"How did you get that?" he asked, with professional brevity, little liking it—soldier bred as he was—that one of the new flock should thus be parcelled out from his fellows and transported in a Pullman.
"Climbing through the window of the saloon I—cut it, sir," was the answer.
"Yes—there perhaps," said Tibbetts, indicating the smaller gash, "but this one,—clean cut like a knife. Whose knife?"
Whereat Brannan looked confused and troubled. "I don't know, sir," he finally said.
"I believe you do know, and that you got it in that saloon row. A pretty thing for a man like you to be mixed in."
Whereat Brannan reddened still more, and looked as though he wanted to speak yet feared to say. It was Miss Loomis who promptly took the word.
"Indeed, captain, you don't understand. He was ordered in. He was handling the hose pipe—the very first—with Mr. Davies." And here she turned as though to seek the other pipeman, while Tibbetts effusively—impulsively—began to make amends.
"Well—well—well," said he. "That's a totally different matter. You got your wound in a good cause, sir, and if I could find out who tried to knife you, he'd repent it this night. Are you sure you don't know?"
"I don't think anybody tried to cut me, sir," was the answer, after a pause.
"Didn't you see anybody with a knife?"