recently had rung to the music of
so many glad young voices. Of the garrison proper at Frayne all the
cavalry officers except Wilkins were away at the front; all the infantry
officers, five in number, were also up along the Big Horn. The four who
had come with Flint were strangers to the post, but Herron, who had been
a classmate of Ross at the Point, moved into his room and took the
responsibility of introducing the contract doctor, who came with them,
into the quarters at the front of the house on the second floor. These
rooms had been left open and unlocked. There was nothing, said the
lawful occupant, worth stealing, which was probably true; but Field had
bolted, inside, the door of his sleeping room; locked the hall door of
his living room and taken the key with him when he rode with Ray. The
doctor looked over the rooms a moment; then sent for Wilkins, the post
quartermaster, who came in a huff at being disturbed at lunch. Field had
been rather particular about his belongings. His uniforms always hung on
certain pegs in the plain wooden wardrobe. The drawers of his bureau
were generally arranged like the clothes press of cadet days, as though
for inspection, but now coats, blouses, dressingsack and smoking jacket
hung with pockets turned inside out or flung about the bed and floor.
Trousers had been treated with like contempt. The bureau looked like
what sailors used to call a "hurrah's nest," and a writing desk,
brass-bound and of solid make, that stood on a table by a front window,
had been forcibly wrenched open, and its contents were tossed about the
floor. A larger desk,--a wooden field desk--stood upon a trestle across
the room, and this, too, had been ransacked. Just what was missing only
one man could tell. Just how they entered was patent to all--through a
glazed window between the bed-room and the now unused dining room
beyond. Just who were the housebreakers no man present could say; but
Mistress McGann that afternoon communicated her suspicion to her
sore-headed spouse, and did it boldly and with the aid of a broomstick.
"It's all along," she said, "av your shtoopin' to dhrink wid them low
lived salvages at Hay's. Now, what d'ye know about this?"

But McGann swore piously he knew nothing "barrin' that Pete and Crapaud
had some good liquor one night--dear knows when it was--an' I helped 'em
dhrink your health,--an' when 'twas gone, and more was wanted, sure Pete
said he'd taken a demijohn to the lieutena