"May I reach under the counter NOW?" he asked.
The sergeant grinned appreciatively, and shifted his gun. "Yes, but
I'll keep this out until I'm sure it's a bottle," he said, and
laughed boisterously.
For an instant, under the cover of the counter, Cahill's hand touched
longingly upon the gun that lay there, and then passed on to the
bottle beside it. He drew it forth, and there was the clink of
glasses.
In the other room Mary Cahill winked at the major, but that officer
pretended to be both deaf to the clink of the glasses and blind to
the wink. And so the incident was closed. Had it not been for the
folly of Lieutenant Ranson it would have remained closed.
A week before this happened a fire had started in the Willow Bottoms
among the tepees of some Kiowas, and the prairie, as far as one could
see, was bruised and black. From the post it looked as though the sky
had been raining ink. At the time all of the regiment but G and H
Troops was out on a practice-march, experimenting with a new-fangled
tabloid-ration. As soon as it turned the buttes it saw from where the
light in the heavens came and the practice-march became a race.
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