"None have been out," said Hay, stoutly, "unless they've gone within the hour. I never let them have the keys, you know, over night. Pete brought them to me at eight last evening and got 'em at six this morning, the usual time." "Where does he get them--without waking you?" asked Webb. "They hang behind the door in my sleeping room. Pete gets them when he takes my boots to black at six o'clock." "Come over to the stables," said the commanding officer, and, wondering, Hay followed. They found the two hostlers busily at work grooming. In his box stall, bright as a button, was "Harney," Hay's famous runner, his coat smooth as satin. Hay went rapidly from stall to stall. Of the six saddlers owned by him not one gave the faintest sign of having been used over night, but Webb, riding through the gangway, noted that "Crapaud," the French halfbreed grooming in the third stall, never lifted his head. Whatever evidence of night riding that might earlier have existed had been deftly groomed away. The trader had seen suspicion in the soldier's eye, and so stood forth, triumphant:-- "No, Major Webb," said he, in loud, confident, oracular tone, "no horse of mine ever gets out without my knowing it, and never at night unless you or I so order it." "No?" queried the major, placidly. "Then how do you account for--this?" Among the fresh hoof prints in the yielding sand, with which the police party had been filling the ruts of the outer roadway, was one never made by government horse or mule. In half a dozen places within a dozen rods, plain as a pikestaff, was the print of a bar shoe, worn on the off fore foot of just one quadruped at the post--Hay's swift running "General Harney." CHAPTER V A GRAVE DISCOVERY