s and several others flared at the brush and canvas shack of the
sutler. Everywhere else about Camp Cooke there was silence and slumber.
The muttered word of command as the half-past-twelve relief formed at
the guard tent, the clink of glasses and murmur of voices, sometimes
accentuated by laughter, came drifting on the night from the open
clubroom. Beyond the guard tents the dim walls of the corral loomed
darkly against the dry, cloudless, star-dotted sky that bordered the
eastern horizon. The sentry, slowly pacing his beaten path along the
_acequia_ that conducted the cool waters of the Yavapai, from the
northward hills to the troughs in the corral, moved noiseless, dim and
ghostly, and Loring, listening for a moment to the faint sounds of
revelry at the shack, turned away to the north, passed the rude shelters
which had been built by the labor of troops for the accommodation of the
officers and the few families there abiding, and found himself presently
on the open plain full a hundred yards out from the buildings and beyond
the post of the sentry on that flank, who, far over at the west end of
his long beat at the moment, was dreaming of the revels he'd have when
his discharge came, and neither heard nor saw the solitary officer whose
one desire was to get away by himself to some point where he could
calmly think. He needed to be alone. Even Blake, whom he had grown to
like and whom he believed to be still at the camp, would have been in
the way.

A strange fellow was Loring, a man grown, so far as judgment and
experience were concerned, when at the age of twenty he entered West
Point, and from the very start became one of the leaders of his class in
scholarship, and later one of the prominent officers of the battalion of
cadets. In scientific and mathematical studies, indeed, he had no
superior among his comrades, but languages and drawing, as taught in
those days at the academy, threw him out of the head of the class, but
could not prevent his landing a close second to the leader in general
standing. Never a popular man in the corps, he commanded, nevertheless,
the respect and esteem of the entire battalion, and little by little
won a deeper regard from his immediate associates. He was a man of
marked gravity of demeanor. He rarely laughed. His smile was only a
trifle more frequent. He was taciturnity personified and for two years
at least was held to be morose. Of his antecedents little was known, for
he never sp