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"You walked me into that cattle-guard on purpose!" he cried. Silence. "You led me into that boiler, and fixed the oil at the end!" No answer. "You mauled me all over the woods, and loaded those sandwiches yourself, and sored me for a week trying to chop down a tree with a pet coon chained in it! You ! You ! What had I done to you?"
But toward evening orders came to unpack and pitch tents again; and whether it had been an exercise to test the quickness of our army for marching, or whether some accident postponed the advance, I do not know. All that evening, being on duty with my Indians to watch the cattle-guard, I did not see Lois.
We encountered the cattle-guard near to a natural meadow along a tiny binikill, and they gave us an account of how Brant had fallen upon Minisink and had slain more than a hundred of our people along the Delaware and Neversink. And I saw my Indians listening with grim countenances while their eyes glowed like coals.
The local commando fell on our cattle-guard the other day a hundred and fifty to our twenty-five and we suffered; it was a horrible bit of country. There was a young chap, Winstay rather a pal of mine he had a narrow squeak, knocked over by a shot in his breast.
Near the place where he and the curious villagers had mounted to the railroad embankment were some planks. They had been taken out of a cattle-guard, to be replaced by new ones. "I can make a temporary runway of the old planks," reasoned Joe, "and guide myself to the rail with them." He quickly explained to the men and boys his need. They grasped the idea at once and began to help.
Later came word from him that he had a headache and would confer with me on the morrow. Neither did I see Lois again that evening, a gill of rum having been issued to every man, and I sticking close as a wood-tick to my red comrades indeed, I had them out after sunset to watch the cattle-guard, who were in a sorry pickle, sixty head having strayed and two soldiers missing.
And the solemn thunder of the last drum-roll must summon them to the great Festival of the Dead. On the 14th the army lay supine. There was no news from Otsego. One man fell dead in camp of heart disease. The cattle-guard was fired on. On the 15th a corporal and four privates, while herding our cattle, were fired on, the Senecas killing and scalping one and wounding another.
And now that he had practically unlimited money to spend, he did not seem to be spending it, but to be keeping better hours than when dodging his father's eye. His only absences from home he accounted for as visits to Winstay, his pal of the campaign, with whom he had got chummier than ever since the affair of the cattle-guard.
Where the track lay clear and straight ahead the torch seemed to light it like day; but in dark places it was suddenly lowered or wavering somewhere else. It was through this carelessness of Jimmy's that at the first cattle-guard north of the village the torch flickered backward, ostensibly to locate Dannie, and the Thread Man went crashing down between the iron bars, and across the gun.
And I wondered how he could make a jest of this business, and how he could have permitted so mad a prank if he truly entertained any very deep regard for Lana Helmer. "Danger," I repeated coldly. "Yes, there is a-plenty of that hereabouts, what with the Seneca scalping parties combing the woods around us, and the cattle-guard fired upon in plain sight of headquarters."
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