Rosita was a dear little ignoramus, embarrassingly fond of him, he told himself, grasping at his usual common sense, which was perplexed by vague alarm. Yet surely she could intend nothing more than to make a pretty scene as special pleader for his cause with Pryor—a pleader who, unless that officer had utterly lost dignity, would produce no other effect than to embitter the jealousy which was the foundation of this persecution.
Fort Lawrence goes to bed early. By eleven o’clock sleep apparently possessed the garrison, with the exception of the widely scattered sentinels who cried the hour. But the clear calls had scarcely died upon the vast surrounding stillness of the prairie night when they were succeeded by the sharp, unmistakable report of a pistol-shot.
Jerry Breton, lounging, half-awake, beside the veranda window of his sitting-room, was roused to full consciousness and a pang of foreboding.
The report came from a path which skirted the rampart immediately beneath the veranda, at a point where the bluff beyond descended so abruptly into the Yellowstone River, hundreds of feet below, that the sentry rarely patrolled it, ingress or egress being impossible to any one in a sane mood. Jerry sprang down the veranda steps, assuring himself that there might be a dozen comparatively harmless reasons for the shot, and that his terror was merely nightmare. Yet when he beheld the body of a man prostrate, face forward, across the path, he knew him, with a knowledge that anticipated sight. Shrinkingly he bent over him, uttered a half-strangled cry, which was dismayed, not surprised, and picked up a pistol, a tiny silver-mounted toy, horribly incongruous beside that ghastly, motionless figure—a dainty, deadly thing that Jerry had given months before to the 'best markswoman in the Northwest.'
There was a swift rush of footsteps from various directions: the sentry to whose beat this stretch of rampart belonged, another sentry from his station before the door of Jerry’s quarters, and three or four partly clad officers roused out of their slumbers.
Jerry stood upright—a slight, erect figure, whose silhouette was distinct against the blue moonlit sky. He swung his arm above his head, and flung the pistol far over the edge of the bluff.
The next instant he was surrounded by a crowd; a tumult of exclamation and question arose, as Pryor’s inanimate body was recognized, and carefully examined for some sign of life. In the midst of the tumult he leaned against the rampart, neither speaking nor apparently hearing, until Blount, the captain of his troop, laid an admonitory hand on his shoulder.
'You were here first—Don’t stare like an idiot! Tell us what you saw.'
'Is he dead?'
'We cannot be sure until the surgeon comes. Did you see any one?'