his friend,
who had fallen after dealing the fatal blow to him who had laid
violent hands, so they regarded it, on two young girls, one a
chieftain's daughter and both objects of reverent and savagely
sentimental interest. "If war doesn't come at once," said Byrne, "it
will be because the Apache has a new sense or a deep-laid scheme. Look
out for him."

No news as yet had come from the runners sent forth in search of the
scattered fugitives, who would soon be flocking together again in the
fastnesses of the Mogollon to the east or the Red Rock country
northward--the latter probably, as being nearer their friends at the
reservation and farther from the few renegade Tontos lurking in the
mountains toward Fort Apache. Byrne's promise to the wanderers, sent
by these runners, was to the effect that they would be safe from any
prosecution if they would return at once to the agency and report
themselves to the interpreter and the lieutenant commanding the guard.
He would not, he said, be answerable for what might happen if they
persisted in remaining at large. But when it was found that, so far
from any coming in, there were many going out, and that Natzie's
father and brother had already gone, Byrne's stout heart sank. The
message came by wire from the agency not long after the return of the
funeral party, and while the evening was yet young. He sent at once
for Wren, and, seated on the major's front piazza, with an orderly
hovering just out of earshot, and with many an eye anxiously watching
them along the row, the two veterans were holding earnest conference.
Major Plume was at the bedside of his wife, so said Graham when he
came down about eight. Mrs. Plume, he continued, was at least no
worse, but very nervous. Then he took himself back to the hospital.

Another topic of talk along the line was Blakely's watch and its
strange recovery, and many were the efforts to learn what Blakely
himself had to say about it. The officers, nearly all of them, of
course, had been at intervals to see Blakely and inquire if there were
not something that they could do, this being the conventional and
proper thing, and they who talked with him, with hardly an exception,
led up to the matter of the watch and wished to know how he accounted
for its being there on the post of No. 5. It was observed that, upon
this topic and the stabbing of Private Mullins, Mr. Blakely was oddly
reticent. He had nothing whatever to suggest as explanation of ei