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Sanderson-Spear I was simply overwhelmed with unsolicited advice and undesirable attention. Indeed, it was all I could do to steer a dignified course between that uncompromising Scylla, Blakely's mother, and the compromising Charybdis of my self-elected champions. But I managed it, somehow.
One night she had heard, another night she had dimly seen, a visitor received at Blakely's back door, and that visitor a woman, with a shawl about her head. Norah told her mistress, who very properly bade her never refer to it again to a soul, and very promptly referred to it herself to several souls, one of them Janet Wren.
In five minutes all that was left of Blakely's little homestead was gone up in smoke and fierce, furious heat and flame, but the daring and well-directed effort of the garrison had saved the rest of the line. In ten minutes nothing but a heap of glowing beams and embers, within four crumbling walls of adobe, remained of the "beetle shop."
Bridger, was "all he demanded and more than he deserved." To think that the very room so recently sacred to the son and heir should be transformed into what that irate little woman called a "beetle shop"! It was one of Mr. Blakely's unpardonable sins in the eyes of the sex that he found so much to interest him in a pursuit that neither interested nor included them.
Then he took himself back to the hospital. Another topic of talk along the line was Blakely's watch and its strange recovery, and many were the efforts to learn what Blakely himself had to say about it.
It was Blakely's way. And that was the last heard of the Bugologist for as much as a week. Meantime there was a painful situation at Fort Whipple, away up in "the hills." Major Plume, eager on his wife's account to get her to the seashore "Monterey or Santa Barbara," said the sapient medical director and ceaselessly importuned by her and viciously nagged by Elise, found himself bound to the spot.
Blakely's quarters, was it not strange that he had taken no pains to prevent a recurrence of so compromising an excursion, for strange stories were afloat.
It began to be whispered about the post that Wren and his luckless companions might never be found at all. Kate Sanders had ceased her song. She was now with Angela day and night. One hope, a vague one, remained beside that of hearing from the baker's dozen that rode on Blakely's trail.
Darkness reigned at Wren's and Graham's, despite the fact that the lords of these manors were still abroad, both at the bedside of Trooper Mullins. A dozen people were gathered by this time at Sanders'. All the other verandas, except Blakely's with its solitary watcher, seemed deserted.
One arrow at least had gone swift and true, one shaft that, launched, perhaps, two seconds too soon for entire success, had barely anticipated the leader's signal and spoiled the scheme of bagging all the game. Blakely's dive to save his fallen comrade had just saved his own head, for rock chips and spattering lead flew on every side, scratching, but not seriously wounding him.
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