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"It wasn't Jordan's week on night-guard." There was silence for a moment, and then Hulton asked: "Where did you meet the man you thought was Jordan? Did he answer you?" "He was going along the ground-floor passage in front of me, and the only light was in the pay-office at the end.
He saw the old man out with his men, standing his shift of night-guard, stubbornly resisting the creeping years and his load of trouble; riding around the sleeping herd with his head sunk on his chest, meeting the younger guard twice on each complete circle, and yet never seeming to see him at all. "Sing low to your cattle, sing low to your steers "
In the story they were supposed to have ridden nearly all night, the night-guard who had been on duty when the storm struck and the cattle began to drift, and who had stuck to their posts even though they could not turn the herd. That might be stretching the probabilities just a shade, but Luck felt that the effects he wanted to get justified the slight license he had used in his plot.
And there he would stay the long dark hours through, as if he thought that besides the comfort it brought to him to be near to Naomi, the tramp, tramp, tramp of his footsteps, which once or twice provoked the challenge of the night-guard on his lonely round, would be company to her in her solitude.
But there is a noise in the street, and lights approaching; the night-guard is passing; they have seen the ladder, for the street is narrow. Hyppolito is down, and tries to escape in vain. They seize and drag him to prison. What was he doing there? What can he reply? That he meant to enter the house, to carry something from it, or commit some bad deed, cannot be denied.
The ingenuity of our tormentors, however, prohibited our knowing any thing in the shape of indulgence; and in realisation of the dramatist's renowned mot, "traitors never sleep," the prison door was suddenly flung open a drum rattled through the aisle the whole body of the prisoners were ordered to stand forth and answer to their names; this ceremony concluding with the march of the whole night-guard into the chapel, and their being ordered to load with ball-cartridge, to give us the sufficient knowledge of what any attempt to escape would bring upon us in future.
It was a pity he spent so much energy, since it could only arouse our curiosity without satisfying it. In camp that night we told the Captain of our excited Mexican friend out in the brush, and our cook had seen sinister men on ponies passing near our camp. The Captain became solicitous, and stationed a night-guard over his precious government mules.
The men had various occupations in which, when the natives were present, they were constantly interrupted, and whenever the larger tribes slept near us, the utmost vigilance was necessary on the part of the night-guard, which was regularly mounted as soon as the tents were pitched. We had had little else than our flour to subsist on.
Now as since Sôda had been on guard the Prince had passed quiet nights, his sickness began to get better, and there was great joy in the palace, and Sôda was promoted and rewarded with an estate. In the meanwhile O Toyo, seeing that her nightly visits bore no fruits, kept away; and from that time forth the night-guard were no longer subject to fits of drowsiness.
Was it an attempt to irritate the boys to some real act of violence something that would put them in fear of the law? Or was it simply a stratagem to call off the night-guard so that they might slip their cattle across into the breaks? They must have counted on some disturbance which would reach the ears of the boys on guard.
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