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Updated: June 24, 2025
Tintop had found and struck Red Dog's camp at dawn on the sixteenth, guided thither by Thunder Hawk himself, had struck hard and heavily, scattering not only Red Dog's people to the hills but destroying their village and burning another that from its foul condition seemed to have been standing there all winter.
Three days later, what was his wrath to find Devers's herd almost a mile away down the stream, and close by the tents of Major Roome's battalion of Foot that had been for a week placidly awaiting the return of the cavalry! Tintop had halted and unsaddled some distance up-stream.
Then Tintop gave Devers positive orders not to content himself with telling people to do thus and so, but to see that the orders were obeyed, and Devers then took his pipe and his blankets and ostentatiously spent hours of the afternoon out on the open prairie, a monument to the severity and exactions of his colonel.
Nearly two hundred if he followed the stream would Tintop have to cover in going from Fort Ransom to that point, but he had started on a Wednesday morning, twenty-four hours ahead of Chrome. Each well knew he would probably have to fight his way. Each meant, according to his own lights, to do his best, and each resorted to measures radically different.
Black Bill told Tintop that Devers was as bad as the Irishman's flea, put your thumb on him and he isn't there. "I'll cinch him," said Tintop in reply, "if he tries any of his damned nonsense on me." But with every intention of doing his level best, "Topsy" little knew the infinite resources of the man. One of Devers's idiosyncrasies was a hatred of doing things as anybody else did them.
The first day Devers's horses were herded to graze far out on the slopes, five hundred yards beyond those of any other troop, and Tintop said he wished Captain Devers hereafter not to allow his herd to be driven beyond those of the rest of the regiment.
He had played his last trump with Tintop early in the campaign, and received that grizzled veteran's rasping intimation that one more experiment would lead to arrest and court-martial, and received it with every appearance of amaze and pain, which might have been effective had not Hastings been called upon beforehand to give his version of the affair that led to it.
"I have always held that the captain should not be spied upon," he said, "and I have too much confidence in the ability and sense of duty of you gentlemen to differ now." Hay was amazed, so was everybody up at head-quarters. Colonel Tintop didn't know what to make of it. Cranston presently decided he had solved the mystery, but kept his theory to himself.
There wasn't a shred of canvas with the regiment while on this brisk raid, nor was there need of it in such perfect weather, and Tintop with Gray by his side stood fuming in the midst of surrounding cook fires, when Devers came placidly up in obedience to the summons of the orderly, and many an ear was brought to bear and bets were given and taken that this time Devers would catch it and no rebate.
If he could realize this, how much the quicker would others be to attach the blame to him! how much the more necessary must it be to lose no time in diverting suspicion elsewhere! The fatal propensity to distort or disobey, which perhaps he could have downed had Tintop or Riggs been there, he could not resist with Warren, an envied contemporary, presumably new to his idiosyncrasies.
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