Within ten minutes of Todd's arrival at the spot the soft sands of the
mesa were tramped into bewildering confusion by dozens of trooper
boots. The muffled sound of excited voices, so soon after the
startling affair of the earlier evening, and hurrying footfalls
following, had roused almost every household along the row and brought
to the spot half the officers on duty at the post. A patrol of the
guard had come in double time, and soldiers had been sent at speed to
the hospital for a stretcher.
Dr. Graham had lost no moment of time in
reaching the stricken sentry. Todd had been sent back to Blakely's
bedside and Downs to fetch a lantern. They found the latter, five
minutes later, stumbling about the Trumans' kitchen, weeping for that
which was lost, and the sergeant of the guard collared and cuffed him
over to the guard-house--one witness, at least, out of the way. At
four o'clock the doctor was working over his exhausted and unconscious
patient at the hospital. Mullins had been stabbed twice, and
dangerously, and half a dozen men with lanterns were hunting about the
bloody sands where the faithful fellow had dropped, looking for a
weapon or a clew, and probably trampling out all possibility of
finding either. Major Plume, through Mr. Doty, his adjutant, had felt
it necessary to remind Captain Wren that an officer in close arrest
had no right to be away from his quarters. Late in the evening, it
seems, Dr. Graham had represented to the post commander that the
captain was in so nervous and overwrought a condition, and so
distressed, that as a physician he recommended his patient be allowed
the limits of the space adjoining his quarters in which to walk off
his superabundant excitement.
Graham had long been the friend of
Captain Wren and was his friend as well as physician now, even though
deploring his astounding outbreak, but Graham had other things to
demand his attention as night wore on, and there was no one to speak
for Wren when the young adjutant, a subaltern of infantry, with
unnecessary significance of tone and manner, suggested the captain's
immediate return to his proper quarters. Wren bowed his head and went
in stunned and stubborn silence. It had never occurred to him for a
moment, when he heard that half-stifled, agonized cry for help, that
there could be the faintest criticism of his rushing to the sentry's
aid. Still less had it occurred to him that other significance, and
damning significance, might attach to his presence on the spot, but,
being first to reach the fallen man, he was found kneeling over him
within thirty seconds of the alarm. Not another living creature was in
sight when the first witnesses came running to the spot. Both Truman
and Todd could swear to that.