Aiken raised his head and for a moment looked almost defiant.
“Why shouldn’t I tell you?” he demanded, indignantly. “Who else was there to tell you? I’ve travelled two days to let you know. I can’t help it if the news isn’t good. I’m just as sorry as you are.”
The other officer was a stout, yellow-haired German. He advanced a step and shook a soiled finger in Aiken’s face. “You can’t help it, can’t you?” he cried. “You’re sorry, are you? You won’t be sorry when you’re paid your money, will you? How much did you get for us, hey! How much did Joe Fiske—”
Reeder threw out his arm and motioned the officer back. “Silence, Captain Heinze,” he commanded.
The men of the Legion who had happened to be standing near the tent when we appeared had come up to look at the new arrivals, and when they heard two of their officers attacking Aiken they crowded still closer in front of us, forming a big half-circle. Each of them apparently was on a footing with his officers of perfect comradeship, and listened openly to what was going forward as though it were a personal concern of his own. They had even begun to discuss it among themselves, and made so much noise in doing so that Captain Heinze passed on Reeder’s rebuke as though it had been intended for them, commanding, “Silence in the ranks.”
They were not in ranks, and should not have been allowed where they were in any formation, but that did not seem to occur to either of the officers.
“Silence,” Reeder repeated. “Now, Mr. Aiken, I am waiting. What have you to say?”
“What is there for me to say?” Aiken protested. “I have done all I could. I told you as soon as I could get here.” Major Reeder drew close to Aiken and pointed his outstretched hand at him.
“Mr. Aiken,” he said. “Only four people knew that those guns were ordered—Quay, who went to fetch them, General Laguerre, myself, and you. Some one of us must have sold out the others; no one else could have done it. It was not Quay. The General and I have been here in the mountains—we did not do it; and that—that leaves you.”
“It does not leave me,” Aiken cried. He shouted it out with such spirit that I wondered at him. It was the same sort of spirit which makes a rat fight because he can’t get away, but I didn’t think so then.