“Come nearer to the light!” ordered the lieutenant, leading the way to the fire from whose glare Brinton had been edging away.
While the supposed deserter was under interrogation by their officer, the two men who had held him had released their grasp on his feeble arms. Now, as the lieutenant moved away, Brinton turned and bolted.
He made for the steep gulch-side down which he had just rolled. But before he could take a half-dozen tottering steps the cavalrymen were upon him.
They dragged him back to the fire, yanking him roughly from side to side as though shaking a naughty child. Part of his torn clothing came away in their grasp.
Brinton swayed dizzily and unresistingly at every haul and jerk.
“Tie him up!” snapped the officer. “I’ll talk to him in the morning.”
Brinton was thrown down, and his legs and arms were trussed with leather bearing reins whose knots cut deeply into the chafed skin of wrists and ankles. Then he was rolled to one side and left there while the troopers gathered around the now roasted kid.
Even in his stark misery, the victim’s military training disgusted him with the needless cruelty of his treatment and the carelessness wherewith his captors were maintaining their camp.
In the darkness he lay, helpless, sore in every joint and tortured by thirst. But for the time his bodily agony was as nothing to him by comparison with the anguish wherewith his present plight filled his mind.
He foresaw that he would be carried to the regimental headquarters of this scouting party. Probably to General Taylor’s own headquarters, or possibly even to those of General Scott.