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Under Fire

by Charles King · English · Gutenberg #20101 · 829,167 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Under Fire

Author: Charles King


        
Release date: December 14, 2006 [eBook #20101]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNDER FIRE ***




Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
Libraries.)








[Illustration: RED DOG'S ARREST.

_Frontispiece._ _Page 264._]




UNDER FIRE.

BY

CAPT. CHARLES KING, U.S.A.,

AUTHOR OF "THE COLONEL'S DAUGHTER," "MARION'S FAITH," "CAPTAIN BLAKE,"
ETC.

_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_

BY C. B. COX.


"A bad dhrill, a wake voice, an' a limp leg--thim three things are the
signs av a bad man."--PRIVATE MULVANEY.

PHILADELPHIA:
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
1895.


COPYRIGHT, 1894,
BY
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.


ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA,
U.S.A.


TO

GENERAL WESLEY MERRITT,
U.S. ARMY,

OUR HONORED COLONEL IN THE OLD DAYS AND A VALUED

FRIEND THROUGH ALL THESE LATER

YEARS, THIS STORY

IS

Inscribed.

Trancriber's note: Minor typos have been corrected, and ads moved to the
end of the book.




PREFACE.


It is ten years since "The Colonel's Daughter" ventured before the
public and found so many friends that "Marion's Faith" and later
"Captain Blake" set forth in reinforcement, and even then there came the
call for more. Pelham's old regiment was not the only one to contain
either odd, laughable, or lovable characters, so now the curtain is
raised on the Eleventh Horse,--a command as apocryphal as the --th, yet
equally distinguished in the eyes of those who trod the war-path twenty
years ago.

C. K.

October, 1894.




UNDER FIRE.




CHAPTER I.


It was the last day of Captain Wilbur Cranston's leave of absence. For
three blissful months he had been visiting his old home in a bustling
Western city, happy in the happiness of his charming wife in this her
first long restoration to civilization since their marriage ten years
before; happy in the pride and joy of his father and mother in having
once more under their roof the soldier son who had won an honored name
in his profession, and in their delight in the exuberant health and
antics of two sturdy, plains-bred little Cranstons. The visit proved one
continuous round of home pleasures and social gayeties, for Margaret
Cranston had been a stanch favorite in the days of her girl- and
bellehood, and all her old friends, married and single, rose _en masse_
to welcome her return. Parties, dances, dinners, concerts, theatre and
opera, lectures, pictures, parks, drives and rides,--all the endless
resources of the metropolitan world had been laid at the feet of the
girl who, leaving them to follow her soldier lover to his exile and
wanderings, had returned in the fulness of time, in the flush of
womanhood, a proud wife and proud and happy mother. People could not
understand her choice at the time of her marriage: "Cranston's all
right, but the idea of going to live in a tent or dug-out," was the
popular way of putting it, and people were still unable to understand
how she could have ever found anything to enjoy in that wild life or to
make her wish to see it again. It was, therefore, incomprehensible to
society that she and her two bouncing boys were utterly overwhelmed with
distress at having to remain in so charming a circle, so happy a home,
when it came time for the captain to return. Society even resented it a
little. Juvenile society--feminine--took it amiss that the Cranston boys
should so scorn the arts of peace, and persist furthermore in saying the
buffalo and bear and wolves in the municipal "Zoo" were frauds as
compared with what they had seen "any day" all around them out on the
plains. Tremendous stories did these little Nimrods tell of the big game
on which they had tired of dining, but some of their tales were true,
and that's what made it so hard for junior society masculine, in which
there wasn't a boy who did not honestly and justly hate these young
frontiersmen, even while envying with all his civilized heart. Loud was
the merriment at school over the Cranstons' blunders in spelling and
arithmetic, but what--what was that as offset to their prowess on
pony-back, their skill with the bow and sling-shot, their store of
Indian trinkets, trophies, ay, even to the surreptitiously shown Indian
scalp? What was that to the tales of tremendous adventure in the land of
the Sioux and Apache,--the home of the bear and the buffalo? What
city-bred boy could "hold a candle" to the glaring halo about the head
of two who could claim personal acquaintance with the great war chiefs
Red Cloud and Spotted Tail?--who had actually been to ride and hunt with
that then just dawning demigod of American boyhood,--Buffalo Bill? Sneer
and scoff and cavil as did their little rivals for a time, calumny was
crushed and scoffers blighted that wonderful March morning when, before
the whole assembled school, there suddenly appeared that paragon of
plainsmen, that idol of all well-bred young Westerners, he whom only on
flaring posters or in the glare of the footlights had they been
permitted to see, and smiling, superbly handsome, king of scouts and
Indian-fighters, Buffalo Bill himself stepped into their midst and
clasped the little Cranstons, madly rejoicing, in his arms, while their
father, the cavalry captain, and even the dreaded teacher looked
approvingly on. It was after that episode of no avail for even the
sturdiest of their schoolmates to seek to belittle the Cranston fame.
Louis, the elder, could not invent a whopper so big as to tax the
credulity of the school. Buffalo Bill was "starring it" with his
theatrical company through the States that spring, playing some
blood-curdling, scalp-taking; hair-raising border drama which all boys
eager strove to see, and when his old chum and comrade, the captain,
went to call on him at his hotel, the great chief of scouts would not
rest until together they had gone to see his friends "the boys." That
other parents should have been pestered half to death as a result of
this visitation any one who knows boys has not to be told, and many were
the queries and complaints addressed to the laughing cavalryman upon
that score. Parents, as a rule, had no proper conception of the honest
merit and deserved fame of this transplanted hero, Bill,--were amazed
to learn from Cranston that he was no fraud at all, but a man whom he
and his regimental comrades swore by. A total change had come over the
spirit of the school-boys' dreams. Nothing but Indian raids,
buffalo-hunts, or terrific combats diversified the hour of recess. The
little girls chose romantic prairie names, were either Indian maidens or
ever-ready-to-be-rescued damsels in distress. The boys became
redoubtable chiefs or rival imitation scouts, but Louis Cranston alone
was permitted to play the _rôle_ of Buffalo Bill; in his presence no
other boy dare attempt it.

It was a revolutionized society long before that budding May morning on
which the captain had to take train for the far West, leaving wife and
little ones to his father's care until the long threatened and now
imminent campaign should be over. Then, should God spare his life
through what proved to be the fiercest and most fatal of ten fierce and
fatal summers, they should rejoin him at some distant frontier fort, and
the boys' triumphant reign at school be ended. Loudly did they clamor to
be taken with him. Stoutly did Louis maintain that his pony could keep
up with the swiftest racer in the regiment, and indirectly did he give
it to be understood at school that just as soon as the war really began
he'd be out with "C" troop as he had been in the past. The war had begun
and some savage fighting had already taken place, when the orders were
launched for the Eleventh Cavalry to concentrate for field service.
Cranston wired that he would give up the last ten days of his leave, and
Mrs. Cranston, brave, submissive, but weeping sore at times, set to
packing her soldier's trunk. It was their last evening together for
many a long month, and their friends knew it, and therefore, even if
they called to leave a sympathetic word with the grandparents, they did
not expect to see the captain and his wife. Once or twice the
gray-haired mother had come to twine her arms about her big boy's neck,
or to say that Mr. and Mrs. Somebody had just called, but wouldn't
intrude. It was, therefore, a surprise when towards nine o'clock she
came to announce a caller below,--a caller who begged not to be
denied,--Mrs. Barnard.

"Mrs. _Barnard_!" exclaimed the army wife, in that tone in which
incredulity mingled with surprise tells to the observant ear that no
welcome awaits the announced one.

"_Who is_ Mrs. Barnard?" asked the trooper, looking up from the depths
of his big trunk.

"Oh, her husband owns about half the tenth ward," said Mrs. Cranston the
elder, city bred, "and," hesitatingly, "you've often seen her in
church."

"At church--yes," answered her daughter-in-law, "but no one ever sees
her anywhere else. She has never called on me, has she?"

"No," said the elder lady. "They are old residents, though, and years
ago when the city was new your father and hers--indeed, her husband and
mine--were well acquainted, but we drifted apart as the city grew. She
was Almira Prendergast."

"I'm sure I never heard of her when I was a girl, though, of course, I
was away at school a good deal. Every one knows her by sight now because
she's the most conspicuous woman in church. She dresses magnificently,"
said Mrs. Cranston the younger. "I couldn't help noticing her diamonds
last Sunday."

"They must have been big, Meg," put in the captain, reflectively, as he
was getting himself out of his smoking-jacket. "Let's see,--ours is a
hundred-dollar pew down near the foot of the side aisle, and hers a
thousand-dollar box-stall just in front of the centre. Could they flash
all that distance? They'd be useful for signalling----"

"Wilbur! I do wish you wouldn't mingle church and cavalry slang. It's
downright irreverent, and at the bottom of your heart you're anything
but an irreverent man."

"I won't," said the captain, solemnly; "at least I'll try to separate
the ideas--they are a trifle incongruous--if you'll tell me how at that
distance you could mingle your devotions with appraisal of Mrs.
Barnard's diamonds."

"I didn't. If you'd gone to church yourself you'd understand these
things. I couldn't help it. I simply happened to be next to her
afterwards--at communion."

"Oh, I see," said Cranston, giving a jab at his thinning hair with the
thickest and stiffest of brushes. "That does bring us to close quarters,
doesn't it?" Then with provoking deliberation he rearranged his necktie
and began pulling on his coat. "Hum, let's see," he went on, his eyes
twinkling and his lips twitching ominously, "anything wrong about Mrs.
B., mother mine, or with the millionaire husband? No? I see: just some
of those people one meets at the Lord's table and nobody else's."

"Wilbur!" exclaimed Mrs. Cranston, in tones of horror. "Indeed, indeed,
mamma, he isn't a bit like that out on the frontier. It's only when he
gets into civilized church circles that he says these outrageous things.
If you could hear him read the burial service over some of our poor
fellows as I have heard him, you'd know he lacked no reverence at all.
He's queer,--he always has been about these social distinctions. You
know and I know they are inevitable."

But leaving wife and mother to deplore his conduct and comfort each
other with the assurance that he really knew better and wasn't as bad as
he painted himself, which was occasionally in lurid colors, as must be
admitted, Captain Cranston went down-stairs with a certain stiffness of
gait which his intimates were well aware was attributable entirely to a
war reminiscence of Pickett's parapet at Five Forks, but which nine out
of ten, uninitiated, ascribed to military _hauteur_. He was still
smiling his whimsical, teasing smile, for, though a devoted son,
husband, and father, Wilbur Cranston was at times a trial to his
feminine connections, and entertained on matters of church and state
some views that were incompatible with those of high society. With
opportunities second to none other when he joined the pioneer circle in
the early days, Mr. Cranston, senior, had but moderately prospered from
a worldly point of view. Eminent in his profession, he was destitute of
any instinct of accumulation. He was a man the whole county
honored,--whose word was his bond, whose purse-strings had never known a
knot,--who had made large moneys in the law and spent them in charity,
until now, occupying a social position at the top of the ladder, he
lived but modestly in the house that was once the envy of all his
neighbors, many of whom once, and more than once, the beneficiaries of
his charity, now looked down upon him from the colossal heights of their
wheat elevators or sixteen-story office blocks. "The Cranstons were
among our oldest and best people," said Society; "it is too bad they are
so poor." For there had been a time when the old lawyer's health failed
and practice was forbidden, and when Wilbur, once the recipient of a
liberal allowance, felt called upon not only to resign that, but often
to help from a captain's pay. Better times had come, and the soldier son
had been able to make investments for himself and for his father in far
Western mining property that yielded good return; but even when known as
one of the few well-to-do men in his regiment, Cranston had persisted in
a certain simplicity of living that some people could not understand.
There were officers who had married wealthy women,--women whose gowns
were superb, whose parlors and tables were richly furnished, whose
household establishments put to shame those of three-fourths of their
companions; whereas Cranston, even when he was able to dress his family
fashionably and furnish his quarters elaborately, would not do it.
"Every year," said he, "some of our most promising young officers are
going to the devil because they or their wives try to dress or to
entertain as do their wealthy neighbors. It's all wrong, and I won't set
the example. It's getting to be the curse of our army, Meg, and if I had
my way I'd introduce a law the reverse of that in force in foreign
armies. Over there no officer can marry unless he and his bride-elect
can show that they will have over a certain income to live upon. In a
republican army like ours no man ought to be commissioned unless he will
agree to live on less than a fixed amount for each successive grade."
They called him "Crank Cranston" in the Eleventh for quite a while, but
without affecting in the faintest degree his sturdy stand. Margaret's
gowns continued simple and inexpensive, and their mode of living modest
as any subaltern's, and many women spoke of them as "close" and "mean,"
but many men wished openly they had Cranston's moral courage. At home,
too, better times had come. There was the old homestead, and Mr.
Cranston as counsel of certain big corporations had his easy salary and
little work. There was no anxiety, but there should be, said he, no
extravagance.

On the other hand, neighbor Barnard, who in by-gone days, tin
dinner-pail in hand, tramped cheerily by the lawyer's rose-trellised
home long hours before the household was awake, and who in his early
struggles to maintain his little lot and roof had often availed himself
of his neighbor's known liberality, had been surely and steadily
climbing to wealth and honors, was now among the ranking capitalists of
the great and growing city, and a few years back had been united in
marriage to the admiration of his early school days,--Almira
Prendergast, who, disdaining him in the early 50's and wedding the youth
of her choice, was overwhelmed with joy to find in the days of want and
widowhood, fifteen years later, that Barnard had been faithful to his
ideal, had remained single for her sake, and so at last had she
consented to accept him and the control of his household. A pew in the
"First Presbyterian" had been for years his habitual resort on the
Sabbath, but as time wore on and wealth accumulated and the lady of his
love assumed more and more the leadership in all matters, spiritual and
domestic, he saw his establishment blossoming into unaccustomed
splendor, he met new people, later comers from the distant East, and
dropped the old, the friends of his boy days. He never meant to. He was
engrossed in his affairs. He let Mrs. Barnard "run the machine," as he
used to phrase it, knowing nothing of that sort of thing himself, and
Almira's buxom beauty, attired now in splendor hitherto undreamed of,
was rapidly rising into prominence in the new and growing circle wherein
the old families revolved but seldom, but the errant orbits of Eastern
stars were quick entangled; and some few years after their marriage a
new and gorgeous edifice having been erected by the congregation of St.
Jude's, and a daughter having been born to Barnard, the man of money
heard without surprise and with little resistance his wife's change of
faith in revealed religion. St. Jude's, a parochial offspring of old and
established St. Paul's down-town, had become an ecclesiastical necessity
in the growing north side. The Cranstons transferred their pew, as did
others, to follow a favorite rector and his gospel closer to home. Mrs.
Barnard experienced a long projected change of heart because the
acknowledged leaders of the social circle herded thither, and Barnard
followed as his wife might lead. The great memorial window in the south
transept, through whose hallowed purpling the noon-day sunshine
streamed rich and mellow on the gray head in that prominent central pew,
was the devout offering of Thomas Barnard and Almira, his wife, in
testimony of their abandonment of the faith of their fathers and the
adoption of that which in school days they had held to be idolatrous.
Wilbur Cranston well recalled how in his school days Tom Barnard's
honest, sturdy form went trudging by at nightfall from the long day's
labor with the railway gang of which he was "boss," but Tom was a
division superintendent when the lawyer's boy came home from West Point
on furlough just as the war dogs began their growling along the border
States. And now Tom Barnard owned all the tenth ward and most of the
railroad, did he? And it was Tom Barnard's wife, a fair, fat penitent in
sealskin and sables, who drove by in such a magnificent sleigh and style
to humble herself at the altar by the side of such as we, whose social
shoes she was as yet held unworthy to unlatch? Wilbur remembered how
once, some years before, when his father's affairs were straitened and
his own were cramped, when Meg and the baby actually and sorely needed
change, but she sturdily refused to leave him and go East because of the
expense, he had bethought him of Tom Barnard, the rising railway man,
and wrote him a personal note explaining the situation and asking
through his influence if such a thing as a pass for himself and wife
could be obtained over certain roads east of the Missouri, and the
answer came, written by a secretary, brief and to the point. Mr. Barnard
enclosed pass over the Q. R. & X. for Mr. Cranston and wife, but did not
feel in a position to ask favors of any other road. And now Tom
Barnard's wife had come almost at the last moment of his stay and begged
that he would not refuse to see her. What on earth could she want?

A boy with a telegram had just entered and was at the open door as the
captain reached the hall. Under the gas lamp without Cranston saw the
carriage standing by the curb--a livery team, not the beautiful roans
that had caught his trooper eye the first Sunday of his leave when he
went to church with mother and Meg. The message was sharp and clear
enough in all conscience:

     "We march at once. You can catch us at Fetterman.

    GRAY, _Adjutant_."

"So old Winthrop goes in command and Bob Gray as adjutant," he mused.
"Then I've no minute to waste."

His step was quicker, his bearing unconsciously more erect and
soldierly, as he entered the parlor and found himself facing the lady.

"I ask your pardon for keeping you waiting, Mrs. Barnard. I was in the
midst of packing when you came, as I must go West at once."

She had not risen from the easy-chair,--a comfortable old family relic
which stood opposite the old-fashioned piano. She leaned forward,
however, so that the sealskin mantle, which the warmth of the room and
the length of her wait had prompted her to throw back, settled down from
her shoulders in rich and luxurious folds. She gave him, half extended,
a hand, which he lifted and lowered once after the fashion of the day
and then released. He remembered her now perfectly,--the Almira
Prendergast the big boys used to say was by long odds the prettiest girl
in the days when half a dozen big brick ward schools were all the town
afforded, but he did not say so, nor did she care to have him.

"Perhaps I ought to begin by apologizing for taking up your time," she
said, as though not knowing how to begin; and then he saw that heavy
lines of grief and anxiety had eaten their way underneath her dark and
luminous eyes,--ravages that no tinsel could cover or wealth dislodge.
"Was it the driver you spoke to at the door? I heard you say wait. I had
already told him; but it isn't my carriage," she went on deprecatingly.
"Our horses cannot stand night work, the coachman says, and there's
always something the matter with them when they are most needed."

