He had
allowed a horse to be sent to a sick man--an officer not on duty--and
one the doctor had warned against exercise for quite a time, at least.
And now the officer was gone, so was the horse, and Cutler, being
sorely torn up by the revelations of the evening and dread of ill
befalling Blakely, was so injudicious as to hint to a soldier who had
worn chevrons much longer than he, Cutler, had worn shoulder-straps,
that the next thing to go would probably be his sergeant's bars,
whereat Murray went red to the roots of his hair--which "continued the
march" of the color,--and said, with a snap of his jaws, that he got
those chevrons, as he did his orders, from his troop commander. A
court might order them stricken off, but a captain couldn't, other
than his own. For which piece of impudence the veteran went
straightway to Sudsville in close arrest. Corporal Bolt was ordered to
take over his keys and the charge of the stables until the return of
Captain Wren, also this order--that no government horse should be sent
to Lieutenant Blakely hereafter until the lieutenant was declared by
the post surgeon fit for duty.
There were left at the post, of each of the two cavalry troops, about
a dozen men to care for the stables, the barracks, and property. Seven
of these had gone with the convoy to Prescott, and, when Cutler
ordered half a dozen horsemen out at midnight to follow Blakely's
trail and try to find him, they had to draw on both troop stables, and
one of the designated men was the wretch Downs,--and Downs was not in
his bunk,--not anywhere about the quarters or corrals.
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