ed for. No, Sandy
didn't know his name, he didn't even notice him particularly. Two or
three men, he thought, were smoking their pipes at the corral corner,
away from stables, as required, and one of these had come forward as he
neared the gate, and asked should he take the lieutenant's horse. Ray
thanked him, dismounted and turned away. Now, what bothered the colonel
was that both the sergeant in charge and each one of the four men
previously questioned declared he did not know the hour at which
Lieutenant Ray returned. They had gone to bed at or before 10:30,
leaving the door on the bolt, so that Hogan or the lieutenant himself
could easily enter. One man, in fact, went so far as to say that coming
down from the Canteen about 10:30 he could have sworn almost it was
Lieutenant Ray who was slowly climbing the slope to the post of No. 3,
and the rear of the officers' quarters. This accorded in a degree with
the statement of Schmitz. What good was Sandy's story to do him if
Foster firmly adhered to the statement made to the Department Inspector?

There was to have been a dance at the Assembly room Tuesday evening, but
no one seemed to feel like dancing even among an indomitable few of the
lassies and younger officers with whom, lads and lassies both, Sandy Ray
had been vastly popular. The night wore on, dark, overcast, with the
wind blowing fitfully from the Sagamore, slamming doors in resounding
hallways and carrying the watch calls of the sentries weirdly over the
eastward prairie. Earlier in the evening little groups appeared in some
few of the verandas, but gradually broke up and went within doors long
before the signal "Lights out." The officer of the day and the adjutant,
under instruction from the post commander, had been questioning the
three worthies who had been out the night before about the time of the
alleged assault on Captain Foster. To a man they stoutly maintained that
the signs and scars of battle, borne by one or two of their number, were
due entirely to the free-for-all affair that occurred at that
disreputable dive southwest of Silver Hill, some four miles away from
the post. Virtuously were they indignant that anyone should suppose that
they were in any way concerned in so abominable a transaction as the
"doing-up" of an officer of the army who so recently had been the guest
of their honored major. But two of them were troopers with shady
records, men who had been but a short time at the station, and