the soldier, for now, unless he
had sufficient "pull" to win for him a staff position, his only hope was
in the ranks.

And so, even in the recruit detachments of the regulars, were found
scores of young men whose social status at home was on a plane much
higher than that of many of their officers. But the time had come when
the long and patient effort of the once despised militiaman had won
deserved recognition. The commissions in the newly raised regiments were
held almost exclusively by officers who had won them through long
service with the National Guard.

And in the midst of all the whirl of work in which he found himself,
Lieutenant Stuyvesant had been summoned to the tent of General Drayton,
commanding the great encampment on the sand-lots south of the Presidio
reservation, and bidden to tell what he knew of one Walter F. Foster,
recruit --th Cavalry, member of the detachment sent on via the Denver
and Rio Grande to Ogden, then transferred to the Southern Pacific train
Number 2 _en route_ to San Francisco, which detachment was burned out
of its car and the car out of its train early on the morning of the
---- of June, 1898, somewhere in the neighborhood of a station with
the uncouth name of Beowawe in the heart of the Humboldt Desert, and
which Recruit Foster had totally disappeared the following evening,
having been last seen by his comrades as the train was ferried across
Carquinez Straits, thirty miles from Oakland Pier, and later by
railway hands at Port Costa on the back trip of the big boat to the
Benicia side.

There was little Stuyvesant could tell. He hardly remembered the man
except as a fine-featured young fellow who seemed shy, nervous, and
unstrung, something Stuyvesant had hitherto attributed to the startling
and painful experience of the fire, and who, furthermore, seemed
desirous of dodging the lieutenant, which circumstance Stuyvesant could
not fathom at all, and if anything rather resented.

He explained to the general that he was in no wise responsible for the
care of the detachment. He had only casually met them at Ogden, and
circumstances later had thrown him into closer relation.

But the veteran general was desirous of further information. He sat at
the pine table in his plainly furnished tent, looking thoughtfully into
the frank and handsome face of the young officer, his fingers beating a
tattoo on the table-top. The general's eyes were sombre, even sad at
times. Beneath them lay