"You 'tind to it, sergeant," he grunted over his shoulder to his loyal henchman, and then, uninvited, ranged up alongside the leader.
The prairie was open here; the road split up into several tracks from time to time, and the men could have ridden platoon front without much difficulty for two or three miles. Away to the southeast the ground rose in slow, gradual, almost imperceptible slope to the edge of the far horizon, not a tree or shrub exceeding a yard in height breaking anywhere the dull monotony of the landscape. Eastward, miles and miles away, a line of low rolling hills framed the dull hues of the picture. Northward there was the same almost limitless expanse of low, lazy undulation. To the right front, the south and southwest, the land seemed to fall away in even longer, lazier billows, until it flattened out into a broad valley, drained by some far-distant, invisible stream. Only to the west and northwest, over their right shoulders, was there gleam of something brighter. The faint blue outline of the far-away Apache range was still capped in places by glistening white, while straight away to the northwest, back of and beyond the dim dust-cloud through which the swallow-tailed guidons were peeping, hovered over their winding trail the bold and commanding heights, Fort Worth's shelter against the keen blasts that swept in winter-time across the prairie from the upper valley of the Rio Bravo. Four hours out, and just where the road dipped into that broad deep swale a quarter-mile behind the rearmost troopers,—just where the wreck of one of Fuller's wagons and the bones of two of Fuller's mules and the soft spongy mud to the west of the trail told how the waters could gather there in the rainy season and evaporate to nothingness when needed in the dry,—a solitary stake driven into the yielding soil bore on bullet-perforated cross-board the legend, "20 miles to Worth and only 20 rods to Hell."
Only twenty miles in four hours, with fresh horses and the cool of the morning, and a paymaster with forty thousand dollars in deadly danger some sixty to eighty miles away. Slow going that, yet scientific. Not another drop of water could those lively chargers hope to have until they reached the springs at Crockett, forty miles away. Thrice has Brooks halted for brief ten minutes' rest, the resetting of saddles, etc., and now, after fifteen minutes' lively jog, he signals "walk" again, and glances back to watch the march of his men. By this time the column is long drawn out. The two troops are split up into four sections each, riding a little over a dozen men in a bunch; by this means they are relieved from the ill effects of the choking clouds of dust. Mullane halts with the major. It pleases him to convey the impression to his men that Brooks can't get along without him. A big pull at his pommel canteen, ten minutes back, has temporarily braced him, and he wants to talk, whereas Brooks, intent on the duty before him, wishes to think.
"Hwat time will we make Crockett's, major?"
"Not before five or five-thirty," is the brief answer.
"'L' Troop can do it in two hours less."
"So could 'D,' if it hadn't to push on again at nightfall." Brooks answers in civil tone, despite the hint conveyed by the brevity of his words, despite the conviction that is growing on him as he somewhat warily glances over his companion, that what "L" might do its captain won't do if he consults that canteen again. Two silent but keen-eared orderlies are sitting in saddle close beside their respective officers, and it will not do to give his thoughts away.
Then Mullane tries another tack. He seeks confidential relations with his chief; and when an Irishman has a man he is jealous of to talk about and whiskey to start him, he needs no supply of facts; they bubble from his seething brain, manufactured for the occasion.
"The Preacher was caught where he couldn't get out of it," says he, with a leering wink at the leading horseman. "Is he larnin' his thrade from Lawrence, afther robbin' him av his throop?"
And now Brooks fires up unexpectedly. Turning quickly on the Irishman with anger in his eyes, the major bends forward over the pommel. "Captain Mullane," he says, so low that the near-by troopers fail to catch his words, so distinctly that the captain cannot fail to, "there are things of more value in a trade than the tricks of it that you seem to know so well. You can learn more from Captain Barclay that is worth knowing than you can ever teach him, and I'll listen to no slur at his expense. You've been drinking too much, Mullane. Take my advice and pull the stopper out of that canteen and put one on your tongue."