By this time much of the crowd and most of the vehicles had driven away. The generals still sat in saddle chatting earnestly together, while their staff officers listened in some impatience to the conversation just recorded. Everybody knew the fault was not Armstrong’s, but it was jarring to have to sit and hearken to the controversy. “Don’t ever twit or try funny business with Armstrong,” once said a regimental sage. “He has no sense of humor—of that kind.” Those who best knew him knew that Armstrong never tolerated unjust accusations, great or small. In his desire to say an irritating thing to a man he both envied and respected, the staff officer had not confined himself to facts, and it proved a boomerang.
And now, Armstrong’s eyes had lighted for an instant on the alleged culprit. Seated opposite Miss Lawrence as the carriage whirled across Point Lobos Avenue, and watching her unobtrusively, he saw the sudden light of alarm and excitement in her expressive face, heard the faint exclamation as her gloved hand grasped the rail of the seat, felt the quick sway of the vehicle as the horses shied in fright at some object beyond his vision. Then as they dashed on he had seen the running guard and, just vanishing within the portals of the corner building, the slim figure of the escaping prisoner. He saw the quivering hands tearing at their fastenings. He turned to the driver and bade him stop a minute, but it took fifty yards of effort before the spirited horses could be calmed and brought to a halt at the curb. To the startled inquiries of Mr. Prime and his daughter as to the cause of the excitement and the running and shouting he answered simply: “A prisoner escaped, I think,” and sent a passing corporal to inquire the result. The man came back in a minute.
“They got him easy, sir. He had no show. His hands were tied behind his back and he couldn’t climb,” was the brief report.
“They have not hurt him, I hope,” said Armstrong.
“No, sir. He hurt them—one of ’em, at least, before he’d surrender when they nabbed him in town. This time he submitted all right—said he only ran in for a glass of beer, and was laughing-like when I got there.”
“Very well. That’ll do. Go on, driver. We haven’t a minute to lose if we are to see the review,” he continued, as he stepped lightly to his seat.
“I saw nothing of this affair,” said Miss Prime. “What was it all about?”
“Nor could I see,” added her father. “I heard shouts and after we passed saw the guard, but no fugitive.”
“It is just as well—indeed I’m glad you didn’t, uncle,” answered Miss Lawrence, turning even as she spoke and gazing wistfully back. “He looked so young, and seemed so desperate, and had such a—I don’t know—hunted look on his face—poor fellow.”
And then the carriage reached the entrance to the reservation and the subject, and the second object of Miss Lawrence’s sympathies, evoked that day, were for the time forgotten. Possibly Mrs. Garrison was partly responsible for this for, hardly had they rounded the bend in the road that brought them in full view, from the left, or southern flank, of the long line of masses in which the brigade was formed, than there came cantering up to them, all gay good humor, all smiles and saucy coquetry, their hostess of the evening at the General’s tent. She was mounted on a sorry-looking horse, but the “habit” was a triumph of art, and it well became her slender, rounded figure.