher," said he, and gave orders accordingly to have them hauled before him should they reappear. Confidently he looked to see or hear of them as again lurking about the commissary storehouse after the manner of their people, beggars to the backbone. But the week went by without a sign of them. "There's only one thing to explain that," said he. "They've either deserted to the enemy or been cut off and killed." What, then, had become of Blakely? What fate had befallen Wren?

By this time, late Saturday night, acting for the department commander now lost somewhere in the mountains, Byrne had re-enforced the guards at the agency and the garrison at Sandy with infantry drawn from Fort Whipple at Prescott, for thither the Apaches would never venture. The untrammeled and sovereign citizen had his own way of treating the obnoxious native to the soil.

By this time, too, further word should have come from some of the field columns, Sanders's especially. But though runners had reached the post bearing brief dispatches from the general, showing that he and the troops from the more southerly posts were closing in on the wild haunts of the Tontos about Chevlon's Fork, not a sign had come from this energetic troop commander, not another line from Sergeant Brewster or his men, and there were women at Camp Sandy now nearly mad with sleepless dread and watching. "It means," said Byrne, "that the hostiles are between us and those commands. It means that couriers can't get through, that's all. I'm betting the commands are safe enough. They are too strong to be attacked." But Byrne was silent as to Blakely; he was dumb as to Wren. He was growing haggard with anxiety and care and inability to assure or comfort. The belated rations needed by Brewster's party, packed on mules hurried down from Prescott, were to start at dawn for Sunset Pass under stout infantry guard, and they, too, would probably be swallowed up in the mountains. The ranch people down the valley, fearful of raiding Apaches, had abandoned their homes, and, driving their stock before them, had taken refuge in the emptied corrals of the cavalry. Even Hart, the veteran trader, seemed losing his nerve under the strain, for when such intrepid frontiersmen as Wales Arnold declared it reckless to venture across the Sandy, and little scouting parties were greeted with long-range shots from hidden foe, it boded ill for all dwellers without the walls of the fort. For the first time in the annals of Camp Sandy, Hart had sandbagged his lower story, and he and his retainers practically slept upon their arms.

It was after midnight. Lights still burned dimly at the guard-house, the adjutant's office, and over at the quarters of the commanding officer, where Byrne and Plume were in consultation. There were sleepless eyes in every house along the line. Truman had not turned in at all. Pondering over his brief talk with the returned commander, he had gone to the storehouse to expedite the packing of Brewster's rations, and then it occurred to him to drop in a moment at the hospital. In all the dread and excitement of the past two days, Pat Mullins had been well-nigh forgotten. The attendant greeted him at the entrance. Truman, as he approached, could see him standing at the broad open doorway, apparently staring out through the starlight toward the black and distant outlines of the eastward mountains. Mullins at least was sleeping and seemed rapidly recovering, said he, in answer to Truman's muttered query. "Major Plume," he added, "was over to see him a while ago, but I told the major Pat was asleep." Truman listened without comment, but noted none the less and lingered. "You were looking out to the east," he said. "Seen any lights or fire?"

"Not I, sir. But the sentry there on No. 4 had the corporal out just now. He's seen or heard something, and they've moved over toward No. 5's post."

Truman followed. How happened it that when Byrne and Plume had so much to talk of the latter could find time to come away over to the hospital to inquire for a patient? And there! the call for half-past twelve had started at the guard-house and rung out from the stables and corrals. It was Four's turn to take it up now. Presently he did, but neither promptly nor with confidence. There were new men on the relief just down from Fort Whipple and strange to Sandy and its surroundings; but surely, said Truman, they should not have been assigned to Four and Five, the exposed or dangerous posts, so long as there were other men, old-timers at Sandy, to take these stations. No. 4's "A-all's well" sounded more like a wail of remonstrance at his loneliness and isolation. It was a new voice, too, for in those days officers knew not only the face, but the voice, of every man in the little command, and—could Truman be mistaken—he thought he heard a subdued titter from the black shadows of his own quarters, and turned his course thither to investigate. Five's shout went up at the instant, loud, confident, almost boastful, as though in rebuke of Four's timidity, and, as Truman half expected, there was the corporal of the guard leaning on his rifle, close to the veranda steps, and so absorbed he never heard the officer approach until the lieutenant sharply hailed:

"Who's that on No. 4?"

"One of 'C' Company's fellers, sir," answered the watcher, coming to his senses and attention at the instant. "Just down from Prescott, and thinks he sees ghosts or Indians every minute. Nearly shot one of the hounds a moment ago."

"You shouldn't put him on that post—"

"I didn't sir," was the prompt rejoinder. "'Twas the sergeant. He said 'twould do him good, but the man's really scared, lieutenant. Thought I'd better stay near him a bit."

