hioned frock and felt,
and a still smaller squad of troopers in yellow-trimmed jackets and
brass-mounted forage caps, were drawn up at the edge of the parade
awaiting the further signal of adjutant's call, while the adjutant
himself swore savagely and sent the orderly on the run for the
sergeant-major. When that clock-governed functionary was missing
something indeed must be going wrong.

Presently the orderly came running back.

"Sergeant Dineen isn't home, sir, and his wife says he hasn't been back
since the lieutenant sent him in town with the last dispatch."

"Tell the first sergeant of "B" Company, then, to act as sergeant-major
at once," said the adjutant, and hurried over to his colonel. "Dineen's
not back, sir," he reported at the gate. "Can anything be wrong?"

"I ordered him to bring with him the answer to my dispatch to the
general, who wired to me from the railway depot at Cheyenne. Probably
he's been waiting for that, and the general's away somewhere. We ought
to have an operator here day and night," said Pecksniff petulantly. But
the irritation in his eyes gave way to anxiety when at that moment the
sutler's buggy was seen dashing into the garrison at headlong speed, his
smart trotter urged almost to a run. Griggs reined up with no little
hard pulling at the colonel's gate, and they could see a dozen yards off
that his face was pale.

"Have you any idea, colonel," he began the moment the officers reached
him, "where Major Burleigh can be? He left the depot somewhere about
three o'clock this morning with that Captain Newhall. He hasn't returned
and can't be found. Your sergeant-major was waylaid and robbed some time
after midnight, and John Folsom was picked up senseless in the alley
back of his house two hours ago. What does it all mean?"

CHAPTER XVII.

That storm-burst along the range had turned for twenty-four hours every
mountain stream into a foaming torrent for a hundred miles. Not a bridge
remained along the Platte. Not a ford was fordable within two days'
march of either Emory or Frayne. Not a courier crossed the Box Elder,
going either way, until the flood went down, and then it transpired that
a tide in the affairs of men had also turned, and that there was trouble
ahead for some who had thought to find plain sailing. For two days
watchers along the lower Box Elder dragged out upon the shallows the
bodies of horses that once upon a time might have borne the "U. S."
brand, but were