her hair was dark
and heavy, could see, in spite of its loose garb, that her figure was
straight, round and slender. The swift versatility of my soul was upon
the point of calling this as fine a figure of young womanhood as I had
ever seen. Now, indeed, the gray desert had blossomed as a rose.

I was about to ask some questions of Belknap, when all at once I saw
something which utterly changed my pleasant frame of mind. The tall
figure of a man came from beyond the line of wagons--a man clad in
well-fitting tweeds cut for riding. His gloves seemed neat, his boots
equally neat, his general appearance immaculate as that of the young
lady whom he approached. I imagine it was the same swift male jealousy
which affected both Belknap and myself as we saw Gordon Orme!

"Yes, there is your friend, the Englishman," said Belknap rather
bitterly.

"I meet him everywhere," I answered. "The thing is simply uncanny. What
is he doing out here?"

"We are taking him out to Laramie with us. He has letters to Colonel
Meriwether, it seems. Cowles, what do you know about that man?"

"Nothing," said I, "except that he purports to come from the English
Army."

"I wish that he had stayed in the English Army, and not come bothering
about ours. He's prowling about every military Post he can get into."

"With a special reference to Army officers born in the South?" I looked
Belknap full in the eye.

"There's something in that," he replied. "I don't like the look of it.
These are good times for every man to attend to his own business."

As Orme stood chatting with the young woman, both Belknap and I turned
away. A moment later I ran across my former friend, Mandy McGovern. In
her surprise she stopped chewing tobacco, when her eyes fell on me, but
she quickly came to shake me by the hand.

"Well, I dee-clare to gracious!" she began, "if here ain't the man I met
on the boat! How'd you git away out here ahead of us? Have you saw airy
buffeler? I'm gettin' plumb wolfish fer something to shoot at. Where all
you goin', anyhow? An' whut you doin' out here?"

What I was doing at that precise moment, as I must confess, was taking a
half unconscious look once more toward the tail of the ambulance, where
Orme and the young woman stood chatting. But it was at this time that
Orme first saw or seemed to see me. He left the ambulance and came
rapidly forward.

"By Jove!" he said, "here you are again! Am I your shadow, Mr. Cowles,
or are you mine?