Across the black and desolate ruin of Blakely's quarters, and well out on the northward mesa, they could dimly discern the form of the unhappy sentry pacing uneasily along his lonely beat, pausing and turning every moment as though fearful of crouching assailant. Even among these veteran infantrymen left at Sandy, that northeast corner had had an uncanny name ever since the night of Pat Mullins's mysterious stabbing. Many a man would gladly have shunned sentry duty at that point, but none dare confess to it. Partly as a precaution, partly as protection to his sentries, the temporary commander had early in the week sent out a big "fatigue" detail, with knives and hatchets to slice away every clump of sage or greasewood that could shelter a prowling Apache for a hundred yards out from the line. But the man now on No. 4 was palpably nervous and distressed, in spite of this fact. Truman watched him a moment in mingled compassion and amusement, and was just turning aside to enter his open doorway when the corporal held up a warning hand.

Through the muffling sand of the roadway in rear of the quarters, a tall, dark figure was moving straight and swift toward the post of No. 4, and so far within that of No. 5 as to escape the latter's challenge. The corporal sprung his rifle to the hollow of his arm and started the next instant, sped noiselessly a few yards in pursuit, then abruptly halted. "It's the major, sir," said he, embarrassed, as Truman joined him again. "Gad, I hope No. 4 won't fire!"

Fire he did not, but his challenge came with a yell. "W-whocomesthere?"—three words as one and that through chattering teeth.

"Commanding officer," they heard Plume clearly answer, then in lower tone, but distinctly rebukeful. "What on earth's the matter, No. 4? You called off very badly. Anything disturbing you out here?"

The sentry's answer was a mumble of mingled confusion and distress. How could he own to his post commander that he was scared? No. 5 now was to be seen swiftly coming up the eastward front so as to be within supporting or hearing distance—curiosity, not sympathy, impelling; and so there were no less than five men, four of them old and tried soldiers, all within fifty yards of the angle made by the two sentry beats, all wide awake, yet not one of their number could later tell just what started it. All on a sudden, down in Sudsville, down among the southward quarters of the line, the hounds went rushing forth, barking and baying excitedly, one and all heading for the brink of the eastward mesa, yet halting short as though afraid to approach it nearer, and then, darting up and down, barking, sniffing, challenging angrily, they kept up their fierce alarm. Somebody or something was out there in the darkness, perhaps at the very edge of the bluff, and the dogs dare go no further. Even when the corporal, followed by No. 5, came running down the post, the hounds hung back, bristling and savage, yet fearful. Corporal Foote cocked his rifle and went crouching forward through the gloom, but the voice of the major was heard:

"Don't go out there, corporal. Call for the guard," as he hurried in to his quarters in search of his revolver. Truman by this time had run for his own arms and together they reappeared on the post of No. 5, as a sergeant, with half a dozen men, came panting from across the parade, swift running to the scene.

"No. 4 would have it that there were Indians, or somebody skulking about him when I was examining him a moment ago," said Plume hurriedly. "Shut up, you brutes!" he yelled angrily at the nearest hounds. "Scatter your men forward there, sergeant, and see if we can find anything." Other men were coming, too, by this time, and a lantern was dancing out from Doty's quarters. Byrne, pyjama-clad and in slippered feet, shuffled out to join the party as the guard, with rifles at ready, bored their way out to the front, the dogs still suspiciously sniffing and growling. For a moment or two no explanation offered. The noise was gradually quieting down. Then from far out to the right front rose the shout: "Come here with that lantern!" and all hands started at the sound.

Old Shaughnessy, saddler sergeant, was the first on the spot with a light. All Sudsville seemed up and astir. Some of the women, even, had begun to show at the narrow doorways. Corporal Foote and two of the guard were bending over some object huddled in the sand. Together they turned it over and tugged it into semblance of human shape, for the thing had been shrouded in what proved to be a ragged cavalry blanket. Senseless, yet feebly breathing and moaning, half-clad in tattered skirt and a coarsely made camisa such as was worn by peon women of the humblest class, with blood-stained bandages concealing much of the face and head, a young Indian woman was lifted toward the light. A soldier started on the run for Dr. Graham; another to the laundresses' homes for water. Others, still, with the lanterns now coming flitting down the low bluff, began searching through the sands for further sign, and found it within the minute—sign of a shod horse and of moccasined feet,—moccasins not of Tonto, but of Yuma make, said Byrne, after a moment's survey.

Rough, yet tender, hands bore the poor creature to the nearest shelter—Shaughnessy's quarters. Keen, eager eyes and bending forms followed hoof and foot prints to the ford. Two Indians, evidently, had lately issued, dripping, from the stream; one leading an eager horse, for it had been dancing sidewise as they neared the post, the other, probably sustaining the helpless burden on its back. Two Indians had then re-entered the swift waters, almost at the point of emergence, one leading a reluctant, resisting animal, for it had struggled and plunged and set its fore feet against the effort. The other Indian had probably mounted as they neared the brink. Already they must be a good distance away on the other side, rendering pursuit probably useless. Already the explanation of their coming was apparent. The woman had been hurt or wounded when far from her tribe, and the Indians with her were those who had learned the white man's ways, knew that he warred not on women and would give this stricken creature care and comfort, food and raiment and relieve them of all such trouble. It was easy to account for their bringing her to Sandy and dropping her at the white man's door, but how came they by a shod horse that knew the spot and strove to break from them at the stables—strove hard against again being driven away? Mrs. Shaughnessy, volubly haranguing all within hearing as the searchers returned from the ford, was telling how she was lying awake, worrin' about Norah and Pat Mullins and the boys that had gone afield (owing her six weeks' wash) when she heard a dull trampin' like and what sounded like horses' stifled squeal (doubtless the leading Indian had gripped the nostrils to prevent the eager neigh), and then, said she, all the dogs roused up and rushed out, howling.

