A Wounded Name | Page 9

behind the blanket and hurled herself on Blake, a panther-like leap of the accused man under cover of the flash and smoke, a thwack like the sound of the bat when it meets a new baseball full in the middle, and Loring's fist had landed full on Higgins' jowl and sent him like a log to the floor.
CHAPTER IV.
The court-martial that met at Camp Cooke in compliance with orders from division headquarters at 'Frisco had, three weeks later, practically finished the case of Brevet-Captain Nevins, and that debonair person, who had appeared before it on the first day, suave, laughing, and almost insolently defiant, had wilted visibly as, day after day, the judge advocate unfolded the mass of evidence against him. All that Nevins thought to be tried for was a charge of misappropriation of public funds and property, and it was his purpose to plead in bar of trial that he had offered to make complete restitution, to replace every missing item, and doubly replace, if need be, every dollar. This, indeed, he had lost no time in doing the moment he was handed over to the post commander, two days after the exciting episode at Sancho's, but he coupled with the offer a condition that all proceedings against him should be dropped, and the veteran major commanding, while expressing entire willingness to receipt for any funds the accused might offer, would promise nothing whatever in return. That Nevins should be charged with desertion and breach of arrest the accused officer regarded as of small importance. He was merely going to Tucson fast as he could to get from business associates, as he termed them, the money deposited with them, and owed to him, and this must also excuse his having borrowed the major's best horse. His friends in congress would square all that for him, even if the court should prove obdurate. That grave charges should have followed him from a former sphere of operations, that his record, while retained in the volunteer service until the spring of '66 and assigned to some mysterious bureau functions in the South, should all have been ventilated and made part and parcel of the charges, that it should be shown that he, as a newly commissioned officer of the army, had made the journey from New Orleans to the Isthmus and thence to San Francisco with men whom he knew to be deserters from commands stationed in the Crescent City, that he should have gambled with them and associated with them and brought one of them all the way with him to Yuma and concealed from the military authorities his knowledge of their crime, that it should be proved he was a professional "card sharp," expert manipulator and blackleg he never had contemplated as even possible, and yet, with calm and relentless deliberation "that cold-blooded, merciless martinet of a West Pointer," as he referred to the judge advocate at an early stage in the proceedings, had laid proof after proof before the court, and left the case of the defense at the last without a leg to stand on. And then Nevins dropped the debonair and donned the abject, for the one friend or adviser left to him in the crowded camp, an officer who said he always took the side of the under dog in a fight, had told him that in its present temper that court, with old Turnbull as one of its leaders, would surely sentence him to a term of years at Alcatraz as well as to dismissal from the military service of the United States. Dismissal he expected, but cared little for that. He had money and valuables more than enough to begin life on anywhere, and the pickings of his accustomed trade were all too scant in Arizona. He needed a broader field, and a crowding population for the proper exercise of his talents; and the uniform of the officer, after all, had not proved to be so potent in lulling the suspicions of prospective victims as he had expected it might be. But Alcatraz! a rock-bound prison! a convict's garb! hard labor on soft diet! that was indeed appalling.
"That man Loring has made you out an innate blackguard, Nevins. You've got to plead for mercy," said his shrewd adviser, and Nevins saw the point and plead. He laid before the court letters from officers of rank speaking gratefully of his aid during the prevalence of yellow fever in the Gulf States. He begged the court to wait until he could show them the affidavits of many statesmen and soldiers, whom it would take months to hear from by mail, and there was then no telegraph in Arizona. He begged for time, for pity, and the court was moved and wrote to Drum Barracks for