ith
Blake stood half a dozen infantry officers and two or three of the --th.
To them, on his way to rejoin his searching troop, had entered big Jim
Ennis, Lanier's chum and classmate, and Ennis looked the picture of
smothered wrath. Half an hour previous he had been seen trotting up from
stables to the adjutant's office, summoned thither by the orderly of the
commanding officer. A few minutes later that same hard-worked orderly
had been seen sprinting to the surgeon's quarters, and Doctor Larrabee,
wrapped in furs and meditation, obeyed the summons, stood in the
presence of an irate commander not more than fifty seconds, came forth
wrapped in gloom, and took the short cut back of the major's house to
his own bailiwick at the hospital.

About the only officer not to put in an appearance that morning out of
doors, afoot, in saddle, or adrift in snow, was Lieutenant Lanier. About
the first officer Button wished to see was Bob, and about the last was
Blake. Yet such was the freakishness of Fate that the first man to hail
him, with ill-timed jocularity, was Blake, and the last of his officers
whom he was destined that day to set eyes on was Bob Lanier, whom
Schuchardt, in answer to the commander's summons, had earlier declared
unfit to leave his quarters.

If it had not been for the startling announcement about the paymaster,
Colonel Button would have fought that matter out with the doctor then
and there. First, however, he had to send forth his mounted men by
scores in search of the missing officer and party. This done, he had
once more summoned Schuchardt. Then he sent for Ennis, and had what they
termed a "red hot row."

In his exasperated frame of mind, Button had been ready to believe
almost any story at the expense of Lanier, and, such is the perversity
of human nature, it added to rather than diminished his wrath that his
revered senior surgeon should promptly corroborate the statements of
both Schuchardt and Ennis, and further assume personal and entire
responsibility for the episode of Saturday afternoon in Lanier's
quarters. That episode had started many a tongue, and one of Button's
henchmen, thinking to win favor at the fountain-head by mention of new
iniquity on the part of the culprit, had deftly enlarged upon it.
Snaffle, of course, was the fellow at fault, and he justified it on the
plea that Lanier was demoralizing two men of his troop. The story he
told was that Lanier had been carousing at his quarters