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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
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