“Bastard,” Sharpe said, and hauled the man to his feet. Two of Pohlmann’s officers had arrived now, one still with a fan of cards in his hand.
“Get his bloody musket,” Sharpe ordered them. The man struggled in Sharpe’s hands, but he was much smaller than Sharpe and a good kick between his legs brought him to order.
“Come on, you bastard,” Sharpe said.
One of the officers had picked up the fallen musket and Sharpe reached over and felt the muzzle. It was hot, showing that the weapon had just been fired.
“If you killed my Colonel, you bastard, I’ll kill you,” Sharpe said and dragged the man through the campfires to the knot of officers who had gathered about the Colonel’s tent.
McCandless’s two horses were gone. Both the mare and the gelding had been stolen, and Sharpe realized it was their hoofbeats he had heard go past him. McCandless, woken by the noise of the horse thieves, had come from the tent and fired his pistol at the men, and one of them had fired back and the bullet had buried itself in the ’39
Colonel’s left thigh. He was lying on the ground now, looking horribly pale, and Pohlmann was bellowing for his doctor to come quickly.
“Who’s that?” he demanded of Sharpe, and nodding at the prisoner.
“The bastard who fired at Colonel McCandless, sir. Musket’s still hot.”
The man proved to be one of Major Dodd’s sepoys, one of the men who had deserted with Dodd from the Company, and he was put into the charge of Pohlmann’s bodyguard. Sharpe knelt beside McCandless who was trying not to cry aloud as the newly arrived doctor, the Swiss man who had sat beside Sharpe at dinner, examined his leg.
“I was sleeping!” the Colonel complained.
“Thieves, Sharpe, thieves!”
“We’ll find your horses,” Pohlmann reassured the Scotsman, ‘and we’ll find the thieves.”
“You promised me safety!” McCandless complained.
“The men will be punished,” Pohlmann promised, then he helped Sharpe and two other men lift the wounded Colonel and carry him into the tent where they laid him on the rope cot. The doctor said the bullet had missed the bone, and no major artery was cut, but he still wanted to fetch his probes, forceps and scalpels and try to pull the ball out.
“You want some brandy, McCandless?” Pohlmann asked.
“Of course not. Tell him to get on with it.”
The doctor called for more lanterns, for water and for his instruments, and then he spent ten excruciating minutes looking for the bullet deep inside McCandless’s upper thigh. The Scotsman uttered not a sound as the probe slid into his lacerated flesh, nor as the long-necked forceps were pushed down to find a purchase on the bullet. The Swiss doctor was sweating, but McCandless just lay with eyes tight shut and teeth clenched.
“It comes now,” the doctor said and began to pull, but the flesh had closed on the forceps and he had to use almost all his strength to drag the bullet up from the wound. It came free at last, releasing a spill of bright blood, and McCandless groaned.
“All done now, sir,” Sharpe told him.
“Thank God,” McCandless whispered, ‘thank God.” The Scotsman opened his eyes. The doctor was bandaging the thigh and McCandless looked past him to Pohlmann.
“This is treachery, Colonel, treachery! I was your guest!”
“Your horses will be found, Colonel, I promise you,” Pohlmann said, but though his men made a search of the camp, and though they searched until morning, the two horses were not found. Sharpe was the only man who could identify them, for Colonel McCandless was in no state to walk, but Sharpe saw no horses that resembled the stolen pair, but nor did he expect to for any competent horse thief knew a dozen tricks to disguise his catch. The beast would be clipped, its coat would be dyed with blackball, it would be force-fed an enema so that its head drooped, then it would as likely as not be put among the cavalry mounts where one horse looked much like another. Both McCandless’s horses had been European bred and were larger and officer quality than most in Pohlmann’s camp, yet even so Sharpe saw no sign of the two animals.