out on the _mesa_,
peering through a pair of borrowed glasses over the dreary eastward
landscape and up and down the deep valley. "How oddly are we
constituted!" said Mrs. Sanders. "If I only had his money, I'd never
be wearing my heart out in this desert land." She was not the only
army wife and mother that should have married a stockbroker--anything
rather than a soldier.

The whole post knew by noon that Byrne was coming, and waited with
feverish impatience. Byrne was the power that would put an end to the
doubts and distractions, decide who stabbed Pat Mullins, who set fire
to the "beetle shop," where Epsom Downs had gone, and could even
settle, possibly, the long-doubtful question, "Who struck Billy
Patterson?" Sandy believed in Byrne as it did in no one since the days
of General Crook. With two exceptions, all Sandy society was out on
the parade, the porticoes, or the northward bluff, as the sun went
down. These two were the Misses Wren. "Angela," said Miss Janet, "is
keeping her room to-day, and pretending to keep her temper"--this to
Kate Sanders, who had twice sought admission, despite a girlish awe
of, if not aversion to, this same Aunt Janet.

"But don't you think she'd like to see me just a little while, Miss
Wren?" the girl inquired, her hand caressing the sleek head of one of
the big hounds as she spoke. Hounds were other objects of Miss Wren's
disfavor. "Lazy, pilfering brutes," she called them, when after hours
of almost incredible labor and ingenious effort they had managed to
tear down, and to pieces, a haunch of venison she had slung to the
rafters of the back porch. "You can come in, Kate, provided you keep
out the dogs," was her ungracious answer, "and I'll go see. I think
she's sleeping now, and ought not to be disturbed."

"Then I won't disturb her," was Miss Sanders's prompt reply, as she
turned away and would have gone, but the elder restrained her. Janet
did not wish the girl to go at all. She knew Angela had asked for her,
and doubtless longed to see her; and now, having administered her
feline scratch and made Kate feel the weight of her disapproval, she
was quite ready to promote the very interview she had verbally
condemned. Perhaps Miss Sanders saw and knew this and preferred to
worry Miss Wren as much as possible. At all events, only with
reluctance did she obey the summons to wait a minute, and stood with a
pout on her lips as the spinster vanished in the gloom of the hallway.
Angela