And then came a cry from within the humble doorway, where merciful hands were ministering to the suffering savage, and Plume started at the sound and glared at Byrne, and men stood hushed and startled and amazed, for the voice was that of Norah and the words were strange indeed: "Fur the love of hivin, look what she had in her girdle! Shure it's Leese's own scarf, I tell ye--the Frenchwoman at the major's!" And Byrne thought it high time to enter and take possession. CHAPTER XVIII A STRANGER GOING At the first faint flush of dawn the little train of pack mules, with the rations for the beleaguered command at Sunset Pass, was started on its stony path. Once out of the valley of the Beaver it must clamber over range after range and stumble through deep and tortuous canons. A road there was--the old trail by Snow Lake, thence through the famous Pass and the Sunset crossing of the Colorado Chiquito to old Fort Wingate. It wormed its way out of the valley of the broader stream some miles further to the north and in face of the Red Rock country to the northeast, but it had not been traveled in safety for a year. Both Byrne and Plume believed it beset with peril, watched from ambush by invisible foes who could be relied upon to lurk in hiding until the train was within easy range, then, with sudden volley, to pick off the officers and prominent sergeants and, in the inevitable confusion, aided by their goatlike agility, to make good their escape. Thirty sturdy soldiers of the infantry under a veteran captain marched as escort, with Plume's orders to push through to the relief of Sergeant Brewster's command, and to send back Indian runners with full account of the situation. The relief of Wren's company accomplished, the next thing was to be a search for Wren himself, then a determined effort to find Blakely, and all the time to keep a lookout for Sanders's troop that must be somewhere north of Chevlon's Fork, as well as for the two or three little columns that should be breaking their way through the unblazed wilderness, under the personal direction of the general himself. Captain Stout and his party were out of sight up the Beaver before the red eye of the morning came peering over the jagged heights to the east, and looking in upon a garrison whose eyes were equally red and bleary through lack of sleep--a garrison worn and haggard through anxiety and distress gravely augmented by the events of the night. All Sandy had been up and astir within five minutes after Norah Shaughnessy's startling cry, and all Sandy asked with bated breath the same question: How on earth happened it that this wounded waif of the Apaches, this unknown Indian girl, dropped senseless at their doorway in the dead hours of the night, should have in her possession the very scarf worn by Mrs. Plume's nurse-companion, the Frenchwoman Elise, as she came forth with her mistress to drive away from Sandy, as was her hope, forever.