"We—didn't get any closer look," answered Devers, in apparent surprise. "You ordered me to bury my dead and then go on. We had just buried them when your next orders reached us—to join you at once. These, of course, superseded the others."
There was profound silence. The major stood by the camp-fire, his hands clasped behind his back, looking full in the face of the troop commander, all the old sayings that he had ever heard with regard to Devers crowding upon him now. When promoted to the regiment only just in time to join it on this hard campaign, and when assigned to the command of this battalion in which Devers was senior captain, the colonel himself had said, "Be on your guard with Devers. He's the trickiest of subordinates." Old Riggs, lieutenant-colonel commanding the Twelfth, had remarked, "So Devers is in your battalion, is he? Well, when you want him to do anything you stand over him while he's at it, or else do it yourself." An intimate friend and classmate whom he had not seen for years had given the new major this significant pointer: "There's a man who could be one of the most valuable officers in service if he devoted to obeying an order one-tenth the energy he throws into finding a way of avoiding it." Yet, in the honesty and earnestness of his own character, Warren was slow to suspect a fellow-soldier of disloyalty. The campaign had gone on without special friction, though he remembered that he had heard Hastings swearing sotto voce more than once at Devers's cantankerous ways, and he recalled now two or three incidents—little things—in which Devers claimed to have misunderstood instructions; but this was so glaring, so gross a departure from both the spirit and letter of the orders he had given when face to face with the captain, that for a moment or two he was at a loss what to say. He was indignant, too, but it was a rule of his to control his temper and never speak to a subordinate in wrath. He had broken it that morning and was sorry; so when at last he trusted himself to speak, he said—
"It must have been more than six hours ago that I told you to bury those two men and then go on. Surely, captain, you could not have taken all this time."
"It was nearly five o'clock, sir, when you ordered me to bury my dead as well as I could, and only a little after eight when we finished it; meantime, we had to march seven or eight miles before we could find a place where we could bury them at all well."
"Why, I meant you to bury them right then and there, just where you were, not go marching in search of a place."
"But we couldn't bury them there; major, I had no tools to dig graves in a hard prairie——"
"Then you mean that you failed to go on after Davies—failed to support him?—that you haven't seen him since I gave those orders? My heaven, Captain Devers! I told you never to let him out of your sight."
"Oh, he wasn't out of sight until darkness—that is, he was frequently in sight. I not only saw, but communicated with him until that time."
"Thank God for that, at least! If he wasn't attacked before dark he's probably safe—Indians are cowards in the dark. He ought to be coming along presently, I suppose. He couldn't have been more than a mile or so east of you."
But to this observation, half query, half self-consolation, Captain Devers made no verbal response. He bowed his head as he took a long swig at his can of coffee, and then a big bite into a ham sandwich of portentous size. The major and one or two others considered it a nod of assent, and ascribed to ravenous hunger the captain's failure to respond by word of mouth. Partially relieved of his anxiety on Davies's account and unwilling to spoil a gentleman's first supper after such long deprivation, the battalion commander turned away, saying—
"Well, eat and drink till you're comforted, anyhow, captain, then we can hear all about it. I'll take a smoke meantime." Truman and Hastings joined him at a fallen Cottonwood a few yards away, and the three puffed their pipes and thanked Providence for the mercies that had come with the close of the day. And then the officer of the guard appeared to ask a question about the posting of the pickets, and, leaving the others with Devers, the major strode off with the officer through the timber to satisfy himself as to the security of the horses for the night, and when he returned—not having been gone ten minutes—Devers had disappeared.
"I wanted to hear his report," said Warren, "and told him so. I supposed he understood." To which neither of his subordinates made reply. When ten minutes more elapsed and Devers did not come, Hastings, noting the major's impatience, called to the orderly trumpeter sitting at the neighboring fire—
"Raney, go and see if Captain Devers is over with his troop anywhere—the major desires to see him." Raney was gone full ten minutes, and when he returned it was to say that Devers's first sergeant said the captain had given orders that all talk must stop so that the worn-out men could rest, and the captain himself, rolled in his blanket, was already sound asleep.
"Well, I swear!" exclaimed the major. "Didn't you understand me to say I wanted to hear all about his march as soon as he finished supper?"
"I certainly did," replied Captain Truman, with an accent on the I that meant volumes.
"So did I," growled Hastings; but he never could bear Devers, who was persistently distorting or misunderstanding the orders the adjutant was compelled to convey to him.
"Well, let him sleep," said Warren, finally. "I suppose he's tired out, and very probably Davies will speedily come in."
But midnight came and no Davies. Out on the prairie—now dimly lighted by the rays of the waning moon—the pickets at the east had descried no moving objects. Every now and then the yelp of a coyote on one side of camp would be echoed far over at the other. These, with an occasional paw or snort from the side-lined herd, and the murmuring rush of the river over its gravelly bed, were the only sounds that drifted to the night-watchers from the sleeping bivouac. Towards one o'clock the sergeant of the guard came out to take a peep. Later, about two, Lieutenant Sanders, officer of the guard, a plucky little chap of whom the men were especially fond, made his way around the chain of posts and stayed some time peering with his glass over the dim vista of prairie to the eastward.
"I declare I thought I saw something moving out there," he muttered, after long study. "Are you sure you've seen or heard nothing?" he inquired of the silent sentry.
"Not a thing, lieutenant, beyond coyotes or Indian signals, I can't tell which. They keep at respectful distance, whatever they are."
"Well, even if Mr. Davies's horses were too used up to come, the couriers ought to have got back long ago. Tell them to find me as soon as they come in," said he, and went back to his saddle pillow in the heart of the grove. At its edge a solitary figure was standing gazing out into the night.
"That you, Sanders?" hailed a voice in low tone.
"Yes," answered the lieutenant, shortly, for he recognized Devers and he didn't like him.
"Isn't Davies in yet?"
"No, and it's two o'clock."
"Oh, he'll turn up all right," said the captain, in airy confidence. "It was all absurd sending him out to scout a smoke—as if we hadn't seen and smelled smoke enough this summer to last a lifetime. He's probably camped down the valley somewhere, and they're all waiting for morning. I'm not worrying about him."
"No, I judge not," muttered Sanders to himself, as he trudged on in the dark. "You're simply keeping awake for the fun of the thing." But even Devers got to sleep at last, and when he woke it was with a sudden start, with broad daylight streaming in his eyes, and stir and bustle and low-toned orders and rapid movement among the men, and Hastings was stirring him up with insubordinate boot and speaking in tones suggestive of neither respect nor esteem.
"Come, tumble up, captain; we're all wanted; Davies has been cut off and massacred."
Already his orderly had led up the captain's horse, pricking his ears and sniffing excitedly around him, and with trembling hands the young German was dragging out from among the blankets the captain's saddle, the hot tears falling as he stooped. His own brother was of Davies's party. Devers was on his feet in an instant, dismayed, and, buckling on his revolver, he went striding through the trees to where Warren stood, pale and distressed, questioning a haggard trooper—one