The late afternoon of an eventful day had come to camp Sandy--just
such another day, from a meteorological viewpoint, as that on which
this story opened nearly twenty-four hours earlier by the shadows on
the eastward cliffs. At Tuesday's sunset the garrison was yawning with
the ennui born of monotonous and uneventful existence. As
Wednesday's sunset drew nigh and the mountain shadows overspread the
valley, even to the opposite crests of the distant Mogollon, the
garrison was athrill with suppressed excitement, for half a dozen
things had happened since the flag went up at reveille.
In the first place Captain Wren's arrest had been confirmed and Plume
had wired department headquarters, in reply to somewhat urgent query,
that there were several counts in his indictment of the captain, any
one of which was sufficient to demand a trial by court-martial, but he
wished, did Plume, for personal and official reasons that the general
commanding should send his own inspector down to judge for himself.
The post sergeant major and the three clerks had heard with sufficient
distinctness every word that passed between the major and the accused
captain, and, there being at Sandy some three hundred inquisitive
souls, thirsting for truth and light, it could hardly be expected of
this quartette that it should preserve utter silence even though
silence had been enjoined by the adjutant. It was told all over the
post long before noon that Wren had been virtually accused of being
the sentry's assailant as well as Lieutenant Blakely's. It was
whispered that, in some insane fury against the junior officer, Wren
had again, toward 3.30, breaking his arrest, gone up the row with the
idea of once more entering Blakely's house and possibly again
attacking him.
It was believed that the sentry had seen and
interposed, and that, enraged at being balked by an enlisted man, Wren
had drawn a knife and stabbed him. True, no knife had been found
anywhere about the spot, and Wren had never been known to carry one.
But now a dozen men, armed with rakes, were systematically going over
the ground under the vigilant eye of Sergeant Shannon--Shannon, who
had heard the brief, emphatic interview between the major and the
troop commander and who had been almost immediately sent forth to
supervise this search, despite the fact that he had but just returned
from the conduct of another, the result of which he imparted to the
ears of only two men, Plume, the post commander, and Doty, his amazed
and bewildered adjutant. But Shannon had with him a trio of troopers,
one of whom, at least, had not been proof against inquisitive probing,
for the second sensation of the day was the story that one of the two
pairs of moccasin tracks, among the yielding sands of the willow
copse, led from where Mr. Blakely had been dozing to where the pony
Punch had been drowsing in the shade, for there they were lost, as the
maker had evidently mounted and ridden away. All Sandy knew that Punch
had no other rider than pretty Angela Wren.