ed him on the
bleak eastward prairie, it was most unlikely she had gone with him, and,
up to one o'clock, there was none to hint with whom, or how, except
afoot, she could have gone. Then, however, came revelation. The sentry
stationed at the northwest face of the post admitted having seen "a rig
from town" making wide circuit clear around behind the fort on the
westward "bench," which was swept almost clean of snow. It had kept well
out beyond hailing distance, stood a moment or two up at the edge of the
bluff, then whirled about and went the way it came. What hour was this?
Just before they called off eleven o'clock. Why had he not mentioned or
reported it? Well, he thought it might have been some of the officers.
"They sometimes came out late and went in home the back way," whereat,
in some confusion, Captain Langley dropped that phase of the
investigation.

By two o'clock that rig also had been trailed back to town, where it was
lost in the tangle of wheel tracks. There Ennis and Field and several
troopers, with one or two interested citizens, were in quest of tidings.
There they were joined by Mayhew himself, who had one more hope. Dora
had a friend, a few years older than herself, with whom she had been
intimate at Fort Riley. They went daily to school together when
children, and wept when parted. Now her friend was married to a
conductor of the Union Pacific Railway, and living in town. It might be
that Dora had gone to her.

They found the house, and hammered at the door and lower windows, and
succeeded only in waking a Chinese servant who said, "All gone; b'long
Omaha," and refused further information. They went to the three stables
in town, and all had "rigs" out, some of them two or three. None, to the
proprietor's knowledge, had been to the fort. Most of them had gone to a
dance at Arena, a cattle town six miles east, and it was high time they
were returning, for now it was after three. "What's all the row about
anyhow?" demanded the night watchman of one of these establishments.
"There was that cockney sergeant fellow here along about midnight,
asking questions and raising hell. The town marshal had a rumpus with
him and went to bed mad." The half-dozen hangers-on about the railway
station, and the roisterers at the one, open-all-night saloon were
growing inquisitive, if not impudent. The station-master had gone home,
but the lone operator to whom, one after another, Field, Ennis, and
Mayhew had appealed,