With the design of drawing him out, I assumed a careless air, and inquired—
“Have we had no visitors at the post? Any one from the camp?”
“Not a soul,” replied he, and again relapsed into meditative silence.
“No visitors whatever? Has no one inquired for me?” I asked, determined to come boldly to the point.
“No,” was the discouraging reply.—“Oh, stay: oh, ah—yes, indeed!” he added, correcting himself, while I could perceive that he spoke in a peculiar tone. “Yes, you were inquired for.”
“By whom?” asked I, in a careless drawl.
“Well, that I can’t tell,” answered the lieutenant in an evident tone of badinage; “but there appears to be somebody mighty uneasy about you. A slip of a Mexican boy has been backward and forward something less than a million of times. It’s plain somebody sends the boy; but he’s a close little shaver that same—he won’t tell either who sends him, or what’s his business: he only inquires if you have returned, and looks dead down in the mouth when he’s told no. I have noticed that he comes and goes on the road that leads to the hacienda.”
The last words were spoken with a distinct emphasis. “We might have arrested the little fallow as a spy,” continued Wheatley, in a tone of quiet irony, “but we fancied he might have been sent by some friend of yours.”
The speaker concluded with another marked emphasis, and under the moonlight I could see a smile playing across his features. More than once I had “chaffed” my lieutenant about Conchita; he was having his revenge.
I was not in a mood to take offence; my companion could have taken any liberty with me at that moment—his communication had fallen like sweet music upon my ears; and I rode forward with the proud consciousness that I was not forgotten. Isolina was true.