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him. There was something he needed to say, yet could not until the agent had retired. Daly saw,—perhaps he had already imbibed something of the situation,—and was not slow to seek his room. Plume took the little kerosene lamp; hospitably led the way; made the customary tender of a "night-cap," and polite regrets he had no ice to offer therewith; left his unwonted guest with courteous good-night and cast an eye aloft as he came through the hall. All there was dark and still, though he doubted much that Graham's sedatives had yet prevailed. He had left the two men opposite the doorway. He found them at the south end of the piazza, their heads together. They straightened up to perfunctory talk about the Medical Director, his drastic methods and inflammable ways; but the mirth was forced, the humor far too dry. Then silence fell. Then Plume invaded it:

"How'd you find Wren—mentally?" he presently asked. He felt that an opening of some kind was necessary.

"Sound," was the colonel's answer, slow and sententious. "Of course he is much—concerned."

"About—his case? Ah, will you smoke, colonel?"

"About Blakely. I believe not, Plume; it's late."

Plume struck a light on the sole of his natty boot. "One would suppose he would feel very natural anxiety as to the predicament in which he has placed himself," he ventured.

"Wren worries much over Blakely's injuries, which accident made far more serious than he would have inflicted, major, even had he had the grounds for violence that he thought he had. Blakely was not the only sufferer, and is not the only cause, of his deep contrition. Wren tells me that he was even harsher to Angela. But that is all a family matter." The colonel was speaking slowly, thoughtfully.

"But—these later affairs—that Wren couldn't explain—or wouldn't." Plume's voice and color both were rising.

"Couldn't is the just word, major, and couldn't especially—to you," was the significant reply.

Plume rose from his chair and stood a moment, trembling not a little and his fingers twitching. "You mean—" he huskily began.

"I mean this, my friend," said Byrne gently, as he, too, arose, "and I have asked Graham, another friend, to be here—that Wren would not defend himself to you by even mentioning—others, and might not have revealed the truth even to me had he been the only one cognizant of it. But, Plume, others saw what he saw, and what is now known to many people on the post. Others than Wren were abroad that night. One other was being carefully, tenderly brought home—led home—to your roof. You did not know—Mrs. Plume was a somnambulist?"

In the dead silence that ensued the colonel put forth a pitying hand as though to stay and support the younger soldier, the post commander. Plume stood, swaying a bit, and staring. Presently he strove to speak, but choked in the effort.

"It's the only proper explanation," said Graham, and between them they led the major within doors.

And this is how it happened that he, instead of Wren, was pacing miserably up and down in the gathering dawn, when the sentry startled all waking Sandy with his cry for the corporal. This is how, far ahead of the corporal, the post commander reached the alarmed soldier, with demand to know the cause; and, even by the time he came, the cause had vanished from sight.

"Apaches, sir, by the dozen,—all along the edge of the mesa," stammered No. 5. He could have convinced the corporal without fear or thought of ridicule, but his voice lacked confidence when he stood challenged by his commanding officer. Plume heard with instant suspicion. He was in no shape for judicial action.

"Apaches!" This in high disdain. "Trash, man! Because one sentry has a scuffle with some night prowler is the next to lose his nerve? You're scared by shadows, Hunt. That's what's the matter with you!"

It "brought to" a veteran trooper with a round turn. Hunt had served his fourth enlistment, had "worn out four blankets" in the regiment, and was not to be accused of scare.

"Let the major see for himself, then," he answered sturdily. "Come in here, you!" he called aloud. "Come, the whole gang of ye. The concert's beginning!" Then, slowly along the eastward edge there began to creep into view black polls bound with dirty white, black crops untrammeled by any binding. Then, swift from the west, came running footfalls, the corporal with a willing comrade or two, wondering was Five in further danger. There, silent and regretful, stood the post commander, counting in surprise the score of scarecrow forms now plainly visible, sitting, standing, or squatting along the mesa edge. Northernmost in view, nearly opposite Blakely's quarters, were two, detached from the general assembly, yet clinging close together—two slender figures, gowned, and it was at these the agent Daly was staring, as he, too, came running to the spot.

"Major Plume," cried he, panting, "I want those girls arrested, at once!"

CHAPTER VIII "APACHE KNIVES DIG DEEP!"
A

t five o'clock of this cloudless October morning Colonel Montgomery Byrne, "of the old Army, sir," was reviling the fates that had set him the task of unraveling such a skein as he found at Sandy. At six he was blessing the stars that sent him. Awakened, much before his usual hour, by half-heard murmur of scurry and excitement, so quickly suppressed he believed it all a dream, he was thinking, half drowsily, all painfully, of the duty devolving on him for the day, and wishing himself well out of it, when the dream became real, the impression vivid. His watch told him reveille should now be sounding. His ears told him the sounds he heard were not those of reveille, yet something had roused the occupants of Officers' Row, and then, all on a sudden, instead of the sweet strains of "The Dawn of the Day" or "Bonnie Lass o' Gawrie" there burst upon the morning air, harsh and blustering, the alarum of the Civil War days, the hoarse uproar of the drum thundering the long roll, while above all rang the loud clamor of the cavalry trumpet sounding "To Horse."