She was looking at him appealingly, as though she hoped he might suggest
some way of helping her to say what had brought her thither--besides a
livery carriage; but Cranston had taken a seat and was waiting, the
telegram crushed in his hand. At last she spoke again.

"You--went to West Point, didn't you?"

"I? Yes."

"Well, then, you could tell me, couldn't you, how to get my boy there?"

"You mean by-and-by when he is old enough?"

"No. I mean now,--at once,--this week in fact."

"W--ell. That is hardly possible, Mrs. Barnard. Cadets are admitted only
in June or September, and only then when there's a vacancy in their
congressional district. But, pardon me. How old is your boy?"

"He is twenty-one,--my eldest,--my first husband's."

"And you wanted to make a soldier of him?" asked Cranston, smilingly.

"Indeed, no! It's the last thing on earth I'd have chosen, nor would he,
I am sure, if he were in his right mind."

"Oh, well, then I shouldn't worry about it, Mrs. Barnard. In this
country, you know, no one has to be a soldier unless he very much wants
to, and very often then he can't. And no boy who isn't in his right mind
could get into the Point even if given a cadetship. What made you think
of it?"

"Why, it seemed--at least I was told--it was the only way out of the
trouble he is in. He--is already in the army, but I'm told it isn't so
bad if one is an officer."

Cranston kept his face with admirable gravity.

"Then I assume that he has enlisted. If he is only just twenty-one and
enlisted without your consent before his birthday, you can still have
him out."

"Oh, we've tried that," said Mrs. Barnard, gravely, "but he had tried
twice before he was twenty-one, and they refused him until he brought
papers to prove his age. Then when he did enlist and we attempted to
have it annulled, they confronted us with these. They refused to believe
our lawyer."

"Well, pardon me, which was right, the papers or the lawyer?"

"The paper. It was my own letter; but I didn't suppose they had it
when--when we sought to have him released as not of legal age."

Cranston smiled. "Was it Mr. Barnard's proposition or the lawyer's?"

"Well, the lawyer said at first there was no other way that he knew of,
we'd have to do that. Of course you understand I wouldn't ordinarily
authorize an untruth, but--consider the degradation."

"The degradation of--having to--authorize the untruth?"

"No; of his enlisting,--becoming a soldier. I thought I'd had to suffer
a good deal, but I never looked for that."

And then Cranston saw her eyes were full of tears.

She had tried lawyers. She had used money. She had invoked the influence
of powerful friends. Each and everyone consulted assured her that the
case could be settled in a twinkling. They would get the boy discharged
at once. Then one after another all had failed, and then some one
suggested to see him, Cranston; he was a regular, perhaps he could help.
It was hard to think of her son as a soldier, but, said she, if he had
to be, for a time at least, why not get him out of where he was and put
him at West Point? She had come, she said, to tell Cranston the whole
story, and then he could have kicked himself for the momentary amusement
she had caused him.

Ah, what an old, time-worn story of mother love, mother spoiling, mother
sorrow! Her bonny boy, her first-born, wild, impulsive, self-indulgent,
overindulged as was his father before him, he had gone the pace from
early youth; had been sent to and sent from one school after another;
had filled and forfeited half a dozen clerkships; tampered with cards
and drink and bad company. Mr. Barnard had been willing to do
anything--everything for him, but he had dishonored every effort, broken
every compact, failed in every trial, forfeited every trust. At last
there had been hot and furious words, expulsion from the house and home,
a life of recklessness, gambling and drinking on moneys wrung from her
until her patience and supplies both had given out. Then some darker
shadow,--arrest and incarceration, one more appeal to mother, one more,
on her knees, from mother to husband, a compromised case, a quashed
indictment, temporary residence at a resort for cure of inebriates--the
one condition exacted by Barnard--and prompt relapse, when discharged,
into his former habits,--disgraceful arrest because of some trouble into
which he had been led while drinking. This, all this she had borne, but
never dreamed, said she, that worse still could follow,--that he could
sink so low as to become a soldier.

What Captain Cranston would have said to a man who had come to him with
such a tale, and with such unflattering conception of the profession he
was proud of, need not here be recorded. It was a mother, helpless,
sorrowing, and honest at least in her impression of the step taken by
her recreant boy. She had come craving help and counsel, not instruction
in the injustice of her estimates. Quivering, trembling, weeping, the
heart-sick woman in her magnificent robes had opened the flood-gates of
her soul and poured out to this comparative stranger the story of her
son's depravity. Aloft, two women listened awe-stricken to her sobs.
Cranston brought her water, made her drink a little wine, and bade her
take comfort, and amazed her by saying that at last her boy had shown a
gleam of manhood, a promise of redemption. She looked up through her
tears in sudden amaze. How was that possible? He must have been drunk
when he did it, and couldn't have been anything but drunk ever since.
Cranston patiently explained that so far from being drunk, the boy must
have been perfectly sober or they couldn't have taken him. He had been
frequently to the recruiting office, according to her account, and must
have been sober at such times, or they would have discouraged his coming
again. He couldn't have been drinking to any extent since enlistment or
he could not be where she said he was, and knew he was, on daily duty as
clerk in the office of the adjutant at the barracks. So far from its
indicating downfall, degradation, it was the one ray of hope of better
days. She looked at him, joy and incredulity mingling in her swimming
eyes. "Then why does everybody I've consulted, even our rector, urge me
to leave no stone unturned to get him out of it, even if we have to buy
him a place at West Point?" was her query. And again Cranston found it
hard to control his muscles--and his temper. Had it come to this?--that
here in his old home the accepted idea of the regular soldier was that
of something lower than the refuse of the prisons and reformatories? He
could only tell her that it was because they knew no better. Up to the
time of her boy's determination to enter the army had there been one
single moment in the last five years when he had been free from his
habits of drinking? asked Cranston. No, not one. And yet that step was
her conception of final degradation. What had occurred, he asked, to
make her feel renewed anxiety, to cause her to seek a cadetship for him?
Because the boy had written that recruits were soon to be sent to
cavalry regiments out on the plains, and he had asked to go. The thought
was terror. And Mrs. Barnard had learned that a congressman from the
interior of the State had a cadetship to dispose of, but he lived at
Urbana, the very place where poor Harry had spent his two months in the
retreat, and then had disbehaved so afterwards. And Mr. Goss, the
congressman, wanted references,--wanted him to pass examination, which
he could not do, because he's only been a little while at school. Harry
wrote a beautiful hand, and had read everything--everything, but he
hated anything like arithmetic as a study, and Cranston had to smile and
tell her that that in itself put West Point out of the question. But,
said he, if he has ambition and ability, why not encourage him to
persevere where he is and win commission from the ranks as many another
boy had done? Bless the mother heart! That, too, had occurred to her,
but they had told her it would take two years at least, whereas Harry
was a born leader, a born commander. That boy could step right out now
and command an army if need be, she said, and no doubt believed it; but
when she wrote to Mr. Cooper about it (and Mr. Cooper it seems was
Colonel Cooper, the boy's commanding officer), that gentleman replied
that while the young soldier had certainly conducted himself in a most
exemplary way and had given promise of being an ornament to the
service,--"He used those very words," said she, producing the colonel's
letter. "See, 'an ornament to the service,'"--still, the colonel could
hardly promise that the boy could rise above the grade of sergeant
inside of two years.

Cranston recognized the handwriting, and took the letter. "I know
Colonel Cooper," he said, "and he means just exactly what he writes.
Mrs. Barnard, I am glad you came. I am glad to take a weight off your
mind. I wish your friends and advisers were here that I might say this
in their presence, especially our good rector, but I say to you with all
my heart, I congratulate you on the step your boy has taken. I honestly
believe he has done better for himself than you could do for him, and I
advise you to let him go and learn campaigning on the frontier. It will
make a man of him if anything will," and he added under his breath, "or
kill him."

"And if you meet my boy, you'll help him? You'll be a friend to him?"
she smiled through her tears. "God bless you for so helping me."

"I'll help him every way I know how," said Cranston.

And so they parted. She infinitely comforted, he oddly impressed. But
Mrs. Barnard felt that fate was still against her and her boy when, four
weeks later, flashed the news of savage battle with the Sioux, of
Captain Cranston shot through the body and fearfully wounded in the
fierce encounter.




CHAPTER II.


Fifty seats in the parquette had been reserved for the members of the
class graduated from West Point on the beautiful morning of the 12th of
June. The brilliant auditorium was thronged with friends of the young
fellows. Officers of the Academy were seated in the boxes, interested no
more in the play than in the enjoyment of "the boys" just released from
their four years of hard study and rigid discipline. Two of the chairs
were vacant almost until the close of the first act, then their owners
came in.

"You fellows have missed a heap of fun," whispered a classmate. Then a
burst of laughter and applause drowned his words. "All the same we
didn't miss the train," was the reply as soon as the new-comer could
make himself heard, after the lowering of the curtain. "Poor old Dad! It
wasn't easy to let him go."

"What took him off in such a devil of a hurry? We counted on his being
with us at the last supper."

"Oh, the Parson don't take much stock in last suppers--of this kind,"
answered the other in no irreverence of spirit, for the young fellow
spoke in genuine earnestness; "still, he couldn't have gone back on us
if it hadn't been for bad news from home."

"What, his mother?"

"No--o. It's a girl. He said he had to go."

"Ah, yes, we knew all along he was engaged, though he never said
anything about it. Parson never struck me as being one of the spoony
kind."

"No, he wasn't a bit. He wrote to her every week, but her letters kept
coming all the time--regular continued stories; but he wouldn't stand
chaffing about them and didn't fancy remarks, so I quit."

"Know anything about her? Ever see her picture?"

"Once, by accident,--a mighty pretty girl, too,--but he never talked
about her; it wasn't his way. We lived together the last two years, and
I reckon there isn't anything I didn't tell him. I remember how you all
laughed at the idea of my taking up with 'Parson' Davies, but he's pure
gold."

"There's no discount on that, Jimmy; but what a time it took to find it
out! If it weren't for the riding-hall we never would have known how
much there was to him. There may be some prettier riders than Parson,
but he's all round the best horseman in the class. What on earth did he
choose the infantry for?"

"Something about that girl, I reckon. Looks to me as though he were
going to get married before he joined the regiment."

"Sacrificing himself and his profession for the sake of a spoons, is it?
Well, thank God, I'm not in love, and I wish he weren't."

Meantime the subject of this cadet chat, a tall, slender, serious-faced
young fellow, was sitting in one of the crowded cars of the night
express whistling away up the shores of the Hudson, shadowy yet
familiar, fifty miles to the hour. His new civilian dress--donned that
morning for the first time--bore something of the cadet about it in its
trim adjustment to the lines of his erect, even gaunt figure. He sat
very straight, looking silently across the aisle out on the starlit
river to his left, and holding on his knees the new dark-blue cape and
an old travelling-bag. A lone woman in search of a seat had entered the
car at Harlem and passed by a dozen unsympathetic travellers, who made
no move to share the seat over which they sprawled aggressively. The
first to lift his satchel and make way for her was the tall, thin-faced
young man in the straw hat and pepper-and-salt suit. He rose and offered
her the inner half, which she accepted gratefully, then thanked him in
broken English for stowing her various bundles in the rack above.

The conductor looked oddly at him as he unrolled his ticket.

"Going through? Don't you want a sleeper?"

"How much is a single berth to Chicago?"

"Five dollars."

"No. I'll get along here."

Not until they reached Albany, after midnight, had he a seat to himself.
Meantime, finding his companion overcome by drowsiness and her poor old
head bobbing helplessly, he rolled his new cloak cape into a sort of
pillow, wedged it between her and the window seat, and bade her use it.
As they came in view of the brightly-lighted station she awoke with a
start and made a spring for her belongings. She had slept soundly ever
since they left Poughkeepsie, and was again profuse in gratitude. "We
stay here several minutes," said Mr. Davies. "Let me help you with your
bundles." And, unheeding her protest, he marched off with a bird-cage
and a big band-box. A burly German made a rush for the car the moment
she appeared upon the platform and lifted her off with vehement
osculatory welcome, Davies standing silently and patiently by the while,
then surrendering her traps to her legal protector. "He is such a kind
young man," said the smiling frau. "He gif me his seat. We have a sohn,
yust so old as you," she added, "but he is farder as Chick-ago. He is a
soldier, out by Fort Larmie."

"Yes?" said Davies, smiling. "Then perhaps I'll see him some day. I
expect to be out there before long."

"And you are a soldier, too! Ach Gott! ein offizier?" she exclaimed, in
consternation, born of German associations.

"Not yet, though I suppose I shall be very soon. What is your boy's
regiment?"

And, jabbering excitedly now, both at once, the two old people began
pouring their tale into his ears; told their boy's name,--"He was a
gorboral alretty,"--and they were justly proud, and Davies made them
happy by noting the name and company in his book and giving his own,
though he explained that he was not yet a lieutenant, only a
just-graduated cadet, but that if ever he found the corporal, he said,
he should tell him of his pleasant meeting with the old folks, and then,
after a cup of coffee at the restaurant counter, he returned to his own
thoughts and the car.

Soon they were spinning up along the shining Mohawk, and still his
eyelids would not close. In his waistcoat-pocket lay a bulky letter,
the last of many in the same superscription--a prim, unformed,
school-girlish hand--that had come to him during the last two years of
his cadet life. Its predecessors, carefully wrapped and tied, were in
the old trunk somewhere ahead among the baggage. In his hand again was
the telegram that, reaching him at the moment when he was bidding adieu
to the academic shades he had grown so deeply to love, had determined
him in the already half-formed resolution to cut loose from his comrades
and the class festivities in New York and take the first train for the
far West.

    "URBANA, June 12.

     "Doctor says come quick. Almira worse.

    "B."

"B" was Almira's elder sister. Urbana, the home of his boy- and her
girlhood, the home where his father lived and died, pastor of the
village flock, a man whose devotion and patriotism during the great war
had won for himself the friendship of the leaders of the armies of the
West and for his only son, years afterwards, the prize of a cadetship at
West Point. Deeply religious in every fibre of his soul, the chaplain
had labored among the hospitals in the field from first to last, and
died not long after the close of the historic struggle, a martyr to the
cause. He died poor, too, as such men ever die, laying up no treasures
upon earth, where moth and rust and thieves are said to lessen treasure
there accumulated, yet where its accumulation seems the chief end of man
not spiritually constituted as was Davies, who was imposed upon by every
beat and beggar, tramp and drab, within reachable distance of Urbana.
Far and wide had spread abroad the words of his personal creed,--that he
would rather it were recorded against him that he had been duped a
million times than that one human being had left his door hungering. His
widow was not only merely penniless, she was helpless but for the strong
arms of her son, who slaved for her as the father had slaved for the
Union. Those were the days when pensions were few. It was too soon after
the war, and facts were fresher in men's minds. Percy did all the
farm-work by day and taught school by night until, in his twenty-first
year, he was sent to the Military Academy by the President himself, who
had known his father from the days of Donelson. It was told of the tall,
taciturn young man that he seriously contemplated resigning during his
fourth class year when he found that he could not send home the little
savings from his cadet pay. If the rule of the sacred commandment could
but be made to work both ways, and days would be indeed long in the land
the Lord our God had given to him who most honored his father and
mother, no life insurance company in all America would have hesitated in
Percy Davies's case, had the policy been millions and the premium unity.
A gentle woman was Mrs. Davies, but a distressingly helpless and
dependent one, and it was an old saying in Urbana that Davies had
married poor Salome Percy because if he didn't nobody would; not because
he stood in need of her, but because she was much in need of him. And
when, not long after his father's death, Percy appealed to a well-to-do
citizen on the widow's behalf, he was refused, and the brawny son and
heir of the well-to-do citizen told of the incident, and was idiot
enough in Percy's presence to repeat this old village saw as the reason
of the refusal, it nearly led to tragedy. Seizing the first available
weapon, a flail, which he wielded with uncommon skill, in one mad moment
the indignant youth smote the other hip and thigh,--the first, and for
years the only, time he was ever known to lose control of himself. In
ten seconds the battered gossip was sprawled full length, and they who
would have rushed to tear his assailant away stood amazed to see him
tearfully imploring the pardon of the vanquished.

And then as Percy grew in years and grace, working day and night that he
might obey that last sacred whispered injunction, "Take care of poor
mother," and Urbana grew in population and importance, one mortgage was
lifted by the sale of part of their little farm, and the home made more
comfortable for the ailing, querulous woman. She loved young folks, and
yet lacked the faculty of attracting them. Striving to interest some of
the village maids in her, Percy interested more than one in himself, and
among these was a rural beauty, by name Almira Quimby. She was only
sixteen, a romantic child with an exquisite complexion, big melting blue
eyes, and curling ringlets. She lived, said other village maids, "on
Sylvanus Cobb and slate-pencils." She devoured with avidity every bit of
sensational trash procurable in the public or post-office libraries, and
made eyes at the tall, strong school-master,--the best rider, reaper,
thresher in the field, and best reader and declaimer in the winter
lyceums. He was intellectually far ahead of his fellows, and his father
had labored to teach him. He was "serious," which was our Western way of
saying he had strong religious views, and Almira became devoted in her
attentions at church, Bible-class, and Sunday-school. Still, he did not
become an adorer, and she began visiting the widow in her affliction,
and thereby seeing more and more of the widow's son. There were
strapping prairie beaux who would have given all they possessed for any
one of the soft, shy looks she stole at Percy Davies, and who began to
hate him vehemently as her fancy for him increased.

