"Entirely! I knew you were in Texas, but I hardly expected you to present yourself here."
Gray seated himself. For a moment the two men eyed each other, the one stony, forbidding, suspicious, the other smiling, suave, apparently frank.
"To what am I indebted for this—honor?" Nelson inquired, with a lift of his lip.
"My dear Colonel, would you expect me to come to Wichita Falls without paying my respects to my ranking officer, my immediate superior?"
"Bosh! All that is over, forgotten."
"Forgotten?" The caller's brows arched incredulously. "You are a busy and a successful man; the late war lives in your mind only as a disagreeable memory to be banished as quickly as possible, but—"
Henry Nelson stirred impatiently. "Come! Come! Don't let's waste time."
"—but I retain distinct recollections of our Great Adventure, and always shall."
"That means, I infer, that you refuse to close the chapter?"
As if he had not heard this last remark, Gray continued easily: "It is a selfish motive that brings me here. I come to crow. It is my peculiar weakness that I demand an audience for what I do; I must share my triumphs with some one, else they taste flat, and since you are perhaps the one man in Texas who knows me best, or has the slightest interest in my doings, it is natural that I come to you."