To do her justice, it should be said that Miss Wren had striven
valiantly against the impulse,--had indeed mastered it for several
hours,--but the sight of the vivid blush, the eager joy in the sweet
young face when Blakely's new "striker" handed in a note addressed to
Miss Angela Wren, proved far too potent a factor in the undoing of
that magnanimous resolve. The girl fled with her prize, instanter, to
her room, and thither, as she did not reappear, the aunt betook
herself within the hour. The note itself was neither long nor
effusive--merely a bright, cordial, friendly missive, protesting
against the idea that any apology had been due. There was but one line
which could be considered even mildly significant. "The little net,"
wrote Blakely, "has now a value that it never had before." Yet Angela
was snuggling that otherwise unimportant billet to her cheek when the
creaking stairway told her portentously of a solemn coming. Ten
minutes more and the note was lying neglected on the bureau, and
Angela stood at her window, gazing out over dreary miles of almost
desert landscape, of rock and shale and sand and cactus, with eyes
from which the light had fled, and a new, strange trouble biting at
her girlish heart. Confound No. 4--and Norah Shaughnessy!
It had been arranged that when the Plumes were ready to start, Mrs.
Daly and her daughter, the newly widowed and the fatherless, should be
sent up to Prescott and thence across the desert to Ehrenberg, on the
Colorado. While no hostile Apaches had been seen west of the Verde
Valley, there were traces that told that they were watching the road
as far at least as the Agua Fria, and a sergeant and six men had been
chosen to go as escort to the little convoy. It had been supposed that
Plume would prefer to start in the morning and go as far as Stemmer's
ranch, in the Agua Fria Valley, and there rest his invalid wife until
another day, thus breaking the fifty-mile stage through the mountains.
To the surprise of everybody, the Dalys were warned to be in readiness
to start at five in the morning, and to go through to Prescott that
day. At five in the morning, therefore, the quartermaster's ambulance
was at the post trader's house, where the recently bereaved ones had
been harbored since poor Daly's death, and there, with their generous
host, was the widow's former patient, Blakely, full of sympathy and
solicitude, come to say good-bye. Plume's own Concord appeared almost
at the instant in front of his quarters, and presently Mrs. Plume,
veiled and obviously far from strong, came forth leaning on her
husband's arm, and closely followed by Elise. Then, despite the early
hour, and to the dismay of Plume, who had planned to start without
farewell demonstration of any kind, lights were blinking in almost
every house along the row, and a flock of women, some tender and
sympathetic, some morbidly curious, had gathered to wish the major's
wife a pleasant journey and a speedy recovery. They loved her not at
all, and liked her none too well, but she was ill and sorrowing, so
that was enough. Elise they could not bear, yet even Elise came in for
a kindly word or two. Mrs. Graham was there, big-hearted and brimming
over with helpful suggestion, burdened also with a basket of dainties.
Captain and Mrs. Cutler, Captain and Mrs. Westervelt, the Trumans
both, Doty, the young adjutant, Janet Wren, of course, and the ladies
of the cavalry, the major's regiment, without exception, were on hand
to bid the major and his wife good-bye. Angela Wren was not feeling
well, explained her aunt, and Mr. Neil Blakely was conspicuous by his
absence.