“Well, we’ll not want to dislodge them before daylight, anyway,” said King.
“If Macdonald can back off without a fight, he’ll do it,” Chadron declared, “for he knows as well as you and I what it’d mean to fire on the troops. And I want you to git him, King, and make sure you’ve got him.”
“It depends largely on whether the fellow can be provoked into firing on us, Chadron. You think he can be; so do I. But in case he doesn’t, the best we can do will be to arrest him.”
“What good would he be to me arrested, King? I tell you I want his scalp, and if you bring that feller out of there in a sack you’ll come back a brigadier. I put you where you’re at. Well, I can put 237 you higher just as easy. But the purty I want for my trouble is that feller’s scalp.”
There was the sound of somebody walking about, in quick, nervous strides. Frances knew that Major King had got up from his usurped place at the desk—place unworthily filled, this low intrigue with Chadron aside, she knew—and was strutting in the shadow of his promised glory.
“Leave it to me, Chadron; I’ve got my own account to square with that wolf of the range!”
A sharp little silence, in which Frances could picture Chadron looking at King in his covert, man-weighing way. Then Chadron went on:
“King, I’ve noticed now and then that you seemed to have a soft spot in your gizzard for that little girl of mine. Well, I’ll throw her in to boot if you put this thing through right. Is it a go?”
“I’d hesitate to bargain for the young lady without her being a party to the business,” King replied, whether from wisdom born of his recent experience, or through lack of interest in the proposal Frances could not read in his even, well-pitched voice.
“Oh, she’d jump at you like a bullfrog at red flannel,” Chadron assured him. “I could put your uniform on a wooden man and marry him off to the best girl in seven states. They never think of lookin’ under a soldier’s vest.”