Camp Sandy on the Verde was the centre of the storm. Pelham and his cavalry had just been sent to other climes, marching overland to "the Plains." Archer was needed at once in command of the district, and was speedily there established, and thither too went Crook, with Bright to write his orders and despatches, with Harris and 'Tonio to head the scouts. Thither presently went Lilian and her mother. The post was large, the garrison ample. There was active service that their own white-haired general welcomed eagerly, for Crook meant to the full that his loyal old friend and supporter should have all the credit that the campaign might bring him. But campaigns conducted under daily telegraphic promptings from distant superiors were not the brisk and independent matters of a few years back. There were too many advisers within easy, if expensive, reaching distance--too many "Friends of the Indian," and far too few of the soldier, close in touch at court. Crook himself was looking vexed and worried. It is so hard to serve God and Mammon, to grapple with the foemen at the front, the Press and the Pulpit at the rear. At the very moment when he had the "hostiles" hemmed between converging columns and sure of capture, his hand was held by orders from the East. At the very moment when the warriors at the reservation should have been watched and guarded against exhorters from without, the latter got within, and a powerful band stampeded up the Red Rock country and were gone. The news reached Archer toward eleven, one winter's night, and at dawn he, in person, with Harris and 'Tonio and twenty scouts and barely thirty mounted men, was climbing the rugged trail from the head of the Beaver in pursuit, leaving Bella and Lilian, brave, silent, yet tearful, at the post. It was nothing new, this going forth of veteran division and brigade commanders of the war days, with a handful of soldiery, to cope with a band of savages on their chosen ground. Barely two years before the Modocs had asked for a talk with the general commanding and killed him. Only the year previous the Cheyennes lured out a lieutenant-colonel, with but a lieutenant's command, and picked him off. And so, two nights later, there was weeping at old Sandy, for a runner was in long hours after sundown with the tidings that there had been a sharp and sudden skirmish among the rocks, that brave old Archer had been the first to fall, and that 'Tonio had been desperately wounded in the effort to save the veteran's life.