"Let the major see for himself, then," he answered sturdily. "Come in here, you!" he called aloud. "Come, the whole gang of ye. The concert's beginning!" Then, slowly along the eastward edge there began to creep into view black polls bound with dirty white, black crops untrammeled by any binding. Then, swift from the west, came running footfalls, the corporal with a willing comrade or two, wondering was Five in further danger. There, silent and regretful, stood the post commander, counting in surprise the score of scarecrow forms now plainly visible, sitting, standing, or squatting along the mesa edge. Northernmost in view, nearly opposite Blakely's quarters, were two, detached from the general assembly, yet clinging close together—two slender figures, gowned, and it was at these the agent Daly was staring, as he, too, came running to the spot.
"Major Plume," cried he, panting, "I want those girls arrested, at once!"
CHAPTER VIII
"APACHE KNIVES DIG DEEP!"
t five o'clock of this cloudless October morning Colonel Montgomery Byrne, "of the old Army, sir," was reviling the fates that had set him the task of unraveling such a skein as he found at Sandy. At six he was blessing the stars that sent him. Awakened, much before his usual hour, by half-heard murmur of scurry and excitement, so quickly suppressed he believed it all a dream, he was thinking, half drowsily, all painfully, of the duty devolving on him for the day, and wishing himself well out of it, when the dream became real, the impression vivid. His watch told him reveille should now be sounding. His ears told him the sounds he heard were not those of reveille, yet something had roused the occupants of Officers' Row, and then, all on a sudden, instead of the sweet strains of "The Dawn of the Day" or "Bonnie Lass o' Gawrie" there burst upon the morning air, harsh and blustering, the alarum of the Civil War days, the hoarse uproar of the drum thundering the long roll, while above all rang the loud clamor of the cavalry trumpet sounding "To Horse."
"Fitz James was brave, but to his heart
The life blood leaped with sudden start."
Byrne sprang from his bed. He was a soldier, battle-tried, but this meant something utterly new to him in war, for, mingling with the gathering din, he heard the shriek of terror-stricken women. Daly's bed was empty. The agent was gone. Elise aloft was jabbering patois at her dazed and startled mistress. Suey, the Chinaman, came clattering in, all flapping legs and arms and pigtail, his face livid, his eyes staring. "Patcheese! Patcheese!" he squealed, and dove under the nearest bed. Then Byrne, shinning into boots and breeches and shunning his coat, grabbed his revolver and rushed for the door.