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."
Byrne looked at the post commander without speaking. The color had
mounted one moment to the major's face, then left him pallid as
before. The hunted, haggard, weary look about his eyes had deepened.
That was all. The longer he lived, the longer he served about this
woebegone spot in mid Arizona, the more he realized the influence for
evil that handmaid of Shaitan seemed to exert over his vain, shallow,
yet beautiful and beloved wife. Against it he had wrought and pleaded
in vain. Elise had been with them since her babyhood, was his wife's
almost indignant reply. Elise had been faithful to her--devoted to her
all her life. Elise was indispensable; the only being that kept her
from going mad with home-sickness and misery in that God-forsaken
clime. Sobs and tears wound up each interview and, like many a
stronger man, Plume had succumbed. It might, indeed, be cruel to rob
her of Elise, the last living link that bound her to the blessed
memories of her childhood, and he only mildly strove to point out to
her how oddly, yet persistently, her good name had suffered through
the words and deeds of this flighty, melodramatic Frenchwoman.
Something of her baleful influence he had seen and suspected before
ever they came to their exile, but here at Sandy, with full force he
realized the extent of her machinations. Clarice was not the woman to
go prowling about the quarters in the dead hours of the night, no
matter how nervous and sleepless at home. Clarice was not the woman to
be having back-door conferences with the servants of other households,
much less the "striker" of an officer with whose name hers, as a
maiden, had once been linked. He recalled with a shudder the events of
the night that sent the soldier Mullins to hospital, robbed of his
wits, if not of his life. He recalled with dread the reluctant
admissions of the doctor and of Captain Wren. Sleep-walking, indeed!
Clarice never elsewhere at any time had shown somnambulistic symptoms.
It was Elise beyond doubt who had lured her forth for some purpose he
could neither foil nor fathom. It was Elise who kept up this
discreditable and mysterious commerce with Downs,--something that had
culminated in the burning of Blakely's home, with who knows what
evidence,--something that had terminated only with Downs's mad
desertion and probable death. All this and more went flashing through
his mind as Miss Wren finished her brief and significant story, and it
dawned upon him that, whatever it might be to others, the death of
Downs--to him, and to her whom he loved and whose honor he
cherished--was anything but a calamity, a thing to mourn. Too
generous to say the words, he yet turned with lightened heart and met
Byrne's searching eyes, then those of Miss Wren now fixed upon him
with austere challenge, as though she would say the flight and fate of
this friendless soldier were crimes to be laid only at his door.