Ordinarily, half a dozen women would come drifting in to Mrs. Ray's during the summer afternoon. To-day there were none. They heard voices on the walk, voices that seemed to hush as the gate was neared, and only to resume in low tone after it was passed. Priscilla could not account for the unusual depression that had seemed to possess Aunt Marion even when struggling against it herself. At breakfast time Aunt Marion had been unusually silent, unusually watchful of Sandy, who, before he would touch his fruit or sip his coffee, had gone forth to the bench in rear of quarters, searching, he said, for some memoranda he might have dropped out there at night. He had hunted all through the pockets of his khaki rig, that he happened to be wearing at that time, and to no purpose. He must have whipped it out with his handkerchief, he said—"just that little flat memorandum book" they had often seen him have, with a few loose pages—no earthly use to anybody but him, no great consequence, and yet, after breakfast, he was searching again, and had Hogan searching, and again he returned and hunted all through his room, and investigated cook and housemaid, and again went forth. Priscilla found herself unable to cast it from her mind or to cause her aunt to forget it. Sandy had been gone an hour when she returned, and had said not to wait dinner; he might ride late and long and far.
"But not toward the reservation," he assured his mother, seeing the trouble in her face. "Though I'd more than like to ride over there with the troop and round up those blackguard reds that turned me back."
"Those blackguard reds" were forbidden by their agent to set foot north of the Minneconjou, where the ranchers and settlers and miners were frequent. But still the mother was anxious, filled with dread she could not speak, and even as she now sat, absently toying with her teaspoon, the maid came in with a note. "A soldier friend of Blenke" had just brought it for Miss Sanford.
So Priscilla opened and read:
Miss Sanford will pardon, I pray, the liberty I probably take in presuming to address her, but our plea to the captain was fruitless. He insists on my going with the detachment to the wood camp; so, long before this reaches Miss Sanford we shall have started, and it may be days before relief will come. Meantime, with my assurance that with Heaven's help I shall yet redeem myself in her estimation, I remain Miss Sanford's grateful and humble servant,
P. Blenke.
Verily, the young man wrote with a pen of the courtier and scholar of olden time rather than the rude trooper. Verily, Blenke was a man of parts—and played them.
"Where is that wood camp?" asked Aunt Marion, with languid interest, relieved, she knew not why, that Blenke should be gone.
"Far up the foothills—west. It seems that lately the Indians have been threatening and abusive," said Priscilla. "That's why the guard was sent. They march soon after reveille, and—he was so unwilling to go just now, when he hoped to arrange matters about his—commission," and Miss Sanford's clear gray eyes, much finer and softer they seemed without the pince nez, were lifted again, half timidly, half hopefully.
"How could he expect or hope for such a thing now?" answered Mrs. Ray, with some asperity. "What officer would recommend him after that—that exhibition?"
Priscilla colored. That episode was a sore point, but not a settler. "He said it depended little on the officers, auntie," was the gently forceful answer, "so long as he had the senator behind him." Whereupon Aunt Marion arose and peered through the one window in the little dining-room that opened to the west. She was forever peering up the valley now, and Priscilla well knew why. The maid again appeared. "Phelps, ma'am, Blenke's friend, came back with this," and she held forth a letter. "He said it was found on sentry post up the bench."