rted things undisturbed. Even the horse that had
been missing and charged to Downs had been accounted for. They found
him grazing placidly about the old pasture, with the rope halter
trailing, Indian-knotted, from his neck, and his gray hide still
showing stains of blood about the mane and withers. They wondered was
it on this old stager the Apaches had borne the wounded girl to the
garrison--she who still lay under the roof of Mother Shaughnessy,
timidly visited at times by big-eyed, shy little Indian maids from the
reservation, who would speak no word that Sudsville could understand,
and few that even Wales Arnold could interpret. All they would or
could divulge was that she was the daughter of old Eskiminzin, who was
out in the mountains, and that she had been wounded "over there," and
they pointed eastward. By whom and under what circumstances they swore
they knew not, much less did they know of Downs, or of how she chanced
to have the scarf once worn by the Frenchwoman Elise.

Then Arnold's wife and brood had gone back to their home up the
Beaver, while he himself returned to the search for Angela and for
Blakely. But those four days had passed without a word of hope. In
little squads a dozen parties were scouring the rugged canons and
cliffs for signs, and finding nothing. Hours each day Plume would come
to the watchers on the bluff to ask if no courier had been sighted.
Hours each night the sentries strained their eyes for signal fires.
Graham, slaving with his sick and wounded, saw how haggard and worn
the commander was growing, and spoke a word of caution. Something told
him it was not all on account of those woeful conditions at the front.
From several sources came the word that Mrs. Plume was in a state
bordering on hysteric at department headquarters, where sympathetic
women strove vainly to comfort and soothe her. It was then that Elise
became a center of interest, for Elise was snapping with electric
force and energy. "It is that they will assassinate madame--these
monsters," she declared. "It is imperative, it is of absolute need,
that madame be taken to the sea, and these wretches, unfeeling, they
forbid her to depart." Madame herself, it would seem, so said those
who had speech with her, declared she longed to be again with her
husband at Sandy. Then it was Elise who demanded that they should
move. Elise was mad to go--Elise, who took a turn of her own, a
screaming fit, when the news came of the relief