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Page 38
Then it was discovered that Jimmy Hayes was missing. Some one remembered
having seen him run for his pony when the attack began, but no one had set
eyes on him since. Morning came, but no Jimmy. They searched the country
around, on the theory that he had been killed or wounded, but without
success. Then they followed after Saldar's gang, but it seemed to have
disappeared. Manning concluded that the wily Mexican had recrossed the
river after his theatric farewell. And, indeed, no further depredations f
rom him were reported.
This gave the rangers time to nurse a soreness they had. As has been
said, the pride and honour of the company is the individual bravery of its
members. And now they believed that Jimmy Hayes had turned coward at the
whiz of Mexican bullets. There was no other deduction. Buck Davis
pointed out that not a shot was fired by Saldar's gang after Jimmy was
seen running for his horse. There was no way for him to have been shot.
No, he had fled from his first fight, and afterward he would not return,
aware that the scorn of his comrades would be a worse thing to face than
the muzzles of many rifles.
So Manning's detachment of McLean's company, Frontier Battalion, was
gloomy. It was the first blot on its escutcheon. Never before in the
history of the service had a ranger shown the white feather. All of them
had liked Jimmy Hayes, and that made it worse.
Days, weeks, and months went by, and still that little cloud of
unforgotten cowardice hung above the camp.
III
Nearly a year afterward -- after many camping grounds and many hundreds of
miles guarded and defended -- Lieutenant Manning, with almost the same
detachment of men, was sent to a point only a few miles below their old
camp on the river to look after some smuggling there. One afternoon,
while they were riding through a dense mesquite flat, they came upon a
patch of open hog-wallow prairie. There they rode upon the scene of an
unwritten tragedy.
In a big hog-wallow lay the skeletons of three Mexicans. Their clothing
alone served to identify them. The largest of the figures had once been
Sebastiano Saldar. His great, costly sombrero, heavy with gold
ornamentation -- a hat famous all along the Rio Grande -- lay there
pierced by three bullets. Along the ridge of the hog-wallow rested the
rusting Winchesters of the Mexicans -- all pointing in the same direction.
The rangers rode in that direction for fifty yards. There, in a little
depression of the ground, with his rifle still bearing upon the three, lay
another skeleton. It had been a battle of extermination. There was
nothing to identify the solitary defender. His clothing -- such as the
elements had left distinguishable -- seemed to be of the kind that any
ranchman or cowboy might have worn.
"Some cow-puncher," said Manning, "that they caught out alone. Good boy!
He put up a dandy scrap before they got him. So that's why we didn't hear
from Don Sebastiano any more!"
And then, from beneath the weather-beaten rags of the dead man, there
wriggled out a horned frog with a faded red ribbon around its neck, and
sat upon the shoulder of its long quiet master. Mutely it told the story
of the untried youth and the swift "paint" pony -- how they had
outstripped all their comrades that day in the pursuit of the Mexican
raiders, and how the boy had gone down upholding the honour of the company.
The ranger troop herded close, and a simultaneous wild yell arose from
their lips. The outburst was at once a dirge, an apology, an epitaph, and
a paean of triumph. A strange requiem, you may say, over the body of a
fallen, comrade; but if Jimmy Hayes could have heard it he would have
understood.
XII THE DOOR OF UNREST
I sat an hour by sun, in the editor's room of the Montopolis _Weekly
Bugle_. I was the editor.
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