delay, and who overtook
them at Fort Frayne, after riding by night through the mountainous
region of the Medicine Bow, with only a single trooper as attendant and
escort. Burleigh had been oddly inquisitive, thought Stone, and had
plied the taciturn Engineer with question after question about officers
whom he knew and matters he seemed to know along the Pacific slope. Mr.
Loring was evidently a bit surprised, yet replied courteously, though
very briefly. Burleigh did all the talking the first day's drive in the
big ambulance over the rolling open prairies north of the Platte, giving
Stone no chance at all. He enlivened the occasion and relieved the
tedium of the journey with anecdotes of the General whose command Loring
had recently left, and Strain, his chief-of-staff, and Petty--"that
damned fool Petty," he called him, and Burleigh had nothing good to tell
of any of them, and much that was derisive, if not detrimental, of all.
Loring listened with neither assent nor dissent, as a rule, though when
appealed to he said he had no opportunity to study the characteristics
as described by Burleigh, as he had spent most of his short service
there surveying in Arizona and saw little and knew less of the officials
in San Francisco. One man of whom Burleigh spoke with regard and regret
was stanch old Turnbull, whose sad death by drowning in the surf off
Pinos, the quartermaster referred to several times. He seemed familiar,
too, with the story of Loring's conduct the night of the collision at
sea and the sinking of the Idaho, and referred to that more than once in
terms of commendation. They stopped for luncheon and to bait the mules
and to give the cavalry escort a brief respite, and it was after this
that Burleigh, as though suddenly reminded of something, began--

"I don't know what made me think of it unless it was Stone's speaking of
New Orleans a moment ago, but did you meet a long-legged fellow named
Blake in Arizona? I knew the girl that drove him out there. One winter
she was in New Orleans while her father was commanding the monitors
moored at Algiers--Miss Torrence. Saw her afterwards in New York. She
married old Granger, you know." Granger was about Burleigh's age, but
Burleigh was a widower and desirous of being considered young. And Stone
wondered why Loring should look disquieted if not embarrassed.

"I met Blake, yes," was, however, his prompt reply.

"How's he standing it? He was a good deal cut up at first. T