oose. The Braska crowd did their best to send them home full, and
they were full, and nothing would do but we must go into the bar and
drink Roederer with them until the conductor came rushing in to say all
aboard. Then they snaked me on to the caboose platform when the train
was under way, pulled me inside and ran me half a mile up the track
before they could stop her again. But that half-mile did the business
for Mr. Howard. There he was spruce and dandified as you please, dressed
fit to kill in a bang-up better suit than I ever hope to own, trying to
sit behind a newspaper. They pulled Burtis aboard, too, and in the
scuffle he fell all over Howard, knocked his hat off, and I knew the
face in a second, and when I came off that car he came with me, by the
scruff of his neck, swearing and protesting and denying that he was
Howard, and threatening to have the law on me and appealing to the
cattlemen for rescue. By Jupiter, if it wasn't that I had been with them
long enough to make a favorable impression they would have rescued him,
too. They didn't half want to let him go, and he straggled hard to get
away as it was."

Then Truman told him what Devers's orders and remarks were, and Sanders
fairly blazed with wrath. "It's the maddest kind of a lie," said he.
"That fellow had never looked for Paine or thought of such a thing. We
found where he had left his uniform and where he kept in hiding until
time to skip out and catch that train. He wasn't looking for anybody and
didn't care to see or be seen by anybody. If it wasn't a clear-cut case
of desertion may I be hanged. He had over two hundred dollars in his
clothes and fresh duds in his grip-sack."

Long before mid-day, therefore, Sanders's words were being repeated from
mouth to mouth, and Trooper Howard, with pale face and starting eyes,
was shut up in the company office where only the captain and Sergeant
Haney could get at him, and Devers was there with his sergeant and
clerk, when just at 10.45 the telegraph operator came bulging into Mr.
Leonard's office.

"An important despatch," said he, "for the commanding officer."

Leonard took it, then hesitated. Under Colonel Stone his instructions
were to open and read at once, but the relations between him and the
captain temporarily in command were neither confidential nor cordial.
"Take it to Captain Devers," said he, "and I will wait."

Devers read the despatch with kindling eye. It was from department
head-quarters