Slavin straightened up, his great hands clinching nervously, drops of perspiration appearing on his red forehead.  “I don’t understand your damned fun.”

Hampton’s lips smiled unpleasantly.  “Slavin, you greatly discourage me.  The last time I was here you exhibited so fine a sense of humor that I was really quite proud of you.  Yet, truly, I think you do understand this joke.  Your memory can scarcely be failing at your age.—­Make another motion like that and you die right there!  You know me.—­However, as you seem to shy over my first question, I ’ll honor you with a second,—­Where’s Silent Murphy?”

Slavin’s great square jaws set, a froth oozing from between his thick lips, and for an instant the other man believed that in his paroxysm of rage he would hurl himself across the table.  Then suddenly the ungainly brute went limp, his face grown haggard.

“You devil!” he roared, “what do you mean?”

Surprised as Hampton was by this complete breaking down, he knew his man far too well to yield him the slightest opportunity for treachery.  With revolver hand resting on the table, the muzzle pointing at the giant’s heart, he leaned forward, utterly remorseless now, and keen as an Indian on the trail.

“Do you know who I am?”

The horror in Slavin’s eyes had changed to sullenness, but he nodded silently.

“How do you know?”

There was no reply, although the thick lips appeared to move.

“Answer me, you red sneak!  Do you think I am here to be played with?  Answer!”

Slavin gulped down something which seemed threatening to choke him, but he durst not lift a hand to wipe the sweat from his face.  “If—­if I didn’t have this beard on you might guess.  I thought you knew me all the time.”

Hampton stared at him, still puzzled.  “I have certainly seen you somewhere.  I thought that from the first.  Where was it?”

“I was in D Troop, Seventh Cavalry.”

“D Troop?  Brant’s troop?”

The big gambler nodded.  “That’s how I knew you, Captain,” he said, speaking with greater ease, “but I never had no reason to say anything about it round here.  You was allers decent ’nough ter me.”

“Possibly,”—­and it was plainly evident from his quiet tone Hampton had steadied from his first surprise,—­“the boot was on the other leg, and you had some good reason not to say anything.”

Slavin did not answer, but he wet his lips with his tongue, his eyes on the window.

“Who is this fellow Murphy?”

“He was corporal in that same troop, sir.”  The ex-cavalryman dropped insensibly into his old form of speech.  “He knew you too, and we talked it over, and decided to keep still, because it was none of our affair anyhow.”

“Where is he now?”

“He left last night with army despatches for Cheyenne.”

Hampton’s eyes hardened perceptibly, and his fingers closed more tightly about the butt of his revolver.  “You lie, Slavin!  The last message did not reach here until this morning.  That fellow is hiding somewhere in this camp, and the two of you have been trying to get at the girl.  Now, damn you, what is your little game?”