CHAPTER II
VALERIE SEEKS NEWS OF THE FASHIONS
Captain Robert lost no time in carrying out the order thus received to remove the prisoners. Placing himself between them, he marched from the tent and hurried down the cañon.
“I warned you to take matters quietly,” he said reproachfully. “Yet you seem to have acted like a keg of explosives from the moment you got inside the tent.”
“I wish I could find myself face to face with that scoundrel, man to man, for a few minutes!” retorted Mortimer. “Oh, for a company of the Guards at my back at this moment and I’d soon teach that fellow and those behind him here a lesson. Prisoners or dead he said they would be shortly. I’d show him that these same Guards were very much alive!”
“Prisoners or dead, eh?” repeated Robert. “Did he tell you that?”
“Yes,” answered Mortimer impatiently.
“He spoke only the truth,” said Robert solemnly.
Dean started. This was the second time within a few minutes he had heard this declaration and the man who now uttered it spoke earnestly and with conviction. In Mortimer the words created nothing save irritation and impatience. The idea of a body of bandits, or other ruffians, talking of annihilating the famous Guards—one of the crack regiments of the world. It was too preposterous!
“Are you afflicted, too?” he asked with contempt. “But never mind that! What’s this body of men here? We are at least entitled to know to whom we are prisoners.”
They had come to the end of the cañon and had reached the main valley. Robert led in sharp turn to the right and kept along parallel with the base of the mountain.