"Just a flyer, Willett," said Blackbeard, in the most off-hand manner imaginable. "Sanchez swears it was Case who shot you, and we're having him up to explain."
For an instant four men stood watching Willett's face. Pale at almost any time of late, it seemed to have turned ashen in the pallid light about them. He swayed, too, a trifle, as though from sudden shock, and it was a second or two before he found his voice. Then:
"What infernal rot! Didn't they find my own pistol, that 'Tonio had stolen, where his fellows or he had dropped it in their flight?"
"O, Lord, yes," was the airy answer, "five miles away. But Harris found the real one, right there at the spot. Case won it from Sanchez just two days before. So he'll be here with 'Tonio the end of the week."
CHAPTER XXVI.
That week was a bad one for Harold Willett. The general, taking Bright with him as usual, had whirled away in his stout spring wagon to supervise the re-establishment of the Indians lately in rebellion. The agent at the Verde reservation had developed symptoms of stampede that were later diagnosed and treated as insanity. It must be owned that he had lived through troublous times and had had experiences to try the nerve of a man of iron, which he was not. The general, after settling matters to his satisfaction at the reservation, purposed a descent on Colonel Pelham and Camp Sandy, for consultation with him and a conference with the troop and company commanders returned to their soldier honors, after their strenuous scout through the mountains. He left Wickham to represent him at headquarters and continue his investigation, and he left Willett to—recuperate, for already he had repented him of the impulse that led to the brilliant officer's appointment on his personal staff. Willett had been a valuable and distinguished soldier in that northern field, and only by these things had the general known him. That Willett was a many-sided man, that he could be an eager and ambitious officer when once afield, and a mere butterfly about the garrison, had not occurred to this simple-minded chief. The combination of terrier and lapdog is rare in the army. However, Willett was not yet fit for field service, and the Gray Fox meant that he should have fair play and a chance to redeem himself.
"We couldn't send him away just now even if he were fit to ride," said Wickham confidentially to his brother aide-de-camp. "Dooley's trial begins presently, and he wants Willett as to character. But Archer and his household should be here by Friday. Then he'll have to behave."
Willett, of course, knew that Archer had been sent for, was coming up and would probably bring Mrs. Archer and Lilian. According to his estimate, too, the family should be here some time Friday. Meantime he had a fortress to reduce whose garrison had already flung out signals of distress. "Evelyn Darrah may have been a flirt at 'Frisco," said Mrs. Crook, "and she's had more experience than most girls of her years, but she's not heartless, and that good-looking scamp knows it."
"Have you talked with Mrs. Darrah?" asked a fair friend at a venture.
"Talked with Kate Darrah! Of course I've talked with her! and told her just what people are saying and thinking, but Kate Darrah was just such a flirt when she was a girl. Kate Darrah many a time pulled the wool over her mother's eyes, and now hers is being pulled the same way. Evvy leads her mother by the nose."