An Apache Princess

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.