A Wounded Name | Page 9

and you, the shorter, I'll trouble to come
into camp forthwith. No, don't draw that pistol unless you want a dozen
bullets through you. Half a troop is right here at my back. Your soldier
name was Higgins and you're a deserter from Cram's battery, New
Orleans."
For a moment there was a silence, broken only by the hard breathing of
the two cornered men, then came a flash, a sharp report, a piercing
scream as the lithe Mexican girl sprang forth from 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