“Maybe I was,” he said, grasping my hand; “but you’re not to worry, old fellow; I’ll stand the consequences, and you’re the best that ever was.”
Nevertheless I did worry, knowing that such an offence was punishable without limit in the discretion of a court-martial. It was scarcely sunrise the next morning when I appeared at Captain Elliot’s headquarters. I had ridden for half an hour, I suppose, my mind all the time recalling a certain military execution I had seen; but this morning I imagined Joe in the rôle of victim. I had not slept, of course, and my nerves were all on edge.
I entered headquarters with a degree of trepidation which I had never felt before.
Captain Elliot was performing his ablutions as well as he could, with a big gourd for basin. He nodded and spoke with his head in the towel.
“Good fight, wasn’t it? We have a lot of those fellows to bury this morning. Pretty good bag for three hundred and fifty-one of us, and it was mainly your battery’s cannister that did it.”
I changed feet and said, “Y—e—s.”
I thought to myself that that was about the way I should take to “let a man down easy” in a hard case.
The captain carefully removed the soap from his ears, then turning to me said: “That’s a fighter, that brother of yours.”
“Yes,” I replied; “but, captain, he is very young, very enthusiastic, and very hot-tempered; I hope—I hope you’ll overlook—his—er—intemperateness and—”
“Thunder, man, do you suppose I’ve got any grudge against a fellow that fights like that?” roared the gallant captain.