“No, sir, the colonel has borrowed them all.”
“Why do you think he’s gone there?”
“Couldn’t come along the road to Whittingham, sir, it’s patrolled.”
There was still a chance. It was ten miles across the country from the colonel’s to Johnny’s and six miles on from Johnny’s to Whittingham. The man divined my thoughts.
“He can’t go fast, sir, he’s wounded in the leg. If he goes home first, as he will, because he doesn’t know his horses are gone, he can’t get here before eleven at the earliest.”
“How was he wounded?” I asked. “Tell me what the colonel did to him, and be short.”
“Yes, sir. The colonel told us Mr. Carr was to be kept at the ranch over night; wasn’t to leave it alive, sir, he said. Well, up to yesterday it was all right and pleasant. Mr. Carr wasn’t very well, and the doses the colonel gave him didn’t seem to make him any better—quite the contrary. But yesterday afternoon he got rampageous, would go, anyhow, ill or well! So he got up and dressed. We’d taken all his weapons from him, sir, and when he came down dressed, and asked for his horse, we told him he couldn’t go. Well, he just said, Get out of the light, I tell you,’ and began walking toward the hall door. I don’t mind saying we were rather put about, sir. We didn’t care to shoot him as he stood, and it’s my belief we’d have let him pass; but just as he was going out, in comes the colonel. ‘Hallo! what’s this, Johnny?’ says he. ‘You’ve got some damned scheme on,’ said Mr. Carr. ‘I believe you’ve been drugging me. Out of the way, McGregor, or I’ll brain you.’ ‘Where are you going?’ says the colonel. To Whittingham, to the President’s,’ said he. ‘Not to-day,’ says the colonel. ‘Come, be reasonable, Johnny. You’ll be all right to-morrow.’ Colonel McGregor,’ says he, ‘I’m unarmed, and you’ve got a revolver. You can shoot me if you like, but unless you do, I’m going out. You’ve been playing some dodge on me, and, by God! you shall pay for it.’ With that he rushed straight at the colonel. The colonel, he stepped on one side and let him pass. Then he went after him to the door, waited till he was about fifteen yards off, then up with his revolver, as cool as you like, and shot him as clean as a sixpence in the right leg. Down came Mr. Carr; he lay there a minute or two cursing, and then he fainted. ‘Pick him up, dress his wound, and put him to bed,’ says the colonel. Well, sir, it was only a flesh wound, so we soon got him comfortable, and there he lay all night.”
“How did he get away to-day?”
“We were all out, sir—went over to Mr. Carr’s place to borrow his horses. The colonel took a message, sir. [Here the fellow grinned again.] I don’t know what it was. Well, when we’d got the horses, we rode round outside the town, and came into the road between here and the colonel’s. Ten horses we got, and we went there to give the ten men who were patrolling the road the fresh horses. We heard from them that no one had come along. When we got home, he’d been gone two hours!”
“How did he manage it?”