Larrabee let out a breath he had not known he was holding.
"Tell him who I am. Then ask him, did Keogh send a message numbered four to Fort Custer this afternoon, regarding the Ashdown train. Ask him to look at his sent book. Don't tell him what was in it."
The key chattered under Ganz's hand. There was a long silence. A horse stamped. Then the cricket in the sky began again, and went on for a long time, and Ganz, hanging in his belt with his ear down near the little sounder, read it out slowly, word by word, in a voice that grew stranger as he went.
"He says. Keogh number four to Custer today was at eleven fifty, routine, return of ordnance stores, Captain Bayne. Number five, twelve ten, personal. Number six, twelve twenty, personal. Number seven, twelve forty, as follows, I repeat." Ganz stopped. "Sir, he's repeating seven."
"Read it."
"Commanding Officer Fort Custer. District commander directs that the train of Ashdown and Company, contractors, now at your post with goods for Crow Agency, be held at your post and not permitted to leave until examined by Inspector Thacker of the Indian Office, who will arrive at your post on the seventeenth. You will place a guard over the train. Acknowledge. By command." Ganz paused, listening. "He says, your office acknowledged number seven at twelve fifty-two, sir. Then he says he sent Custer two more after that, both routine, and they went out at two and at three-fifteen and he got no acknowledgment, and then the line went dead. He says, what is this about. He says there's no Sioux anywhere south of the Missouri that he's heard of. He says what Sioux."
For a while Larrabee did not say anything. He thought of the stub of a page in the gutter of a book, and of Kessel's round hand copying out a message that no one had sent, numbered four, so that the numbers would come out right, because a clever man knew the numbers were the first thing anybody would check. He thought of a train that had to be well out on the road, and burning, before the seventeenth, when a man from the Indian Office would come with a flour trier of his own.
"Tell him," he said. "Message for the district adjutant, from Larrabee at the line break, eleven miles north of Custer. Order number four received at Custer today not sent by Keogh. Believe it false. Believe your number seven suppressed at Custer office. Line deliberately cut. Ashdown train out tonight under my escort, contrary to your seven. Have reason to believe contractor intends destruction of the train tonight and false report of Indian depredation. Am returning to the train. Request Ashdown be detained at Miles City, left Custer by noon stage. Request Sergeant Kessel, Signal Corps, Custer office, be relieved and held." He stopped. "That's all. Send it."