Mrs. Oliver came daily, and spent her time with Marylyn. She did not feel that Dallas needed buoying--Dallas, quiet, self-poised, and staunch. Yet, all the while, the elder girl was growing wan under the strain. For, having given generously of her strength, there was no one from whom, in turn, she might take. And so her thoughts came often to be of the one who had faithfully watched over them, how faithfully, shown by the fact that catastrophe had followed swift upon his leaving. And in her heart she cried out for him. The tragedy on the bend furnished a nine days' wonder for Brannon. But the garrison felt little grief over it. Lancaster had earned their dislike by insults open and veiled, and by his determination to cut his family off from every friendly influence. The enlisted men were even inclined to treat his disappearance facetiously. When they heard about the pole, they declared that in his fright over it, he had fired a shot, cut a finger, broken a crutch--and "lit out." One wag announced that the section-boss was mired in some alkali mud-hole; another, that he had been bitten by a polecat; a third composed some doggerel lines in which Lancaster was described as having gone "over the range." Notwithstanding this, the troopers had deep sympathy for the bereaved girls. Oliver, never too popular, they scored roundly for his treatment of Matthews, and vowed to the latter that he had ample grounds for walking off and leaving the whole "shooting-match." But Matthews gently chided them, reminding them that any moment an interpreter might be badly needed. Furthermore, he said, he would disregard the unfairness shown him, for he knew his duty. Brannon was still asking Who? and Why? and How? in the Lancaster affair when Squaw Charley discovered and showed to Captain Oliver the testimony that had in some way escaped the scout. Under a willow clump on the beach before Shanty Town, was a well-defined mark in the sand, V-shaped, long, and quite deep. It was the mark left by the prow of a boat that had been pulled out of the water and hidden at the river's edge. It was almost certain proof of the route taken, going and coming, by Lancaster's assailant. But no absolute facts were unearthed. As the days slipped by, this cruel one became apparent: the section-boss, with his wild outbursts of anger, his implacable hatreds, his suspicions, and his tantrums of jealousy--was gone. CHAPTER XXVI BACKSLIDING Across the sky, a pale shining ribbon, stretched the Milky Way. The braves in the stockade were watching it, their faces reverently upturned. They sat before their lodges in silent knots of two or three; or stood apart here and there, shrouded in summer sheets of dressed cow skin, and motionless as statues. When they moved, it was to draw heavily upon a pipestone bowl and waft the incense of kinnikinick toward the glimmering strip overhead--the sacred road that leads the Sioux to the Happy Hunting Grounds.