“Ah!” the comandante cried. “There will be promotion for me in this!”
“Catch him first! You little know your man!”
“Do I not? Did I not refuse him hospitality recently because of that same insult? Did I not almost cross blades with him within the past forty hours, and remembered barely in time that an officer does not fight with an adventurer?”
“It perhaps were well for the officer you remembered that,” the sergeant muttered.
“Bah! Captain Fly-by-Night, eh? A boaster and braggart!”
“Think not that! He is a fighter, that man, as well as a scoundrel! And you have him here?”
“He camps like a fool beside the creek at the mission, believing himself secure, no doubt, perhaps meeting his Indian gentiles and doing his plotting almost inside the mission walls.”
“Get him! Do not let him escape and reach his Indians, or nothing can stop the attack. The dogs know their conspiracy is discovered, and may move sooner than was expected. Those in the north wait for the attack to begin here at San Diego de Alcalá. Runners will carry the news, and the raid will flash up the coast like fire before a gale!”
“It will be an easy matter to get him,” the lieutenant observed, getting up from his stool.
The beating of horse’s hoofs came to them through the open window; they heard the sentry’s challenge and quick steps in the barracks-room, a knock at the door.