Of course there was a rush to the outlying ranch, whose few remaining occupants grinned exasperatingly and shrugged their shoulders, but gave no information. Of course a courier was sent scurrying away on the trail of the cavalry, but he came back sore-footed at night, relieved of his horse, arms and equipments, and thanking God for his life. Of course another courier was started by night to make the perilous ride to the Salado and order the instant return of at least a platoon, but nothing more was heard of him for a week, and it was nearly five days before these desert-bound exiles of Camp Cooke got another atom of reliable news from Sancho's, and meantime wondrous other things had happened. It did not take long to determine the means by which Nevins had succeeded in getting away. There was little, indeed, to prevent his doing so if he saw fit to go, for, unless sentries were posted on all four sides of his tent, he might crawl off in the darkness unobserved. The sentry on No. 4 had received orders merely to summon the corporal and report to him if the officer ventured to leave his tent, and as No. 4 was a post over a hundred yards in length, and the sentry responsible for all of it, there was no right or reason in demanding of him that he should give his undivided attention to what might be going on close to the corral. In fact, by removing Nevins from the inner quadrangle of the camp and placing him outside the walls, Major Starke had made it all the easier for him to skip a second time if he saw fit to do so; but Starke reasoned that Nevins still had some hope that congressional influence would save him from dismissal, and therefore would not peril his chances by a second flight. Starke did not know that Nevins was honest at least in one statement, that he expected dismissal. His fate was sealed, his pay was confiscated to square shortages. There was actually nothing to be gained by staying at Cooke in virtual confinement, perhaps eight or ten weeks, until his case could be decided in Washington and the orders received back in Arizona. It actually simplified matters in many ways for Nevins to go. Somebody, for instance, would have to pay the cost of his subsistence all that time at Cooke. Thrice a day his meals were sent to him from the little bachelors' mess, already sorely taxed for the "entertainment" of the members of the court, and the four poor fellows who constituted that frontier club had been only too glad when its members from other stations insisted that they should pay their share of the long three weeks' burden on the culinary department. But Nevins now was penniless, so he said, and why should impecunious infantry subalterns support in idleness a disgraced and virtually dismissed officer? Yet that is precisely what the government compelled them to do--or starve him. Thinking it all over during the day, Major Starke concluded that at least Camp Cooke had something to be thankful for, and