y boots to black at six o'clock."

"Come over to the stables," said the commanding officer, and, wondering,
Hay followed.

They found the two hostlers busily at work grooming. In his box stall,
bright as a button, was "Harney," Hay's famous runner, his coat smooth
as satin. Hay went rapidly from stall to stall. Of the six saddlers
owned by him not one gave the faintest sign of having been used over
night, but Webb, riding through the gangway, noted that "Crapaud," the
French halfbreed grooming in the third stall, never lifted his head.
Whatever evidence of night riding that might earlier have existed had
been deftly groomed away. The trader had seen suspicion in the soldier's
eye, and so stood forth, triumphant:--

"No, Major Webb," said he, in loud, confident, oracular tone, "no horse
of mine ever gets out without my knowing it, and never at night unless
you or I so order it."

"No?" queried the major, placidly. "Then how do you account for--this?"

Among the fresh hoof prints in the yielding sand, with which the police
party had been filling the ruts of the outer roadway, was one never made
by government horse or mule. In half a dozen places within a dozen rods,
plain as a pikestaff, was the print of a bar shoe, worn on the off fore
foot of just one quadruped at the post--Hay's swift running "General
Harney."

CHAPTER V

A GRAVE DISCOVERY

Only an hour was the major away from his post. He came back in time for
guard mounting and the reports of the officers-of-the-day. He had reason
to be on the parade at the "assembly of the details," not so much to
watch the work of the post adjutant _pro tempore_, as the effect of the
sudden and unlooked for change on certain of the customary spectators.
He had swiftly ridden to the camp of the recreant Stabber and purposely
demanded speech with that influential chieftain. There had been the
usual attempt on part of the old men left in charge to hoodwink and to
temporize, but when sharply told that Stabber, with his warriors, had
been seen riding away toward Eagle Butte at three in the morning, the
sages calmly confessed judgment, but declared they had no other purpose
than a hunt for a drove of elk reported seen about the famous Indian
race course in the lower hills of the Big Horn. Circling the camp,
however, Webb had quickly counted the pony tracks across the still dewy
bunchgrass of the bench, and found Schreiber's estimate substantially
correct. Then, stopping