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.