Loring was slowly reddening. He more than half believed that Burleigh had heard the story set afloat by the gossips in San Francisco, and was trying to draw him out. His tone, therefore, was cold and his answer brief. "They were there, but I never saw them. Pardon me, major, your rifle is slipping," and leaning forward the Engineer straightened up the endangered weapon and braced it with his foot. "A dreary landscape this," he added, glancing out at the barren stretches of rolling prairie extending to the horizon. "Very. All like this till you get over towards the mountains, then it's fine. But, isn't it really believed out there that Nevins is dead? What became of his wife?" "She went back to New Orleans, I was told. If Nevins isn't dead, he at least hadn't been heard of up to the time I left." And several times again that long afternoon did Burleigh return to the charge and speak of Nevins, and more than once during the busy days that followed, but by the time they started on their return he had probably concluded that Loring really knew no more about him, and once or twice when Blake and his love affairs were mentioned Loring seemed unwilling to hear. Stone pondered over it not a little before they got to Reno on the back track, and there it was that Burleigh had demanded to be sent right on to Frayne, despite fatigue, for something had come to him in this mail that filled him with dismay, as the major commanding told them a dozen times over. Moreover, Mr. Omaha Stone became gradually convinced that Loring was in partial possession of the secret of Burleigh's stampede. Unless Stone was utterly in error, Loring had seen somewhere before the handwriting of the superscription of the envelope Burleigh had dropped in his nerveless collapse. But Stone might as well have cross-questioned the sphinx. Loring would admit nothing. Yet it was of this very matter the Engineer was thinking one soft still evening soon after his return to department headquarters. His boxes had just arrived. He had found a fairly comfortable room away from the turbulent section of the new and bustling town, and equally distant from the domicile of Stone and his particular set. Loring never gambled and took little interest in cards. He was still "taking his rations" at the hotel, but much disliked it, and was seriously thinking of seeking board in some private family. The barracks were too far out, and the roads deep in mud, or he would have lived and "messed" out there. The few boarding houses were crowded, and with an uncongenial lot as a rule. Private families that took two or three table boarders were very few, but some one suggested his going to see the rector of the new parish, himself a recent arrival.