Scouting parties returning find no trace of Captain Wren and
Sergeant Carmody, but we shall persevere. Indians lurking
all about us make it difficult. Shall be needing rations in
four days. All wounded except Flynn doing fairly well. Hope
couriers sent you on 30th and 31st reached you safely.

The dispatch was in the handwriting of Benson, a trooper of good
education, often detailed for clerical work. It was signed "Brewster,
Sergeant."

Who then were the couriers, and what had become of them? What fate had
attended Blakely in his lonely and perilous ride? What man or pair of
men could pierce that cordon of Indians lurking all around them and
reach the beleaguered command? What need to speculate on the fate of
the earlier couriers anyway? Only Indians could hope to outwit Indians
in such a case. It was madness to expect white men to get through. It
was madness for Blakely to attempt it. Yet Blakely was gone beyond
recall, perhaps beyond redemption. From him, and from the detachment
that was sent by Bridger to follow his trail, not a word had come of
any kind. Asked if they had seen or heard anything of such parties,
the Indian couriers stolidly shook their heads. They had followed the
old Wingate road all the way until in sight of the valley. Then,
scrambling through a rocky labyrinth, impossible for hoof or wheel,
had made a short cut to the head waters of the Beaver. Now Blakely,
riding from the agency eastward slowly, should have found that Wingate
trail before the setting of the first day's sun, and his followers
could not have been far behind. It began to look as though the
Bugologist had never reached the road. It began to be whispered about
the post that Wren and his luckless companions might never be found at
all. Kate Sanders had ceased her song. She was now with Angela day and
night.

One hope, a vague one, remained beside that of hearing from the
baker's dozen that rode on Blakely's trail. Just as soon as Byrne
received the Indian story concerning Wren's disappearance, he sent
runners eastward on the track of Sanders's troop, with written advice
to that officer to drop anything he might be doing along the Black
Mesa and, turning northward, to make his way through a country
hitherto untrod by white man, between Baker's Butte at the south and
the Sunset Mountains at the north. He was ordered to scout the canon
of Chevlon's Fork, and to look for sign on every side until, somewhere