his pocket and handed it to Goodell.

He glanced quickly through it, then swept the rest of us with a
quizzical smile. "By Jove! you must have a pull with the old man, Mac,"
he said to MacRae. "I suppose you know what's in this epistle?"

"Partly." Mac answered as though it were no particular concern of his.

"I'm to turn Hicks and Gregory over to you," he read the note again to
be sure of his words, "see that you get a week's supply of grub here,
and then leave you to your own devices. What's the excitement, now?
Piegans on the war-path? Bull-train missing, or whisky-runners getting
too fresh, or what? My word, the major has certainly established a
precedent; you're the first man I've known that got thirty days in clink
and didn't have to serve it to the last, least minute. How the deuce did
you manage it? Put me on, like a good fellow--I might want to get a
sentence suspended some day. Any of us are liable to get it, y'know."
Goodell's tone was full of gentle raillery.

"The high and mighty sent me out to lead a forlorn hope," Mac dryly
responded. "Does that look like a suspended sentence?" He turned his arm
so that we could see the ripped stitching where his sergeant's stripes
had been cut away.

"Tough--but most of us have been there, one time or another," Goodell
observed sympathetically; and with that the subject rested.

Though I was burning to know things, we hadn't the least chance to talk
that evening. Nine lusty-lunged adults in that one room prohibited
confidential speech. Not till next morning, when we rode away from Pend