"Is that the young fellow that those sergeants have been hunting for?" asked one of the detectives. "We managed to find out about him. He was in town early as three o'clock Friday, and he left on Number Six that night."
"Do you mean to tell me," said Sumter, gazing blankly at the speaker, "that he wasn't out here when—this—happened?"
"Not unless he had wings! That train leaves at 11.40." Whereupon Kate Sumter slowly withdrew her hand, then turned away.
VII
Another day went by. Major Scott and his clerk, under Larrabee's skilful touch, were gradually regaining strength and beginning to answer questions. At first their senses seemed dulled, as though they could not shake off the frost that benumbed them. At first they could tell little of the cause of the mishap. The ambulance was curtained in, even at the rear, through which the two scared troopers had managed to slip to their doom. Not until the snows melted in the spring, and the contents of the ravines should be revealed, was it likely they would be heard of again. The railway was still blocked. The wires were still down. Fort Cushing stood isolated from the outer world, and no less than five of its garrison were absent and unaccounted for: the two men detailed to drive in with the paymaster, two bacchanalians who, being in town when the storm broke, had dared each other to face the gale and tramp out, and finally a young trooper named Cary, who had arrived with the same recruit squad that brought them Rawdon, and had been on terms of friendship, if not indeed of intimacy, with him. They had been together that very Friday afternoon. In addition, whereabouts unknown, was Sergeant Fitzroy, of Snaffle's Troop. "Absent with leave," said the morning report. "Acting under the verbal instructions of the commanding officer," said his captain.
Along toward dusk on Tuesday, others of the searching squadron, sent afar down the valley, had come back, reporting that the ambulance mules were found, huddled together, half starved and still half harnessed, in a log shack or shelter to which their instinct had guided them after their heels had made chopsticks of the running gear. The ambulance body was snowed under somewhere and nowhere in sight. The driver, a civilian employed in the Quartermaster's Department, had totally disappeared. Scott, the paymaster; Thomas, his clerk; and Rafferty, Lanier's soldier servant, or "striker" as then called, were still half dazed—Rafferty, indeed, so much dazed that no coherent words had yet escaped him.
One more unfortunate, the driver of Foster's sleigh, was in trouble. Not until two hours after the dance had he turned up with the missing equipage, a cock-and-bull story, and a case of what the corporal called "jag." He swore that, having got chilled through, waiting, he just thought to get one hot whiskey at the store. Sentry Number Six said he'd mind the team while the driver went in, and the next thing he knew "they'd run'd away, hell for leather," and he, their driver, had to follow two miles to Flint's Ranch, close to town, where he "might have taken a nip or two more." It was his first offense and Foster forgave. It should be remarked, however, that Number Six declared that it was not he with whom the driver left the sleigh, but two "fellers," i.e., troopers, who happened to be near the store. However, that did not seem much to matter at the time.
And Fort Cushing was in unhappy frame of mind. Colonel Button was in most inhospitable mood, and chafing because he could not communicate with the general commanding the department. Mrs. Button was confined to the house and denied to all but one or two intimates. Bob Lanier was still in close arrest. No man could say what might be the result, for Barker, the adjutant, declared he knew no more than they. "The Old Man had something up his sleeve"—several somethings—against him, but was confiding in no one, for he and Stannard were at odds over the matter; he and Sumter were practically estranged because of it, and for the first time in regimental history Button seemed to be giving all his attention to Snaffle and men of his stamp and set. They were not more than three or four in number. They had been rather tolerated than sought in the past, but now the colonel seemed to have use for them alone.