Captain Mayne - Headless Horseman

“How should I know?” answered the officer appealed to. “Ask her cousin, Mr Cassius Calhoun.”

“We have asked him, but without getting any satisfaction. It’s clear he knows no more than we. He only met them on the return — and not very far from the place where we had our bivouac. They were gone a precious long time; and judging by the sweat of their horses they must have had a hard ride of it. They might have been to the Rio Grande, for that matter, and beyond it.”

“Did you notice Calhoun as he came back?” inquired the captain of infantry. “There was a scowl upon his face that betokened some very unpleasant emotion within his mind, I should say.”

“He did look rather unhappy,” replied the major; “but surely, Captain Sloman, you don’t attribute it to — ?”

“Jealousy. I do, and nothing else.”

“What! of Maurice the mustanger? Poh — poh! impossible — at least, very improbable.”

“And why, major?”

“My dear Sloman, Louise Poindexter is a lady, and Maurice Gerald — ”

“May be a gentleman for aught that is known to the contrary.”

“Pshaw!” scornfully exclaimed Crossman; “a trader in horses! The major is right — the thing’s improbable — impossible.”

“Ah, gentlemen!” pursued the officer of infantry, with a significant shake of the head. “You don’t know Miss Poindexter, so well as I. An eccentric young lady — to say the least of her. You may have already observed that for yourselves.”

“Come, come, Sloman!” said the major, in a bantering way; “you are inclined to be talking scandal, I fear. That would be a scandal. Perhaps you are yourself interested in Miss Poindexter, notwithstanding your pretensions to be considered a Joseph? Now, I could understand your being jealous if it were handsome Hancock here, or Crossman — supposing him to be disengaged. But as for a common mustanger — poh — poh!”

“He’s an Irishman, major, this mustanger; and if he be what I have some reason to suspect — ”

“Whatever he be,” interrupted the major, casting a side glance towards the door, “he’s there to answer for himself; and as he’s a sufficiently plain-spoken fellow, you may learn from him all about the matter that seems to be of so much interest to you.”

“I don’t think you will,” muttered Sloman, as Hancock and two or three others turned towards the new-comer, with the design of carrying out the major’s suggestion.

Silently advancing across the sanded floor, the mustanger had taken his stand at an unoccupied space in front of the counter.

“A glass of whisky and water, if you please?” was the modest request with which to saluted the landlord.

“Visky und vachter!” echoed the latter, without any show of eagerness to wait upon his new guest. “Ya, woe, visky und vachter! It ish two picayunsh the glass.”

“I was not inquiring the price,” replied the mustanger, “I asked to be served with a glass of whisky and water. Have you got any?”

“Yesh — yesh,” responded the German, rendered obsequious by the sharp rejoinder. “Plenty — plenty of visky und vachter. Here it ish.”

While his simple potation was being served out to him, Maurice received nods of recognition from the officers, returning them with a free, but modest air. Most of them knew him personally, on account of his business relations with the Fort.

They were on the eve of interrogating him — as the major had suggested — when the entrance of still another individual caused them to suspend their design.

The new-comer was Cassius Calhoun. In his presence it would scarce have been delicacy to investigate the subject any further.

Advancing with his customary swagger towards the mixed group of military men and civilians, Calhoun saluted them as one who had spent the day in their company, and had been absent only for a short interval. If not absolutely intoxicated, it could be seen that the ex-officer of volunteers was under the influence of drink. The unsteady sparkle of his eyes, the unnatural pallor upon his forehead — still further clouded by two or three tossed tresses that fell over it — with the somewhat grotesque set of his forage cap — told that he had been taking one beyond the limits of wisdom.

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