In a frontier post, news flies with the dust in the air. Soon the story of Matthews and the bull had spread to every soul at Brannon. The Line chatted it from gallery to gallery. Clothes-Pin Row digested it in hilarious groups. At barracks, it set the men to swapping yarns. "I knowed a feller onct that was goin' past a bull-pen," declared one trooper, "and he had a pail of cherries, and I'll be darned if——" "But, say! Down home, one time," put in a second, "there was a vaquero with a red sash that was stoopin' to fix a flank girth, and——" "Why, that ain't a two-spot to what happened in Kansas a year ago this summer. The purtiest gal I ever seen—you know them Kansas gals can be purty—she had a wig that'd keep your hands warm in January. Well——"
When, however, the surgeon recounted the story at the bachelors' noon mess, mirth over it was noticeably lacking. To the little circle of officers there was nothing comical in the fact that a man from the post had molested the girls so recently orphaned. And all save Fraser vowed stormily that Matthews would be called to account. The young lieutenant said nothing.
Before the meal ended, the interpreter came in. He had changed his clothes and restored his hair to its pristine smoothness. He gave the group his usual bob and smile.
Cold stares answered him—from all but one, who fairly bounded from his chair. It was Fraser, face red, shoulders working under the blue of his uniform. He planted himself before Matthews.
"You damned blackguard!" he gasped.
The other looked highly amused. "What's got into your craw, sonny?" he inquired.
"You damned blackguard!" repeated Fraser. And struck out.
An amazed and delighted mess room looked on. For Fraser, the tender-hearted, Fraser, the pink-cheeked "mamma's darling," was battering the interpreter hammer and tongs!
From the doorway the captain's voice interrupted the battle, and the two men were pulled apart. Matthews fell to wiping at his stained lips, which had magically puffed to proportions suggesting those of the colonel's black cook. While the lieutenant was panting, and struggling wildly to get free.
Oliver thrust the latter behind him and addressed the interpreter. "I'm not stopping this boy because I don't think you need a sound thrashing," he said. "I'd like to see you walloped within an inch of your life. But I can't have this kind of thing going on."