for the door.

Across the parade, out of their barracks the "doughboys" came
streaming, no man of them dressed for inspection, but rather, like
sailors, stripped for a fight; and, never waiting to form ranks, but
following the lead of veteran sergeants and the signals or orders of
officers somewhere along the line, went sprinting straight for the
eastward _mesa_. From the cavalry barracks, the northward sets, the
troopers, too, were flowing, but these were turned stableward, back of
the post, and Byrne, with his nightshirt flying wide open, wider than
his eyes, bolted round through the space between the quarters of Plume
and Wren, catching sight of the arrested captain standing grim and
gaunt on his back piazza, and ran with the foremost sergeants to the
edge of the plateau, where, in his cool white garb, stood Plume,
shouting orders to those beneath.

There, down in the Sandy bottom, was explanation of it all. Two
soldiers were bending over a prostrate form in civilian dress. Two
swarthy Apaches, one on his face, the other, ten rods away, writhing
on his side, lay weltering in blood. Out along the sandy barren and
among the clumps of mezquite and greasewood, perhaps as many as ten
soldiers, members of the guard, were scattering in rude skirmish
order; now halting and dropping on one knee to fire, now rushing
forward; while into the willows, that swept in wide concave around the
flat, a number of forms in dirty white, or nothing at all but
streaming breechclout, were just disappearing.

Northward, too, beyond the post of No. 4, other little squads and
parties could be faintly seen scurrying away for the shelter of the
willows, and as Byrne reached the major's side, with the
to-be-expected query "Whatinhell'sthematter?" the last of the fleeing
Apaches popped out of sight, and Plume turned toward him in mingled
wrath and disgust:

"That--ass of an agent!" was all he could say, as he pointed to the
prostrate figure in pepper and salt.

Byrne half slid, half stumbled down the bank and bent over the wounded
man. Dead he was not, for, with both hands clasped to his breast, Daly
was cradling from side to side and saying things of Apaches totally
unbecoming an Indian agent and a man of God. "But who did it? and
how?--and why?" demanded Byrne of the ministering soldiers.

[Illustration: "NOW HALTING, DROPPING ON ONE KNEE TO FIRE"]

"Tried to 'rest two Patchie girls, sir," answered the first,
straightening up and salutin