He would have been of utterly unimpressionable material could he have
looked unmoved day after day upon her budding beauty, and it was not
long before Davies found himself strangely interested, and still he
would not speak. It was not until his appointment came, and he was
preparing to go to the Academy, that he owned himself vanquished.
Almira's red eyes and not entirely concealed emotion had told the mother
how the girl was grieving at the prospective loss of her first love, and
she with motherly solicitude took Percy to task. If he cared for Almira
why didn't he say so? With perfect truth the young man replied that he
couldn't help admiring her, but had struggled against it because he was
in no position to marry, and did not know when he would be. To this the
mother replied that she had grown very fond of Almira, and had learned
to depend upon her. She was not only very pretty but, what was much
better, a very good girl, and her father was as "well-to-do" as anybody
in Urbana, except the hotel-keeper. He could well afford to give her
part of the big farm and build them a house near the widow's own roof.
She knew, or thought she knew, as do so many of us, just what her
neighbor could and should do, but overlooked the fact that old Quimby
had two sons and three daughters older than Almira. The fact that most
of them were married in no wise detracted from their expectations of
material aid from the "old man." The fact that he might care to take
unto himself a wife to replace the late incumbent now sleeping placidly
in Urbana's leafy cemetery was no more contemplated by them than by the
Widow Davies. But there was another widow in Sangamon County who knew
better and who wisely said naught. Almira's father was well off, said
Mrs. Davies. She had rich relations in the great metropolis of the
State. Her Aunt Almira was married to the manager of the Q. R. & X.
Railway,--the man who used to send father Davies an annual pass so long
as he lived. Mrs. Davies longed, she said, to see her son happily mated,
and then she would be glad to go and rest by the father's side under the
shadow of the soldier's monument. How it all happened would be too long,
too old, and by no means uncommon a story. When Percy Davies went to
West Point he left behind him a weeping maid who vowed that she would
wait for him a lifetime, if need be. It was really quite a romantic
parting, and the young man believed himself very deeply in love, and so
did Almira.

And yet he was not easy in his mind. Percy Davies was old for his years.
He was going to the Point because of his father's strong predilection
for the graduates of that institution. The son had no especial taste
for a military life. He was studious. He would far rather have gone to
some college or university and pursued a classical course, and then
studied for the law or the ministry. He had no means for such an end,
however, and accepted what was offered him on his father's account, with
no little uneasiness on his own. It was not his desire or purpose to
remain in the army. If he could honorably do so he meant to leave the
military service within the four years which his letter of appointment
stipulated he should serve after graduation. He doubted the propriety of
his accepting it under the circumstances, and he--looked upon by his
fellow-men and youths as the most enviable of their number--left his
home for the new life in no enviable frame of mind.

For some months after his departure Almira fairly lived with the invalid
mother, and was faithful both to her and to the absent lover. Not a day
passed without her spending hours with the widow and discoursing on the
perfections of the absent one. Old Quimby, a hard-fisted, hard-headed
old democrat, had made no objection to the engagement, remarking that if
'twan't Davies 'twould be somebody else, and seeing as he was the
smartest lad at farming and schooling, and that it would be four years
anyhow, why, there was no call for him to worry. Then Urbana built a
bigger school-house and got a new teacher, and for two years saw naught
of Percy Davies. Property increasing in value, another slice of the
homestead lot had been sold, and with economy the widow could be
comfortable on her little income; but it was not long before the
gossips, dropping in to cheer her up a bit, began to tell of the swains
who were making eyes at 'Mira, and then of 'Mira's growing consciousness
of her charms and fascinations. The second year of Percy's absence there
could be no doubt that three or four bucolical hearts were turned on her
account. Had there been just one devotee the absent lover's claims might
have been endangered, but there being several she was content in a
placid cowlike way in their attentions, and became less devoted to
mamma. With the second summer, however, Percy came home on cadet
furlough. The slight stoop was gone. An erect, martial carriage and
quick, springy step had replaced the somewhat plodding gait of the
school and farm. The sprouting beard and whiskers had vanished, and a
stiff moustache, which soon began to curl and twist becomingly, adorned
his upper lip. The "store clothes" of the Western town long since cast
aside, Davies appeared in stylish and trim-fitting civilian dress, but
resolutely declined all appeals to wear--except for mother's eyes--the
uniform of his famous corps. When he went on sunshiny Sundays to the
church that seemed hallowed to his father's memory, the spotless white
trousers and natty sack coat of dark-blue flannel were, however, so
military in their effect as to create, despite himself, almost the
effect of regimentals. Then he had acquired already an air and manner, a
polish that distinguished him at once above his fellow-townsmen, and
Almira's wavering allegiance gave place to new romance and fervor. The
old flame had found too little breath in his earnest, honest letters to
keep it alive. As for him, though he had belonged to what was termed the
"bachelor gang" at the Point and mingled but little in ladies' society,
he was a close observer, and Percy Davies saw at a glance that though
more radiant in her rustic beauty than before, more appealing to the
senses in the flush of her health and unconscious grace, there was still
something besides the fashion of her gown that differed widely from the
beauties who thronged the gravelled walks, the shady groves, the tented
field of the national military academy. The swains of the winter gone by
were less in evidence now, and it pleased her anyhow during the two
months of his home stay to forget them one and all and cling only to
him. Changes came in the next two years--and trouble. Old Quimby married
again. Almira's home-life became unhappy. Quarrels ensued between the
new wife and the children. Reproaches fell from the lips of the failing
widow because of Almira's tacit acceptance of the devotions of young Mr.
Powlett, son of the resident physician of the sanitarium that was now
bringing so many patients to Urbana. A handsome, dare-devil sort of boy
was Powlett, who speedily cut out all the local beaux at the parties and
picnics which filled the summer of '75. A beautiful dancer was he, and
taught Almira to waltz and "glide" in a style never before seen in
Urbana, and that other couples first derided, then envied, then vainly
strove to imitate. That Urbana censors should go to the widow with
invidious comment upon Almira's misbehavior was a matter of course, and
that the widow should transmit their tales, not entirely without
embellishment and reproof, was only to be expected. Almira accepted both
with ill grace, was moved to tears and protest. She couldn't help it if
people admired her and liked to dance and walk and talk with her. She
must either submit to it or shut herself up and mope and not go out at
all. She thought Mrs. Davies most unjust, but she did not promise to
amend. Then the widow, finding Almira obdurate, was moved to write to
Percy advising him that he should caution her, who was only
light-hearted and thoughtless, and, to the widow's surprise, Percy
refused. He gravely wrote that Almira was but a child when she engaged
herself to him. She had seen nothing of the world or of other men, and
it was a matter he would not interfere with, and one that he desired his
mother to leave alone. This was simply incomprehensible. Urbana was very
gay that autumn and early winter. The sanitarium was the means of
bringing business to town, and a number of new stores were opened, and
new young men came to tend the counter and swell the parties, and still
young Powlett held supremacy, and everybody began to say that the cadet
was cut out, and Almira Quimby had gone over heart and soul to the new
claimant, when there came a cataclysm,--a scandal at the sanitarium, a
stir at the Palace Hotel, Urbana's new hostelry, the arrest of a
recently discharged patient by the name of Brannan, an afflicted young
man with what was described as an unconquerable mania for drink, and the
sudden disappearance of young Powlett. There was investigation and more
scandal. It transpired that this young Adonis had abused his father's
trust to the extent of smuggling liquor to certain patients and of
heaven only knew what else. Dr. Powlett resigned, crushed and
humiliated. Lawyers came and bailed out the other unfortunate, of whom
it soon was rumored that he was Almira Quimby's own cousin, the son of
her rich city aunt, and that was the reason the lawyers and not the
relatives came. It was presently established that young Brannan was more
sinned against than sinning, and the holidays opened, with a fearful gap
in Urbana, for Almira's devoted lover, to the comfort of every
right-thinking maid and swain in Sangamon society, had fled, no one knew
whither.

Two weeks later the Widow Davies lay at death's door. Her son was
telegraphed for, and came. His leave was for only one week,--even that a
most unusual concession, granted only because of his unimpeachable
conduct and his safe though not high standing in scholarship. His coming
seemed to give new life to the mother, and Almira vied with him in
attention and devotion. Urbana took it much to heart that after her
months of monopoly of Mr. Powlett, of whom the most damaging and
dreadful things were now told, she should so calmly and complacently
resume her apparent sway over this martial and dignified and superior
sort of person, the widow's son. Urbana fully meant that his eyes should
be opened just so soon as the mother's were closed. But Urbana found
that luck was dead against it. The widow began to mend,--the son it was
who was suddenly prostrated on the eve of his return to the Point.

Leaving Almira at her father's door one night after seeing her safely
home, Davies was found lying in the high-road, senseless, an hour later,
and never, said Urbana, knew what hit him. Concussion of the brain was
feared, for he had evidently been assaulted in the dark from behind and
felled to earth by blows of some heavy, blunt instrument. Robbery was
evidently the motive, for his little store of money and the beautiful
and costly watch presented to his father at the close of the war were
gone. Almira had two patients now, and devotedly she attended them. When
in a fortnight Percy declared he must return, and did return to pass his
midwinter examination, she wore at last an engagement ring. Urbana did
not know that he had offered--and she had refused--freedom. Urbana did
not know that she declared she loved him as she never did before, and as
she never had another. Urbana resented it that he who was so soon to
occupy the exalted station of an officer of the regular army, and the
princely salary of something over a thousand dollars a year "with all
expenses paid,"--double the sum enjoyed by the head salesman of Miller &
Crofts,--should be so utterly deluded as to the frivolous character of
his betrothed, and means were taken to enlighten him. Anonymous letters
came to Cadet Davies of the graduating class, which that grave and
reverend senior committed, not to memory, but to flames. Whatever she
had been before his visit and mishap, Almira was all devotion now. In
May he wrote to her gravely and affectionately, bidding her remember
that he always felt that she had been pledged to him when too young to
know her own mind, that his must needs be a life of self-denial,
privation, and danger, that he must live with the utmost economy
consistent with his position as an officer, because his mother's comfort
must be a sacred charge so long as she lived, and that it might be years
before he could see his way to asking any woman to come and share his
lot. All this he had conscientiously explained to her before, and she
had met it with tears and reproaches. She could help him live
economically. They could sell the homestead and take mother to live with
them. She would welcome the day when she could leave her father's roof,
now no longer a home to her. She knew it must be that he was tiring of
her,--that he had met some proud lady in the East, and his poor little
village maid was forgotten, etc. Now, in answer to this last letter,
virtually proffering release if she so desired, her response was
vehement. He would kill her with his cruelty and coldness. She had no
hope or ambition other than to share his lot, however humble. To be her
noble soldier, her hero Percy's bride, would be her heaven, and neither
gold nor grandeur nor princely mansion could tempt her from his side,
and she would welcome the grave if he proved false to her. It was all
the high-flown, emotional, melodramatic trash to be expected of an
ill-balanced girl whose pretty head was stuffed with the romance of the
country post-office type, and Davies sighed heavily as he read.

He had planned to visit an old friend of his father's and see something
of New York harbor and city before turning his back on the East. Never
yet had he set foot in Gotham, and as it would be years before
opportunity might again be afforded him, he had weighed it all pro and
con, and decided that Dr. Iverson's advice and invitation should be
accepted. He would go with his classmates, spend the last evening with
them, and join the reverend doctor on the morrow. His mother, even in
her invalided state, urged that he should do so, but Almira heard the
plan with fresh outburst of tears. There was to be a grand picnic of
all the beaux and belles of Urbana on the 18th. She had counted on
having her soldier lover in attendance on that occasion. She had told
him of it, and that was enough. She had declined all other invitations,
saying that Mr. Davies was to hasten thither the moment the graduating
exercises were over, and now to think of the triumph and malicious
delight of the other girls was intolerable. Her lover should fly to her
like homing-pigeon the instant he was released from prison. It was
tantamount to treason that he should purpose anything else. Almira
fretted herself into a fever. She wrote one long letter to the recreant
Parson, and her sister Be_ay_trice, as they called her, followed it up
with another still more alarming. Then, as he did not wire instant
submission, the telegram was sent. Old Quimby was on the platform at the
Urbana station as Davies sprang from the train. "Nothing much," said he,
in response to the young man's eager inquiry. "Some dam girl nonsense
she and Bee have cooked up between them. When they ain't devilling the
life out of their step-mother they're worrying somebody else. Oh,
yes!--'course the doctor's been humbugging for a week,--too glad to get
a chance of shovin' in a bill."

Davies went gravely up the sunny street to his mother's home,--a meeting
that served to chase away the clouds, and then an hour later to Almira's
bower. Bee ushered him into a pretty room whose windows were overhung
with honeysuckle and pink chintz, and there in a great old-fashioned
rocking-chair reclined the lovely invalid, who greeted him with
outstretched arms and rapturous cry, and who was sufficiently restored
to exhibit him at the Sunday-school picnic as originally planned. So far
as she was concerned, all went blithely as a marriage-bell until the
morning of July 5, when there came the fearful news of the massacre of
General Custer and his troops at the hands of the Sioux. That evening
the city papers said all officers on leave were hurrying to their
regiments, that reinforcements were being pushed to the front, that
recruits were needed at once; and the next day, followed by a mother's
prayers and a maiden's unavailing protest, Percy Davies was gone. Just
as his father did in '61, leaving all to pursue the path of duty, the
young soldier, though not yet commissioned, sped to the nearest army
post, and joined the first command _en route_ for the field.




CHAPTER III.


In the hot July sunshine, up the long vista of the street the flags hung
drooping, every one, with a single exception, at half staff. Over the
building where hearts were heaviest the colors soared highest; the
general commanding, until ordered from Washington, being debarred a
manifestation of mourning which the sovereign citizen adopts as a matter
of course. It was bitter disaster that had befallen the national arms
and involved so popular a commander with scores of his gallant men; the
stars and stripes that had been saluted all over town in honor of the
ever-glorious Fourth were now set at mid-height or draped with black.
The crowds that had gathered about the newspaper offices and department
head-quarters all the previous day were scattered, in the conviction
that little remained to be told, but there was a gathering at the
railway station to bid adieu to the battalion of infantry from the
neighboring fort, leaving by special train for the seat of war. They had
cheered the dusty fatigue uniforms as the cars rolled away, and many a
young fellow would gladly have gone with the boys in blue could he have
faced the social ban which a misguided public has established against
its most loyal servants, holding enlistment in the regular army as
virtual admission of general worthlessness. And now the crowds still
lingered under the glass roof of the big passenger shed, for word had
gone out that another train coming across the bridge was loaded with
more troops, and there was a fascination in watching these prospective
victims of the stake and scalping-knife. It had been a fierce campaign
thus far, and one in which the losses and vicissitudes both (there are
no honors to speak of) had been borne principally by the cavalry, but
now the "doughboys" with their "long toms" were being pushed to the
front. "Wait till Emma Jane gets her eye on ould Squattin' Bull," said
an Irish private, patting the butt of his rifle, as with head and
shoulders half-way out of the car window he confidentially addressed the
crowd. "It'll be the last spache he'll ever ax to hear."

"That'll do there, Moriarty; get that gun inside," said a lieutenant,
briefly. And as Moriarty obeyed, with a grin and wink at the throng, the
laugh and cheer that went up were evidently for Private Pat and not for
his superior. It is the smiling face, not official gravity, that wins
the great heart of the people. The band which had headed the column on
the march in from the post, but was not to accompany it to the field,
was still waiting to give the next comers a fitting "send off." Two or
three staff officers in civilian dress stood in earnest talk with the
superintendent of the railway, a knot of curious citizens surrounding
them, eager to pick up any point with reference to the troops or their
transportation. Expectant eyes were cast towards the east where the
towers of the great bridge loomed in the shimmer and glare of the hot
noontide. "She ought to be here now," said the railway-man with an
impatient snap of his watch-case. "What keeps No. 5, Gus?" he asked of
an assistant hurrying by.

The man hauled up short and touched his hat. "This just came at the
train-despatcher's office, sir," said he, as he handed up a slip of
paper, which the superintendent quickly read, a queer look coming into
his face as he did so.

"Hu-m-m, gentlemen. This is something _you_'ll have to straighten out.
It doesn't seem to be in my line." And he handed the paper to Major
Ludlum, chief quartermaster of the department, who in turn read it, his
eyes filling with grave concern.

"Recruits on No. 5 broke loose at Bluff Siding,--drunk--raiding the
saloon. Can't get 'em on train again. Can guards or police be sent?" It
was signed by the conductor.

"Well," said Ludlum, disgustedly, "we might have known that would
happen. The idea of sending three car-loads of raw recruits with only
one officer, and that one old Muffet. It's tempting Providence."

"Why, I thought he had a lieutenant with him. Somebody said so at the
office this morning," said the department engineer officer.

"Not even a lieutenant,--a cadet, if you like; graduated not a month
ago,--not yet commissioned. Some young cub just out of school, with
about as much idea how to handle drunken recruits as I have of dressing
a doll. Home on graduating leave and thought it his duty to volunteer is
all I can make out of it."

"Well, bully for him!" spoke up the superintendent. "The boy's got the
right stuff in him if that's the case."

"What's his name?" asked the engineer officer. "I knew most of this
year's class when I was there on duty."

"Davies," said the quartermaster, consulting a notebook. "Remember him?"

"Why,--yes,--vaguely. He was not in the section I had charge of," said
Captain Eustis. "One of the last men to attract attention,--Parson
Davies they called him, I believe. He was one of the Bible-class. Don't
think anybody knew him outside of the Sunday-school."

"No wonder the recruits jumped the traces with no one but old Muffet and
a parson," said the quartermaster, disdainfully. "Now the question is,
what's to be done? Somebody's got to go over and pull them out of the
hole."

