Now Darrin dropped to one knee, the rifle at ready. Aiming with the utmost coolness, the young Naval officer fired.

Straight and true went the bullet this time into Bruin's heart.

The big ma.s.s swayed, then fell. There was barely a gasp to signal the bear's end of life.

"Sergeant," remarked the midshipman coolly, "your conduct just now fully confirmed what I said about your being a valuable man for the Army."

"I probably wouldn't have been in the Army much longer, sir, if you hadn't got your rifle and fired just as you did," retorted the boyish sergeant.

"And I couldn't have reached my rifle if you hadn't shown the very unusual nerve to try to whip a bear in a bayonet charge."

"I know a good deal better, now, Mr. Darrin, how useless a bayonet attack is against a bear. Though Sergeant Terry and I once made a good haul of bear's meat with bayonets when at too close quarters with bears."

"You'll have to tell me about that as you go along," remarked the young Naval officer.

Noting the locality well, they left the bear where it had fallen, to be taken up a little later.

"h.e.l.lo, sir. There are other shots from our party," cried Overton, as three rifle reports rang out not far away. "That seems to show, sir, that they're meeting with luck, too."

CHAPTER XXIV

CONCLUSION

AFTER that, through the days to come, the luck seemed to boom.

At the end of four days young Sergeant Terry and his guard returned, having turned over all the prisoners to the sheriff of Blank County.

Noll had also wired the post at Fort Clowdry, and had received the post adjutant's answer that a guard would be sent to bring Private Hinkey back for trial on the charge of desertion.

"The sheriff knew all the prisoners at once, all except Hinkey,"

Sergeant Noll reported back to his chum and to Lieutenant Prescott. "The leader of the gang is a half-popular fellow with some cla.s.ses here in the mountains. Despite the fact that he's a desperado, he is often surprisingly good-natured, and always game when he loses. His name is Griller--Butch Griller, he's called. His crew are called the Moccasin Gang, because Griller has always preferred that his men wear moccasins instead of shoes. Shoes may give out in the wilds, but moccasins can always be made whenever an antelope is killed."

"The Moccasin Gang?" repeated Lieutenant Prescott. "Why, I've heard stories about that desperate crowd. But what were they doing around our camp?"

"Griller told me about that before we reached town," Sergeant Noll continued. "Griller and his men, it seems, were being pursued by the sheriff of the next county. He trailed them to a cabin where they had stopped and made such a complete surprise that Griller and his gang got away only by jumping through the windows without their arms. Then they traveled fast. When they found that there were soldiers here, the Moccasins hoped that they could get some of our arms and ammunition.

Thus provided, they hadn't much doubt of being able to provide themselves with more fighting hardware. And they'd have gotten away, too, if it hadn't been that Butch Griller had promised Hinkey a chance for revenge on Sergeant Overton."

"But how did Hinkey come to be with them?" broke in Lieutenant Prescott.

"Griller told me about that, sir," Noll replied. "Griller said he was standing on the stoop of a house in Denver, near the ball grounds, at the time when Hinkey deserted and made his break to get away. Griller was in Denver, on the quiet, to get more men together. When he saw Hinkey running, he sized him up as a man just deserted, and felt that Hinkey would be useful to him. So he called to Hinkey, shoved him inside the house, and then, when----"

"Say, but I remember that! And now I recall where I saw Griller before.

He told me that Hinkey had rushed on and turned the next street corner below. That threw me off the track," muttered Sergeant Hal.

"Well, his new man Hinkey brought him no luck," laughed Lieutenant Prescott. "And the Moccasins won't do much more harm, unless they manage to break jail."

"I don't believe they'll get away from that sheriff, anyway, sir,"

remarked Sergeant Noll grimly.

Noll Terry and the members of his guard were in time to do some more hunting before the happy soldiers' holiday came to an end.

When the expedition set out on its return both of the big transport wagons carried all the wild game meat that could be packed into them, and officers' and enlisted men's messes at Fort Clowdry celebrated in joyous fashion.

