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ever, must have joined the party on the way, and from here,--where with the wagon was found Hay's stout box, bereft of its contents,--in four different directions the pony tracks of little parties crossed or climbed the spurs, and which way the captives had been taken, Captain Billings, the commander, could not determine. What the Sioux hoped he might do was divide his force into four detachments and send one on each trail. Then they could fall upon them, one by one, and slay them at their leisure. Billings saw the game, however, and was not to be caught. He knew Bill Hay, his past and his popularity among the red men. He knew that if they meant to kill him at all they would not have taken the trouble to cart him fifty miles beforehand. He dropped the stern chase then and there, and on the following day skirted the foothills away to the east and, circling round to the breaks of the Powder as he reached the open country, struck and hard hit a scouting band of Sioux, and joined the general three days later, when most he was needed, near the log palisades of old Fort Beecher. Then there had been more or less of mysterious coming and going among the halfbreed hangers-on about the trader's store, and these were things the new post commander knew not how to interpret, even when informed of them. He saw Mrs. Hay but once or twice. He moved into the quarters of Major Webb, possessing himself, until his own should arrive, of such of the major's belongings as the vigilance of Mistress McGann would suffer. He stationed big guards from his two small companies about the post, and started more hard swearing among his own men, for "getting only two nights in bed," than had been heard at Frayne in long months of less pious post commandership. He strove to make himself agreeable to the ladies, left lamenting for their lords, but as luck would have it, fell foremost into the clutches of the quartermaster's wife, the dominant and unterrified Wilkins. Just what prompted that energetic and, in many ways, estimable woman, to take the new major into close communion, and tell him not only what she knew, but what she thought, about all manner of matters at the post, can never be justly determined. But within the first few days of his coming, and on the eve of the arrival of General Field, Major Flint was in possession of the story of how devoted young Field had been to Esther Dade, and how cruelly he had jilted her for the brilliant Miss Flo
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