Captain Howard set off at a resolute trot toward the charred remains and stood gazing dolorously down at the blackened, fallen heap of timbers and the pile of ashes.
The sound of his familiar voice elicited a responsive whinny of pleasure from within the stables close at hand, where his own charger stood at the manger, unconscious of the possibilities of famine that hung above his high-bred head.
“What are you doing for feed?”
“Buying from the Indians of Keowee Town—paying six prices.”
Captain Howard shook his head disconsolately. During the late war the public granaries of the Cherokees had been destroyed by the British commands as punitive measures and the people reduced to the verge of starvation. The scanty crop of the past summer by no means replaced those great hoards of provisions, and in his report as to the store of corn he would have remaining at the time of his departure he had expressed his intention, entirely approved, to bestow it as a parting gift upon the neighboring town of Keowee. Now he, himself, was destitute, and how to forage his force on the march through the wilderness to Charlestown he could not yet imagine.
Suddenly—“How did the horses stand it?” Mervyn thought the ordeal would never end. To answer in his capacity as captain-lieutenant, temporarily in command, these strict queries in the presence of men who knew that he had seen naught of the event tried his nerve, his discretion, his ingenuity to the utmost. He revolted at the mere simulacrum of a deception, and yet he desired to report the matter to Captain Howard when they should not be at hand to hear his superior officer’s blunt comments. He felt that the unlucky chance owed him this slight shield to his pride.
He had naturally expected that his report would be made at the usual time and in the usual manner, when he could explain properly the details and account for his absence with seemliness and dignity. He said to himself that no one could have foreseen that instead of making the official inspection at the regulation time the commandant would be struck on the instant of his arrival by the absence of the granary and fly over the whole place, peering into every nook and squawking with excitement like some old house-keeping hen of a woman. The sight of the vacant place where the granary should have stood seemed to affect his nerves as an apparition might have done. He could not be through quaking over it. Mervyn, however, gave no token of the perturbation that filled his mind as he turned to Jerrold.
“You were at the stables, lieutenant.”
“I had considerable trouble with the horses,” said Jerrold. “They were terrified, of course, by the noise and glare. I had them led out of the stalls, thinking the stables might take fire.”
“Casualties?” sharply asked the captain.