Stevens broke in hotly.
“Take me, curse you!” he snarled. “But spare the young lady, can’t you? You’re making a miserable mistake here, as you’ll learn in a little while. I’ll go with you to the fort and speak to your colonel; but, for Heaven’s sake, don’t force the young lady to go.”
The young officer bowed again, with a touch of his fingers to his cap.
“Your pardon,” he said courteously, with hesitation; “but what you say is—er—inadvisable. We must ask both of you to accompany us to the fort. It is a—er—mere formality, of course. As soon as you have told the colonel what you have told us he will permit you to go; but we must, you understand, do our duty as we see it.”
CHAPTER XIX.
AT THE FORT.
It was an unfortunate thing for May Arlington and her lover that Colonel Montrose, the commandant, was absent from Fort Cimarron when they were brought to that place, and that in his stead was Lieutenant Joel Barlow. It was even more unfortunate for them that Barlow stood to the girl in the relation of a discarded and chagrined lover.
He had but a week before visited that little sod house out on the wide, wind-swept plains, and there had told the girl his love, and she had turned him away. He knew why she had done so, too; he knew that it was because of Ben Stevens.
To Joel Barlow the men who had brought in the prisoners—for they were really prisoners—made their report; and Barlow went forth to see the girl and Stevens.
He felt a secret satisfaction; for his love for the girl, or what he had fancied was love, had turned to hate, and for Ben Stevens he had a feeling that was perfectly ferocious. So he smiled inwardly, and stared at that nugget of gold, as he carefully examined it.
“Yes, it must be returned to the colonel,” he said, but in his eyes there was a light of anxious questioning.