r aloft again, scouting from another height
to the northward, and while the orderly went on to find and tell him,
Arnold and his grave-faced comrade dismounted there to await the
coming of the litters. Graver were the faces even than before. The
news that had met them was most ominous. Two of those who searched
with Colonel Byrne had found pony tracks leading northward--leading in
the very direction in which they had seen the smoke. There was no
other pony shoe in the Sandy valley. It could be none other than
Angela's little friend and comrade--Punch.

And this news they told to Blakely as the foremost litter came. He
listened with hardly a word of comment; then asked for his scouting
notebook. He was sitting up now. They helped him from his springy
couch to a seat on the rocks, and gave him a cup of the cold water.
One by one the other litters were led into the little amphitheater and
unlashed. Everyone seemed to know that here must be the bivouac for
the night, their abiding place for another day, perhaps, unless they
should find the captain's daughter. They spoke, when they spoke at
all, in muffled tones, these rough, war-worn men of the desert and
the mountain. They bent over the wounded with sorrowing eyes, and
wondered why no surgeon had come out to meet them. Heartburn, of
course, had done his best, dressing and rebandaging the wounds at
dawn, but then he had to go on with Stout and the company, while one
of the Apache Yumas was ordered to dodge his way in to Sandy, with a
letter urging that Graham be sent out to follow the trail and meet the
returning party.

Meanwhile the sun had dropped behind the westward heights; the night
would soon be coming down, chill and overcast. Byrne was still away,
but he couldn't miss the tank, said one of the troopers who had ridden
with him. Twice during the morning they had all met there and then
gone forth again, searching--searching. Punch's little hoof-tracks,
cutting through a sandy bit in the northward ravine, had drawn them
all that way, but nothing further had been found. His horse, too, said
the orderly, was lame and failing, so he had been bidden to wait by
the water and watch for couriers either from the front or out from the
post. Byrne was one of those never-give-up men, and they all knew him.

Barley was served out to the animals, a little fire lighted, lookouts
were stationed, and presently their soldier supper was ready, and
still Blakely said nothing. He had w