“Well?” he said.
“Well?” asked the sergeant.
“I should think you could see how it is,” said Cahill, “without my having to tell you.”
“You mean you don't want she should know?”
“My God, no! Not even that I kept a bar.”
“Well, I don't know nothing. I don't mean to tell nothing, anyway, so if you'll promise to be good I'll call this off.”
For the first time in the history of Fort Crockett, Cahill was seen to smile. “May I reach under the counter NOW?” he asked.
The sergeant grinned appreciatively, and shifted his gun. “Yes, but I'll keep this out until I'm sure it's a bottle,” he said, and laughed boisterously.
For an instant, under the cover of the counter, Cahill's hand touched longingly upon the gun that lay there, and then passed on to the bottle beside it. He drew it forth, and there was the clink of glasses.
In the other room Mary Cahill winked at the major, but that officer pretended to be both deaf to the clink of the glasses and blind to the wink. And so the incident was closed. Had it not been for the folly of Lieutenant Ranson it would have remained closed.