The situation was indeed serious. Many of the commands now suddenly
ordered to take the field were so short of men that, after the manner of
doing things in the 70's, a detachment of undrilled recruits, one
hundred and eighty strong, was hurriedly tumbled aboard the cars at the
cavalry depot on the Mississippi, while others were shipped from the far
East for the Foot. Only one officer--a semi-invalided old trooper--could
be spared from Jefferson Barracks to accompany the batch. There was no
time to wait, and just an hour before the detachment started there
arrived at the office of the depot commander a tall, slim, solemn young
man in brand-new fatigue uniform,--that of the infantry,--who introduced
himself as Mr. Davies of the graduating class, who said he was not yet
assigned to a regiment, but having read that all officers were hastening
to join their commands before they got beyond communication in the
Indian country, thought it possible that he might be assigned to some
company in the field and didn't wish to be left behind. That night he
was seeing his first service. Colonel Cooper, the post commander, shook
him by the hand and presented him to old Muffet, who was in a devil of a
stew and glad of professional help, and then wired on ahead to the
general commanding across the Missouri, or to his representatives at
head-quarters,--he being in the field. All went well enough early in the
night, but, towards morning, whiskey had been smuggled aboard in
sufficient quantity to start the devil of mischief, and finally, at
Bluff Siding, just before reaching the Missouri bridge, overpowering the
unarmed and perhaps sympathetic sentries at the car doors, and defying
the orders of their sergeants, the half-drunken crowd swarmed out and
made a swoop upon a saloon across the side-track. In less time than it
takes to tell it every cubic foot of space of the bar-room was packed
with rioting humanity in grimy blue flannel. The proprietor, who had
stood his ground at the instant of initial impact, was now doubled up
underneath the counter; his shrieking family--Hibernians all, and
somewhat used to war's alarms, though hardly to the sight of raiding
boys in blue--had taken refuge in the privacy of their own apartments
above and behind the saloon itself, while within the reeking
establishment pandemonium had broken loose. Bottles, glasses, and raw
liquor were liberally besprinkling the heads and shoulders of the
surging throng. A brawny Irishman, mad with the joy of unlimited riot
and whiskey, was on top of the counter impartially cracking the heads of
all men within reach with the blows of a big wooden bung-starter. Four
or five who had found the trapdoor leading presumably to the supplies in
the cellar were furiously fighting back the crowd so as to admit of
their raising it and forcing a passage down the wooden flight. Poor
Muffet, vainly pleading and swearing, was scouting on the outskirts of
the crowd about the door-way, occasionally turning and shrieking orders
to some bewildered lance sergeant to find the lieutenant and tell him he
must get in there and do something, but the lieutenant was nowhere to be
seen. At a respectful distance the neighbors were looking curiously on,
half a dozen roustabouts from the wharf-boat moored under the bank, a
little batch of railway employés, a number of slatternly women, not
entirely unsympathetic, and perhaps half a dozen hands from a
neighboring saw-mill, but all these, combined with the townsfolk
hurrying to the scene, would have been powerless as opposed to the
sixscore drink-maddened "toughs." Of the recruits, perhaps a dozen had
remained in the cars; of their non-commissioned officers, perhaps half a
dozen were trying to do something, but having no directing head or hand,
accomplishing little. It looked as though nothing but the bursting
asunder of that ramshackle building would liberate its human charge, for
even those who, battered, bleeding, and suffocated, would gladly have
escaped into outer air, were packed in, sardine-like, and incapable of
self-extrication. To the appeal of the conductor that he should regain
control of his men and prevent destruction of property, the luckless
Muffet plaintively responded, "My God, what can I do? I've done my best,
and nobody else has done anything. The only officer I've got has
deserted me."

But even as he spoke, accompanied by a jutting and hissing and spraying,
by outburst of yells, jeers, maudlin laughter, there came sudden
vomiting forth of drenched and dripping forms. Over the heads of the
throng within, into the hot faces of the throng without the double door,
hurling them back from the battered entrance in sudden panic, a powerful
stream of cold water, shooting from unseen nozzle, broke up and
demoralized the drunken barrier. Skilfully directed into the heart of
the crowd at the door-way, then into the ruck and tumult within, it
first cleared a passage, then, torrent-like, swept away into it,
tumbling and swearing and cursing, but going, the last able-bodied
invader of saloon sanctity, bestowing upon its foul interior the first
thorough washing it ever received, driving the despoilers before it with
the force of a battering-ram, yet even then, unsatisfied, following up
its victory. With perhaps half a dozen soldiers and as many mill-hands
hauling on the slack of the hose behind him, through a north window came
the tall, slender, serious-faced person of Mr. Davies, a laughing young
lance corporal manning the butt with him, and, aiming low and driving
discipline and punishment at the rate of a gallon a second, _a
posteriori_, at the now drenched and scattering mob, and shouting, "Back
to the train! Back to your seats!" never did they cease their deluge
until the last laggard capable of locomotion took shelter within the
cars. Muffet, recoiling in time to escape both rush of men and muddy
water, stood shouting confirmatory orders from the platform the while.
Many a mob will face the shock of charging steel and hissing lead that
melts away before ridicule and squirted water. The _emeute_ was ended
long before the police arrived, and Muffet had regained some measure of
his accustomed presence of mind. "Oh, we simply manned the saw-mill
hose," said he, in complacent acknowledgment of the congratulation of
the staff officials first to meet him. "It didn't take long to souse
them to their sober senses."

Indeed, the three car-loads of dripping and bedraggled humanity, meekly
side-tracked under the guarding bayonets of the one company of infantry
left at the fort, found not a sympathetic eye among the lookers-on. An
ambulance had carted off to the hospital four or five, whose battered
skulls bore witness to the hammering powers of big Milligan and his
bung-starter. That redoubtable giant himself, weak from the shock of
having involuntarily gulped more water in a second than ever before he
had swallowed in weeks, was flattened out in a baggage-car. Two more of
the arriving reinforcements failed to appear to the public eye at the
scene of congratulation, and, as sometimes happens in even so well
regulated a family as our little army, these were the two who most
deserved any honors that were being bestowed,--Mr. Davies and his
assistant pipeman.

Just as the last prostrate victim of that powerful combination--rum and
riot--had performed the frog's march to the baggage-car, the raving
saloon-keeper had been instructed to send his bill of damages to the
chief quartermaster across the bridge, the conductor had signalled "Go
ahead," and the young officer, ruefully scanning the wreck of his new
fatigue uniform, was clambering on the platform of the sleeper, when he
saw that the blood was dripping from the corporal's hand, despite the
big handkerchief wrapped about it.

"Come in here, corporal," said he. "Let me look at that. How did it
happen?" And he led the way into the men's toilet-room of the sleeper.

"I must have cut it with some of that broken glass at the window," was
the answer.

He was paling now, drooping evidently from loss of blood. Quickly Mr.
Davies unrolled the bandage, and there, beside a little jagged gash,
disclosed a deep cut from which the blood was oozing. "Why, man," said
he, "that's as clean as though done with a razor. Did any one try to
knife you?"

But the soldier made no answer. He sank limp upon a seat. Two civilian
travellers, in prompt sympathy, tendered flasks, and a stiff cup of
brandy brought back some vestige of the flitting color. Then a young
lady came forward from the interior of the car. "Please let me help
you," she said. "My father was a surgeon and I know something about
these wounds." Davies gratefully gave way to her, and found himself
watching the swift, skilful touch of her slender white hands as she bent
over the work. It was finished in a minute, and then with calm decision
the girl spoke again. "I will take him back to our section. He needs
quiet for a while," said she, standing erect now and addressing herself
to Mr. Davies, and rather pointedly ignoring the younger civilian, whose
interjected remarks fell upon ears that were dainty but deaf. "I am with
Mrs. Cranston," said she, "whose husband is among the wounded. Do you
know him?--Captain Cranston?"

"Only by reputation," answered Davies, raising his cap. "You are very
good to our men. Go with this young lady, corporal. I'll come as soon as
I can wash my hands."

Hardly waiting, however, for his reply, the girl had passed her hand
underneath the soldier's arm and led him rearwards as the train slowly
rounded the long curve to the bridge embankment. Davies slipped out of
his sack coat and plunged his hands in the basin. "Would you mind
pumping for me?" he said to the nearest civilian, who with his companion
stood gazing admiringly after the girl. "My hands are covered with that
poor fellow's blood."

"Certainly," was the prompt answer, as one of them grasped the
nickel-plated lever. The other and younger man turned to the ice-water
tank, rinsed the tumbler that had just been used to such good purpose,
poured out another stiff load of spirits, and with confident kindliness
held it out to the young officer.

"Thank you," said Davies, shaking his head, "I never use it."

"You don't?" was the surprised answer. "Why, I thought all army officers
drank."

"That seems to be the general idea," was the quiet answer. "Much more
general than the practice, I hope. Thank you," he continued, as, drying
his hands, he quickly donned his coat and went on through the car. They
watched him a moment as he was presented to the elder of the two ladies,
one whose face, though still young, bore traces of grief and tears and
anxiety. They saw her look up and clasp his proffered hand, evidently
glad to meet one of her husband's cloth.

"Now, if I'd only known about her husband's being one of the wounded, I
could have rung in there all right," said the younger of the two
travellers. "I haven't seen a prettier girl in all my wanderings,--but
she stood me off even on a dodge I never knew to fail."

"You were too transparent, so to speak, Willett," said the elder. "She
couldn't help seeing you were trying to scrape acquaintance. All young
girls don't take to frivolity any more than all officers to whiskey."

Willett, nettled at this palpable hit, spoke resentfully. "Oh, I dare
say they'd make a good team,--one's a prude and the other a prig."

"Perhaps not a very bad team, as you put it, my boy," was the answer, as
the elder thoughtfully regarded the two now in earnest conversation.
"But a girl who won't flirt isn't necessarily a prude, nor a man who
won't drink a prig. If I were marrying again, I should be glad of a girl
like that for a wife. If I were soldiering again, I'd like that boy for
a sub."

And just before leaving the train on its arrival at the Omaha station
the speaker went to Davies and held out his hand. "Lieutenant," said he,
"my name is Langston. I met and knew a number of West Pointers during
the war, and I am glad to have met you. If ever I can be of service to
you in my way,--and my duties carry me out here on the frontier very
often,--let me know."

Never dreaming how it might be needed, Davies accepted the proffer of
services with all that the proffer implied.




CHAPTER IV.


Guarded by a detachment of veteran infantry, the recruits so turbulent
at noon were spiritless now in every sense of the word. Turning over his
charge, as well as his account of their conduct and of his own, to the
commander of the escort, Captain Muffet remained at department
head-quarters long enough to impress the officials thereat on duty with
his version of the riot at Bluff Siding,--its inciting cause and its
incisive cure. Then he went back to the cavalry depot and presumably
improved on his initial effort. The story of Muffet's wild ride with the
raw recruits and Muffet's method of quelling a mob was often told that
summer at the rear long after Lieutenant Davies and the recruits in
question had gone to the front and were lost to all communication. The
officer who went in command from Omaha was an expert. He established a
sergeant's guard in each recruit car, with orders to flatten out the
first man who left his seat, rap every head that showed outside a window
when the train stopped, and so turned over the one hundred and
seventy-two that were turned over to him a sick and subdued lot by the
time they reached Fort Sanders the following afternoon. "This is Mr.
Davies,--Lieutenant Davies,--just graduated,--who's to go on with 'em,"
said he to the commanding officer of that old army post, adding for his
private ear, "He's a tenderfoot and doesn't know anything but moral
suasion." To this conclusion Captain Tibbetts has been impelled by what
he had heard as well as by the events of the night. Mr. Davies, of whom
he knew nothing except what Muffet had to say, having been told that he
needn't bother about the men any more, had nevertheless bothered about
them, three or four at least, very much,--Lance Corporal Brannan to
begin with, who was slashed in the hand, and a couple of sorely battered
penitents in the middle car among them. No surgeon being with the
detachment, Davies had begged permission towards evening to fetch these
poor fellows back to the sleeper, where their hurts could be cleaned and
bandaged. Tibbetts said no, and two hours later yes. Meantime he had met
the ladies, one of whom, the elder, exhausted by the sleeplessness and
anxiety of forty-eight hours, was comforted by the despatch brought her
at Omaha to the effect that her husband was being sent in by easy stages
to Fort Fetterman, where she could meet and nurse him, and she was now
finally and peacefully sleeping in her berth. The other, a slender,
graceful girl, with very soft dark eyes and grave, sweet, mobile face,
who sat and fanned Mrs. Cranston during the heat of the afternoon, had
next surprised the captain by re-dressing the ugly wound in the young
corporal's hand. Tibbetts knew Captain Cranston well by reputation. He
was one of the finest troop commanders of the cavalry arm, but Tibbetts
had never before met Mrs. Cranston and her companion now consigned to
his care.

"You are well taught in first aid to the wounded," he said. "Where did
you learn?"

"My father was Dr. Loomis, of the army," she answered, simply. "He
taught me when I was quite a child. He died, as I think perhaps you
know."

"We all knew him, Miss Loomis," was the instant reply. "Even those who
never met him, personally, knew him as I did,--for his devotion to our
poor fellows in the fever epidemic. And your mother?"

"Mother has been dead for years. I am alone now, but for my cousin
Margaret,--Mrs. Cranston. I am her companion."

And the captain, himself aging in the service, and with daughters who
might be left as was this girl,--penniless,--understood, and bowed in
silent sympathy. It was the sight of the gash in Brannan's fist that
called him back to the business before him.

"How did you get that?" he asked, with professional brevity, little
liking it--soldier bred as he was--that one of the new flock should thus
be parcelled out from his fellows and transported in a Pullman.

"Climbing through the window of the saloon I--cut it, sir," was the
answer.

"Yes--_there_ perhaps," said Tibbetts, indicating the smaller gash, "but
this one,--clean cut like a knife. Whose knife?"

Whereat Brannan looked confused and troubled. "I don't know, sir," he
finally said.

"I believe you do know, and that you got it in that saloon row. A pretty
thing for a man like you to be mixed in."

Whereat Brannan reddened still more, and looked as though he wanted to
speak yet feared to say. It was Miss Loomis who promptly took the word.

"Indeed, captain, you don't understand. He was ordered in. He was
handling the hose pipe--the very first--with Mr. Davies." And here she
turned as though to seek the other pipeman, while Tibbetts
effusively--impulsively--began to make amends.

"Well--well--well," said he. "That's a totally different matter. You got
your wound in a good cause, sir, and if I could find out who tried to
knife you, he'd repent it this night. Are you sure you don't know?"

"I don't think anybody tried to cut me, sir," was the answer, after a
pause.

"Didn't you see anybody with a knife?"

But this Brannan wouldn't answer, and the captain, after a moment's
thought, went lurching through the grimy, swaying cars, hunted up the
two damaged recruits and gruffly bade them follow him. Davies looked up
gratefully as they entered the sleeping-car, but the captain did not
notice him. "I have reconsidered," said he, "and brought these patients
to you, Miss Loomis," then turned abruptly away. It was the subaltern
who aided, and then who thanked the skilful, light-handed nurse, for the
poor fellows seemed both abashed and humbled. One of them, looking
furtively about, had caught sight of Brannan, sitting alone in a section
with his bandaged hand. Quick glance of recognition was exchanged. There
was an instant of question in the new-comer's eye. It was answered by
the corporal, who raised two fingers to his compressed lips one second,
then let them fall. But Davies saw,--saw also that when told by the
captain they might remain there in the roomier, cooler sleeper for a
time, the younger and more intelligent-looking of the two dropped into
the seat by Brannan's side. They chatted in low tone together, as the
night came on, their lips moving and their ears attent even though their
heads were turned apart,--communing as men commune who do not wish to be
thought in conversation.

"We shall have supper at Grand Island," said the captain, presently,
"and coffee will be sent through the cars for the men. If you will
escort Mrs. Cranston and Miss Loomis, Mr. Davies, my sergeants will look
after the command." And Mr. Davies being subordinate and just out of
four years' training in which no man may hesitate to do just as a
superior may bid, obeyed his instructions, not unwilling, even though
smarting under vague sense of being given to understand he was of no
military use.

Re-entering the car, refreshed after a hearty supper, and seeing his
fair charges to their section, Mr. Davies caught sight of his invalids
still seated where he had left them, and looking weak and hungry.

"Did they bring you no coffee? Have you had no supper?" he asked. And,
as a shake of the head was sole answer, he sallied forth. Appealing to
the sergeant in charge of the distribution of the cooked rations, he was
favored with the brief reply, "The captain didn't give me no orders."
Moreover, there didn't seem to be anything left. The captain was still
leisurely finishing his own supper, after having got the coffee started
on the train. The huge caldrons used for the purpose were already being
lifted off the cars, empty. Every drop had been spilled or swallowed by
the hungry and thirsty crowd. With quick decision Davies stepped to the
lunch-counter, loaded up with huge frontier sandwiches, doughnuts, and
hard-boiled eggs, and bade the manager draw a jug full of coffee and get
it, with some cups, milk, and sugar, on the sleeper at once. He came
forth laden, the Pullman porter with him, as the conductor was trolling,
"All aboard." Down the platform he went with the eyes of half the blue
coats on the cars upon him, and soldiers refreshed by food and coffee
are in more receptive mood than when dejected by hunger. Some men in the
third car who had heard his eager queries of the commissary sergeant
knew for whom those supplies were meant, others did not, and of these
latter one jocular and untutored Patlander sang out, "Bully for the
leftenint; 'tis he that knows how to look out for number wan." Whereat
there came furious shouts of "Shame!" "Shut up!" and inelegant and
opprobrious epithets, all at the expense of the impetuous son of Erin
who had spoken too soon. Some one whacked his empty head with an equally
empty canteen and called him a Yap. Some one else, farther back, sang
out, "Three cheers for the lieutenant," and stentorian authority in
chevrons bellowed "Silence there, fore and aft!" and then, when instant
hush and awe rewarded the mandate, followed up the order with the
military Milesianism, "Youse fellers wants to keep your mouths shut
barrin' you're atin'." The wounded in the Pullman ate and drank
gratefully and heartily at the lieutenant's expense, and these are
matters the rank and file remember. Lance Corporal Brannan, made
comfortable for the night in the sleeper, had a few murmured words with
the dark-eyed and more intelligent-looking of the two recruits before
they were remanded to their own car for the night, where they went, and,
after the manner of their kind, one of them bragged not a little over
the bully supper they had had with the lieutenant. "Enjoy it while you
can, me bucks," was the caustic comment of a fellow-recruit who had all
the ear-marks and none of the credentials of previous service about him.
"It's the last of that sort of hobnobbing you'll ever see."

For upwards of an hour during the night, while Mrs. Cranston lay
peacefully sleeping, Mr. Davies and Miss Loomis sat in conversation in
the opposite section. Tibbetts, who would fain have enjoyed such a
privilege, found no opportunity. Somewhere towards ten o'clock he came
quickly in. Davies read official matter in the captain's manner as he
approached the section, and rising, stood attention, cadet-like, when
addressed.

"Mr. Davies, while I think everything will go quietly with those
fellows from this on, I wish to take all necessary precautions. I will
divide the night with you. After two o'clock I wish you to go through
the cars once every two hours and see that the recruits are quiet and
the guard alert, also to step outside to the platform when we stop at
stations. Better turn in now and get what sleep you can."

