h forward on the trail of Stout's command, hoping to
overtake them by nightfall. She whispered this to sleepless Kate on
her return to the house, for Angela, exhausted with grief and long
suspense, had fallen, apparently, into deep and dreamless slumber.

But the end of that eventful night was not yet. Arnold and his
sextette slipped away soon after four o'clock, and about 4.50 there
came a banging at the major's door. It was the telegraph operator. The
wire was patched at last, and the first message was to the effect that
the guard had been fired on in Cherry Creek canon--that Private
Forrest was sorely wounded and lying at Dick's deserted ranch, with
two of their number to care for him. Could they possibly send a
surgeon at once?

There was no one to go but Graham. His patients at the post were doing
fairly well, but there wasn't a horse for him to ride. "No matter,"
said he, "I'll borrow Punch. He's needing exercise these days." So
Punch was ordered man-saddled and brought forthwith. The orderly came
back in ten minutes. "Punch aint there, sir," said he. "He's been gone
over half an hour."

"Gone? Gone where? Gone how?" asked Graham in amaze.

"Gone with Miss Angela, sir. She saddled him herself and rode away not
twenty minutes after Arnold's party left. The sentries say she
followed up the Beaver."

CHAPTER XIX

BESIEGED

Deep down in a ragged cleft of the desert, with shelving rock and
giant bowlder on every side, without a sign of leaf, or sprig of
grass, or tendril of tiny creeping plant, a little party of haggard,
hunted men lay in hiding and in the silence of exhaustion and despond,
awaiting the inevitable. Bulging outward overhead, like the counter of
some huge battleship, a great mass of solid granite heaved unbroken
above them, forming a recess or cave, in which they were secure
against arrow, shot, or stone from the crest of the lofty, almost
vertical walls of the vast and gloomy canon. Well back under this
natural shelter, basined in the hollowed rock, a blessed pool of fair
water lay unwrinkled by even a flutter of breeze. Relic of the early
springtime and the melting snows, it had been caught and imprisoned
here after the gradually failing stream had trickled itself into
nothingness. One essential, one comfort then had not been denied the
beleaguered few, but it was about the only one. Water for drink, for
fevered wounds and burning throats, they had in abundance; but the
last "hardtack