John hurried away, too anxious to wait longer, and the colonel again slowly bent his way in the dim, midnight darkness, to the sleeping village of the white tents, and as he passed the outer guard, he murmured:
"Have I done right, or have I done a cowardly thing?"
The guard touched his cap, and said:
"I did not understand you, sir."
"No matter," answered the colonel, as he passed on more rapidly to his tent.
"The girl may yet be saved, or he may be made to marry her," he muttered, as he threw up his own tent door.
XXXVII.
"DEAD OR DISGRACED?"
John sped away between the high sagebrush and willows which skirted the stream running along west from camp. At one place he found himself on the bank and saw that the ditch ran far below in a small gully.
He could hear nothing, nor could he see any signs of human habitation. He turned his steps in another direction and hurried onward in his zigzag course, straining his eyes in the fading moonlight of the evening for sight of a habitation.