paid to
contractors through the quartermaster's department. Even Wells-Fargo,
pioneer expressmen of the Pacific slope, sent their messengers and
agents no further then than the Colorado River, and Uncle Sam's mail
stage was robbed so often that a registered package had grown to be
considered only an advertisement to the covetous of the fact that its
contents might be of value.

And so when the record of the court was duly signed and sealed in huge
official envelope, and Lieutenant Loring, even more grave and taciturn
than usual, went the rounds of the rude quarters to leave his card or
pay his ceremonious parting call on the officers who knew enough to call
on him--which in those crude days of the army many did not--he was asked
by more than one experienced soldier whether he had requested an escort
in view of the fact that he was burdened with valuables that, though
small in bulk, were convertible into cash that was anything but small in
amount. To such queries Mr. Loring, who had an odd aversion to answering
questions as to what he was going to do, merely bowed assent and changed
the subject. Lieutenant Gleason, an officer who had recently joined the
infantry and was one of Nevins' victims, a man of unusual assurance
despite his few months of service, had persisted in his queries to the
extent of demanding from what quarter Loring expected to get an escort,
Blake being away at the Hassayampa, and no other cavalry being within
sixty miles; and Gleason felt resentful, though he deftly hid the fact,
because the engineer ignored the question until it had been thrice
repeated, and then he said, somewhat tartly: "That is my affair, Mr.
Gleason." Everybody thought that Loring was decidedly unsociable, and
some went so far as to call him supercilious and haughty.

"Too damned big to mingle with men who fought all through the war while
he was a schoolboy at the Point," said Gleason, who had never seen a
skirmish.

This latter gentleman took it much amiss that Loring had won the
shoulder-straps of a first lieutenant the day he first donned his
uniform (many vacancies then existing in the Corps of Engineers), while
Gleason and others, with what he called war records, were still second
lieutenants. Officers of the caliber of Turnbull and Starke saw much to
respect in the grave, silent, thoughtful young officer, but the
juniors--the captains and lieutenants--though they had marked the ease
and ability with which Loring handled