But though promptly at two o'clock the young officer aroused the
captain, who was dozing in the smoking-room, he himself had had little
sleep. The events of the day, the novelty of his position, the desire to
see something of the strange, half-settled land so recently the
roaming-ground of Indian and buffalo through which they were steadily
rolling, and which lay outspread, weird and ghostly, in the summer
moonlight,--these and thoughts of home and the rapidly nearing
possibilities of frontier warfare, all combined to make him wakeful. He
was only getting sleepy when he should have been wide awake. Captain
Tibbetts was an old campaigner and awoke from his doze with a start,
shook himself together, and said he'd take a turn through the car before
undressing for the night. In a moment or two he returned, the first
sergeant with him, and this faithful old soldier was rewarded by a long
pull from the captain's canteen before returning to the recruit car.

"Do you know anything about that young fellow,--ever meet him before?"
said Tibbetts, indicating with a nod the recruit corporal, who, with a
pillow under his head and his feet on the opposite seat, was now curled
up in slumber.

"No, sir," answered Davies.

"Well, he's a man of good education and family, if I'm not mistaken. I'm
told he's been on duty as clerk at the depot, and 'twas he who made out
the rolls. It will be long before he can write again. Better leave him
at Sanders." As he spoke the captain was holding out the well-filled
flask in one hand, the cup in the other. Davies took neither. "Won't you
have a nip?" asked the senior. "It'll help you to keep awake."

"Thank you, sir, I never have, and don't care to begin."

Tibbetts began screwing on the cap, looking his man over as he did so.

"I believe you're right," said he, "and if I were to begin over again
I'd do the same. But we were all taught the other way fifteen years
ago." He paused as though he half wanted to say more, but finally turned
away and disappeared in his section.

Obedient to his instructions, Davies made frequent tours through the
cars, and scouted the outside of the train at every stop. The night
passed, however, in perfect peace. The dawn came hours before the train
was due at Sidney, where coffee was again to be served. Only one
incident occurred to give him food for new thought. Towards four o'clock
he returned to the sleeper after an absence of some ten minutes, just as
the train pulled slowly away from one of those little prairie stations,
and as he entered the dimly-lighted aisle he saw that Brannan was not in
his place. Standing at Mrs. Cranston's section farther on, a little
phial and medicine-glass in her hand, her dark hair falling in heavy
braids down her back, attired in a loose, warm wrapper, was Miss Loomis,
calm, yet evidently anxious. Beyond her hovered Brannan, holding the
captain's flask.

"What is it?" asked Davies. "Can I be of assistance?"

"Mrs. Cranston woke up in some pain," was the answer. "I know just what
to do for her. Thank you, corporal, I believe we won't need the
flask.--He thought I needed it," said she, turning to Davies. And
Brannan, going to the captain's section, slipped his prize back into the
little russet leather satchel and shoved it underneath the berth. Davies
looked at him in some surprise, but made no comment.

"I am sorry I was not here to help you," said he. "Did you have to wake
him,--Brannan?"

"He was awake. A soldier was in here speaking with him when I heard Mrs.
Cranston, just after we stopped at the last station. We were there
several minutes, were we not?"

"Yes, taking on water; but Captain Tibbetts gave orders that no man
should leave his car. Who was the man who came in here, corporal?" asked
he of Brannan.

"I--I couldn't give his name, sir," was the answer, in evident
embarrassment. "He came in just the minute the lieutenant got off at the
station. He was only in here a few seconds, sir."

"What did he want?" asked Davies.

"He--wanted something of the captain, sir, but I told him the captain
was asleep."

Davies hastened through the passage and across the jolting platform to
the next car ahead.

"Sergeant," said he, "what man went through here into the sleeper when
we stopped last station?"

"No man, sir," said the non-commissioned officer, stoutly.

"But there must have been--or no, perhaps he could have run along the
left side of the train from a forward car and jumped on the platform. I
didn't think of that. Did you see or hear no one?"

"I heard some one on the platform of the sleeper, sir, but I thought it
was the lieutenant."

Going forward Davies met with no better success. The guard at each door
was positive no man had gone out. Then, unless there were collusion on
the part of the sentries, he must have slipped through some window, said
Davies to himself. Miss Loomis was still up and rearranging Mrs.
Cranston's pillows when he returned.

"Did you ascertain anything?" she asked.

"Nothing. They all deny any knowledge of such a thing."

"Do you know, I thought there was something strange about it. The man
seemed hurried and excited, talked low and fast, and when Brannan
refused or seemed to refuse what was asked, I heard him say, 'Well,
you'll be a sorry man if you don't.'"

But of this threat Brannan denied all knowledge whatsoever. Davies,
feeling sure that the young soldier was concealing something, decided to
ask no more questions inviting more lies, but to wait and report the
affair to the captain after breakfast. This time the sergeants did not
overlook the lance corporal in the distribution of coffee and rations.
Davies found that Miss Loomis had just finished dressing and bandaging
the wound when he returned to the sleeper shortly after they resumed
the journey. The soldier looked gratefully into her face as he turned
away, and murmured something the young officer could not hear. "Yes, I
understand," said Miss Loomis in reply.

A moment later she accosted him. "I'm going to ask you something that
may sound very strange," she said, and her color heightened and the lids
swept quickly over her eyes, "yet--I believe you won't misunderstand. I
want you to do something--or rather _not_ to do something--for me. You
were going to tell Captain Tibbetts about that affair of last
night,--that other soldier's coming in here, were you not?"

"I certainly was."

"Well--please don't."




CHAPTER V.


A week later, with additional detachments of horse, foot, and recruits,
Mr. Davies found himself in camp on the sandy, sage-covered flats to the
west of old Fort Fetterman. Here, too, were gathered wagons and mules
laden with ammunition and supplies for the big column already in the
field far to the northward. Officers hurrying to the front from leave of
absence which they had promptly relinquished, newspaper correspondents,
packers, teamsters, scouts and would-be scouts, soldiers old and
soldiers new,--it was a strange and motley array, all awaiting the
coming of the cavalry command, which was to be their escort through the
Indian-infested region that lay between them and the main supply camp
beyond Cloud Peak. Between them and the barren slopes to the northward
rolled the swollen Platte, its shallowest fords breast-deep. At rare
intervals, with his life in his hands and his despatches done up in
oil-skin, some solitary courier came galloping down to the opposite bank
and was hauled over by the rope ferry, the only means of dry
communication between the shores. One day, strongly guarded, there
arrived a little procession of ambulances and _travois_, bearing such of
the wounded as could stand such rude transportation,--but this was while
Davies with his recruits was still on his foot tramp through the passes
of the Medicine Bow,--and among these wounded was Captain Cranston, now
comfortably housed in the quarters of a brother officer who was with his
troop at the front, and there Davies found the two ladies, his
companions of the railway ride, duly installed as nurses. Almost the
first question asked by Miss Loomis was about her patient, the lance
corporal.

"He is here with us," said Davies, "his hand still in a sling. That was
a deep cut and a bad one, but he's a plucky young fellow and declined to
be left behind at Sanders. He tells me, however, that the hospital
steward with us cannot compare in skill with the nurse he had on the
cars."

Miss Loomis smiled. "You know I owe that to father," she said. Then,
with quick change of subject, "But I haven't congratulated you on your
assignment."

"Is it here?--has it come?" he asked, eagerly. "I did not know. What
regiment?"

"To the Eleventh Cavalry,--Captain Cranston's own regiment."

"The Eleventh Cavalry!" he exclaimed, surprise and pleasure in his face.
"I had not hoped for that; and yet----" a shadow falling and constraint
creeping into his tone. "I fear I ought to have gone into the infantry.
I had made every preparation. Where did you hear?"

"About the orders? Why, from Colonel Denton. He came last evening to
call, and we were speaking of you. Haven't you been to see him yet? You
know that's an officer's first duty on coming to a post."

"I came here first," answered Davies. "It seemed most natural. Of course
I was going to call on the commanding officer. Captain Tibbetts said he
would take me as soon as he came up, a little later. I got away earlier,
as I wanted to inquire for my letters, but I missed them after
all,--they had been sent over to camp. Are you sure about my being
assigned to the cavalry?"

"There's no doubt about it. Colonel Denton said instructions came by
telegraph to notify you of your assignment to the Eleventh, and
directing you as having relinquished graduation leave to report to
Colonel Winthrop, now commanding the regiment in the field. Perhaps your
throwing up your leave and seeking instant service had something to do
with your good fortune,--if cavalry is really what you wanted."

"It is certainly what I would most like," he answered; "and yet,--there
were reasons."

She stood there in the door-way in her cool white dress looking so fresh
and dainty and fair to see; her dark eyes had lighted with pleasure at
sight of her friend, and the flush was still on her soft and rounded
cheek. She was noting how his few days of marching and campaigning had
improved him, even at the expense of a sensitive complexion. Mr.
Davies's nose was peeling, as a result of a week's exposure to
blistering Wyoming suns, his eyes were red-rimmed too, in tribute to
alkali dust and water. The gloss was gone from his trim fatigue dress, a
red silk handkerchief had replaced the white starched collar, and a soft
drab felt hat the natty forage-cap. But he looked the more soldierly and
serviceable if less trim, and being tall, spare, and athletic, if not
particularly handsome, Mr. Davies was at least as presentable as the
average of his fellows now thronging the post, for bristling beards and
frontier scouting-dress banish all vestige of dandyism. But if she liked
him still better now that the week had wrought its changes, what could
be said of his impressions? Attractive as she had appeared in the grime
and dust and heat of the railway car, now in that dainty gown of cool
white lawn, open at the rounded throat, she saw with woman's unerring
eye the unspoken approval if not open admiration in his face. Not yet
nineteen, she had lived a busy, earnest, thoughtful life. The Cranstons
had known her from early maidenhood. She was a child in the Southern
garrison in the days of the great epidemic, when the young captain owed
his life to the doctor's skill and assiduous care. It was this that led
to the deep friendship between the two men, and to Cranston's assuming
the duties of guardian and protector after Loomis's lamented death. It
was this that determined her hastening to Mrs. Cranston the moment the
sad news came, and then accompanying her to the frontier. A mature head
was that on her young shoulders, but she who had so easily repelled the
advances of the admiring fellow-passenger on the train had been
attracted by the bearing and behavior of the young officer, who,
absorbed in his new cares and duties, had apparently noticed her hardly
at all. She and the train conductor and Mr. Langston, the elder of the
two civilians, at least, knew who was the inspiration of that effective
squelching given the rioting recruits, whatever impression might be
prevailing at department head-quarters or at Sanders. She, presumably,
had her duties as assistant to Mrs. Cranston at the bedside of the
sorely wounded officer. Davies, too, had matters requiring his attention
about the post, for the word had gone the rounds that they were to march
at dawn on the morrow. Yet here under the vine-sheltered portico they
lingered, chatting on all manner of topics. Mrs. Cranston came smilingly
to congratulate the young officer on his assignment to her husband's
regiment, to say the captain was dozing now and that she thought she
would lie down a while, but that Miss Loomis was not to think of coming
in out of the sweet summer air.

"Oh, Mr. Davies is only waiting for Captain Tibbetts to come up from
camp to call with him on the post commander," said Miss Loomis; "and
here comes the captain now," she continued, as a stalwart, full-bearded,
heavily-built fellow swung himself off his horse at the gate, and,
leaving him with his orderly, came forward with cordial inquiries for
his wounded comrade, and with a packet of letters, at least a dozen,
which he handed to the new lieutenant.

"Seven of them addressed in the same fair, feminine hand, youngster,"
said he, in the easy jocularity of the frontier. "That gives you dead
away."

And the color that mounted to Mr. Davies's forehead, a cloud of
embarrassment, told plainly that the shot was a centre. He had not
recovered himself when the captain again turned, saying they must go to
the commanding officer's quarters at once or be too late.

"Remember, you are to come and lunch with us, Mr. Davies," said the
captain's wife, as he was saying adieu.

"I--I'm afraid I can't, Mrs. Cranston," was his answer. "We march so
soon, and I have so many preparations to make."

"Preparations? Why, what on earth have you been doing ever since you
came up to the post?" asked his witless or too witty tormentor. "He's
simply eager to get off by himself somewhere and devour his ration of
spoon meat. I know how it is, Mrs. Cranston. I was there ten years ago."
And Davies's low-toned protestations were drowned in the jovial tones of
his burly comrade.

"I'll come to say good-by to-night, perhaps," he stammered, as he was
led away, still clutching his packet; but Miss Loomis had turned and
gone within-doors before the visitors reached the gate.

"I'm sorry to hear of it," said Captain Cranston, when later that
evening his wife was laughingly telling of Davies's betrayal and
confusion. "I always feel distressed to find a young fellow, just
entering service, has already enlisted in one much more exacting. I was
in love when I graduated myself."

And Davies didn't come to say adieu. He wrote a note to Mrs. Cranston
saying he found so many duties crowding on him at the last moment, so
many home letters to be written owing to his having left in such haste,
that it was impossible for him to leave camp. He begged her to say
good-by for him to Miss Loomis, whom he sincerely hoped he might meet
again, and with his best wishes for the captain's speedy recovery and
restoration to duty, he begged to subscribe himself her friend and most
obedient servant.

"Now, I like that young fellow," said Mrs. Cranston, folding up the
letter, "only I didn't----"

"Well, didn't what?" asked her companion, seeing that she had faltered
for a word.

"Well--he didn't act at all like an engaged man,--like he ought to have
acted," said Mrs. Cranston, with honest disdain of masculine flirts or
malevolent rules of speech, due perhaps to long association with belles
of the Blue Grass country.

"Why, I didn't think he was engaged," said Miss Loomis.

"No,--and he didn't mean you to. But when one mail brings a man seven
letters from one girl, I've no use for him."

"Well, I should much rather he had them of one than from seven different
girls," said Miss Loomis, smiling resolutely.

"Oh, you're bound to uphold him, I see. All the same, I thought better
of him."

"Ah?" And now in a very pretty, playful way did Miss Loomis take her
companion's flushed face between two long, white, slender hands,--very
cool and dainty members were they,--and archly queried, "Are you
beginning to tire of your bargain, Lady Cranston? Are you planning
already to unload me, as the captain says, on somebody else?"

The answer came with sudden vehemence and a hug. "You are much too good
for any man I know,--except Will, and you can't have him. And I'll never
let you go till the right one comes."

After which outburst, and for over a week, did this young matron say
little more to Miss Loomis on the subject, but she must have enlivened
some hours of the captain's convalescence with her views on recent
graduates in general, and this one in particular, for when at last
letters came from the front announcing the arrival of the reinforcements
and the final cutting loose of the reorganized column from its base, the
prostrate warrior glanced up at his busy wife with an odd mixture of
merriment and concern in his haggard face.

"To whose troop do you suppose your friend Davies has been assigned?"

"Not to yours, surely. You have no vacancy."

"No. I fear I wish I had,--every time I see my bulky senior sub in
saddle. But, of all men you know----"

"Will Cranston! You don't mean Captain Devers?"

"Yes,--Captain Differs, for a fact."

"Well, then your _protégé_ and Mr. Davies have gone into the same troop.
What a strange coincidence! Isn't it time Mrs. Barnard answered Agatha's
letter?"

"Time she answered it? Yes," replied Cranston, "yet not time for her
answer to get here. Poor lady! She was so distressed at the thought of
his going into the army. I hope that letter will comfort her. It ought
to. I doubt if he ever did an honest day's work before."




CHAPTER VI.


The battalion had halted at the foot of the slope, each troop closing up
on its predecessor and huddling in shivering silence. No trumpet
sounded; no word of command was heard. Every troop leader threw up his
hand when he thought he had gone far enough and rolled stiffly out of
saddle, his horse only too willingly standing stock-still the instant he
found himself no longer urged. "Dismount" either by signal or command
would have been an affront to a cavalry force two-thirds of whose array
seemed to be dismounted already, some towing along by taut bridle-rein
the famished relic of a once spirited charger, others comforting
themselves with the reflection that at least they had now only their own
carcass to care for, others still wishing they had not even that
responsibility, wondering how much longer their aggrieved stomachs might
have to struggle with the only pabulum upon which they had been allowed
to expend their gastric juices for over forty-eight hours, and suffering
the pangs of remorse, both physical and mental, in the poignant
consciousness that the cause of this distress was the undigested
portion of some late faithful four-footed friend and companion, for the
command for rations had been reduced to horse meat on the hoof. Three
hundred miles from the nearest post when their supplies gave out, in the
heart of the Bad Lands and the height of the worst season of the year,
except midwinter, it had turned its back to the forts and its face to
the foe, true to its orders, still following the trail of the hostile
tribe,--the only hot thing it had struck for a week. "Live on the
country, there isn't anything else," were their orders, as they cut
loose from the main command, and their major--a reserved and
conservative fellow at other times--came away from the grim presence of
his commander with blasphemy on his bearded lips. The only human
habitation within scores of miles of his line of march were Indian
lodges, and both grass for the horses and game for the men had been
fired off the face of the earth by those active foemen before the
drenching wintry rain set in and chilled to the marrow the shelterless
forms of starving trooper and staggering steed.

"Live on the country, indeed! Two antelope and ten prairie dogs was the
sum total of the game secured by the hunters in three days' pursuit. And
what are they," said Captain Truman, "among so many? Barley loaves and
Galilee perch might be made to go round in a bigger crowd in the days of
miracles, but this isn't Jordan's strand," he added, as he glanced
around at the dripping, desolate slopes, and then, fortified in his
opinion by the gloomy survey, concluded, with cavalry elegance, "not by
a damn sight."

"What's the matter ahead, anyhow?" hailed a brother captain, up to his
shins in sticky mud, who had been making mental calculation as to how
many more hours of such wearing work and wretched weather it would take
to unhorse his entire company.

"Don't know," was the short answer. Men fight, but they seldom talk on
empty stomachs.

"Why, I thought I saw you talking with Hastings when he rode back."
Hastings being the battalion adjutant. "Didn't he say what they were
pow-wowing about?"

"No, and I didn't ask. There was nothing to eat in sight, and that's the
only matter that interests my people just now. Just look at those poor
brutes!" And Truman heaved a sigh as he gazed about among his gaunt,
dejected horses, many of them so weak as barely to be able to stand.

