"Sh! don't make a bit of noise, Tom. There's a man working at the lock on the stable door. Get up quietly while I wake Jack."
It was more difficult to keep the excitable Irishman quiet while arousing him, but I succeeded in getting him up without making noise enough to be heard outside. Each man took a look through the peep-hole and saw that the crouching soldier was still intently working at the lock.
"Now," I whispered to my comrades, "let each one of us get his carbine or pistol ready, and be careful to keep them from rattling, and when I open our door we'll call on him to throw up his hands and take him prisoner."
"I think I'll give him a load of shot first," whispered Jack, who had the shotgun, "an' then call on him to throw up."
Finding that I could not open our door without making a noise, I jerked it wide open quickly. As I did so the kneeling man turned the full side of his face to me, and in the bright moonlight I recognized private John Flaherty, one of two soldiers who not long before, with Lieutenant Smith, had been caught in a blizzard at our camp and had stayed there until the storm was over. Seeing Jack raise his shotgun to fire, I knocked the muzzle up as I exclaimed:
"Don't shoot, Jack, it's Flaherty!"
He had pressed the trigger, but my throwing the barrels up sent the load of shot into the dirt roof of the stable instead of into Flaherty's back.
I wondered at the stupid, sluggish manner of the man as he rose to his feet at the report of the gun, but when he started off up the path leading to the top of the bank his uncertain gait plainly showed that he was drunk.
Dropping his shotgun, Jack bounded out and up the path after him, soon overtaking the drunken soldier, seizing him by the collar and cuffing him right heartily, with each slap rebuking the would-be horse thief for his drunkenness and thievery.
When Flaherty was brought into the dugout it was evident that he was almost senseless from drink. He was taken over to Found's bed and left there, sound asleep.