I saw the notebook. I saw Eagle hastily scrawling his appeal for a written order to fire the guns. I saw Major Vandyke wearing this coat, read the message, crumple up the paper, and then—then—the vision faded. But the question rang in my ears: what would he be likely to do with the paper? What should I have done had I been a man in his place? Would I have torn the message into bits and trusted to the wind to scatter it?...
No! If I meant to swear that no such document had ever reached me, I should have been afraid to leave bits of khaki-coloured, blue-lined paper lying about the ground. I should have crumpled the message deep down in the bottom of a pocket, and burnt it later, when I was safe in my own tent. Yes, that was what any man as quick-witted and unscrupulous as Sidney Vandyke would have been likely to do. He could not possibly have forgotten such a bit of evidence afterward, and left it in the pocket of his coat instead of destroying it; such things could happen only in the crudest melodramas, where the actors were mere puppets for uncritical and ignorant audiences to applaud. It was wildly absurd to dream that I might find any hidden treasure tucked away in a breast-pocket of Sidney Vandyke's cast-off uniform; and I did not for a moment believe it; yet the vision of the khaki-coloured paper had been so clear that I dared not resist the impulse it prompted.
I picked up the coat, holding it away from me gingerly, by the collar, as a small white cat might grip a large brown rat by the back of its neck. Then, also gingerly, I dipped my fingers into one pocket after another. All were empty: yet now quite distinctly I heard a crisp, delicate crackling of paper.
It was like searching for a ghost and seeing no sign, but catching a faint echo of invisible feet. Something was hidden there. I could not be mistaken. Perhaps the thing when found would not be worth finding; but a thousand times over, it was worth the pain of looking for.
I cleared a place on the large table which had been spread with contributions for the refugees, and laid the coat out flat. All over the two fronts I slowly, carefully, passed my fingers until, between the cloth and lining, far down on the left side near the edge of the coat, I touched the thing that crackled.
Whatever it was, this thing must have slipped down through a break in one of the pockets. I explored again, and discovered a small rip not more than two inches in length at the bottom of the inside breast-pocket. But the lost bit of paper could not be got at through this opening. The lining of the coat would have to be slit down before the hidden thing could be reached, and I pulled the pocket wrong side out, hoping with a quick jerk to tear it from the coat. More easily said than done! The material was expensively tough, and resisted my frantic tuggings, yet I wouldn't give up. I dared not go foraging downstairs for a pair of scissors; neither did I wish to ring for a servant to bring me them. I wanted desperately to be alone with this cast-off garment of Sidney Vandyke's—alone with any secret I might force it to yield up.
The coat seemed to resist every effort and trick of mine, as if it still served its old master and were stubbornly resolved to protect him against a stranger's prying; but at last a sharp jerk made a stitch give way. After that the rest was easy. I wrenched the pocket half out, and that once done I was able with both hands to tear the lining down nearly its whole length. Then I thrust my hand between it and the cloth, and touched a crumpled piece of paper.
I dreaded while I longed to look at what I had discovered: for I realized that in all human probability I was about to suffer a crushing disappointment. This lost scrap of paper might prove to be part of some torn, irrelevant letter of long ago; or it might be an American greenback, or a forgotten memorandum. As I withdrew my hand—the paper in it—involuntarily I shut my eyes, as if shrinking from a blow. But I scolded myself for cowardly weakness, and opened my eyes again to see a folded, refolded, and crumpled piece of khaki-coloured paper ruled with blue lines. Then I knew that, from the first faint crackling which I had felt rather than heard, I had been sure in my heart of finding this thing: sure that I had always been meant by Fate to find it.
With cold and shaking fingers I cautiously unfolded the paper without tearing it. Yes! It was a leaf torn from a notebook—the khaki notebook I had given Eagle. One page was blank. The other was almost covered with writing, scribbled with blue pencil, a pencil which must have been rather blunt, because the marking was heavy, though it showed signs of haste. No one familiar with Eagle March's hand could have failed to recognize it as his, rough and hurried as was the scrawl.
At the top of the page was jotted down the date of that unforgettable night at El Paso.