a moment Wren stood staring at his commander in amaze. He had expected to be offered opportunity to state the circumstances leading to his now deeply deplored attack on Mr. Blakely, and to decline the offer on the ground that he should have been given that opportunity before being submitted to the humiliation of arrest. He had intended to refuse all overtures, to invite trial by court-martial or investigation by the inspector general, but by no manner of means to plead for reconsideration now; and here was the post commander, with whom he had never served until they came to Sandy, a man who hadn't begun to see the service, the battles, and campaigns that had fallen to his lot, virtually accusing him of further misdemeanor, when he had only rushed to save or succor. He forgot all about Sanders or other witnesses. He burst forth impetuously:
"Extraordinary, sir! It would have been most extraordinary if I hadn't gone with all speed when I heard that cry for help."
Plume looked up in sudden joy. "You mean to tell me you didn't—you weren't there till after—the cry?"
Wren's stern Scottish face was a sight to see. "Of what can you possibly be thinking, Major Plume?" he demanded, slowly now, for wrath was burning within him, and yet he strove for self-control. He had had a lesson and a sore one.
"I will answer that—a little later, Captain Wren," said Plume, rising from his seat, rejoicing in the new light now breaking upon him. Westervelt, too, had gasped a sigh of relief. No man had ever known Wren to swerve a hair's breadth from the truth. "At this moment time is precious if the real criminal is to be caught at all. You were first to reach the sentry. Had you seen no one else?"
In the dead silence that ensued within the room the sputter of hoofs without broke harshly on the ear. Then came spurred boot heels on the hollow, heat-dried boarding, but not a sound from the lips of Captain Wren. The rugged face, twitching with pent-up indignation the moment before, was now slowly turning gray. Plume stood facing him in growing wonder and new suspicion.
"You heard me, did you not? I asked you did you see anyone else during—along the sentry post when you went out?"
A fringed gauntlet reached in at the doorway and tapped. Sergeant Shannon, straight as a pine, stood expectant of summons to enter and his face spoke eloquently of important tidings, but the major waved him away, and, marveling, he slowly backed to the edge of the porch.
"Surely you can answer that, Captain Wren," said Plume, his clear-cut, handsome face filled with mingled anxiety and annoy. "Surely you should answer, or—"
The ellipsis was suggestive, but impotent. After a painful moment came the response:
"Or—take the consequences, major?" Then slowly—"Very well, sir—I must take them."
Chapter VI.
A Find in the Sands
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.
A third story, too, was whispered in half a dozen homes, and was going wild about the garrison, to the effect that Captain Wren, when accused of being Mullins's assailant, had virtually declared that he had seen other persons prowling on the sentry's post and that they, not he, were the guilty ones; but when bidden to name or describe them, Wren had either failed or refused; some said one, some said the other, and the prevalent belief in Sudsville circles, as well as in the barracks, was that Captain Wren was going crazy over his troubles. And now there were women, ay, and men, too, though they spake with bated breath, who had uncanny things to say of Angela—the captain's only child.
And this it was that led to sensation No. 4—a wordy battle of the first magnitude between the next-door neighbor of the saddler sergeant and no less a champion of maiden probity than Norah Shaughnessy—the saddler sergeant's buxom daughter. All the hours since early morning Norah had been in a state of nerves so uncontrollable that Mrs. Truman—who knew of Norah's fondness for Mullins and marveled not that Mullins always preferred the loneliness and isolation of the post on No. 5—decided toward noon to send the girl home to her mother for a day or so, and Norah thankfully went, and threw herself upon her mother's ample breast and sobbed aloud. It was an hour before she could control herself, and her agitation was such that others came to minister to her. Of course there was just one explanation—Norah was in love with Mullins and well-nigh crazed with grief over his untimely taking off, for later reports from the hospital were most depressing. This, at least, was sufficient explanation until late in the afternoon. Then, restored to partial composure, the girl was sitting up and being fanned in the shade of her father's roof-tree, when roused by the voice of the next-door neighbor before mentioned—Mrs. Quinn, long time laundress of Captain Sanders's troop and jealous as to Wren's, was telling what she had heard of Shannon's discoveries, opining that both Captain Wren and the captain's daughter deserved investigation. "No wan need tell me there was others prowling about Mullins's post at three in the marnin.' As for Angela—" But here Miss Shaughnessy bounded from the wooden settee, and, with amazing vim and vigor, sailed spontaneously into Mrs. Quinn.
"No wan need tell you—ye say! No wan need tell you, ye black-tongued scandlum! Well, then, I
