“And was Caspard in the field with the rebels?”
“Yes. He was hand in glove with General Luna and the other rebel leaders, and I think he had turned over some messages from General Otis’s headquarters to the rebels. But, candidly speaking, I think Lieutenant Caspard is somewhat off in his head. Once he came to me and said that if only I and the other prisoners would join him, we could end this shedding of blood inside of a week.”
“He must be crazy, to join the rebels,” put in Ben. “Does he hold any position under them?”
“They call him capitan, but if he has such a position, it is merely a nominal one. I think the natives are beginning to suspect that he is not quite right in his mind. But still they love to hear him praise them, and they swallow a good bit of what he says, like so many children.”
For the moment Major Morris was silent. Then he turned to Ben. “Our mission seems to have come to a sudden end,” he said. “Brownell can tell Colonel Darcy all he wants to know.” And he related to the escaped prisoner the reason for their coming beyond the American lines.
“Yes, I reckon I can tell the colonel well enough,” answered Barton Brownell. “For I saw Caspard often, as I mentioned before, and he never knew what it was to keep his tongue from wagging.”
“And how did you escape?” asked Ben, with interest.
“In a very funny way,” and the soldier laughed. “As I said before, we were kept up in the mountains, in a large cave. There were six of our troop, but all told the prisoners numbered twenty-eight. There was a guard of four rebels to keep us from escaping, and an old woman called Mother Beautiful, because she was so ugly, used to cook our food for us—and the food was mighty scanty, I can tell you that.
“Well, one day two of the guards went off, leaving the old woman and the other two guards in sole charge. There had been a raid of some kind the day before, and the guards had some fiery liquor which made them about half drunk. The old woman got mad over this, and she was more angry than ever when one of the guards refused to get her a pail of water from a neighboring spring. ‘I’ll get the water, mother,’ says I, bowing low to her, and would you believe it, 188 she made the two guards let me out, just to get her the water.”