glared Byrne, with sudden light in his
eyes, for Wren had told his troubles--all.

"Apache _knife_--yes."

"What the devil do you mean, Graham?" and the veteran soldier, who
knew and liked the surgeon, whirled again on him with eyes that looked
not like at all.

The doctor turned, his somber gaze following the now distant figure of
the post commander, struggling painfully up the yielding sand of the
steep slope to the plateau. The stretcher bearers and attendants were
striding away to hospital with the now unconscious burden. The few
men, lingering close at hand, were grouped about the dead Apaches. The
gathering watchers along the bank were beyond earshot. Staff officer
and surgeon were practically alone and the latter answered:

"I mean, sir, that if that Apache knife had been driven in by an
Apache warrior, Mullins would have been dead long hours ago--which he
isn't."

Byrne turned a shade grayer.

"Could _she_ have done that?" he asked, with one sideward jerk of his
head toward the major's quarters.

"I'm not saying," quoth the Scot. "I'm asking was there anyone else?"

CHAPTER IX

A CARPET KNIGHT, INDEED

The flag at Camp Sandy drooped from the peak. Except by order it never
hung halfway. The flag at the agency fluttered no higher than the
cross-trees, telling that Death had loved some shining mark and had
not sued in vain. Under this symbol of mourning, far up the valley,
the interpreter was telling to a circle of dark, sullen, and
unresponsive faces a fact that every Apache knew before. Under the
full-masted flag at the post, a civilian servant of the nation lay
garbed for burial. Poor Daly had passed away with hardly a chance to
tell his tale, with only a loving, weeping woman or two to mourn him.
Over the camp the shadow of death tempered the dazzling sunshine, for
all Sandy felt the strain and spoke only with sorrow. He meant well,
did Daly, that was accorded him now. He only lacked "savvy" said they
who had dwelt long in the land of Apache.

Over at the hospital two poor women wept, and twice their number
strove to soothe. Janet Wren and Mrs. Graham were there, as ever, when
sorrow and trouble came. Mrs. Sanders and Mrs. Cutler, too, were
hovering about the mourners, doing what they could, and the hospital
matron, busy day and night of late, had never left her patient until
he needed her no more, and then had turned to minister to those he
left behind--the widow and the fatherless. Ove