A new road to Silver Hill, albeit roundabout, had become a necessity. The old well-worn beeline through by way of the ford had become impracticable for women and children and self-respecting people in general. It was skirted for some two hundred yards by tenements and tenants not easily described in these pages. The colonel had been jeered at by painted sirens at upper windows. Priscilla Sanford, starting one morning to town, turned crimson at the shrill acclaim of the scarlet sisterhood, two of whom had kissed their hands to her. Stone, when he heard of it, would have leveled the shack with the ground, but the mournful plight of his predecessor, condemned for not preventing what Stone would almost precipitate, gave him timely pause. Sandy might have sallied forth and shot somebody not feminine, but Sandy was still in arrest. The paymaster had come and gone. So had most of the money; so, worse luck, after two days of salooning, had gone no less than fifty of the garrison. In nearly two years Minneconjou had not had as many desertions as resulted from those two days.
But, sorrowful to relate, among the first to go and the last to be heard from were two of Priscilla's trusties--gone no man could say whither--and in addition to this catastrophe something had strangely, surely gone amiss with her paragon, Blenke--Blenke the scholarly, Blenke the writer and linguist--and Priscilla's world was reeling under her well-shod feet.
To begin with, how came Blenke, the impeccable, the would-be candidate for transfer to the cavalry and aspirant for commission, to be sojourning even for an hour at so disreputable a spot as Skidmore's? Blenke, it will be remembered, had a forty-eight hour pass to enable him to visit Rapid City on important personal business. Blenke was supposed to have taken the westbound Flyer on Monday--the Flyer that flew five hours late. Blenke was supposed to be spending all Tuesday, or most of it, in the heart of the Hills. Blenke was not due at the post until the afternoon of Wednesday, and was not expected to leave Rapid City until Wednesday morning; yet here he was, of all places in the world, at that hog ranch on Tuesday night. Stone sent a patrol over at 1 A. M. with a spare horse and invitation for Private Blenke to return at once and account for his eccentric orbit at office hours in the morning. The patrol trotted over, nothing loath, but Blenke had disappeared. "Gone to town for a doctor," said the abandoned few still groping about the smoldering ruins. So the patrol returned without him. It was represented that Blenke had scorched his face, singed off his eyebrows and burned his hands in his gallant essay to save the women. But this was all hearsay evidence.