city,
heard much theory and little truth about the time that Lieutenant
Blakely, returning suddenly thereto after an absence of two months,
during which time frequent letters had passed between him and Clarice
Latrobe, found that Major Plume had been her shadow for weeks, her
escort to dance after dance, her companion riding, driving, dining day
after day. Something of this Blakely had heard in letters from
friends. Little or nothing thereof had he heard from her. The public
never knew what passed between them (Elise, her maid, was better
informed). But Blakely within the day left town again, and within the
week there appeared the announcement of her forthcoming marriage,
Plume the presumably happy man. Downs got full the first payday after
his re-enlistment, as has been said, and drunk, as in duty bound, at
the major's "swagger" wedding. It was after this episode he fell
utterly from grace and went forth to the frontier irreclaimably
"Downs." It was a seven-days' topic of talk at Sandy that Lieutenant
Blakely, when acting Indian agent at the reservation, should have
accepted the services of this unpromising specimen as "striker." It
was a seven-weeks' wonder that Downs kept the pact, and sober as a
judge, from the hour he joined the Bugologist to the night that
self-contained young officer was sent crashing into his beetle show
under the impact of Wren's furious fist. Then came the last pound that
broke the back of Downs' wavering resolution, and now had come--what?
The sergeant and party rode back from Dick's to tell Captain Cutler
the deserter had not taken the Cherry Creek road. Another party just
in reported similarly that he had not taken the old, abandoned Grief
Hill trail. Still another returned from down-stream ranches to say he
could not have taken that route without being seen--and he had not
been seen. Ranchman Strom would swear to that because Downs was in his
debt for value received in shape of whisky, and Strom was rabid at the
idea of his getting away. In fine, as nothing but Downs was missing,
it became a matter of speculation along toward tattoo as to whether
Downs could have taken anything at all--except possibly his own life.

Cutler was now desirous of questioning Blakely at length, and
obtaining his views and theories as to Downs, for Cutler believed that
Blakely had certain well-defined views which he was keeping to
himself. Between these two, however, had grown an unbridgeable gulf.
Dr. Graham h