Ex-Private Hinkey, the deserter, was soon tried by general court-martial, and sentenced to be dismissed from the service, to forfeit all pay and allowances and to serve two years at a military prison.

It was Lieutenant Prescott who gave one of the crowning sensations just toward the close of Hinkey's trial.

Just before the battalion had left Fort Clowdry to go to the military tournament at Denver, First Sergeant Gray had asked every soldier in B Company to turn in a slip on which was written the name and address of his nearest relative or friend.

As such data was already on file, the men had wondered not a little at the request, but they had complied. And now Lieutenant Prescott informed the members of the court that it had been a ruse of his.

These slips, together with the clumsily printed note that had accompanied the return of Private William Green's money, and also the envelope addressed to Green, which latter Hal had admitted as his writing--all, just before the start of the hunting trip, had been forwarded by Lieutenant Prescott to a famous writing expert in the east.

Word had finally come from the expert to the effect that the envelope had really been addressed by Sergeant Hal, as that young soldier admitted. The printed note to Green, however, had been fashioned, the expert stated positively, by the same man who had turned in the written name and address of the "nearest friend" of ex-Private Hinkey.

With this report the expert had sent a curiously drawn chart showing resemblances between Hinkey's admitted handwriting and the printed note to Green. There were also photographs, made with the aid of the microscope, showing p.r.o.nounced similarities of little strokes and flourishes that were alike, both in Hinkey's admitted handwriting and in the turns given to some of the letters of the printed note.

Summing up all the evidence, the expert's report stated positively that Hinkey was the one who had fashioned the note to Green.

Finding that he could no longer deny his guilt, Hinkey was finally driven to confession before the court.

He had hated Sergeant (then Corporal) Overton with such an intensity, Hinkey confessed, that he had found himself willing to stop at nothing that would damage the young soldier in any way.

The envelope that Hal had addressed in his own handwriting, it now turned out, was one that he had so addressed at the request of Sergeant Gray to enclose an official communication that Gray had delivered to Private Green some weeks before.

On finding this envelope, and realizing how it would implicate Hal Overton, Hinkey had even gone to the extreme of returning Green's money, when he might safely have kept and spent it.

The reason why the money had not been found during the search that had immediately followed the discovery of the robbery in the squad room was equally simple. Hinkey, the afternoon before the robbery, had made the discovery of a secret hiding place under the floor beside his cot. That hiding place had been made, at great trouble, by some soldier formerly living in the squad room, and Hinkey's discovery of it had been accidental.

Now that he was in the mood for confessing, Hinkey also described how he had slipped the revolver lightly under Sergeant Hal's blanket in pa.s.sing Overton's cot.

So the mystery was wholly cleared up at last, and when ex-Private Hinkey departed to begin his term of imprisonment the Army was well rid of one who was in no sense fit to be the comrade of any honest man wearing Uncle Sam's soldier uniform.

Late in the fall the Colorado courts sent Griller and his crew to the penitentiary for long terms.

Immediately after Hinkey's trial, Lieutenant Prescott, who had gone to all the trouble to secure the evidence, drew up a brief statement, setting forth Sergeant Hal Overton's complete innocence of the squad-room robbery and declaring who the scoundrel was.

This statement was published, by direction of Colonel North, in the orders of the day.

Then, of course--human nature always works this way--even those of the soldiers who had most honestly believed in young Overton's guilt, now swarmed around him to a.s.sure him that they had never for an instant believed it possible that he could be otherwise than a most honest and wonderful soldier. Not they! Oh, no! Now that they knew who the real culprit was, these victims of human nature were ready to cross their hearts that they had known all along that Overton was absolutely guiltless; and they had even suspected, all along, who would turn out by and by to be the villain.

As has been said, this is human nature, and therefore not to be sneered at. In fact, nearly all of the men who protested so loudly to Hal Overton had the actual grace to believe themselves--as is always the case.

Private William Green, however, had been cured, ever since the return of most of his money, of the bad habit of carrying so much around with him.

Seldom after that was he to be caught with more than a hundred dollars.