And so, one with another, they kept the sacred fire alight. As for that matter, the aforesaid Miss Puss knew how her men valued the difficulties of approach, which was why she scattered them. She proposed to take them in detail. Men do not weaken readily before each other, but alone they are helpless creatures, when the woman understands herself. She can then sew them up, tag them, and put them away on various shelves, and rely on them to stay there; but it requires management, of course. "I say, Miss Searles, those fellows will set spring guns and bear traps for me to-night; they will never forgive me." "Oh, well, Mr. Shockley, to be serious, I don't care. Do you suppose a wolf will be found? I am so bored." Which remark caused the eminent Lieutenant to open his mouth very wide in imitation of a laugh, divested of all mirth. "Miss Katherine Searles," he said, in mock majesty, "I shall do myself the honor to crawl into the first badger-hole we come to and stay there until you dig me out." "Don't be absurd; you know I always bury my dead. Mr. Butler, do you expect we shall find a wolf? Ah, there is that King Charles cavalier, Mr. Ermine--for all the world as though he had stepped from an old frame. I do think he is lovely." "Oh, bother that yellow Indian; he is such a nuisance," jerked Butler. "Why do you say that? I find him perfectly new; he never bores me, and he stood between me and that enraged savage." "A regular play. I do not doubt he arranged it beforehand. However, it was well thought out--downright dramatic, except that the Indian ought to have killed him." "Oh, would you have arranged it that way if you had been playwright?" "Yes," replied the bilious lover. Shaking her bridle rein, she cried, "Come, Mr. Shockley, let us ride to Ermine; at least you will admire him." Shockley enjoyed the death stroke which she had administered to Butler, but saying to himself as he thought of Ermine, "D---- the curly boy," and followed his charming and difficult quarry. He alone had ridden true. The independent and close-lipped scout was riding outside the group. He never grew accustomed to the heavy columns, and did not talk on the march--a common habit of desert wanderers. But his eye covered everything. Not a buckle or a horse-hair or the turn of a leg escaped him, and you may be sure Miss Katherine Searles was detailed in his picture. He had beheld her surrounded by the young officers until he began to hate the whole United States army. Then he saw her dismiss the escort saving only two, and presently she reduced her force to one. As she came toward him, his blood took a pop into his head, which helped mightily to illumine his natural richness of color. She was really coming to him. He wished it, he wanted it, as badly as a man dying of thirst wants water, and yet a whole volley of bullets would not disturb him as her coming did. "Good morning, Mr. Ermine; you, too, are out after wolves, I see," sang Katherine, cheerily.