“I thought,” said the old man suspiciously, “that perhaps you learned it with Slaughter’s army, along the Rio Grande. Slaughter, he’s near Brownsville yet, isn’t he?”
“Is he?”
“With about twenty-five thousand men?”
“Lord, I’ve clean forgot, not having counted ’em lately.”
“Where did you come from then, when you came to Mobile?”
“W’y, as I remember, from Sand Spring, Missouri, near the Arkansas line.”
A more obscure crossroads may not exist anywhere, but its bare mention had a curious effect on the prying Don Anastasio. In the instant he seemed to cringe before his late passenger.
“Then you–Your Mercy,” he exclaimed, “belongs to Shelby’s Brigade?”
43The Missourian nodded curtly. His questioner was extraordinarily well informed.
“And, and how many men has Shelby at Sand Spring?”