And then came a cry from within the humble doorway, where merciful hands were ministering to the suffering savage, and Plume started at the sound and glared at Byrne, and men stood hushed and startled and amazed, for the voice was that of Norah and the words were strange indeed:

"Fur the love of hivin, look what she had in her girdle! Shure it's Leese's own scarf, I tell ye—the Frenchwoman at the major's!"

And Byrne thought it high time to enter and take possession.



CHAPTER XVIII

A STRANGER GOING

At the first faint flush of dawn the little train of pack mules, with the rations for the beleaguered command at Sunset Pass, was started on its stony path. Once out of the valley of the Beaver it must clamber over range after range and stumble through deep and tortuous canons. A road there was—the old trail by Snow Lake, thence through the famous Pass and the Sunset crossing of the Colorado Chiquito to old Fort Wingate. It wormed its way out of the valley of the broader stream some miles further to the north and in face of the Red Rock country to the northeast, but it had not been traveled in safety for a year. Both Byrne and Plume believed it beset with peril, watched from ambush by invisible foes who could be relied upon to lurk in hiding until the train was within easy range, then, with sudden volley, to pick off the officers and prominent sergeants and, in the inevitable confusion, aided by their goatlike agility, to make good their escape. Thirty sturdy soldiers of the infantry under a veteran captain marched as escort, with Plume's orders to push through to the relief of Sergeant Brewster's command, and to send back Indian runners with full account of the situation. The relief of Wren's company accomplished, the next thing was to be a search for Wren himself, then a determined effort to find Blakely, and all the time to keep a lookout for Sanders's troop that must be somewhere north of Chevlon's Fork, as well as for the two or three little columns that should be breaking their way through the unblazed wilderness, under the personal direction of the general himself. Captain Stout and his party were out of sight up the Beaver before the red eye of the morning came peering over the jagged heights to the east, and looking in upon a garrison whose eyes were equally red and bleary through lack of sleep—a garrison worn and haggard through anxiety and distress gravely augmented by the events of the night. All Sandy had been up and astir within five minutes after Norah Shaughnessy's startling cry, and all Sandy asked with bated breath the same question: How on earth happened it that this wounded waif of the Apaches, this unknown Indian girl, dropped senseless at their doorway in the dead hours of the night, should have in her possession the very scarf worn by Mrs. Plume's nurse-companion, the Frenchwoman Elise, as she came forth with her mistress to drive away from Sandy, as was her hope, forever.

Prominent among those who had hastened down to Sudsville, after the news of this discovery had gone buzzing through the line of officers' quarters, was Janet Wren. Kate Sanders was staying with Angela, for the girls seemed to find comfort in each other's presence and society. Both had roused at sound of the clamor and were up and half dressed when a passing hospital attendant hurriedly shouted to Miss Wren the tidings. The girls, too, would have gone, but Aunt Janet sternly bade them remain indoors. She would investigate, she said, and bring them all information.

Dozens of the men were still hovering about old Shaughnessy's quarters as the tall, gaunt form of the captain's sister came stalking through the crowd, making straight for the doorway. The two senior officers, Byrne and Plume, were, in low tones, interrogating Norah. Plume had been shown the scarf and promptly seconded Norah. He knew it at once—knew that, as Elise came forth that dismal morning and passed under the light in the hall, she had this very scarf round her throat—this that had been found upon the person of a wounded and senseless girl. He remembered now that as the sun climbed higher and the air grew warmer the day of their swift flight to Prescott, Elise had thrown open her traveling sack, and he noticed that the scarf had been discarded. He did not see it anywhere about the Concord, but that proved nothing. She might easily have slipped it into her bag or under the cushions of the seat. Both he and Byrne, therefore, watched with no little interest when, after a brief glance at the feverish and wounded Indian girl, moaning in the cot in Mrs. Shaughnessy's room, Miss Wren returned to the open air, bearing the scarf with her. One moment she studied it, under the dull gleam of the lantern of the sergeant of the guard, and then slowly spoke:

"Gentlemen, I have seen this worn by Elise and I believe I know how it came to find its way back here—and it does not brighten the situation. From our piazza, the morning of Major Plume's start for Prescott, I could plainly see Downs hanging about the wagon. It started suddenly, as perhaps you remember, and as it rolled away something went fluttering to the ground behind. Everybody was looking after the Concord at the moment—everybody but Downs, who quickly stooped, picked up the thing, and turned hurriedly away. I believe he had this scarf when he deserted and that he has fallen into the hands of the Apaches."