4 to study the
dark and distant upheavals in the Red Rock country, where, almost
every night of late, the signal fires of the Apaches were reported.
Not until he was again alone did he realize that he had been almost
frigidly greeted by those who spoke at all. It set him to thinking.
Mrs. Plume was still confined to her room. The major had returned from
Prescott and, despite the fact that the regiment was afield and a
clash with the hostiles imminent, was packing up preparatory to a
move. Books, papers, and pictures were being stored in chests, big and
little, that he had had made for such emergencies. It was evident
that he was expecting orders for change of station or extended leave,
and they who went so far as to question the grave-faced soldier, who
seemed to have grown ten years older in the last ten days, had to be
content with the brief, guarded reply that Mrs. Plume had never been
well since she set foot in Arizona, and even though he returned, she
would not. He was taking her, he said, to San Francisco. Of this
unhappy woman's nocturnal expedition the others seldom spoke now and
only with bated breath. "Sleep-walking, of course!" said everybody, no
matter what everybody might think. But, now that Major Plume knew that
in her sleep his wife had wandered up the row to the very door--the
back door--of Mr.
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