f the officer ventured to leave his tent, and as No.
4 was a post over a hundred yards in length, and the sentry responsible
for all of it, there was no right or reason in demanding of him that he
should give his undivided attention to what might be going on close to
the corral. In fact, by removing Nevins from the inner quadrangle of the
camp and placing him outside the walls, Major Starke had made it all the
easier for him to skip a second time if he saw fit to do so; but Starke
reasoned that Nevins still had some hope that congressional influence
would save him from dismissal, and therefore would not peril his chances
by a second flight. Starke did not know that Nevins was honest at least
in one statement, that he expected dismissal. His fate was sealed, his
pay was confiscated to square shortages. There was actually nothing to
be gained by staying at Cooke in virtual confinement, perhaps eight or
ten weeks, until his case could be decided in Washington and the orders
received back in Arizona. It actually simplified matters in many ways
for Nevins to go. Somebody, for instance, would have to pay the cost of
his subsistence all that time at Cooke. Thrice a day his meals were sent
to him from the little bachelors' mess, already sorely taxed for the
"entertainment" of the members of the court, and the four poor fellows
who constituted that frontier club had been only too glad when its
members from other stations insisted that they should pay their share of
the long three weeks' burden on the culinary department. But Nevins now
was penniless, so he said, and why should impecunious infantry
subalterns support in idleness a disgraced and virtually dismissed
officer? Yet that is precisely what the government compelled them to
do--or starve him. Thinking it all over during the day, Major Starke
concluded that at least Camp Cooke had something to be thankful for, and
sending for Privates Poague and Pritzlaff, he sternly rebuked them for
their probable negligence (for "discipline must be maintained"), and
with dire threats of what they might expect in the way of punishment if
they transgressed in the slightest way for six months to come, he bade
them go back to duty, released, which they did, each with his tongue in
his cheek and a wink of the inner eye, as they strode off together and
went grinning to the guard-tents for their blankets.

All the same Starke wished to know whither Nevins had gone, and whether
anything new had s