"My men are as bad off as the horses, pretty near," said Captain Devers,
the other. "There isn't one of them that hasn't turned his saddle-bags
inside out to-day for the last crumb of hard-tack. They're worn to skin
and bone. Three of them broke down entirely back there at the creek
crossing, and if there weren't Indians all round us, nothing would have
fetched them along. There goes Davies, coddling 'em again, damn it! That
man would spoil any troop----Mr. _Davies!_" he called, and a gaunt, wiry
fellow, with a stiff beard sprouting on his thin, haggard face, turned
away from a bedraggled trooper who had thrown himself in utter
abandonment among the dripping sage brush at the side of the trail, and
came to his troop commander.

"I wish you wouldn't make such a fuss over those men," said Devers,
petulantly. "Just leave 'em alone. They'll come out all right. This
coddling and petting isn't going to do any good. Soldiers are not like
sick children."

"A good many of ours seem to feel that way just now, sir," said the
young officer. "I only thought to cheer him up a bit."

"Well, when my men need nursing, Mr. Davies, I'll have you detailed in
that capacity, but be so good as to refrain from it otherwise. I don't
like it. That's all."

Without a word Davies turned on his heel and went back to his horse.
Truman, looking after him with a not unkindly interest in his tired
eyes, saw that he swayed a little as he ploughed his way through the
thick and sticky mud. "That boy's as weak as a sick child himself,
Devers," said he. "You'll have to have a nurse for him before we get
in."

"Well, it's his own fault, then. He had just as much in his haversack as
I had when we cut loose from the main column. I 'spose he's given it
away."

"I know he has," was the curt rejoinder. "Neither of those two men could
stomach tough mule meat. I suppose that was the only way to get 'em
along."

Devers turned gloomily about. Down in the bottom of his heart he felt
that in his annoyance at what he considered disregard of his
instructions he had spoken harshly and unjustly to a young officer of
whom he had heard many a word of praise during the hard and trying
campaign now drawing to a close. True, the words had fallen mainly from
the lips of those of the rank and file or from seniors whom he didn't
like. In some, cases, especially among the enlisted men, they would
appear to have been spoken for the captain's especial benefit. Devers,
while a painstaking officer and not unmindful of the care of his men,
was one who "lacked magnetism," to say the least, and never won from
them the enthusiastic homage they often lavished on others among their
superiors. The fact that Lieutenant Davies, finding Moore and Rupp
actually so weak from lack of food that they could hardly drag one leg
after another, had been sharing with them his own slender store of
provision was not the first thing the men had noted in his favor, but
that was no reason, thought Devers, why they should raise their voices
and glance covertly in his direction when referring to it. Devers was
one of the kind sometimes called unsympathetic, that is, he seemed so,
but it was more in manner than in fact, for few troop commanders in his
regiment were really more careful in providing for their men than he.
But these were days that tried men's tempers as well as their souls, and
the officer who could look back on that long campaign against the Sioux
without regretting some speech wrung from him by the exasperation
produced by incessant exposure, hardship, and finally by starvation,
were few indeed. Devers was honest enough to admit to himself at the
moment that he wished he hadn't said what he did say to Davies, but not
so honest as to confess it to any one else. Yet stealing a glance at the
young fellow whom he had humiliated, now wearily leaning against his
saddle, Devers would have been glad to find some way of making amends,
but, stealing another glance around another way after Truman, of whom he
was both jealous and afraid, he hardened his heart. It is one thing to
say "I was in the wrong" to the victim, and quite another to admit it to
one's fellows. It is fear of what the world will say that keeps many a
man from righting many a wrong, and men, too, who wouldn't flinch in
front of a mile of batteries.

Standing listlessly by their horses, the men of Devers's troop had, some
of them at least, been silent witnesses of the scene. One or two
officers also had marked and conjectured, though they had not heard,
what had taken place. Truman alone was cognizant of all, and, whatever
may have been his views, this was neither the time nor place to express
them. But he took occasion to stop as he was returning to the head of
his own troop and speak to the young officer in the case.

"Davies," said he, kindly, "come over with me a moment. I've got a
little chunk of antelope in my saddle-bags, and you need it, man. We'll
all have something to eat to-night--_sure_. We'll make the Belle Fourche
by nine."

Davies looked up gratefully. "I'm ever so much obliged, captain," he
began, "but I can't eat with all those poor fellows looking at me.
They're about done up."

"Oh, it's rough, I know, but all they've got to do is tag along with the
column till night and then eat their fill. You haven't had enough to
live on, and may have work ahead. Here comes Hastings now."

And as he spoke the battalion adjutant came spurring down from a low
ridge at the front fast as a miserably jaded horse could bear him.
Earlier in the campaign every man would have felt the thrill of coming
excitement,--a chase, a brush of some kind, perhaps,--but now all were
weak and weary. Even the Patlanders in Truman's troop, men of whom it
had often been said that they'd rather fight than eat, were no more full
of fight to-day than they were of food.

"What's he want?" growled Devers, sauntering over to where the officer
stood. "We've left the Indians miles behind. Surely there can't be any
between us and the river."

Many eyes were fixed on the coming horseman or on the little group of
scouts and soldiers surrounding the major, who, kneeling, was levelling
his field-glasses over the ridge at some objects far away, apparently
towards the southeast.

"They're everywhere,--damn them!" was the curt answer, "except where we
want them. But he's looking off square to the left, not ahead."

This was true. Whatever it might have been far to the front of the weary
column that caused the little squad of scouts to signal halt after their
first cautious peep over that ridge, the object at which so many were
now excitedly peering and pointing was at right angles to the direction
of the march. Yet did the advance keep well concealed against observant
eyes ahead, though why they should do so when every Indian in Dakota by
this time knew all about them, their movements, and those of the main
column farther over towards the Little Missouri, Truman couldn't
understand.

"Have you ten horses that can stand a side scout?" asked the adjutant,
urging his mud-spattered mount to the head of Devers's troop. He spoke
abruptly, and without salute, to his superior officer,--his own captain
at that.

"What are we on but a side scout now?" demanded that officer, in the
surly tone the best of men may fall into under such circumstances.

"That isn't the question," replied Mr. Hastings, "and we've no time for
points. Davies, it's your detail. There's something--we can't make out
what--over towards the river. Report to the major and I'll find your
party."

"I doubt if my horse can stand any side scout," said Davies, slowly,
"but I am ready."

"Oh, your horse's as good as any in the outfit," interposed the
adjutant, impatiently. "The major wants ten men from your troop at once,
captain,--the ten who have the strongest horses. It won't take 'em more
than a dozen miles out of the way, I reckon. The whole crowd would go,
only men and horses can barely make the day's march as it is."

"See any Indians?" asked Truman, lounging up.

"I haven't. Crounse and the scouts say they have, and it's likely
enough. Of course you've seen the pony tracks, and what's queer is that
many of them head over towards the very point where this smoke is
drifting from. Looks as if they'd jumped some wagons and burned them."

Meantime, Mr. Davies had slowly mounted and was urging his reluctant
horse into some semblance of a canter. As the slope in front of him
steepened, however, both horse and rider abandoned the effort, and,
full fifty yards below the point where the battalion commander and his
scouts were in consultation, the lieutenant dismounted, and leaving his
steed unguarded to nibble at a patch of scant and sodden herbage that
had survived the Indian fires, he slowly climbed the ascent. "I am
ordered to report to you, sir," was all he had to say.

The major lowered his field-glass and looked back over a broad, burly
shoulder garbed in canvas shooting-jacket. Not a stitch of uniform
graced his massive person from head to heel, yet soldier was manifest in
every gesture or attitude. A keen observer might have said that a shade
of disappointment crossed his fine, full-bearded face as he heard the
subaltern's voice, but no sign of it appeared in his tone when he spoke.

"Mr. Davies, just take this glass and see what you make of that smoke
off yonder. The sun is getting low and it baffles me somewhat." Silently
the lieutenant obeyed, and creeping up towards the crest he knelt and
took a preliminary peep.

Issuing from the Bad Lands the jaded column had been plodding all day
long, though with frequent enforced rests, through a rolling sea of
barren, turfless earth. What grass had carpeted its surface in the
spring had been burned off by sagacious Indians, bent on impeding by
every known device the march of troops through their lands,--and what
device the Indian does not know is little worth knowing. Under a
dripping leaden sky the earth lay desolate and repulsive. Miles away to
the north the dim, castellated buttes and pinnacles of the range were
still faintly visible, and the tortuous trail of the column of twos
winding its way over wave after wave of barren prairie like the wake of
some terrestrial bark in a sea of mud. Far to the westward a jagged line
of hills, sharply defined, seemed to rear their crests from the general
level of the land, and somewhere along the eastern slope of that ridge,
and not far from where two twin-pointed buttes seemed peeping over at
these uncouth invaders, the main command of the expedition should have
passed earlier in the day, making for the crossing of the swift-running
stream that circled the northern border of some black, forbidding
heights lying like a dark patch upon the landscape at its southwestern
edge. Black as it looked, that was their one refuge. There alone dare
they hope to find food. Thither had been sent an advanced detail with
orders to buy at owners' prices flour, bacon, bread, coffee, anything
the outlying settlements might have for sale that would sustain life.
Men who had been living on horse or prairie-dog would not be fastidious.
Here, too, the major had hoped by night to bivouac his weary men, but it
seemed desperately far away. The march had been much impeded, and now,
far out on his left flank was something that could not be passed
uninvestigated. He, with his worn battalion of four troops, had been
detached from the main column three days previous with orders to follow
the trail of a war-party of Sioux, and smite them hip and thigh if he
could catch them in forty-eight hours; if not, to veer around for the
valley and rejoin the column at its bivouac among the foot-hills. There
they should rest and recuperate. The pursued Indians, fortunately, had
turned southward and gone jogging leisurely away towards their
reservations, until warned of the pursuit by ambitious young braves
still hovering about the troops in hope of slicing off the scalp of some
straggler. Then, every man for himself, they had apparently scattered
over the face of the country, laughing gleefully to think what fun the
white chief would have in deciding which trail to follow. The situation
on the third day out had been summarized by Crounse, the guide, about as
follows: "So long as this outfit pulls together it won't catch an
Indian; so soon as it doesn't pull together it'll catch hell," which
being interpreted meant that the four companies united were too strong
for the number of Indians within striking distance, or say three days'
march, but that if it were divided into little detachments, and sent
hither and yon in pursuit of such small parties as would then allow
themselves to be seen, the chances were that those pursuing squads would
one by one be lured beyond support, surrounded, cut off, and then
massacred to a man. The major and his officers, most of them, knew this
as well as Crounse. They knew, moreover, that even so large a command as
theirs had been cut off, surrounded, and massacred more than once in the
history of Sioux warfare, but then the Indians were massed, not
scattered helter-skelter all over the continent as was the case the end
of this eventful summer. Well did Major Warren understand that with such
broken-down horses and weakened men he could now effect little or
nothing against the Indians after whom he had been sent, even could he
overtake them, and his instructions were literally obeyed. It was high
time for him to restore his men to their comrades. He was making the
best of his way to the rendezvous, hoping almost against hope to reach
the welcome of the bivouac fires, and hot tins of coffee and toothsome
morsels of hard-tack and bacon, things they had not had a scrap of for
three days, and only occasional reminders of for the previous ten, when
lo! off to their flank, far to the southeast there appeared this
unwelcome yet importunate sign. Was it appeal for help or lure to
ambush? Who could say? Only one thing was certain,--a thick smoke
drifting westward from the clump of wallows and timber surrounding what
Crounse said was a spring could not be passed unheeded.

"If we march the whole command over there, it will be another
twenty-four hours before we can reach the regiment. I don't think many
of the men, or horses either, can go that much longer without a bite,"
said Mr. Hastings, the battalion adjutant, seeing in his senior's eye a
permission to speak.

"Well, there are no settlements there and never have been," said
Crounse, "so it can't be cabins or shacks. Wagons it may be, but who'd
be damn fool enough to start a wagon-train up the valley this year of
all others, when every Indian at the reservation except old Spot is in
league with the hostiles? I can't believe it's wagons, yet it's on the
road full a mile this side of the river itself. What I'm afraid of is
that it's a plant. They want to coax us over there and cut us off, as
they did Custer." The major was silent and thoughtful. Davies, still
studying the distant objects, said not a word. Leading their horses,
eight troopers following a sergeant, all wet, weary, and heaven only
knows how hungry, came slowly forward up the slope until they reached
the spot where Davies's horse was nibbling. Here the foremost halted
without a word, and the others grouped about him or, stopping short when
their leader did so, threw themselves on the wet ground reckless of cold
or rheumatism, as spiritless a squad as frontier warfare could well
develop. Valley Forge knew nothing like it. The retreat from Moscow
might have furnished a parallel.

Leaving his horse to do as his jaded fancy might suggest, the battalion
adjutant, returning from his quest, came slowly to the major's side.
"I've picked out nine, sir. It was simply impossible to find another in
the whole two hundred. Some of these look barely able to stagger as it
is."

"And it's Davies's detail?" asked the major, in low tone.

"Yes, sir. He's the only sub in the battalion who hasn't been on
detachment duty since we left the Yellowstone, and his horse is able to
go. Look at him, actually kicking!"

This was true. The sergeant's starving charger, showing a disposition to
poach on the little preserve that Davies's steed had pre-empted, was
rewarded by a sudden whirl about and flourish of two shod hoofs.

"Davies," said the major, kindly, yet with quick decision, "I hate to
impose additional work on worn-out men, but we can't leave that matter
uninvestigated. I want you to ride over there and see what that smoke
means. I don't think Indians in any force are near, and ten men ought to
be enough to stand 'em off. If it's nothing of consequence you can
follow on up-stream or camp as you please. If it's a wagon outfit
attacked, and there's anything left to help, do your best. We'll keep a
troop in supporting distance, and instead of marching straight for the
hills, I'll edge off here towards the river, sending Devers well out
towards you. We've got nearly three hours of daylight yet. Think you
understand?"

"I think so, sir," said Davies, slowly replacing his glass, then looking
hesitatingly around.

"Anything you want?" asked Warren.

"Well, I should like to see Captain Truman just a minute, sir."

"He's three hundred yards back there now, and time's precious. Can't I
do?" asked the major, not unkindly. "Want to leave anything?"

"No, sir. It's of no consequence." And turning abruptly, Davies went
half sliding, half shuffling down the slippery slope, kicked the mud off
his boots, and briefly nodding to the sergeant, said "Mount," hoisted
himself into saddle, and led his little party silently away. One of the
men looked appealingly back towards Crounse.

"Got any baccy, Jim?"

"Not a pinch. I'd give my boots for a chew."

Davies heard the appeal and turned to his sergeant. "Tell Dunn to come
up here alongside," said he, reaching down into his saddle-pocket; "I've
half a plug left, sergeant, and we'll divide."

"It'll help the men as much as a square meal, sir," said the trooper,
gratefully; "but I never saw the lieutenant chew."

"I don't, but it's some I fetched along for just such an emergency."

Meantime the major and his party stood gazing silently after them. They
saw them winding away down the southward face of the long ridge and
crossing the shallow ravine at its foot. Beyond lay another long, low
spur of treeless prairie.

"The Parson didn't seem over-anxious to go," muttered Mr. Hastings, as
though to himself.

"Small blame to him!" promptly answered the major. "I don't blame any
man in this command for declining any invitation, except to dinner.
Hallo! What's that?"

In Davies's little party the men had been seen passing some object from
one to the other. One or two who had ridden up alongside the young
officer touched their hats and fell back to their place. Suddenly two of
them left the squad and, urging their horses to such speed as they were
capable of, went at heavy plunging lope over the southern end of the
opposite ridge and disappeared from view.

"Antelope, by jimminy! I thought I saw a buck's horns over that crest
yonder a minute ago," said an orderly.

"Antelope be damned!" said Crounse, gritting his teeth. "If those men
knew this country as I do they'd think twice before they rode a hundred
yards away from the column. I wouldn't undertake to ride from here to
that butte yonder,--not for a beefsteak, I wouldn't,--God knows what
else I wouldn't do for that!"

"Why, you can see the whole valley, and there ain't an Indian in
sight," said the orderly trumpeter, disdainfully.

"Yes, and it's just when you can't see one that a valley's most apt to
be full of 'em, kid," began the frontiersman, but the major cut him off.

"Ride after Mr. Davies with my compliments, trumpeter, and tell him to
recall those men, and not to let them straggle, even after game."

The trumpeter touched his ragged hat-brim and turned away to get his
horse, which he presently spurred to a sputtering lope, and went
clattering away on the trail.

"We may as well mount now and push ahead," said the major, after a
moment's reflection. "Keep Davies in sight as much as possible,
Crounse." And so saying he went on and climbed stiffly into saddle, for
he, too, was wet and chilled and sore-spirited; but it was his business
to put the best face on matters in general, and the troopers, seeing the
major mount, got themselves to their horses without further order. None
of the horses, poor brutes, required holding, but stood there with
dejected crest, pasterns deep in the mud, too weak to wander even in
search of grass. Warren came riding slowly towards his men.

"Captain Devers," said he, "I have sent Mr. Davies off to the left to
scout towards the valley. I wish you to follow his trail a mile, and
then to march due south by compass, keeping about midway between him and
us. Hold him in sight, if possible, and be ready to support him if he
should be attacked. We will back you. If all is quiet by the time you
strike the old road in the valley, turn west and follow on to camp."

But Captain Devers was one of those officers who seemed never to grasp
an order at first hand. Even when it came in writing, clear, brief, and
explicit, he often required explanations. "I don't think I understand,
sir," he began, but Warren cut him short.

"I should have been prepared for that," he exclaimed, giving way for the
first time to the generally peppery and irascible spirit of semi-starved
men. "Mount!" he ordered. "Captain Truman, lead the column,--Crounse
will show you the line. I will ride here awhile with Devers and show him
what's wanted."

