A Brace of Bad Fellows.
I was at the moment riding in the rear of my troop—having fallen back to hold conversation with my two unattached followers, thus incidentally introduced. The last trooper in the rank—except the corporal, who rode alongside of him—was a man of large body, somewhat slouched and unshapen; as were also his arms, limbs, and the forage-cap on his head. Altogether, he was a slovenly specimen for a cavalry soldier—to look at from behind; and his aspect from the front did not alter the impression.
A long cadaverous countenance, bedecked with a pair of hollow-glass-like eyes; a beard long as the face, hanging down over his breast, defiled with fragments of food and the “ambeer” of tobacco; behind which appeared a row of very large white teeth, set between lips of an unnaturally red colour; above these a long nose, broken near the middle, and obliquing outward to the sinister angle of his mouth;—such was the portrait presented by the individual in question.
I did not see his face, for I was behind him; but it did not need that to enable me to identify the man. By his back, or any part of his body, I could have told that the trooper before me was Johann Laundrich, the Jew-German.
“What of him?” I inquired, in an undertone, seeing that he was the individual referred to in the speech of the old trapper.
“Don’t ’ee see, Cap’n! them theer boots! I heern ye stopped ’im from takin’ ’em last night. He’s got ’em along wi’ him for all that. Thar they be!”
Rube’s gesture was this time more definite; and pointed to the cloak of the trooper, rolled and strapped to the cantle of his saddle.
Between the folds of the cloth, ill-adjusted as they were, I saw, protruding a few inches outward, something of a buff colour, that evidently did not belong to the garment.
A slight scrutiny satisfied me that it was a boot; and, guided by what the trapper had said, I saw that it could be no other than one of the pair I had prevented Laundrich from pilfering from the corpse of the Mexican officer.
I had only hindered him for the time. He had evidently returned to the tent, and made a finish of his filthy work.