A Wounded Name. Charles King

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СКАЧАТЬ their carbines across their shoulders and dismounting as they reached the old familiar spot, and Loring cast one look thither before he spoke.

      "Who were the two men who followed me?" he calmly asked, and his eyes, though red-rimmed and inflamed by the dust of the desert, looked straight into the dark face of the aggrieved Sancho.

      "Surely I know not, Señor Teniente"—he had dropped the "capitan" as too transparent flattery.

      "Don't lie, Sancho. There's ten more dollars," and Loring tossed an eagle into the ready palm. "That's thirty, and I shall want that horse again in the morning."

      "To-morrow, señor! Why, he will not be fit to go."

      But to this observation Mr. Loring made no reply. Straight from Sancho's side he walked down the corral, halted behind two rangy, hard-looking steeds that showed still the effects of recent severe usage, and these he studied coolly and thoroughly a few minutes, while peering from two narrow slits in the ranch wall between the windows two sun-tanned frontiersmen as closely studied him. With these latter, peeping from the shaded window, was "the wife of my brother," exchanging with them comments in low, guarded tones. In the adjoining room, a bedroom, a girl of perhaps sixteen, slender, graceful and dark-eyed, peeped in the opposite direction, over toward the willows where Blake's men were now unsaddling—whence presently, with giant strides came Blake himself, stalking over the sand. Sancho, despite his anxious scrutiny of Loring's silent movements, saw the coming officer and prepared his countenance for smiles. But with a face set and forbidding Blake went sternly by, taking no notice of the proprietor, and made directly for the little group now muttering at the dining-room door. The loungers, some of whom had deserted the supper-table for a sight of the captives and the cavalcade, sidled right and left as though to avoid his eye, for into each face, most of them hang-dog visages, he gazed sharply as though in search of some one, yet never faltered in his stride. Back from her barred window shrank the young girl as the tall soldier came within a dozen paces. To one side or another, smoke inhaling, and striving to look unconcerned, edged the swarthy constituents of the group, and with never a word to one of them, straight through their midst and the doorway beyond went Blake, catching the three peepers, "the wife of my brother" and the brace of palpable cutthroats at their loopholes. So unexpected was the move that it had not even occurred to one of the creatures at the door to mutter a word of warning. So engrossed were the three in their scrutiny that Blake's entrance was unheard. True, he had discarded boots and spurs, and his feet were encased in soft Apache moccasins. The floor, too, was earthen, but he had made no effort at stealth, and in the gloom and shadow of the low-roofed room it was for a moment difficult to distinguish the human figures against the opposite wall. It was his ear that first gave warning, for low, yet distinct, he heard the words:

      "If he'd taken any horse but that roan—or knew less about riding—we'd 'a caught him twenty miles out, and they'd never 'a caught Nevins. Dash, dash the whole dashed blue-bellied outfit, and be dash, dash, dashed to their quadruple dashed souls!" and the concentrated spite and hatred of the speaker hissed in every syllable.

      "'Taint a question of what we couldn't do. What can we do? He's got money and plenty of it cached somewhere about the old camp, and five hundred dollars of it's mine. That's what I want. I don't care a damn what they do with him so long as they don't send him to prison where we can't nail him. That's what that bloody court will do though, an' I know it."

      "How d'ye know?" fiercely demanded the other; "'nless you've been in the army—which you swear you haven't. Where'd you desert from? Come, own up now," and, turning for an instant from his peephole, the speaker became suddenly aware of the silent form of Lieutenant Blake.

      "None of your dashed business," began the other, when a harsh "Shut up!" brought him around in amaze and he, too, confronted the dark figure standing like a sign post between them and the violet light beyond the open doorway. Instinctively the hands of both men sought their pistol-butts, but Blake made never a move. The woman, looking around for the cause of the sudden silence, caught sight of the statuesque intruder and, with a low cry, threw her shawl over her head and, bending almost double, with outstretched, groping hands, scurried to where the mission-made blanket hung at the doorway of the bedroom and darted through the aperture like a rabbit to its form, the folds of the heavy wool falling behind her.

      And still the tall lieutenant neither spoke nor moved. His revolver hung at his right hip, his hunting-knife slept in its sheath, but his hands sat jauntily on his thighs. The stern, set look of his clear-cut face had given place to something like a grin of amusement. First at one, then at the other, of the two bewildered worthies he gazed, looking each deliberately from head to foot as they hovered there, both irresolute and disconcerted, one of them visibly trembling. There was a doorway leading into the room in which was set the table for stage passengers of the better class, officers and the few ladies who had ventured to follow their lords into far-away Arizona, or the gente fine, which included Amazons whose money could pay their way pretty much anywhere and was made pretty much anyhow. But that room was empty and the one beyond it, the bar, had only one or two occupants, too far away to see what was going on. There was a doorway and a swinging screen of dirty canvas just beyond the loophole lately occupied by "the wife of my brother," a doorway that gave on the corral, and to each of these each silent "tough" had given a quick, furtive glance, but not a step was taken. How long the strain of the situation might have lasted there is no saying. It was broken by the sudden lifting of that dirty canvas screen, as sudden and perceptible a start on part of each of the confronted men and the quick entrance of the engineer. For another second or two no word was spoken. Loring's eyes were evidently unable at the instant to penetrate the gloom. Then he recognized Blake, then gradually the two men at the wall, and then at last Blake spoke.

      "There are your followers, Loring."

      A moment's careful scrutiny, then a nod of assent was Loring's answer.

      "Now, then, you two," said Blake. "I've suspected you before. Now I more than suspect you. You—the long villain—I warn never to come nosing about our camp again, and you, the shorter, I'll trouble to come into camp forthwith. No, don't draw that pistol unless you want a dozen bullets through you. Half a troop is right here at my back. Your soldier name was Higgins and you're a deserter from Cram's battery, New Orleans."

      For a moment there was a silence, broken only by the hard breathing of the two cornered men, then came a flash, a sharp report, a piercing scream as the lithe Mexican girl sprang forth from behind the blanket and hurled herself on Blake, a panther-like leap of the accused man under cover of the flash and smoke, a thwack like the sound of the bat when it meets a new baseball full in the middle, and Loring's fist had landed full on Higgins' jowl and sent him like a log to the floor.

CHAPTER IV.

       Table of Contents

      The court-martial that met at Camp Cooke in compliance with orders from division headquarters at 'Frisco had, three weeks later, practically finished the case of Brevet-Captain Nevins, and that debonair person, who had appeared before it on the first day, suave, laughing, and almost insolently defiant, had wilted visibly as, day after day, the judge advocate unfolded the mass of evidence against him. All that Nevins thought to be tried for was a charge of misappropriation of public funds and property, and it was his purpose to plead in bar of trial that he had offered to make complete restitution, to replace every missing item, and doubly replace, if need be, every dollar. This, indeed, he had lost no time in doing the moment he was handed over to the post commander, two days after the exciting episode at Sancho's, but he coupled with the offer a condition that all proceedings against him should be dropped, and the veteran major commanding, while expressing entire willingness to receipt for any funds the accused might offer, would promise nothing whatever in return. That Nevins should be charged with desertion СКАЧАТЬ