mantle of San Francisco mountain.
Natzie, the girl queen, was gone from the guard-house: Punch, the Lady
Angela's pet pony, was gone from the corral, and who would say there
had not been collusion?

"One thing is certain," said the grave-faced post commander, as, with
his officers, he left the knot of troopers and troopers' wives
hovering late about the guard-house, "one thing is certain; with
Wren's own troopers hot on the heels of Angela's pony we'll have our
Apache princess back, sure as the morning sun."

"Like hell!" said Mother Shaughnessy.

CHAPTER XXVI

"WOMAN-WALK-NO-MORE"

More morning suns than could be counted in the field of the flag had
come, and gone, but not a sign of Natzie. Wren's own troopers, hot on
Punch's flashing heels, were cooling their own as best they could
through the arid days that followed. Wren himself was now recovered
sufficiently to be told of much that had been going on,--not all,--and
it was Angela who constantly hovered about him, for Janet was taking a
needed rest. Blakely, too, was on the mend, sitting up hours of every
day and "being very lovely" in manner to all the Sanders household,
for thither had he demanded to be moved even sooner than it was
prudent to move him at all. Go he would, and Graham had to order it.
Pat Mullins was once again "for duty." Even Todd, the bewildered
victim of Natzie's knife, was stretching his legs on the hospital
porch. There had come a lull in all martial proceedings at the post,
and only two sensations. One of these latter was the formal
investigation by the inspector general of the conditions surrounding
the stabbing at Camp Sandy of Privates Mullins and Todd of the ----th
U. S. Cavalry. The other was the discovery, one bright, brilliant,
winter morning that Natzie's friend and savior, Angela's Punch, was
back in his stall, looking every bit as saucy and "fit" as ever he did
in his life. What surprised many folk in the garrison was that it
surprised Angela not at all. "I thought Punch would come back," said
she, in demure unconcern, and the girls at least, began to understand,
and were wild to question. Only Kate Sanders, however, knew how
welcome was the pet pony's coming. But what had come that was far from
welcome was a coldness between Angela and Kate Sanders.

Byrne himself had arrived, and the "inquisition" had begun. No
examinations under oath, no laborious recordings of question and
answer, no crowd of curious listeners. T