Now, it is one of the peculiarities of prairie landscape that where
whole counties may appear to be one general level or open slopes when
viewed from the distance, the face of the country is really cut up in
countless directions by ravines, watercourses and _coulées_, so that,
except in the level bottom-lands along a river-bed, it is next to
impossible to keep moving objects continually in view. Davies and his
little party were out of sight when the major reappeared on the ridge
with Devers's ragged troop at his heels. So, too, were the would-be
hunters. "Kid" Murray, the trumpeter, alone remained in view, and he had
just reached the crest of a parallel ridge somewhat lower and about a
quarter of a mile to the left.

Then those at the head of column saw a strange thing. The young
trumpeter, instead of pushing forward on the trail, had suddenly reined
in. Bending forward in his saddle, he was gazing eagerly in the
direction taken by the antelope-stalkers; then, suddenly again, whirled
about and began frantically signalling to the column. They saw him
quickly swing his battered trumpet from behind his back and raise it to
his lips, sounding some call. Floating across the wind, over the bleak
and barren prairie, came almost together the muffled sound of two
rifle-shots, then the stirring trumpet signal,--_gallop_.

"Away with you, Devers!" ordered the major. "Head Truman this way, Mr.
Hastings. Tell him to come on." And forty horsemen went laboring down
the gentle slope, lugging their rusty brown carbines, one by one, from
the mud-covered sockets.




CHAPTER VII.


Jaded as were the horses, it was only by vigorous spurring that they
were forced into anything like a gallop. Earlier in the campaign, only
with extreme difficulty could they have been held. In dispersed order,
spreading out, fan-like, to avoid the volleys of mud hurled back by the
leaders, the troop came struggling up to the opposite ridge, many of the
men loading as they rode, all with eager eyes and compressed lips
staring straight ahead for the first glance at what each knew must be
the foe. That no shot was to be dreaded from lurking Indians along the
ridge each reasoned from the fact that the trumpeter, after sounding his
signal and seeing them well on their way, had himself pushed on out of
sight. Once or twice the foremost thought they heard other shots. All
reined up as they reached the crest, and this was what they saw:

Far ahead, down towards the valley ran a long tongue or spur from the
high ground over which they had steadily been marching since the dawn.
Farther away, perhaps ten miles, a black fringe in the depths of the
valley marked the winding river-bed. Against this and the dull
background of the opposite rise a faint column of pale, blue-white smoke
was drifting slowly westward from a little patch of trees at least a
mile nearer them than the river. "That's Antelope Springs," said
Crounse, who knew every league of the valley. Straight towards this
point a little party of horse were now steadily moving, a dark spot upon
the slopes, and nearly a thousand yards away. They were gradually
descending to the valley along the eastern side of the long tongue
referred to, all ignorant, probably, of what might be going on upon the
other. Obedient to his orders then, Davies was riding by the shortest
line to the designated goal, and all with them thus far seemed tranquil
enough. But hardly half a mile to the right front of their supporting
comrades, afoot now, and stopping every minute to let drive a long-range
shot at some objects scurrying away over the slopes to the south, "the
Kid" was running, and ever and anon turning to beckon them on. One
glance told the experienced hands what those fleeing rascals
were,--Indians, fresh from some deviltry, their swift ponies bounding
over the little gullies and watercourses like so many goats. Once more
the troop spurred on, though every man realized the hopelessness of any
pursuit. The first thought in every mind was the fate of their two
venturesome comrades. Even "the Kid" could not be sure what that was as
they reached him. "They're just over around that point," he almost
sobbed in his excitement. "I saw the Indians sneaking up the ridge
yonder. They fired from there, and then rushed in with a yell, and I'm
afraid they've got 'em."

Brief search was all that was needed. Not half a mile west of the little
party, and hidden from the sight and hearing of their comrades, the two
eager, hungry hunters had met their fate. Four lurking warriors,--part
of the daring band that, hanging about the battalion, watched its every
move, ever on the alert for just such opportunity as this--had lashed
their ponies to the gallop, darted along the winding ravine between the
two ridges until opposite the point where the hunters crossed, then
crawling to the top, had shot the poor fellows from their hidden covert,
and rushing in as they tumbled from their saddles, had quickly finished
the bloody work. One of the men, Mullen, a notable shot, seemed to have
been killed at the first fire, as he lay face downward, his hands
gripping the wet soil, his scalp torn from the bare and bleeding skull.
Phillips, his chum, had died fighting, and was riddled with shot and
lance wounds. His horse, too, was killed, while that of Mullen was
wandering helplessly about in a dazed sort of way, as though unable to
comprehend his own narrow escape. For once there had been no time for
further mutilation. Contenting themselves with the arms, ammunition, and
scalps of the troopers, the Indians had scurried away on the instant.
The whole affair had not lasted two minutes, yet there on the open
prairie, in broad daylight, with a four-company battalion of horse not
six hundred yards away in one direction, and double their own number of
troopers riding along not six hundred yards away in another, they had
dared interpose between and swoop down upon their victims in their
fancied security. Devers was almost beside himself with grief and rage.

"It's all that damned Sunday-school soldier's fault!" he burst forth.
"He's let these poor fellows ride slap into ambush, and gone off without
a thought of them." He would have said more, and in the full hearing of
the whole command, but the stern voice of the major checked him.

"Hush, Devers, hush!" he ordered, as he rode into the midst of the pale
and excited group gathered about the lifeless forms. "Don't halt,
Truman," he ordered, as the senior captain came trotting up at the head
of the long straggling column. "Push right on and do your best to catch
those devils. I'll follow in a minute."

Without either orders or permission six or eight of Devers's men spurred
into the nearest gaps in Truman's column,--and gaps were many,--others,
half dazed, hung about their captain.

"Send a messenger to Mr. Davies and let him know what's happened,"
continued the major, after a moment of painful thought. "Bury your dead
as quick as you can, then carry out your orders. Better halt Davies
until you're ready to move ahead." Saying this, and followed by his
orderly, the battalion commander spurred away towards a bedraggled party
of some fifty dismounted men, some with horses meekly drooping at their
master's heels, several without even the shadow of a steed. Truman had
"fallen out" his utterly ineffective to form a guard for the sick and
unhorsed, Davies's two patients among them, and one of those now, in
weakness and excitement, crying like a child. A gray-haired lieutenant
was with the party striving to get this reserve into some kind of shape.
"Follow Captain Truman's trail to the river, Mr. Calvert," said the
major. "Bring your party along as well as you can. You'll find camp
somewhere up-stream. We'll have rations to meet you. I'll have to go on
now after the battalion,--what there is of it," he added to himself, his
teeth firmly set. "Was ever luck worse than this?"

And thus was Captain Devers, as senior officer, left in command with the
troops that remained clustered about the still warm and bleeding bodies
of their murdered comrades, and his first order was characteristic.
"Ride after Mr. Davies, trumpeter. Tell him to halt his party where they
are, and say I wish to see him at once." Dashing the tears away from his
eyes, little Murray said, "Yes, sir," and mounted his horse. He was
starting when Devers called him again. "You needn't tell Mr. Davies
what's happened," he said. "It would demoralize him entirely;" adding in
an undertone that was none the less audible to the men around him, "He's
worse than demoralized now."

Digging graves with hunting-knives and fingers as the only tools is
wearisome work. "What's the use of it anyhow?" reasoned the captain,
impatiently. "We simply can't dig anything but a shallow trench inside
an hour with the means at hand. The coyotes would paw up the bodies,
sure, before we'd gone five miles. Better carry them along on these led
horses by the shortest route to the river. We're bound to find plenty of
rocks there that the wolves can't roll away." It wasn't the first time
the sad little command had had to "pack" their dead and wounded, and in
a quarter of an hour, with perhaps thirty men trailing along behind him,
Devers, instead of obeying his original instructions, was striking
straight across country for the river. And so it happened as nightfall
approached there were four parties of cavalry, widely dispersed, in the
gathering gloom of the desolate prairie. The major with about one
hundred men was still hurrying far to the southwest on the trail of the
Indians, hoping before dark to find them in sufficient force to halt and
show fight. Calvert with his invalid corps followed three miles in their
wake, and losing ground with every minute; then Devers, with about
thirty men in saddle and two dead on their _travois_, was slowly
plodding southward towards the stream. Davies's little squad, halted as
ordered, was now isolated from all, far over on the east side of the
jagged spur, over whose crest their lieutenant had just disappeared from
their sight, with Murray in attendance, riding wearily back to find his
captain, disturbed by contradictory orders and dishearted to see him in
march full a mile farther away than he supposed, and diverging from the
point of direction of his own party with every step. Time and again had
Devers, still fuming with nervous tension and mingled wrath and
pain,--hungry and savage, too, it must be borne in mind,--given vent to
some petulant expression because of the non-arrival of the young officer
whom he saw fit to hold responsible for the loss of his men; and when at
last Mr. Davies neared them, riding diagonally towards the troop from
the low divide to the east, Devers did not change the direction of his
little column so as to meet him half-way, but held on sullenly
southward. Observance of the major's orders would have carried him along
the trail of Davies's party until well across that ridge or spur, then
having gone the designated mile he should now be marching southward
along the ridge where he could, frequently at least, see both Davies's
squad and their distant objective-point,--that smouldering fire in the
valley. Marching as he was he could see neither.

Presently coming to the head of one of those tortuous ravines washed out
from the general surface of the prairie by the melting snows of
centuries, and noting that if he kept to the eastward side he would have
to deflect a trifle to that direction, Devers inclined to his right, and
ten minutes later found it swinging around in front of him, already
broad and deep and obliquely crossing his path. Either he must dismount
and lead down the abrupt declivity and up the opposite bank, or, keeping
along the bluff, follow the windings of the ravine. One wrong step had
led with him to another. There is a fatality about such things that
besets the truest of men and bedevils the best intentions. The more he
followed the right bank the farther west of south it bore him, and
Devers hid his compass with his conscience in the breast of his
hunting-shirt, and found relief in renewed expletives. It was Davies
who had to urge his horse to the lope to overtake the command so
steadily pulling away from him. He wondered who the poor fellows could
be who seemed to have given out and were being dragged along on the
_travois_, but it soon became necessary for him to descend into the
depths of the ravine, down along a tributary break, and then even in
nearing he lost sight of them until, after another canter and a hard
pull up the opposite slope, he came at last suddenly face to face with
his captain. Murray by this time, his horse entirely used up, was far to
the rear.

"It's an hour since I sent for you, Mr. Davies," began the captain,
sternly. "What in God's name has kept you so long?"

"I could come no quicker, sir," was the reply, given in respectful yet
remonstrative tone. "My horse----"

"Oh, you've got the best horse in the battalion, and he carries the
lightest weight," said the captain, angrily; "physically and
intellectually both, by God!" he added to himself. "You must have been
far off your course to have been so long reaching me."

"I was heading straight for the fire, captain,--straight as men could
go. I kept it in sight every minute from the time we crossed the crest
yonder," said Davies, his tired, haggard eyes looking squarely into
those of his commander instead of seeking sympathetic glance from the
pale, drawn faces of the silent troopers nearest him.

"Well, then, that is your excuse, I suppose, for allowing men to
straggle in defiance of my orders."

"It is partially so, sir, partially not. I knew these were the orders
early in the campaign, but ever since we ran out of rations Mullen and
Phillips, as well as dozens of other men in the regiment, have been out
hunting on the flanks every day. They never stopped to ask permission
this time. I never knew that they were gone until they were out of
sight. I supposed, of course, they wouldn't be away so long."

"I have told you more than once, Mr. Davies, that you were reckless of
my instructions, and I've sent for you to show, once and for all, what
it has cost. Stand aside there!" he said sternly to the men, whom some
instinct of pity had prompted to gather between them and the stiffening
forms of the dead. "There are your hunters,--two of my best men, Mr.
Davies, and who but you is responsible for this?"

For a moment the young officer gazed as though stricken with sudden
horror, his blue eyes staring, his gaunt, pinched features ghastly
white, and then Sergeant Haney and another trooper sprang from their
horses and ran to his side. Weak, worn, starved, he had quailed at the
dreadful sight, and was toppling head-foremost to the ground, swooning
away.

[Illustration: "THERE ARE YOUR HUNTERS,--TWO OF MY BEST MEN."

Page 96.]

When half an hour later the captain with his silent and gloomy party had
resumed his march for the river, only with the field-glasses could
occasional glimpses be had of the main command far away to the southwest
in the gathering dusk. Lieutenant Calvert, with his invalid corps, was
dragging wearily after them, something like two miles away over the
rolling surface, sometimes dipping out of sight among the swales and
_coulées_, sometimes crawling over some low wave, and Davies, restored
to consciousness and accompanied by one of Devers's oldest troopers,
Sergeant McGrath, had once more ridden away to join his distant and
isolated party. Just before it grew too dark to see anything at all he
was faintly visible at the top of the divide where he and the sergeant
had halted, evidently searching in the gloom of the lowlands beyond for
sign of the squad he had left over an hour before. Then they disappeared
and were seen no more.

Ten miles up-stream, around rousing camp-fires, in the thick of the
timber, the main body of the expedition--their lately starving
comrades--were holding high carnival. Men and horses were astonishing
their stomachs with dainties to which they had long been unaccustomed,
for wagons had come out from the settlements to meet them, pouring in
all the afternoon, and, mindful of his detached battalion, the colonel
had presently despatched three or four of these welcome loads, well
guarded, down the winding river in search of Warren, with instructions
to bivouac at once and feast, and at nightfall they had met him, halted
at the river after the luckless pursuit. The wagons were unloaded on the
spot, and two of them pushed on out to meet Calvert, and be loaded up
again with his exhausted plodders, while scouts, mounted on the draught
mules that had had so long and hard a pull all day, and yet were
stronger and fresher than the starving horses, were sent on down-stream
in search of Devers. With these latter went a pencilled note from the
battalion commander as follows:

"Rations here in plenty. Unless you and Davies are used up, you'd better
come along to camp. We'll keep bright fires burning to guide you. I
presume you've seen no Indians, or we'd have heard from you before
now."

In sending this letter Major Warren assumed two things: first, that
Devers had carried out his orders, crossed the long spur that jutted
down almost to the stream at its deep concave bend, and then, moving
south, had kept Davies in sight, if not actually in touch. Second, that
Davies had carried out his orders, investigated the fire, and then
rejoined his captain. For, reasoned the major, had Davies been attacked,
Devers would have known it, supported him at once, and sent word to us.
Men instructed to watch for signals from the ridge had reported that
nothing had been seen, which surely would not have been the case had
Devers desired to communicate. He assumed further that Davies must now
be somewhere about the point where the spur sank to the general level of
the valley, some eight or nine miles down-stream, too far to send a
wagon in the dark where there was no road, but not too far for men to
march, with rations as their reward.

"Ride straight for that point," said he to the sergeant who was to carry
the note, "and watch for their fires in case they have camped." And the
sergeant and his companions--two wiry troopers whom nothing seemed to
daunt or tire--had ridden away on their ambling mules, their own
stomachs warmed with hot coffee and bread and bacon, and their soldier
maws crammed with that most beneficent and comforting of frontier
luxuries,--navy plug. What was a night ride after their weeks of
marching to the joy of being first to announce full rations for all
hands! They had gone only half-way, perhaps four miles, when from
somewhere in the timber to their right front, certainly not more than
five hundred yards ahead, they came suddenly in view of something at
which each man instantly reined in, and the sergeant, springing from his
saddle, grabbed his mule by the nose. "Grab yours, too," he muttered,
hoarsely; "for God's sake don't let the damn fools bray." And in another
instant each of the astonished and protesting brutes was grabbed
accordingly.

"Sure it must be the camp of 'B' Troop," said the other man,
resentfully. "Indians wouldn't be lighting camp-fires so close to us."

"It can't be the captain," answered Sergeant Rice, with emphasis he well
remembered and spoke of long months later. "I heard the major's orders
to him, and he couldn't be this side of that point without having
disobeyed them."

But just then, soft and faint, sad and plaintive and low, there came
floating on the night wind the familiar notes of the sweetest of trumpet
calls, and Rice turned to his comrades in amaze. "It _is_ old Differs,
by Jupiter! Who but he would be sounding taps with Indians on every
side? Does the darn crank think that worn-out men can't go to sleep
without it?" Even the soldiers, then, were alive to some of the
captain's peculiarities. Even they could not do him justice. Even Rice
supposed that Devers, rejoicing in being once more freed from the
supervision of superior authority which he so cordially hated and so
persistently strove to evade, was celebrating the event by resuming the
sounding of unnecessary bugle calls, prohibited for night use during
the recent campaign. But neither the sergeant nor his comrades dreamed
that it was in its other, in its saddest significance, the sweet old
call was sounding,--that Devers and his men were bidding the last
farewell, and piping "lights out" to them who rode forth gallantly at
morn, only at sundown to be numbered with the dead.




CHAPTER VIII.


Morning dawned over the bivouacs along the stream in hilarity unknown
for previous weeks. The sun that for a fortnight had refused his face,
and sent wet skies to weep in sympathy with the hungering column, now
that the troopers no longer cared a rap whether he sulked or shone, came
forth in all his glory to surround and beam upon and shower
congratulation as do mundane friends who hold aloof when days are dark
and troublous, yet swarm like bees when dazzling and unexpected
prosperity bursts upon the lately fallen. Merrily rang the reveille as
"jocund day" came riding o'er the misty mountain-tops. With joke and
song and laughter answered the war-worn men, scores of whom had
alternately dozed and cooked and eaten and drunk all the live-long
night. Vain were counsels of captains and doctors. Soldier stomachs that
could tackle mule and horse meat could stand any load, said the boys,
and loaded accordingly. Cheer and laughter and merry-making, fun and
chaff and jollity, ran through the ranks, where all, but another sun
agone, was silence and despond. The rough campaign was practically over.
Only scattered bands of hostiles remained, in this part of the country
at least. Rest and recuperation for those "tatterdemalions" would be the
enforced order of the day for a month to come, for while they might
readily and speedily build up, it would take many a week to remount the
column or restore such horses as remained. Here among the Cottonwoods,
with fire and water and food at hand, the men could have loafed in
comfort and content a month, if need be; but here was no grass, and
barely a nibble of oats could be distributed for each surviving horse
from the scanty supply hurried forward the previous day. Before noon,
therefore, after another morning devoted principally to breakfasting,
the trumpets were sounding "boots and saddles." No need to sound "The
General" with its stirring summons to "Strike your tents and march
away," for tents had long months before been struck--by the pen of the
commander--from the list of camp equipage to be taken to the field. "We
were only waiting for Warren to come on," explained an aide of the
general to a regimental commander, "and we've sent him word to meet us
on the Birchwood farther up among the hills. We'll camp there to-night.
What kept him, do you suppose?"

