“—So I,” he continued, “posted off to the tent, to find a rabble of communist soldiers stealing my balloon-car, ropes, bag, and all. I tell you I did what I could, but they said the balloon was contraband of war, and a military necessity; and they took it, the thieving whelps! Then I saw how matters were going to end, and I told the governor that he’d better go to Lorient as fast as he could travel before they stole the buttons off his shirt. 308
“Scarlett, it was a weird sight. I never saw tents struck so quickly. Kelly Eyre, Horan, and I harnessed up; Grigg stood guard over the props with a horse-pistol. The ladies worked like Trojans, loading the wagons; Byram raged up and down under the bayonets of those bandits, cursing them as only a man who never swears can curse, invoking the Stars and Stripes, metaphorically placing himself, his company, his money-box, and his camuel under the shadow of the broad eagle of the United States.
“Oh, those were gay times, Scarlett. And we frightened them, too, because nobody attempted to touch anything.”
Speed laughed grimly, and began to pace the floor, casting sharp glances at me.
“Byram’s people, elephant and all, struck the road a little after three o’clock this morning, in good order, not a tent-peg nor a frying-pan missing. They ought to be in Lorient by early afternoon.”
“Gone!” I repeated, blankly.
“Gone. Curious how it hurt me to say good-bye. They’re good people—good, kindly folk. I’ve grown to care for them in these few months ... I may go back to them ... some day ... if they want a balloonist ... or any kind of a thing.”
“You stayed to take care of me?” I said.
“Partly.... You need care, especially when you don’t need it.” He began to laugh. “It’s only when you’re well that I worry.”
I lay looking at him, striving to realize the change that had occurred in so brief a time—trying to understand the abrupt severing of ties and conditions to which, already, I had become accustomed—perhaps attached.