“Schmidt, stand berfectly still,” said Meyer in his softest fluting.  “Kelly has his beece aimed at your head.  If you stir hant or foot, you are a kawn koose.”

CHAPTER XXXII.

Texas Smith was too old a borderer to attempt to draw his weapons while such a man as Kelly was sighting him at ten feet distance.

“Play yer hand, sergeant,” he said; “you’ve got the keerds.”

“You know, Schmidt, that our leftenant has been garried down the river,” continued Meyer.

The bushwhacker responded with a grunt which expressed neither pleasure nor sorrow, but merely assent.

“You know,” went on the sergeant, “that such things cannot habben to officers without investigations.”

“He war a squar man, an’ a white man,” said Texas.  “I didn’t have nothin’ to do with cuttin’ him loose, if he war cut loose.”

“You didn’t saw the lariat yourself, Schmidt, I know that.  But do you know who did saw it?”

“I dunno the first thing about it.”

“Bray to pe struck tead if you do.”

“I dunno how to pray.”

“Then holt up your hants and gurse yourself to hell if you do.”

Lifting his hands over his head, the ignorant savage blasphemed copiously.

“Do you think you can guess how it was pusted?” persisted the soldier.

“Look a hyer!” remonstrated Smith, “ain’t you pannin’ me out a leetle too fine?  It mought ‘a’ been this way, an’ it mought ‘a’ been that.  But I’ve no business to point if I can’t find.  When a man’s got to the bottom of his pile, you can’t fo’ce him to borrow.  ‘Sposin’ I set you barkin’ up the wrong tree; what good’s that gwine to do?”

“Vell, Schmidt, I don’t zay but what you zay right.  You mustn’t zay anyting you don’t know someting apout.”

After another silence, during which Texas continued to hold his hands above his head, Meyer added, “Kelly, you may come to an order.  Schmidt, you may put down your hants.  Will you haf a jew of topacco?”

The three men now approached each other, took alternate bites of the sergeant’s last plug of pigtail, and masticated amicably.

“You army fellers run me pootty close,” said Texas, after a while, in a tone of complaint and humiliation.  “I don’t want to fight brass buttons.  They’re too many for me.  The Capm he lassoed me, an’ choked me some; an’ now you’re on it.”

“When things habben to officers, they must pe looked into,” replied Meyer.

“I dunno how in thunder the lariat got busted,” repeated Texas.  “An’ if I should go for to guess, I mought guess wrong.”

“All right, Schmidt; I pelieve you.  If there is no more drubble, you will not pe called up again.”

“Ask him what he thinks of the leftenant’s chances,” suggested Kelly to his superior.

“Reckon he’ll hev to run the river a spell,” returned the borderer.  “Reckon he’ll hev to run it a hell of a ways befo’ he’ll be able to git across the dam country.”