“Why, don’t you see them on the chair before you?”
“What?” roared the injured man, “My uniform, my uniform, sir! Don’t you understand? Do you think for a moment that I will tolerate the idea of wearing citizen’s clothes,—and secondhand at that?” Whereupon he gave the chair a vigorous push with his foot, upsetting it, clothes and all. As he did so, a pocketbook slipped from his coat pocket and rested on the floor at his feet. Captain Osborn was momentarily at a loss to know what to do or say in the emergency. In the meantime, the cattle owner had reached for and picked up the pocketbook and some business cards that had fallen out of it. “Ho, ho! what’s this?” said he, glancing at one of the cards. “‘Hugh Stanton, Cashier Meade National Bank, Meade, Kansas.’ It seems that I have a namesake in the banking business.” As he opened the pocketbook to replace the cards, he read aloud the name stamped in gold on the russet leather lining, “‘John B. Horton.’ Horton, Horton,” he repeated to himself, as he pressed his hand against his wound. “Where have I heard that name?” and he looked half vacantly at the old captain, who was watching him intently.
“Lieutenant Stanton,” said the captain, coming closer to him and looking him squarely in the face, “this pocketbook belongs to the man whose name you have pronounced—John B. Horton—the cattle king of southwestern Kansas and No-Man’s-Land, who is worth ten million dollars if he is worth a cent. His beautiful home is at Horton’s Grove; he has a noble wife and a most lovely daughter, Ethel.”
“Ethel, Ethel,” repeated the injured man, “my wife’s name.”
“Not a vestige of remembrance,” murmured the captain to himself, “this is, indeed, sad.” Then nerving himself for the occasion, he said aloud and with marked firmness, “Lieutenant Stanton, dress yourself; put on your clothes, citizen’s though they be, and I will undertake to clear up the mystery.”
The wounded man stared vacantly at the captain for a moment, and then began mechanically to dress himself in silence, and, before Captain Osborn could intercept him, he approached a large French plate mirror.
“Hold on,” cried the captain, but it was too late. The wounded man, with his bandaged head, had seen his reflection in the glass.
“Great God! What is this?” he exclaimed, starting back in amazement. “This beard streaked with gray. My God! What am I? Where am I?” and he sank back into a chair, overcome with confusion and mystery.
Captain Osborn hastily opened a drawer of a desk and took from it an old daguerreotype, and, approaching him, said, “Do you recognize this?”
“Oh, yes,” said he, after a moment’s scrutiny, “indeed, this is my captain, Captain Osborn of the Twenty-ninth, the warmest friend of my boyhood, and as brave a man as ever wore the blue.”