A Call For Help

That night the wire across the mountains to Prescott was long alive
with news, and there was little rest for operator, adjutant, or
commanding officer at Sandy. Colonel Byrne, it seems, had lost
telegraphic touch with his chief, who, quitting Camp McDowell, had
personally taken the field somewhere over in the Tonto Basin beyond
the Matitzal Range, and Byrne had the cares of a continent on his
hands. Three of the five commands out in the field had had sharp
encounters with the foe. Official business itself was sufficiently
engrossing, but there were other matters assuming grave proportions.

Mrs. Plume had developed a feverish anxiety to hie on to the Pacific
and out of Arizona just at a time when, as her husband had to tell
her, it was impossible for him, and impolitic for her, to go. Matters
at Sandy, he explained, were in tangled shape. Mullins partially
restored, but still, as Plume assured her, utterly out of his head,
had declared that his assailants were women; and other witnesses,
Plume would not give names, had positively asserted that Elise had
been seen along the sentry post just about the time the stabbing
occurred. Everything now, said he, must depend on Captain Wren, who
was known to have seen and spoken to Elise, and who could probably
testify that she returned to their roof before the tragic affair of
the night. But Wren was now away up in the mountains beyond Snow Lake
and might be going far over through Sunset Pass to the Colorado
Chiquito. Meantime he, Plume, was responsible for Elise, in duty bound
to keep her there to face any accuser. In her nervous, semi-hysterical
state the wife could not well be told how much she, too, was involved.
It was not necessary. She knew--all Fort Whipple, as Prescott's
military post was called, knew all about the fire that had destroyed
the "beetle shop" and Blakely's belongings. Elise, in wild excitement,
had rushed to her mistress with that news and the further information
that Downs was gone and could not be found. This latter fact, indeed,
they learned before Plume ever heard of it--and made no mention of it
in his presence.