I could see that this was no newcomer in the world of the out-of-doors, however.  She was turned out in what one might have called workmanlike fashion, although neat and wholly feminine.  Her skirt was short, of good gray cloth, and she wore a rather mannish coat over a blue woolen shirt or blouse.  Her hands were covered with long gauntlets, and her hat was a soft gray felt, tied under the chin with a leather string, while a soft gray veil was knotted carelessly about her neck as kerchief.  Her face for the time was turned from us, but I could see that her hair was dark and heavy, could see, in spite of its loose garb, that her figure was straight, round and slender.  The swift versatility of my soul was upon the point of calling this as fine a figure of young womanhood as I had ever seen.  Now, indeed, the gray desert had blossomed as a rose.

I was about to ask some questions of Belknap, when all at once I saw something which utterly changed my pleasant frame of mind.  The tall figure of a man came from beyond the line of wagons—­a man clad in well-fitting tweeds cut for riding.  His gloves seemed neat, his boots equally neat, his general appearance immaculate as that of the young lady whom he approached.  I imagine it was the same swift male jealousy which affected both Belknap and myself as we saw Gordon Orme!

“Yes, there is your friend, the Englishman,” said Belknap rather bitterly.

“I meet him everywhere,” I answered.  “The thing is simply uncanny.  What is he doing out here?”

“We are taking him out to Laramie with us.  He has letters to Colonel Meriwether, it seems.  Cowles, what do you know about that man?”

“Nothing,” said I, “except that he purports to come from the English Army.”

“I wish that he had stayed in the English Army, and not come bothering about ours.  He’s prowling about every military Post he can get into.”

“With a special reference to Army officers born in the South?” I looked Belknap full in the eye.

“There’s something in that,” he replied.  “I don’t like the look of it.  These are good times for every man to attend to his own business.”

As Orme stood chatting with the young woman, both Belknap and I turned away.  A moment later I ran across my former friend, Mandy McGovern.  In her surprise she stopped chewing tobacco, when her eyes fell on me, but she quickly came to shake me by the hand.

“Well, I dee-clare to gracious!” she began, “if here ain’t the man I met on the boat!  How’d you git away out here ahead of us?  Have you saw airy buffeler?  I’m gettin’ plumb wolfish fer something to shoot at.  Where all you goin’, anyhow?  An’ whut you doin’ out here?”

What I was doing at that precise moment, as I must confess, was taking a half unconscious look once more toward the tail of the ambulance, where Orme and the young woman stood chatting.  But it was at this time that Orme first saw or seemed to see me.  He left the ambulance and came rapidly forward.