Page:Lost with Lieutenant Pike (1919).djvu/324

 XXI

GOOD-BY TO LIEUTENANT PIKE

The lieutenant and men were to be sent clear to the city of Chihuahua, more than six hundred miles southward, where the commanding general of all Mexico had headquarters.

An officer and two soldiers from Governor Alencaster had called for him again in the morning immediately after breakfast. He returned to the Lieutenant Bartholomew house fuming. Stub never before had seen him so angry.

"I protested with all my power" he related, to Lieutenant Bartholomew and Stub's father. "I said that I should not go unless forced to by military strength. The governor agreed to give me a paper certifying to the fact that I march only as compelled to, but our detention as prisoners is a breach of faith. I consented to come to Santa Fe, for the purpose of explaining to him my accidental presence within his frontiers; and I have so explained. He has even read my papers and my commission. Now he orders us still further into the interior."

"You have my sympathy, señor," proffered Lieutenant Bartholomew.