aming waters, barely five hundred yards
behind the chase, and, as they rode vehemently onward through the
starlight, straining every nerve, they heard nothing of the happenings
about the Fosters' doorway, where by this time post commander, post
surgeon, post quartermaster and acting post adjutant, post ordnance,
quartermaster and commissary sergeants, many of the post guard and most
of the post laundresses had gathered--some silent, anxious and
bewildered, some excitedly babbling; while, within the sergeant's
domicile, Esther Dade, very pale and somewhat out of breath, was trying
with quiet self possession to answer the myriad questions poured at her,
while Dr. Waller was ministering to the dazed and moaning sentry, and,
in an adjoining tenement, a little group had gathered about an
unconscious form. Someone had sent for Mrs. Hay, who was silently,
tearfully chafing the limp and almost lifeless hands of a girl in Indian
garb. The cloak and skirts of civilization had been found beneath the
window of the deserted room, and were exhibited as a means of bringing
to his senses a much bewildered major, whose first words on entering the
hut gave rise to wonderment in the eyes of most of his hearers, and to
an impulsive reply from the lips of Mrs. Hay.

"I warned the general that girl would play us some Indian trick, but he
ordered her release," said Flint, and with wrathful emphasis came the
answer.

"The general warned you _this_ girl would play you a trick, and, thanks
to no one but you, she's done it!"

Then rising and stepping aside, the long-suffering woman revealed the
pallid, senseless face,--not of the little Indian maid, her shrinking
charge and guest,--but of the niece she loved and had lived and lied for
many and trying years--Nanette La Fleur, a long-lost sister's only
child.

So Blake knew what he was talking about that keen November morning among
the pines at Bear Cliff. He had unearthed an almost forgotten legend of
old Fort Laramie.

But the amaze and discomfiture of the temporary post commander turned
this night of thanksgiving, so far as he was concerned, into something
purgatorial. The sight of his sentry, bound, gagged and bleeding,--the
discovery of the ladder and of the escape of the prisoner, for whom he
was accountable, had filled him with dismay, yet for the moment failed
to stagger his indomitable self esteem. There had been a plot, of
course, and the instant impulse of his soul was to fix the b