Charles King - Trumpeter Fred - A Story of the Plains

"Lieutenant," he said, halting and raising his hand in salute, "it isn't quite so bad as I feared, but bad enough. Sergeant Farron, Corporal Watts, and I are the principal losers, besides Sergeant Dawson. Three of the men who went into the Agency on pass just after we were paid had left most of their money with me, and that is gone. I had it with my own in the flat wallet I always carried in the inside pocket of my hunting-shirt. You can see, sir, how it was done," and the sergeant displayed a long clean cut through the Indian tanned buckskin. "It took a sharp knife and a light hand to do that, for I'm not a heavy sleeper. Farron, Watts, and I were sleeping side by side just over there on the bank, and they heard nothing all the night. But will the lieutenant look at this handkerchief, sir? Is it chloroformed? I feel dull and heavy, as though I had been drugged. He couldn't have got it from me any other way."

Blunt took the bandanna and sniffed it cautiously, and then turned it over and curiously inspected it. There was certainly an odor of chloroform about it – a strong odor.

"Whose is this?" he asked. "I do not remember seeing any of the men wearing one like this."

"None of them own it, sir. I've asked the whole party but Sergeant Dawson and the men on guard. They have these cheap red things for sale at the store there at the Red Cloud Agency, but none of the troop have I ever seen wearing them; they are too small for neck handkerchiefs. Dawson is out yet, trying to locate the trail. I've sent Robbins for him," and the sergeant looked anxiously away southward, searching the prairie with a world of pain and trouble in his eyes.

"What could possibly have induced the boy to turn scoundrel all at once?" asked the lieutenant. "It will break his old father's heart."

"I can't account for it, sir. He has been as honest and square as a boy could be ever since his enlistment; but the men tell me that he has been spending a good deal of time over in the post whenever we camped there, and I am afraid, from what Donovan says, that he has been gambling with the young fellows at the band quarters. There's a hard lot in there, I'm told; and the old hands encourage the boys to get all they can out of strangers, and then they turn to and fleece the boys. It is about four hundred dollars he has taken. A man knows that will last but a little while on the frontier, but to a boy it seems a big pile."

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