Then came sudden silence, as springing to the sandy ground, the singer reached the Wrens' veranda and saw the dim form of Mr. Blakely, standing silently confronting a still dimmer form, faintly visible at the side window against the soft, tempered light of the hanging lamp in the hall. "Who was the creature?" I repeat, were the strange words, in Miss Wren's most telling tone, that brought Kate Sanders to a halt, startled, silent. Then Blakely answered: "Some day I shall tell Miss Angela, madam, but never--you. Good-night." CHAPTER XV A CALL FOR HELP That night the wire across the mountains to Prescott was long alive with news, and there was little rest for operator, adjutant, or commanding officer at Sandy. Colonel Byrne, it seems, had lost telegraphic touch with his chief, who, quitting Camp McDowell, had personally taken the field somewhere over in the Tonto Basin beyond the Matitzal Range, and Byrne had the cares of a continent on his hands. Three of the five commands out in the field had had sharp encounters with the foe. Official business itself was sufficiently engrossing, but there were other matters assuming grave proportions. Mrs. Plume had developed a feverish anxiety to hie on to the Pacific and out of Arizona just at a time when, as her husband had to tell her, it was impossible for him, and impolitic for her, to go. Matters at Sandy, he explained, were in tangled shape. Mullins partially restored, but still, as Plume assured her, utterly out of his head, had declared that his assailants were women; and other witnesses, Plume would not give names, had positively asserted that Elise had been seen along the sentry post just about the time the stabbing occurred. Everything now, said he, must depend on Captain Wren, who was known to have seen and spoken to Elise, and who could probably testify that she returned to their roof before the tragic affair of the night. But Wren was now away up in the mountains beyond Snow Lake and might be going far over through Sunset Pass to the Colorado Chiquito. Meantime he, Plume, was responsible for Elise, in duty bound to keep her there to face any accuser. In her nervous, semi-hysterical state the wife could not well be told how much she, too, was involved. It was not necessary. She knew--all Fort Whipple, as Prescott's military post was called, knew all about the fire that had destroyed the "beetle shop" and Blakely's belongings. Elise, in wild excitement, had rushed to her mistress with that news and the further information that Downs was gone and could not be found. This latter fact, indeed, they learned before Plume ever heard of it--and made no mention of it in his presence.