"We were all out, sir--went over to Mr. Carr's place to borrow his horses. The colonel took a message, sir. [Here the fellow grinned again.] I don't know what it was. Well, when we'd got the horses, we rode round outside the town, and came into the road between here and the colonel's. Ten horses we got, and we went there to give the ten men who were patrolling the road the fresh horses. We heard from them that no one had come along. When we got home, he'd been gone two hours!"
"A woman, sir," said my warrior, with supreme disgust. "Gave her a kiss and ten dollars to undo the front door, and then he was off! He daren't go to the stables to get a horse, so he was forced to limp away on his game leg. A plucky one he is, too," he concluded.
"Poor old Johnny!" said I. "You didn't go after him?"
"No time, sir. Couldn't tire the horses. Besides, when he'd once got home, he's got a dozen men there, and they'd have kept us all night. Well, sir, I must be off. Any answer for the colonel? He'll be outside the Golden House by eleven, sir, and Mr. Carr won't get in if he comes after that."
"Tell him to rely on me," I answered. But for all that I didn't mean to shoot Johnny on sight. So, much perturbed in spirit, I set off to the barracks, wondering when Johnny would get to Whittingham, and whether he would fall into the colonel's hands outside the Golden House. It struck me as unpleasantly probable that he might come and spoil the harmony of my evening; if he came there first, the conspiracy would probably lose my aid at an early moment! What would happen to me I didn't know. But, as I took off my coat in the lobby, I bent down as if to tie a shoestring, and had one more look at my revolver.
I shall never forget that supper as long as I live. Considered merely as a social gathering it would be memorable enough, for I never before or since sat at meat with ten such queer customers as my hosts of that evening. The officers of the Aureataland Army were a very mixed lot--two or three Spanish-Americans, three or four Brazilians, and the balance Americans of the type their countrymen are least proud of. If there was an honest man among them he sedulously concealed his title to distinction; I know there wasn't a sober one. The amount of liquor consumed was portentous; and I gloated with an unholy joy as I saw man after man rapidly making himself what diplomatists call a _quantité negligéable_. The conversation needed all the excuse the occasion could afford, and the wit would have appeared unduly coarse in a common pot-house. All this might have passed from my memory, or blended in a subdued harmony with my general impression of Aureataland; but the peculiar position in which I stood gave to my mind an unusual activity of perception. Among this band of careless, drunken revelers I sat vigilant, restless, and impatient; feigning to take a leading part in their dissolute hilarity, I was sober, collected, and alert to my very finger-tips. I anxiously watched their bearing and expression. I led them on to speak of the President, rejoicing when I elicited open murmurs and covert threats at his base ingratitude to the men on whose support his power rested. They had not been paid for six months, and were ripe for any mischief. I was more than once tempted to forestall the colonel and begin the revolution on my own account; only my inability to produce before their eyes any arguments of the sort they would listen to restrained me.