"And you!" he shouted--"YOU dared to escape?--you dare to be alive?
You cowardly hound, I"ll send you to join them if I hang for it!"
But with the leap of a panther the captain was upon him, grasping his wrist. "Hold it in, Sam Yountsey, hold it in!"
We were now all upon our feet--except the stranger, who sat motionless and apparently inattentive. Some one seized Yountsey"s other arm.
"Captain," I said, "there is something wrong here. This fellow is either a lunatic or merely a liar--just a plain, every-day liar whom Yountsey has no call to kill. If this man was of that party it had five members, one of whom--probably himself--he has not named."
"Yes," said the captain, releasing the insurgent, who sat down, "there is something--unusual. Years ago four dead bodies of white men, scalped and shamefully mutilated, were found about the mouth of that cave. They are buried there; I have seen the graves--we shall all see them to-morrow."
The stranger rose, standing tall in the light of the expiring fire, which in our breathless attention to his story we had neglected to keep going.
"There were four," he said--"Ramon Gallegos, William Shaw, George W.
Kent and Berry Davis."
With this reiterated roll-call of the dead he walked into the darkness and we saw him no more.
At that moment one of our party, who had been on guard, strode in among us, rifle in hand and somewhat excited.
"Captain," he said, "for the last half-hour three men have been standing out there on the mesa." He pointed in the direction taken by the stranger. "I could see them distinctly, for the moon is up, but as they had no guns and I had them covered with mine I thought it was their move. They have made none, but, d.a.m.n it! they have got on to my nerves."
"Go back to your post, and stay till you see them again," said the captain. "The rest of you lie down again, or I"ll kick you all into the fire."
The sentinel obediently withdrew, swearing, and did not return. As we were arranging our blankets the fiery Yountsey said: "I beg your pardon, Captain, but who the devil do you take them to be?"
"Ramon Gallegos, William Shaw and George W. Kent."
"But how about Berry Davis? I ought to have shot him."
"Quite needless; you couldn"t have made him any deader. Go to sleep."
Footnotes:
{1} Rough notes of this tale were found among the papers of the late Leigh Bierce. It is printed here with such revision only as the author might himself have made in transcription.