The Spy Of The Rebellion Part 55

Keating, who had been almost worn out from the Texas trip, had been sleeping in a bunk below, and who had been roused by William's firing and the strange motion of the schooner, now came on deck rather thinly clad, and the two detectives covered Taylor with their revolvers; while the captain, himself at the wheel, handled the schooner so that it was only necessary for him to keep himself above water in order to float with the tide against the side of the boat, when my son, rather too indignant to be particularly tender, grabbed him by the hair and his luxuriant whiskers, drew him aboard, and soundly kicked him into the cabin, where he began crying from excitement and fright, even going to such depths of discouragement that he begged for a revolver with which to kill himself, which being handed him by my son for that purpose, he very properly refused, and was put to bed for the purpose of drying his clothes like a truant school-boy.

It was my son's intention to take the steamer at Indianola for Galveston immediately upon arriving at the former place; but on account of a heavy "Norther," which had blown all day Friday, the steamer had been obliged to put out to sea, and the party were consequently compelled to put up at the Magnolia House, and wait there until the following Monday; and it required all the detective's shrewdness to keep Taylor quiet, as he had learned from some source that the creation of Wyoming Territory, which occurred a short time before his capture, had caused Cheyenne to be a city of quite a different Territory than when the requisition was issued, which would have amounted to so grave a technical flaw that the requisition would not have held against a _habeas corpus_.

Court had just set at the place, and Indianola was full of lawyers, hungry as vultures for just such a rich case; but by constant persuasions, partial promises, leading to a hope, at least, that a compromise might be effected at New Orleans, and dark hints of irons, and that, should his brother come on there and create any disturbance he would be immediately arrested as accessory both before and after the crime; with constant drives out into the country, rambles down the sea-sh.o.r.e, and every pretext known to the mind of the ingenious detective, everything was managed successfully; a receipt for nearly two thousand dollars in specie secured; the turning over of the money to Taylor's brother stopped; and Taylor himself taken to New Orleans without an attempt at rescue; and receiving a dispatch there from me to the effect that a compromise could not be for a moment considered, the party left that city Thursday, February 4th, arriving in Cheyenne six days later, my son accounting for his prisoner to the authorities into whose hands the case then pa.s.sed; the last being seen of "Harry G.

Taylor, the Man from Somewhere," being behind the bars of the guard-house at Fort Russell, where he had been placed for safe-keeping previous to his trial;--and I have related these facts, not so much to show any startling phase of crime, as to give the public a single ill.u.s.tration, out of thousands upon my records, of how men must overcome every known obstacle while leading the hard life of the detective.

THE END.