"Will he be court-martialled?"
"Of course. There's nothing else for it. It's a question which of those two men can establish his case, and a court-martial will have to decide between them. But, I'm afraid, Peggy, it will go against March. The circumstances were so very queer, and Vandyke's denial of giving any order at all is so strong. Besides, it would be such a mad, improbable thing for him to give such an order, as there was no danger of attack. He'd have no motive."
"He would have a motive," I broke in. "I can prove that. Will they let a woman bear witness for a prisoner in a military court-martial?"
"I suppose your evidence could be taken, if they were certain it had an important bearing on the case. But I don't see how that could have, Peggy. This isn't women's business, it's men's."
"And devils'," I finished for him. "We won't argue now whether my evidence could be important or not. Tell me both sides of the story you were speaking of, first Captain March's, then Major Vandyke's."
"Well, March says that while he was strolling about, at a short distance from the guns, looking through his field glasses at a fire he could see on the other side of the river, he saw a chap in khaki hurry up the hill, wheeling a bicycle. As soon as the fellow came near enough to make out his features, March says he recognized Vandyke's orderly, a man who's been the major's soldier servant for a good length of time. This orderly, according to March, brought a verbal order from Vandyke as acting colonel, to begin firing number one and number two guns, and keep them in action until further notice, aiming at a spot just beyond one of the bridges on the Mexican side. March said he was so astounded at getting such an order, he thought there must be some awful mistake, and before obeying he wanted to have it on paper. So he took the risk of any danger from delay in case the order was really all right, and scribbled a few lines to Vandyke on a leaf torn out of his notebook——"
"A leaf torn out of his notebook!" I couldn't help echoing. "Perhaps it was the one I gave him."
"Shouldn't wonder!" Tony went on, stolidly. "He says he repeated in writing the command he'd just received, and begged Vandyke, if it was correct, to confirm him in the same way. The messenger dashed off, leaving March wondering like thunder what it all meant: whether there was some fearful mistake, or whether there was a big crisis, and no time for written orders. He could see, of course, that it might be possible, and that Vandyke had ordered only those two guns to be fired just to scare the Mexicans off from playing any trick they were at. The spot he was to aim at suggested that explanation, for not much harm ought to be done with a few shots directed that way. Not much of what you might call 'material harm' I mean. But there was no end to the harm such an incident could do, if there'd been nothing to provoke it. You see the situation as March says he saw it, don't you?"
"Yes, I see. But what happened after that?"
"According to March, the orderly was back again in next to no time. March had stopped where he was, waiting for him, as he didn't want to give the snap away to me and the men till the last minute. And he was hoping against hope, till he got the return message. It was verbal again, in spite of his written request, and mighty peremptory, ordering him to obey without any more nonsense. That's March's story. Not seeing a way to get out of it, yet realizing the awful consequences should there be anything wrong, March was going to pass on the order to load and fire when he suddenly thought he'd compromise by firing blank only. You see he was in an awful fix anyway, had to make an instant decision, and did what he thought best at the moment, though in giving that order to fire blank he was already disobeying the orders of his superior officer. Vandyke's version is that he never sent any orders whatever. That his orderly was with him in his car, and had never left it for a minute. That March must have been deceived by some trick of resemblance—a sort of 'Captain of Kopenick' (if you know that story); getting off a hoax on him, a deadly hoax, meant to upset the whole situation between the United States and Mexico. He says March ought to have known better than to obey a verbal order when the thing was so serious, and that he was something worse than an ass to mistake a stranger for Johnson, the orderly, whose face March knew almost as well as his own. There's where Vandyke scores an extra point against March. It would be very unusual to send a verbal order."