open and its contents littered about. The
drawers in a heavy bookcase were open and papers were strewn upon the
floor. The folding doors to the dining-room were open. Decanters,
goblets, cigar stumps and heel taps were scattered over the table. Guest
or host, or both, had left things in riotous shape. Then down came the
servant, a scared look in his eyes.

"The major isn't in, sir. His bed hasn't been occupied, an' the
captain's gone, too. Their uniforms are there, though."

Five minutes later, on a borrowed horse, John Folsom was galloping like
mad for home. A door in the high board fence at the rear of his house
shot open just as he was darting through the lane that led to the
stable. A woman's form appeared in the gap--the last thing that he saw
for a dozen hours, for the horse shied violently, hurling the rider
headlong to the ground.

CHAPTER XVI.

At three o'clock in the morning, while the stars were still bright in
the eastern sky, the little party of troopers, Dean at the irhead, had
ridden away from the twinkling lights of camp, and long before sunrise
had crossed the first divide to the north, and alternating trot, lope
and walk had put miles between them and Fort Emory before the drums of
the infantry beat the call for guard mounting.

At ten o'clock the party halted under some spreading willows, deep in a
cleft of the bold, high hills that rolled away toward the Sweetwater
valley. Horses were unsaddled and picketed out to graze. A little cook
fire was started close to the spring that fed the tiny brook, trickling
away down the narrow ravine, and in a few moments the aroma of coffee
and of appetizing slices of bacon greeted the welcoming nostrils of the
hungry men. The sun that had risen clear and dazzling was now obscured
by heavy masses of clouds, and time and again Dean cast anxious eyes
aloft, for a storm seemed sweeping eastward from the distant Wahsatch
range, and long before the little command had dived downward from the
heights into the depths of this wild, romantic and contracted valley,
all the rolling upland toward Green River, far to the west, lay under
the pall of heavy and forbidding banks of hurrying vapor. Coffee and
breakfast finished, Dean climbed the steep bluff overhanging the spring,
a faithful sergeant following, and what he saw was sufficient to
determine immediate action.

"Saddle up. We'll push ahead at once."

For an instant the veteran trooper looked dissent, but dis