"Who could have done it, then?" asked Flint. It was inconceivable to Waller's mind that any one of the soldiery could have been tempted to such perfidy for an Indian's sake. There was not at the moment an Indian scout or soldier at the post, or an Indian warrior, not a prisoner, unaccounted for. There had been halfbreeds hanging about the store prior to the final escapade of Pete and Crapaud, but these had realized their unpopularity after the battle on the Elk, and had departed for other climes. Crapaud was still under guard. Pete was still at large, perchance, with Stabber's braves. There was not another man about the trader's place whom Flint or others could suspect. Yet the sergeant of the guard, searching cautiously with his lantern about the post of Number Six, had come upon some suggestive signs. The snow was trampled and bloody about the place where the soldier fell, and there were here and there the tracks of moccasined feet,--those of a young woman or child going at speed toward the hospital, running, probably, and followed close by a moccasined man. Then those of the man, alone, went sprinting down the bluff southeastward over the flats some distance south of the Foster's doorway and up the opposite bluff, to a point where four ponies, shoeless, had been huddled for as much, perhaps, as half an hour. Then all four had come scampering down close together into the space below the hospital, not fifty yards from where the sentry fell, and the moccasined feet of a man and woman had scurried down the bluff from the hospital window, to meet them west of Foster's shanty. Then there had been confusion,--trouble of some kind: One pony, pursued a short distance, had broken away; the others had gone pounding out southeastward up the slope and out over the uplands, then down again, in wide sweep, through the valley of the little rivulet and along the low bench southwest of the fort, crossing the Rock Springs road and striking, further on, diagonally, the Rawlins trail, where Crabb and his fellows had found it and followed. But all this took hours of time, and meanwhile, only half revived, Nanette had been gently, pityingly borne away to a sorrowing woman's home, for at last it was found, through the thick and lustrous hair, that she, too, had been struck a harsh and cruel blow; that one reason, probably, why she had been able to oppose no stouter resistance to so slender a girl as Esther Dade was that she was already half dazed through the stroke of some blunt, heavy weapon, wielded probably by him she was risking all to save.