All doubt would have been removed—had any existed—when I saw the corpse give, or rather receive, a sudden jerk, which brought the head close in to the canvas.
I could stay no longer inside that tent; and with a single bound I carried myself clear of the entrance.
No sooner did I get outside, than I was relieved from the influence of the supernatural. A perfectly natural—perhaps I should say unnatural—cause divested the phenomenon of its mystery. A man was in the act of stripping General Vasquez of his boots!
With shame I recognised the uniform of an American rifleman.
In justice to that uniform be it told, that the man was not an American, but a worthless mongrel, half Jew, half German; who on more than one occasion had received chastisement for strange crimes, and who afterwards, in a future battle—as I have good reason to know—fired his traitorous bullet at my own back.
“Laundrich! ruffian!” I cried. “Despoiling the dead!”
“Ach! tish only a Mexican—our enemish, captan.”
“Scoundrel! desist from your unhallowed work, or I shall devote you to a worse fate than his whose noble remains you are defiling. Off to your quarters! Off, I say!”
The human wolf skulked away, unwillingly, and with an air of savage chagrin.