"Heard you that now?" stormed Mother Shaughnessy, as he strode away. "Who but he has helped his women to go unpunished—" and the words were out and heard before the sergeant major could spring and silence her. Before another day they were echoing all over the post—were on their way to Prescott, even, and meeting, almost at the northward gateway, the very women the raging laundress meant. Of her own free will Clarice Plume was once again at Sandy, bringing with her, sorely against the will of either, but because a stronger will would have it so—and sent his guards to see to it—a cowed and scared and semi-silent companion of whom much ill was spoken now about the garrison—Elise Lebrun.
The news threw Norah Shaughnessy nearly into spasms. "'Twas she that knifed Pat Mullins!" she cried. "'Twas she drove poor Downs to dhrink and desartion. 'Twas she set Carmody and Shannon to cuttin' each other's throats"—which was news to a garrison that had seen the process extend no further than to each other's acquaintance. And more and stormier words the girl went on to say concerning the commander's household until Mullins himself mildly interposed. But all these things were being told about the garrison, from which Lola and Alchisay had fled in terror to spread the tidings that their princess was a prisoner behind the bars. These were things that were being told, too, to the men of Sanders's returning troop before they were fairly unsaddled at the stables; and that night, before ever he sought his soldier pillow, Shannon had been to "C" Troop's quarters in search of Trooper Stern and had wrung from him all that he could tell of Carmody's last fight on earth—of his last words to Lieutenant Blakely.
Meantime a sorely troubled man was Major Plume. That his wife would have to return to Sandy he had learned from the lips of Colonel Byrne himself. Her own good name had been involved, and could only be completely cleared when Wren and Blakely were sufficiently recovered to testify, and when Mullins should be so thoroughly restored as to be fit for close cross-examination. Plume could in no wise connect his beloved wife with either the murderous assault on Mullins or the mysterious firing of Blakely's quarters, but he knew that Sandy could not so readily acquit her, even though it might saddle the actual deed upon her instrument—Elise. He had ordered that Blakely should be brought to his own quarters because there he could not be reached by any who were unacceptable to himself, the post commander. There were many things he wished to know about and from Blakely's lips alone. He could not stoop to talk with other men about the foibles of his wife. He knew that iron box in Truman's care contained papers, letters, or something of deep interest to her. He knew full well now that, at some time in the not far distant past, Blakely himself had been of deep interest to her and she to Blakely. He had Blakely's last letter to himself, written just before the lonely start in quest of Angela, but that letter made no reference to the contents of the box or to anything concerning their past. He had heard that Wales Arnold had been intrusted with letters for Blakely to Clarice, his wife, and to Captain, or Miss Janet Wren. Arnold had not been entirely silent on the subject. He did not too much like the major, and rather rejoiced in this opportunity to show his independence of him. Plume had gone so far as to ask Arnold whether such letters had been intrusted to him, and Wales said, yes; but, now that Blakely was safely back and probably going to pull through, he should return the letters to the writer as soon as the writer was well enough to appreciate what was being done. Last, but not least, Plume had picked up near the door in Blakely's room the circular, nearly flat, leather-covered case which had dropped, apparently, from Natzie's gown, and, as it had neither lock nor latch, Plume had opened it to examine its contents.
To his surprise it contained a beautifully executed miniature, a likeness of a fair young girl, with soft blue eyes and heavy, arching brows, a delicately molded face and mouth and chin, all framed in a tumbling mass of tawny hair. It was the face of a child of twelve or thirteen, one that he had never seen and of whom he knew nothing. Neither cover, backing, nor case of the miniature gave the faintest clew as to its original or as to its ownership. What was Natzie doing with this?—and to whom did it belong? A little study satisfied him there was something familiar in the face, yet he could not place it.
The very night of her coming, therefore, he told his wife the story and handed her the portrait. One glance was enough. "I know it, yes," said Mrs. Plume, "though I, too, have never seen her. She died the winter after it was taken. It is Mr. Blakely's sister, Ethel," and Mrs. Plume sat gazing at the sweet girl features, with strange emotion in her aging face. There was something—some story—behind all this that Plume could not fathom, and it nettled him. Perhaps he, too, was yielding to a fit of nerves. Elise, the maid, had been remanded to her room, and could be heard moving about with heavy, yet uncertain tread. "She is right over Blakely," quoth the major impatiently. "Why can't the girl be quiet?"
"Why did you bring him here, then?" was the weary answer. "I cannot control Elise. They have treated her most cruelly."
"There are things you cannot explain and that she must," said he, and then, to change the subject, stretched forth his hand to take again the picture. She drew it back one moment, then, remembering, surrendered it.
"You saw this in—St. Louis, I suppose," said he awkwardly. He never could bear to refer to those days—the days before he had come into her life.
"Not that perhaps, but the photograph from which it was probably painted. She was his only sister. He was educating her in the East." And again her thoughts were drifting back to those St. Louis days, when, but for the girl sister he so loved, she and Neil Blakely had been well-nigh inseparable. Someone had said then, she remembered, that she was jealous even of that love.
And now again her husband was gazing fixedly at the portrait, a light coming into his lined and anxious face. Blakely had always carried this miniature with him, for he now remembered that the agent, Daly, had spoken of it. Natzie and others might well have seen it at the reservation. The agent's wife had often seen it and had spoken of his sorrow for the sister he had lost. The picture, she said, stood often on his little camp table. Every Indian who entered his tent knew it and saw it. Why, surely; Natzie, too, mused the major, and then aloud: