signed to Sanford's troop, and the biggest surprise that had
come since his commission met him one day at Gila Bend, when that same
old red stage, a relic of California days, emerged from the dust-cloud
of its own manufacture, and a quiet youth in pepper-and-salt and
sand-colored costume, looked up from behind a pair of green goggles
saying:

"Hullo, Blake!"

It was the voice, not the face, that the tall trooper recognized.

"Well--of--all--the--Why, what in the name of Pegasus brings you here,
Loring? I thought you had graduated into the engineers."

"Fact," said the newcomer sententiously.

"Well, what's an engineer doing in Arizona? I'd as soon look to see an
archbishop."

"Scouting," said the dust-colored man. "Where's dinner?"

"In the shack yonder, if your stomach's copper-lined. Better come over
to my camp and take pot-luck there."

Which Loring gladly did, and then went on his dusty way, leaving Blake
with something to think of beside his own woes. Within half a year of
his graduation from West Point the young engineer, one of the stars of
his class, had been ordered to report to the general commanding the
Division of the Pacific and was set to work on a military map in that
general's office. Loring found all maps of Arizona to be vague and
incomplete, and was ordered forthwith to go to the territory and gather
in the needed data. That he, too, should be lass-lorn never for a moment
occurred to his comrade of the line. Had such facts been confessed
among the exiles of those days many a comradeship of the far frontier
would have been strengthened. That the girl who duped Gerald Blake
should have been known to her who had captivated Mr. Loring was
suspected by neither officer at the time, and that, despite the efforts
and the resolution of both men, both women were destined to reappear
upon the stage, and temporarily, at least, reassume their sway, was
something neither soldier would have admitted possible. Yet stranger
things had happened, and stranger still were destined to happen, and the
first step in the drama was taken within the fortnight of this chance
meeting at Gila Bend.

Sancho, studying the coming stage with Blake's binocular until it dove
into the arroyo five hundred yards to the west, handed that costly
instrument to the silent, dumpy, dark-skinned woman who stood patiently
at his side, and said briefly, "_Dos_" at which she vanished, and after
restoring the glass to its hiding-place in h