"You have testified that you did not go outside of the line on the night of the camp on the Niobrara, and did not allow anyone to go back after the troop marched away. For what purpose did you, yourself, ride back and enter the log hut you described?"
"I—I never did," gasped Dawson, with glaring eyes and ashen face, "I——" but his tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of his mouth, for Captain Charlton quietly arose, stepped forward, and placed upon the table a large, flat wallet, at sight of which the sergeant's nerves gave way entirely. He made one or two efforts to speak, he struggled as if to rise, his eyes rolled in his head, and in another instant he was slipping helplessly to the floor. A young surgeon sprang to his side as the bystanders strove to lift him, and with one brief glance turned to the court: "Mr. President, this man is in a spasm, and should be taken to the hospital."
"Very good, sir," was the calm reply. "Major Edwards, will you see to it that a sentry is posted over him. That man must not be allowed to escape."
Two more witnesses were examined that afternoon—the provost sergeant and Captain Charlton. The former testified that Dawson had been gambling and had lost heavily in the post before pay day; that on that fateful Sunday, bill after bill he had seen him pay—over one hundred dollars at the table in the gamblers' tent down below the reservation—before he interfered, warned him of the departure of his troop, and ordered him to report in garrison with his horse at once. Donovan had merely been a looker-on at the mad game in which the sergeant had sought to recover his losses.
Charlton stated that, after his investigation at Red Cloud, he was confident that Dawson was the trooper who rode back to the old ranch, and that something must be concealed there. Searching it late, Sunday night, he found in the dugout a spot where the earth had been recently scooped away, and there in Dawson's old rubber poncho was the wallet with his papers and about two hundred dollars of the missing money, or what his men believed to be such.
And then, amid the sympathetic glances of all the court, young Fred told his strange but soldierly story. It was Dawson who asked him to get the chloroform for him at Red Cloud and gave him the folded pencil note; it was Dawson who suggested to him the idea of sleeping down below the bivouac that evening near where Donovan was posted, and it was Dawson who roused him suddenly and startlingly in the dead of the night. "Up with you, Fred, boy!" he had said. "Up with you, but make no noise. There's the devil's own news! The Indians are out everywhere! The lieutenant's just got a courier from Robinson, and he and Sergeant Graham have to write dispatches to go right to the captain at Laramie. You know the whole Platte valley, and how to get across and reach the Sidney road below?" Of course he did. "Then the lieutenant says, for God's sake lose not a minute; go for all you're worth; keep well to the west until you cross the Platte, and then make for the southeast, and warn back everybody who is coming north. He says Mrs. Charlton and the children were to come that way, Saturday or Sunday, to join the captain at Red Cloud. You can save them, if you're in time."
Suddenly roused from sleep, Fred was bewildered for an instant; could only realize that his loved benefactors and friends were in deadly peril and that he was chosen to haste and rescue them, Dawson lifted him into the saddle; pressed some money into his hand to buy food when he reached the settlement or Sidney, in case he met no travelers this side; led him to the water's edge, and bade him lose not an instant. He never dreamed of harm or wrong or plot until his wounded father told him the foul charge against him, after his long and gallant ride that blazing Sunday.
Then for a moment the little man broke down and sobbed; and old war-worn soldiers in the court turned away with glistening eyes, and the president, rapping on the table, huskily ordered the room to be cleared. Charlton's arms were around his trumpeter's shoulders as he led him to the open air, and to his father's bedside. "Cleared!" he said, in answer to the longing look in the sergeant's eyes. "Cleared! There isn't a man, woman, or child in all the post that doesn't know the verdict, and that Dawson is doomed to four years in prison." And then he left them together and alone.
HE SOUNDED THE RETREAT.