ago, darkly glowering and
scowling about the store, where day and night the bookkeeper sat
absorbed in accounts and letters, muttered many a _carramba_, and had
even been goaded into explosive _carrajo_, because a defrauded
soldiery, thirsting for revenge or restitution, persisted in connecting
him with these skilled but quite unprincipled experts of the alluring
game of monte, whereas Dago hated the sight of Munoz, of whom he stood
in dread.

But while all men knew the "greasers" had gone, and many wondered why,
and none at Almy could tell, there was abundant reason to believe they
would soon reappear. Much news had been coming in--news from Crook's
column along the Mogollon and the eastward foothills--good news, too,
for far and wide the Indians were heeding his Gospel of Peace, which,
tersely translated, read: "Come in and be fed. Stay out and be fought,"
and by scores the mountain warriors, with their queerly assorted
families, were flocking to the San Carlos and Apache reservations, and
at last there seemed promise of a general burial of the hatchet. At
last there was hope, wrote Stannard, that the Bennett boys would be
restored. Good news, too, and stacks of mail, had come from Prescott
and from far distant homes, but the bit of news that appealed to all
but a chosen few at Camp Almy, as by all means the most important and
welcome, was "The paymaster's coming!" The paymaster, indeed, after
weeks of detention, was scheduled to be at the post by nightfall of the
coming Tuesday or Wednesday, and Wednesday would usher in the old-time
saturnalia of the south-western frontier, the joy of the laundress,
soldier and sutler, the dread of every post and company commander from
Her Majesty's dominion to the Mexican line--Pay Day.

And stacks of letters and some few papers and magazines--by no manner
of means all that were hopefully started--had come to the Archers and
Mrs. Stannard and the exiles of official Almy, and stacks of letters
were there for the slowly bettering young soldier lying helpless under
the commander's roof, faithfully tended and devotedly nursed, the
object of the fondest hope and love and prayer--Lieutenant Harold
Willett, on detached service from "the Lost and Strayed," as
aide-de-camp to the commanding general, Department of Arizona, who
never yet since the day he left Vancouver Barracks had set eyes on him.
Most of these letters, tied in tape, stood piled like bricks upon the
mantel-shelf in the dark