“Stop that infernal firing!” he yelled, purple with rage, his arms pumping in frantic gesture. And then he broke into a perfect tirade of English and Spanish. “I’ll bring the American troops across and hunt every hound of you to his hole and shoot him like the dog he is,” he screamed.
Your Mexican is not at his best in the psychology of bluff. Half the rifles were already raised. Swinnerton directed his words at the evil-faced little firing-director, who had lived a replete life with the reformed bandits of the Rurales, but who had yet to hear or see a thing like this.
“Do you imagine that you may fire into American territory, kill American soldiers, and escape the troops?”
The self-commissioned officer blew his firing-whistle.
“Señor,” he said, “igscouse. We do no know our fire offend. We will make attack from other quarters.”
Swinnerton wasted neither words nor time. He hurried back, and knelt at the side of the wounded orderly. He threw one of the boy’s arms about his own neck and lifted him, his voice running on like a mother’s crooning.
“Never mind, Felker; it’s not a bad wound. If I’m a surgeon at all, I’ll mend it. There, is that easy, boy? Then here we go.”
A special train had hurried the general and the colonel and staff back from Huachuca. Fredericks, good soldier that he was, had marched to the sound of the guns. From the time he had trotted out at the head of his troop, an absurd suspicion had been troubling Fredericks, and the moment of his return he verified it. He found and examined the envelop in Swinnerton’s room, and he was even ahead of the general in greeting Swinnerton when the latter came staggering under his heavy burden toward the custom-house steps. Despite the gravity of the occasion, the general smiled, the colonel chuckled, and Fredericks laughed aloud.
Swinnerton’s hair was rumpled like the ruffled crest of a cockatoo. Dust had blackened the caking streaks on his face, which was red from exertion. He was wheezing and puffing like a donkey-engine, and at every expiration of breath his cheeks bulged prodigiously. And what is more than mere words of description can ever convey, he was simply Swinnerton, at whom and with whom people smiled. He did not smile this time. He set his burden down and glared murderously at Fredericks.
“Well, Fredericks,” he gasped, with no thought of the deference due to the general’s stars, “what is there about this so infernally funny?”