"Fitz James was brave, but to his heart
The life blood leaped with sudden start."

Byrne sprang from his bed. He was a soldier, battle-tried, but this meant something utterly new to him in war, for, mingling with the gathering din, he heard the shriek of terror-stricken women. Daly's bed was empty. The agent was gone. Elise aloft was jabbering patois at her dazed and startled mistress. Suey, the Chinaman, came clattering in, all flapping legs and arms and pigtail, his face livid, his eyes staring. "Patcheese! Patcheese!" he squealed, and dove under the nearest bed. Then Byrne, shinning into boots and breeches and shunning his coat, grabbed his revolver and rushed for the door.

Across the parade, out of their barracks the "doughboys" came streaming, no man of them dressed for inspection, but rather, like sailors, stripped for a fight; and, never waiting to form ranks, but following the lead of veteran sergeants and the signals or orders of officers somewhere along the line, went sprinting straight for the eastward mesa. From the cavalry barracks, the northward sets, the troopers, too, were flowing, but these were turned stableward, back of the post, and Byrne, with his nightshirt flying wide open, wider than his eyes, bolted round through the space between the quarters of Plume and Wren, catching sight of the arrested captain standing grim and gaunt on his back piazza, and ran with the foremost sergeants to the edge of the plateau, where, in his cool white garb, stood Plume, shouting orders to those beneath.

There, down in the Sandy bottom, was explanation of it all. Two soldiers were bending over a prostrate form in civilian dress. Two swarthy Apaches, one on his face, the other, ten rods away, writhing on his side, lay weltering in blood. Out along the sandy barren and among the clumps of mezquite and greasewood, perhaps as many as ten soldiers, members of the guard, were scattering in rude skirmish order; now halting and dropping on one knee to fire, now rushing forward; while into the willows, that swept in wide concave around the flat, a number of forms in dirty white, or nothing at all but streaming breechclout, were just disappearing.

"Now halting, dropping on one knee to fire" "Now halting, dropping on one knee to fire"

Northward, too, beyond the post of No. 4, other little squads and parties could be faintly seen scurrying away for the shelter of the willows, and as Byrne reached the major's side, with the to-be-expected query "Whatinhell'sthematter?" the last of the fleeing Apaches popped out of sight, and Plume turned toward him in mingled wrath and disgust:

"That—ass of an agent!" was all he could say, as he pointed to the prostrate figure in pepper and salt.

Byrne half slid, half stumbled down the bank and bent over the wounded man. Dead he was not, for, with both hands clasped to his breast, Daly was cradling from side to side and saying things of Apaches totally unbecoming an Indian agent and a man of God. "But who did it? and how?—and why?" demanded Byrne of the ministering soldiers.

"Tried to 'rest two Patchie girls, sir," answered the first, straightening up and saluting, "and her feller wouldn't stand it, I reckon. Knifed the agent and Craney, too. Yonder's the feller."

Yonder lay, face downward, as described, a sinewy young brave of the Apache Mohave band, his newer, cleaner shirt and his gayly ornamented sash and headgear telling of superior rank and station among his kind. With barely a glance at Craney, squatted beside a bush, and with teeth and hands knotting a kerchief about a bleeding arm, Byrne bent over the Apache and turned the face to the light.

"Good God!" he cried, at the instant, "it's Quonathay—Raven Shield! Why, you know him, corporal!"—this to Casey, of Wren's troop, running to his side. "Son of old Chief Quonahelka! I wouldn't have had this happen for all the girls on the reservation. Who were they? Why did he try to arrest them? Here! I'll have to ask him—stabbed or not!" And, anxious and angering, the colonel hastened over toward the agent, now being slowly aided to his feet. Plume, too, had come sidelong down the sandy bank with Cutler, of the infantry, asking where he should put in his men. "Oh, just deploy across the flats to stand off any possible attack," said Plume. "Don't cross the Sandy, and, damn it all! get a bugler out and sound recall!" For now the sound of distant shots came echoing back from the eastward cliffs. The pursuit had spread beyond the stream. "I don't want any more of those poor devils hurt. There's mischief enough already," he concluded.

"I should say so," echoed the colonel. "What was the matter, Mr. Daly? Whom did you seek to arrest?—and why?"

"Almost any of 'em," groaned Daly. "There were a dozen there I'd refused passes to come again this week. They were here in defiance of my orders, and I thought to take that girl Natzie,—she that led Lola off,—back to her father at the agency. It would have been a good lesson. Of course she fought and scratched. Next thing I knew a dozen of 'em were atop of us—some water, for God's sake!—and lift me out of this!"

Then with grave and watch-worn face, Graham came hurrying to the spot, all the way over from Mullins's bedside at the hospital and breathing hard. Dour indeed was the look he gave the groaning agent, now gulping at a gourd held to his pale lips by one of the men. The policy of Daly's predecessor had been to feather his own nest and let the Indian shift for himself, and this

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