Miners, prospectors, and ranchmen were few in numbers,
but, far and wide they knew the captain's bonny daughter, and, like
the men of her father's troop, would have risked their lives to do her
a service. Their aversions as to Sandy were centered in the other sex.
Aunt Janet, therefore, had some reason for doubting the report of Mrs.
Bridger. It was so unlike Angela to be so very late returning,
although, now that Mrs. Bridger had mentioned it, she, too, remembered
hearing the rapid thud of Punch's galloping hoofs homeward bound, as
was she, at 5.45. Yet, barely five minutes thereafter, Angela, who
usually spent half an hour splashing in her tub, appeared full
panoplied, apparently, at the head of the stairs upon her aunt's
arrival, and was even now somewhere down the row, hobnobbing with Kate
Sanders. That Lieutenant Blakely should have missed retreat roll-call
was in itself no very serious matter. "Slept through at his quarters,
perhaps," said Plume. "He'll turn up in time for dinner." In fine the
major's indifference struck the captain as an evidence of official
weakness, reprehensible in a commander charged with the discipline of
a force on hostile soil. What Wren intended was that Plume should be
impressed by his formal word and manner, and direct the adjutant to
look up the derelict instanter.
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