The ex-officer of volunteers was the last of the number who laid himself along the grass.
If the last to lie down, he was the first to get up. Scarce had the carousal ceased—scarce had the sonorous breathing of his companions proclaimed them asleep—when he rose into an erect attitude, and with cautious steps stole out from among them. With like stealthy tread he kept on to the confines of the camp—to the spot where his horse stood “hitched” to a tree.
Releasing the rein from its knot, and throwing it over the neck of the animal, he clambered into the saddle, and rode noiselessly away.
In all these actions there was no evidence that he was intoxicated. On the contrary, they proclaimed a clear brain, bent upon some purpose previously determined. What could it be?
Urged by affection, was he going forth to trace the mystery of the murder, by finding the body of the murdered man? Did he wish to show his zeal by going alone?
Some such design might have been interpreted from a series of speeches that fell carelessly from his lips, as he rode through the chapparal.
“Thank God, there’s a clear moon, and six good hours before those youngsters will think of getting to their feet! I’ll have time to search every corner of the thicket, for a couple of miles around the place; and if the body be there I cannot fail to find it. But what could that thing have meant? If I’d been the only one to see it, I might have believed myself mad. But they all saw it—every one of them. Almighty heavens! what could it have been?”
The closing speech ended in an exclamation of terrified surprise—elicited by a spectacle that at the moment presented itself to the eyes of the ex-officer—causing him to rein up his horse, as if some dread danger was before him.
Coming in by a side path, he had arrived on the edge of the opening already described. He was just turning into it, when he saw, that he was not the only horseman, who at that late hour was traversing the chapparal.
Another, to all appearance as well mounted as himself, was approaching along the avenue—not slowly as he, but in a quick trot.