"I was,—yes,—but I saw you coming, so waited. How's Hooker?"
"Very low, poor fellow! Typhoid has him in tight grip. He's flighty to-night. He thinks he's back on the summer campaign again, and his talk is all of the Antelope Springs affair. Odd! this makes the third man to come back from Boynton's party, two with typhoid fever and one with the mail-carrier and a bottle,—Brannan I mean,—and they all talk about that. From what I have gathered it would seem that Devers blamed Mr. Davies for the whole tragedy, but the men, when their tongues are loosened by fever or rum, lay loads of blame elsewhere."
"Yes?" said Cranston, with deep interest, yet reluctant to talk of regimental scandal with an outsider. "I should like to know what they say."
"Well, they say McGrath could tell a tale if he were alive, and that Lutz and the men at the agency believe they were shoved up there because they had said things which First Sergeant Haney overheard and reported to the captain. It seemed queer, even to me, so many men going from Devers's troop under command of somebody else's lieutenant, and now Davies himself has gone, and suppose he should hear of this talk?"
"He will know what to do, chaplain. Davies has earnest friends who will not see him further wronged, but just now, as you probably understand, nothing can be done. Now excuse me a moment. I may have been mistaken, but I thought I saw a man's figure hanging about the back gate of Number Twelve as I came up the bluff from the wood-yard. I thought he went through Davies's yard and that I'd see him crossing the parade when I got to the corner, but not a soul was in sight and it is almost as light as the day. If he didn't go through he must be in the shadows there of the wood-shed. There's been some prowling, and though this isn't the sort of night for that sort of thing, it's still possible. Will you kindly wait here and watch the front and this side while I beat up the rear?"
Wonderingly the chaplain assented, and, with his sabre clanking at his side, Cranston strode away northward along the line of white picket-fence until he came to the high rear barrier of the row, one of black unplaned boards, and around behind that he disappeared. Across the intervening yard and through the open gate-way at the back the chaplain could see a patch of the snow-clad valley, and watched for the appearance of Cranston's sturdy form in that silvery gap.
But another eye had also been alert. The very instant the figure of the officer-of-the-day disappeared from view behind the high back fence, out from the shadows of the shed there sprang a lithe, slender form, clad in soldier overcoat, and, in less time than it takes to tell it, around it darted behind the shed, was one instant poised at the top of the fence that separated the yard of Davies's quarters from that of their next-door neighbor, then noiselessly dropped out of sight on the other side. The next minute Cranston appeared in the gap.
Instead of shouting, fearful of disturbing the inmates, the chaplain quit his post, hastened along the front to Davies's gate and around the house to the rear, where he found Cranston searching.
"There was a man. I saw him. He leaped the fence into the next yard. A tall, slender fellow."
But search in there and in its fellows revealed nothing. The prowler had had time to skip from yard to yard, and nothing short of the services of the entire guard would be apt to result in his capture.