rottled the expletive half spoken.
Could they have dared waylay the major--and so close to the post? A
moment more and he was hurrying over to his troop quarters; five
minutes, and a sergeant and ten men were running with him to the
stables; ten, and a dozen horses, swiftly saddled, were being led into
the open starlight; fifteen, and they were away at a lunging bronco
lope, a twisting column of twos along the sandy road, leaving the
garrison to wake and wonder. Three, four, five miles they sped, past
Boulder Point, past Rattlesnake Hill, and still no sign of anything
amiss, no symptom of night-raiding Apache, for indeed the Apache
dreads the dark. Thrice the sergeant had sprung from his horse,
lighted a match, and studied the trail. On and on had gone the mules
and wagon without apparent break or interruption, until, far beyond
the bluff that hid the road from sight of all at Sandy, they had begun
the long, tortuous climb of the divide to Cherry Creek. No. 4 might
have heard shots, but, if intended for the wagon, they had been
harmless. It was long after one when Wren gave the word to put back to
the post, and as they remounted and took the homeward trail, they rode
for the first five minutes almost directly east, and, as they ascended
a little slant of hillside, the sergeant in advance reined suddenly
in. "Look there!" said he.

Far over among the rocky heights beyond the valley, hidden from the
south from Sandy by precipitous cliffs that served almost as a
reflector toward the reservation, a bright blaze had shot suddenly
heavenward--a signal fire of the Apache. Some of them, then, were in
the heart of that most intractable region, not ten miles northeast of
the post, and signaling to their fellows; but the major must have
slipped safely through.

Sending his horse to stable with the detachment, Wren had found No. 4
well over toward the east end of his post, almost to the angle with
that of No. 5. "Watch well for signal fires or prowlers to-night," he
ordered. "Have you seen any?"

"No signal fires, sir," answered the sentry. "Welch, who was on before
me, thought he heard shots--"

"I know," answered Wren impatiently. "There was nothing in it. But we
did see a signal fire over to the northeast, so they are around us,
and some may be creeping close in to see what we're doing, though I
doubt it. You've seen nothing?"

"Well, no, sir; we can't see much of anything, it's so dark. But
there's a good many of the pos