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