The week was closing, the third of a mournful little series of seven-day happenings, the like of which Almy had never before experienced, and it was hoped might never know again. "The Moon of Many Woes," as later it transpired the Indians had named the night goddess of November, was a thing of the past. A new queen had come, hovering like silvery filament over the black barrier of the Mazatzal in a sky cloudless and glinting with myriad points of fire. The nights were cold and still, the days soft yet brilliant in the blaze of an unshrouded sun. An almost Sabbath-like calm hovered over the valley, for even signal smokes had ceased to blur the horizon. Not a hostile Indian had been heard of since the coming of Freeman's couriers. The brawling gang of "greaser" gamblers had stolen away from the "ghost ranch." Even the ghost himself seemed to walk no more. Something had happened to call the firm of Munoz y Sanchez elsewhere, and Dago, darkly glowering and scowling about the store, where day and night the bookkeeper sat absorbed in accounts and letters, muttered many a _carramba_, and had even been goaded into explosive _carrajo_, because a defrauded soldiery, thirsting for revenge or restitution, persisted in connecting him with these skilled but quite unprincipled experts of the alluring game of monte, whereas Dago hated the sight of Munoz, of whom he stood in dread. But while all men knew the "greasers" had gone, and many wondered why, and none at Almy could tell, there was abundant reason to believe they would soon reappear. Much news had been coming in--news from Crook's column along the Mogollon and the eastward foothills--good news, too, for far and wide the Indians were heeding his Gospel of Peace, which, tersely translated, read: "Come in and be fed. Stay out and be fought," and by scores the mountain warriors, with their queerly assorted families, were flocking to the San Carlos and Apache reservations, and at last there seemed promise of a general burial of the hatchet. At last there was hope, wrote Stannard, that the Bennett boys would be restored. Good news, too, and stacks of mail, had come from Prescott and from far distant homes, but the bit of news that appealed to all but a chosen few at Camp Almy, as by all means the most important and welcome, was "The paymaster's coming!" The paymaster, indeed, after weeks of detention, was scheduled to be at the post by nightfall of the coming Tuesday or Wednesday, and Wednesday would usher in the old-time saturnalia of the south-western frontier, the joy of the laundress, soldier and sutler, the dread of every post and company commander from Her Majesty's dominion to the Mexican line--Pay Day.