down at the pool."

For an instant he stood glaring, incredulous. "At the pool! You! My
bairnie!" Then, with sudden outburst of passionate wrath, "Go to your
room!" said he.

"But listen--father, dear," she began, imploringly. For answer he
seized her slender arm in almost brutal grasp and fairly hurled her
within the doorway. "Not a word!" he ground between his clinched
teeth. "Go instantly!" Then, slamming the door upon her, he whirled
about as though to seek his sister's face, and saw beyond her,
rounding the corner of the northwest set of quarters, coming in from
the _mesa_ roadway at the back, the tall, white figure of the missing
man.

Another moment and Lieutenant Blakely, in the front room of his
quarters, looking pale and strange, was being pounced upon with eager
questioning by Duane, his junior, when the wooden steps and veranda
creaked under a quick, heavy, ominous tread, and, with livid face and
clinching hands, the troop commander came striding in.

"Mr. Blakely," said he, his voice deep with wrath and tremulous with
passion, "I told you three days ago my daughter and you must not meet,
and--you know why! To-day you lured her to a rendezvous outside the
post--"

"Captain Wren!"

"Don't lie! I say you lured her, for my lass would never have met
you--"

"You shall _un_say it, sir," was Blakely's instant rejoinder. "Are you
mad--or what? I never set eyes on your daughter to-day--until a moment
ago."

And then the voice of young Duane was uplifted, shouting for help.
With a crash, distinctly heard out on the parade, Wren had struck his
junior down.

CHAPTER III

MOCCASIN TRACKS

When Mr. Blakely left the post that afternoon he went afoot. When he
returned, just after the sounding of retreat, he came in saddle.
Purposely he avoided the road that led in front of the long line of
officers' quarters and chose instead the water-wagon track along the
rear. People among the laundresses' quarters, south of the _mesa_ on
which stood the quadrangular inclosure of Camp Sandy, eyed him
curiously as he ambled through on his borrowed pony; but he looked
neither to right nor left and hurried on in obvious discomposure. He
was looking pale and very tired, said the saddler sergeant's wife, an
hour later, when all the garrison was agog with the story of Wren's
mad assault. He never seemed to see the two or three soldiers, men of
family, who rose and saluted as he passed, and not an officer in the
regim