“I cannot think who you refer to, for I don’t know of any officer who has got a pair of antlers in his room.”
“Oh, he has sent them home.”
“Then I am glad I don’t know him, and I shall make no effort to find him out.”
Carl, the Trailer, looked at Parker with a smile of disbelief on his face.
“I mean it,” said the lieutenant earnestly. “I should not care to associate with any man who could tell a lie like that.”
“Maybe the colonel knows it, and that was the reason he selected you to command this expedition.”
“I don’t know why he selected me unless it was because I have always tried to do my duty. This is his way of telling a young officer that he is satisfied with him. Would you mind telling me how you came by your odd name—Carl, the Trailer?” added Parker, who was anxious to change the subject of the conversation.
“It was nothing at all, only just because I happened to do my business as I ought to have done it,” said Carl, “although I felt proud of it at the time I did it.”
With this he threw his leg over the pommel of his saddle, produced a well-worn brier-root from his pocket, and proceeded to fill up for a smoke. When he had got his pipe fairly lighted he went on with his story something in this way:
It all happened a few years ago, when Carl was, as he considered himself, a little boy. He was the only scout at the fort, and it became necessary to send some dispatches to Fort Belknap. The fort was just on the outskirts of the Comanche country, and they were pretty hostile, and felt exceedingly vindictive toward anybody with white blood in their veins. Carl did not know much about the country, having never been down there but once, but he knew how to trail Indians. In fact, he could not remember the time when he couldn’t do it. On the way he fell in with a troop of soldiers who were out punishing the savages for some outrage they had committed on the settlers, and as they were journeying toward the fort he kept company with them, and he never regretted it but once in his life. The company were all green; not even the officers had ever been out after Indians before, and Carl did not know why it was that the Indians did not make an assault upon them. The Indians were all around them; they could not help but see them, for they were on the summit of high swells looking at the troops, and at night they took extra pains to make a camp where they thought no Indians could surprise them.