gwater nearly fifty miles out.
Driving steadily through the starlit night, he should reach the old
frontier fort by dawn at the latest, and what news would Dade have to
send him there? Not a word had he uttered to either the officers who
respectfully greeted, or reporters who eagerly importuned, him as to the
situation at Frayne; but men who had served with him in Arizona and on
the Yellowstone many a year before, knew well that grave tidings had
reached him. Dade had, in fact, supplemented Webb's parting despatch
with another saying that Blake's little party, returning, had just been
sighted through the telescope nine miles out, with two men afoot. But
not until the general reached Lodge Pole Creek did the message meet him,
saying that Webb's advance guard could hear the distant attack on Ray.
Not until he reached the Chugwater in the early night could he hope to
hear the result.

It was nightfall when the awful suspense of the garrison at Frayne was
even measurably lifted. Blake, with three troopers at his back, had then
been gone an hour, and was lost in the gloaming before Dr. Tracy's
orderly, with a face that plainly told the nervous tension of his two
hours' ride, left his reeking, heaving horse at the stables and climbed
the steep path to the flagstaff, the shortest way to the quarters of the
commanding officer. Despite the gathering darkness, he had been seen by
a dozen eager watchers and was deluged with questions by trembling,
tearful women and by grave, anxious men.

"There's been a fight; that's all I know," he said. "I was with the pack
mules and the ambulances and didn't get to see it. All I saw was dead
ponies way out beyond Ten Mile Ridge. Where's the major?--I mean the
captain?" No! the orderly didn't know who was killed or wounded, or that
anybody was killed and wounded. All he knew was that Dr. Tracy came
galloping back and ordered the ambulances to scoot for the front and him
to spur every bit of the way back to Frayne with the note for Captain
Dade.

All this was told as he eagerly pushed his way along the board walk;
soldiers' wives hanging on his words and almost on him; officers' wives
and daughters calling from the galleries or running to the gates, and
Dade heard the hubbub almost as quickly as did Esther, who hurried to
the door. By the light of the hall lamp the commander read the pencilled
superscription of the gummed envelope and the word "Immediate" at the
corner. The same light fell on