But the colonel couldn't imagine. Away down the valley to the eastward
Warren's men had slept, as they had marched, much later,--those of them
who could sleep at all, for all through the night there had been cause
of disturbance to more than a few of the command. It was late before the
demands of hunger were appeased. Little fires blazed all through the
timber, and men cooked and ate until they could eat and drink and cook
no more. Then the luxury of tobacco kept many awake. Then came advanced
troopers to say Devers was coming in, and despite the fact that two good
and gallant comrades would no more gather with them about the camp-fire,
there went up a cheer of welcome, and many men ran to meet the worn
arrivals, to take their horses to feed and water so that the masters
might be fed at once, and the major's first thought had been to welcome
his subordinate and fill him with comfort before requiring of him
detailed account of the day's doings. "I hardly expected you so soon,"
he said; "but here's coffee all ready, baker's bread fresh in town
yesterday,--think of it!--and bacon and flapjacks. Your men must be
pretty tired."

"They're about used up," said Devers; "but of course when we got your
instructions to come on we came."

"Oh, I didn't mean you to come on if you were in camp for the night. Our
men would rather eat than sleep and we thought yours would; but
here--swallow this," said he, hospitably. "This is no time for business.
I haven't tasted anything so good as that coffee in years."

"Thanks," said Devers, pulling gratefully at the steaming tin. "That
_is_ good. I'm glad, for my part, you told us to come along," he went
on, reverting again to the subject of the major's note. "We shouldn't
have done anything of the kind, of course, otherwise,--especially with
Davies still out."

"_What!_ Isn't Davies with you?" asked Warren, with sudden anxiety and
suspicion. "Why, I thought----"

"Well, we couldn't wait for him, you know, in face of your directions,"
said the captain, his eyes glancing quickly, almost furtively, from one
to another of the bearded faces about him, for Truman, Hastings,
Calvert, and all the officers of the little command had gathered. "Of
course, I sent couriers right out to guide him----"

"Why--what I meant was for you to bring him along," said the major,
gravely, yet not unkindly. "I felt sure, of course, you were within
communicating distance at least, even if he hadn't come in. What did
that smoke turn out to be when you got a closer look at it?"

"We--didn't get any closer look," answered Devers, in apparent surprise.
"You ordered me to bury my dead and then go on. We had just buried them
when your next orders reached us,--to join you at once. These, of
course, superseded the others."

There was profound silence. The major stood by the camp-fire, his hands
clasped behind his back, looking full in the face of the troop
commander, all the old sayings that he had ever heard with regard to
Devers crowding upon him now. When promoted to the regiment only just in
time to join it on this hard campaign, and when assigned to the command
of this battalion in which Devers was senior captain, the colonel
himself had said, "Be on your guard with Devers. He's the trickiest of
subordinates." Old Riggs, lieutenant-colonel commanding the Twelfth, had
remarked, "So Devers is in your battalion, is he? Well, when you want
him to do anything you stand over him while he's at it, or else do it
yourself." An intimate friend and classmate whom he had not seen for
years had given the new major this significant pointer: "There's a man
who could be one of the most valuable officers in service if he devoted
to obeying an order one-tenth the energy he throws into finding a way of
avoiding it." Yet, in the honesty and earnestness of his own character,
Warren was slow to suspect a fellow-soldier of disloyalty. The campaign
had gone on without special friction, though he remembered that he had
heard Hastings swearing _sotto voce_ more than once at Devers's
cantankerous ways, and he recalled now two or three incidents--little
things--in which Devers claimed to have misunderstood instructions; but
this was so glaring, so gross a departure from both the spirit and
letter of the orders he had given when face to face with the captain,
that for a moment or two he was at a loss what to say. He was indignant,
too, but it was a rule of his to control his temper and never speak to a
subordinate in wrath. He had broken it that morning and was sorry; so
when at last he trusted himself to speak, he said,--

"It must have been more than six hours ago that I told you to bury those
two men and then go on. Surely, captain, you could not have taken all
this time."

"It was nearly five o'clock, sir, when you ordered me to bury my dead as
well as I could, and only a little after eight when we finished it;
meantime, we had to march seven or eight miles before we could find a
place where we could bury them at all well."

"Why, I meant you to bury them right then and there, just where you
were, not go marching in search of a place."

"But we couldn't bury them there; major, I had no tools to dig graves in
a hard prairie----"

"Then you mean that you failed to go on after Davies,--failed to support
him?--that you haven't seen him since I gave those orders? My heaven,
Captain Devers! I told you never to let him out of your sight."

"Oh, he wasn't out of sight until darkness,--that is, he was frequently
in sight. I not only saw, but communicated with him until that time."

"Thank God for that, at least! If he wasn't attacked before dark he's
probably safe,--Indians are cowards in the dark. He ought to be coming
along presently, I suppose. He couldn't have been more than a mile or so
east of you."

But to this observation, half query, half self-consolation, Captain
Devers made no verbal response. He bowed his head as he took a long swig
at his can of coffee, and then a big bite into a ham sandwich of
portentous size. The major and one or two others considered it a nod of
assent, and ascribed to ravenous hunger the captain's failure to respond
by word of mouth. Partially relieved of his anxiety on Davies's account
and unwilling to spoil a gentleman's first supper after such long
deprivation, the battalion commander turned away, saying,--

"Well, eat and drink till you're comforted, anyhow, captain, then we can
hear all about it. I'll take a smoke meantime." Truman and Hastings
joined him at a fallen Cottonwood a few yards away, and the three
puffed their pipes and thanked Providence for the mercies that had come
with the close of the day. And then the officer of the guard appeared to
ask a question about the posting of the pickets, and, leaving the others
with Devers, the major strode off with the officer through the timber to
satisfy himself as to the security of the horses for the night, and when
he returned--not having been gone ten minutes--Devers had disappeared.

"I wanted to hear his report," said Warren, "and told him so. I supposed
he understood." To which neither of his subordinates made reply. When
ten minutes more elapsed and Devers did not come, Hastings, noting the
major's impatience, called to the orderly trumpeter sitting at the
neighboring fire,--

"Raney, go and see if Captain Devers is over with his troop
anywhere,--the major desires to see him." Raney was gone full ten
minutes, and when he returned it was to say that Devers's first sergeant
said the captain had given orders that all talk must stop so that the
worn-out men could rest, and the captain himself, rolled in his blanket,
was already sound asleep.

"Well, I swear!" exclaimed the major. "Didn't you understand me to say I
wanted to hear all about his march as soon as he finished supper?"

"I certainly did," replied Captain Truman, with an accent on the I that
meant volumes.

"So did I," growled Hastings; but he never could bear Devers, who was
persistently distorting or misunderstanding the orders the adjutant was
compelled to convey to him.

"Well, let him sleep," said Warren, finally. "I suppose he's tired out,
and very probably Davies will speedily come in."

But midnight came and no Davies. Out on the prairie--now dimly lighted
by the rays of the waning moon--the pickets at the east had descried no
moving objects. Every now and then the yelp of a coyote on one side of
camp would be echoed far over at the other. These, with an occasional
paw or snort from the side-lined herd, and the murmuring rush of the
river over its gravelly bed, were the only sounds that drifted to the
night-watchers from the sleeping bivouac. Towards one o'clock the
sergeant of the guard came out to take a peep. Later, about two,
Lieutenant Sanders, officer of the guard, a plucky little chap of whom
the men were especially fond, made his way around the chain of posts and
stayed some time peering with his glass over the dim vista of prairie to
the eastward.

"I declare I thought I saw something moving out there," he muttered,
after long study. "Are you sure you've seen or heard nothing?" he
inquired of the silent sentry.

"Not a thing, lieutenant, beyond coyotes or Indian signals, I can't tell
which. They keep at respectful distance, whatever they are."

"Well, even if Mr. Davies's horses were too used up to come, the
couriers ought to have got back long ago. Tell them to find me as soon
as they come in," said he, and went back to his saddle pillow in the
heart of the grove. At its edge a solitary figure was standing gazing
out into the night.

"That you, Sanders?" hailed a voice in low tone.

"Yes," answered the lieutenant, shortly, for he recognized Devers and he
didn't like him.

"Isn't Davies in yet?"

"No, and it's two o'clock."

"Oh, he'll turn up all right," said the captain, in airy confidence. "It
was all absurd sending him out to scout a smoke,--as if we hadn't seen
and smelled smoke enough this summer to last a lifetime. He's probably
camped down the valley somewhere, and they're all waiting for morning.
I'm not worrying about him."

"No, I judge not," muttered Sanders to himself, as he trudged on in the
dark. "You're simply keeping awake for the fun of the thing." But even
Devers got to sleep at last, and when he woke it was with a sudden
start, with broad daylight streaming in his eyes, and stir and bustle
and low-toned orders and rapid movement among the men, and Hastings was
stirring him up with insubordinate boot and speaking in tones suggestive
of neither respect nor esteem.

"Come, tumble up, captain; we're all wanted; Davies has been cut off and
massacred."

Already his orderly had led up the captain's horse, pricking his ears
and sniffing excitedly around him, and with trembling hands the young
German was dragging out from among the blankets the captain's saddle,
the hot tears falling as he stooped. His own brother was of Davies's
party. Devers was on his feet in an instant, dismayed, and, buckling on
his revolver, he went striding through the trees to where Warren stood,
pale and distressed, questioning a haggard trooper,--one of the
couriers sent on for Davies the previous evening. Devers burst in with
interrupting words, and was instantly coolly checked.

"Never mind now, captain. Mount at once and get your men in saddle." Nor
would Warren see or speak with him, as with a hundred troopers at his
heels--all whose horses were even moderately fit for a ten-mile
trot--the major led the way down the valley, a few eager scouts
cantering on before. All Devers could learn as they jogged along was
that Tate, one of the couriers, had ridden in at seven on an exhausted
mule to say that not until after dawn had they found Davies's
party,--seven of them,--stone dead, stripped, scalped, gashed, mutilated
almost beyond recognition, far out on the slopes east of that fatal spur
over which the September sun had risen before he came, leaving his
stunned comrade trailing hopelessly behind.




CHAPTER IX.


The prairie sod was torn by the hoofs of a hundred ponies. That was
evident. All around a little sink in the surface at a distance of
several hundred yards the warriors must have dashed and circled for full
an hour. Here along the rim of the shallow basin, each behind the
bloated and stiffening carcass of his horse,--each surrounded by
threescore copper shells, showing that he had fought till hope and
ammunition both were gone,--lay the poor remains of the gallant boys who
had ridden silently away in obedience to their orders on the previous
afternoon,--recognizable now only by their teeth or some still ungashed
body mark. How long they had pluckily, cheerily held out, confident of
the speedy coming of the comrades from over that westward spur, and
therefore less miserly of their lead and eager to stretch some of their
yelling foes upon the sward, could now only be conjectured. Little by
little their fierce, defiant fire had slackened. Little by little
confidence had waned, and doubt and dread replaced it. Some, probably,
had been earlier shot by the storm of centring bullets; some, possibly,
had sent their last shot into the reeling brain,--death by one's own
hand being better at least than by slow and fiendish torture; and at
last, probably just at dusk, the triumphant savages were able to close
in upon their helpless prey and reap their reward of scalps and plunder
and wreak their fury on a mute and defenceless foe.

But in a search of full an hour not a sign had Warren's best scouts
discovered of Davies or his companion. The Indian trail, that of a
war-party of at least fifty or sixty braves, led away southward again,
into and through the timber in the distant river bottom, and there it
became scattered, most of the party seeming to have ridden on towards
the reservation in the darkness of the night, while others turned
up-stream, and their pony-tracks led towards the point where Warren's
battalion had bivouacked. These were probably the causes of the flitting
shadows Sanders had detected far out on the prairie,--these the owls and
coyotes whose weird cries had at intervals disturbed the silence of the
night. Solemnly, sadly, now, the burial-parties labored. The soil was
comparatively soft in the neighboring ravine,--much more so than higher
up the slopes where the two crack shots had fallen earlier in the
afternoon,--and here, with picket-pins and a spade or two which happened
to be with the pack-train, a trench was scooped out, into which the poor
remains were lowered and then covered with stones, dragged from the
depths of the neighboring _coulée_. It took some hours to finish the sad
duty, and meanwhile sharp-eyed scouts were busily occupied striving to
determine what had become of Davies and Sergeant McGrath.

In this work the major himself took the lead, and here Devers's
statements had to be drawn upon. Old Indian-fighters pointed out many a
significant sign to sustain the theory that the fight must have lasted
full an hour,--the trampled condition of the turf,--the quantities of
shells lying behind every little hummock or ridge in the surrounding
prairie that commanded the position of the defence or afforded shelter
from its fire. Down in the very ravine in which the bodies were buried,
full four hundred yards from the scene of their desperate stand, the
soft, sandy soil was pawed and trodden by waiting war-ponies, whose
riders, lying flat on their stomachs along the bank above, had kept
their watch upon the besieged, firing whenever head or hand appeared
above their carcass fortification. The whole ingenuity of the Indian
plan became apparent as the situation was studied. Noting after ten
o'clock that morning that the battalion was no longer marching due
south, but had turned, heading southwest straight away for the landmark
of the valley,--that distant, black, pine-crested peak,--the lurking
warriors had devised their scheme to lure a scouting detachment away
from the support of the column. Far down in the river bottom, ten miles
away to the left of the trail, they had built at the springs a "shack"
from the relics of some miner's outfit captured thereabouts earlier in
the summer, and waiting until the head of the column was approaching the
crest of the water-shed to the north, set fire to their pile and then
secreted their main body in a deep ravine to await results, while small
parties were thrown well forward to pick off venturesome individuals, if
only such rode out in reconnoissance. If the white chief "bit" and
detached a small party, then every effort was to be made to keep the
battalion occupied and interested,--to draw it along, if possible,
towards the southwest,--just a few daring spirits devoting themselves to
this duty, while the stronger party, keeping in hiding until they lured
it far beyond rescuing distance, gradually encircled the isolated squad
and at last pounced upon their prey. It is no new device. It was to
prevent just such a play that Warren had ordered Devers with his troop
to keep midway, holding Davies's little party in sight and support and
the main column in communication. Had Devers obeyed the instructions
given him and gone on down along that jutting spur instead of far to the
west of it, the catastrophe would have been averted,--the Indian attack,
even if attempted, could have been beaten off.

In bitterness of spirit the major was riding over the field, too full of
exasperation as yet to trust himself to send for and speak to his
subordinate, even when he felt that he must hold conference with him in
order to determine how best to direct the search. Twice or thrice had
Devers essayed to open communication with his chief and impress him with
his views, but Warren had sent him word by Hastings to supervise at the
designated point--which he himself selected--the burial of the men,
while he, the major, went on with the search. Time and again it was
noted how often Devers would climb the bank and anxiously gaze off to
the west toward that fatal curtain,--the spur that separated him from
the sacrificed detachment the night before. What his thoughts were could
only be conjectured, but little Sanders seemed to hit pretty near the
mark when he confided to Hastings that Differs didn't seem to care a
damn whether Warren followed the Indian trail or not; what he was afraid
of was that the major would "get onto" his own. And indeed as the
morning wore on it began to look as though that were what the major was
bent on doing. The scouting-parties had come back with their report of
what they had found in the river bottom, and by this time Warren with
his escort was three miles over to the west and slowly searching along
the east face of the spur, peeping into every hollow and depression that
might shelter a human form and looking everywhere for the print of
horses' hoofs. At ten o'clock he had sent to Devers for some intelligent
non-commissioned officer who could point out about where they had last
seen Davies as he crossed the ridge returning to his men at sundown, but
Devers very plausibly responded that while it might not be difficult to
do so from where they parted, "just over on the west side," it couldn't
be reliably done from so far to the east. The reply must at least serve
to delay matters awhile, and every moment was of value to Devers.

His own theory was that, as twilight was setting in as Davies recrossed
the ridge, everything beyond in the low grounds was in deep obscurity.
The attack had probably begun about the time the young officer, with
Murray, first crossed the ridge in obedience to the captain's orders to
report to him in person. Less than an hour, Devers thought, elapsed
before he could again have come within sight of the spot where he left
his little command. By that time all was practically over. In the
gathering darkness and in the glut and greed of their savage triumph the
Indians had crowded about the victims. Davies and the sergeant,
returning, had been allowed unmolested to make their way well down
toward the scene. The fire in the bottom was fed to lure them on (it was
still smouldering when Warren's men trotted thither in the morning), and
the two had either been captured alive and run off with the main body to
grace the stake at the scalp-dance to be held with fiendish rejoicing
somewhere beyond danger of interruption, or else, warned in some way,
the two had sought to escape, and had been headed off and killed in some
of the still unexplored ravines or _coulées_ farther to the southwest.
In either case, provided the major did not persist in his investigation
and so discover how very far Devers had led his troop away from sight or
support of Davies's men, and how utterly he had failed to carry out his
orders, the captain felt tolerably confident that all the blame would be
landed where it properly belonged,--on the shoulders of the dead and
defenceless lieutenant, whose reluctance to undertake the duty many had
observed, and whose womanish swoon at sight of the slaughtered men had
not only proved his unfitness for frontier service, but long delayed his
return to his party. Devers had always said Davies was entirely
overrated by the colonel and Truman and others; he had held all summer
that the lieutenant was a "molly-coddle;" he had been reproved more than
once for what they termed his injustice to his subaltern, and now Davies
had proved just exactly what he knew he would prove,--a carpet knight, a
prayer-meeting soldier, with neither grit nor brawn nor backbone; and if
he was killed, at least he had died in time to save the regiment from
having to blush for him in the future. Devers had served throughout the
war of the rebellion in a regiment that saw no end of hard fighting, but
always when he happened to be on sick-leave or detached service of some
kind, for in all of his years of service no man in his grade or corps
had so seldom been under fire, either in the South or on the plains.
With abilities unquestioned and opportunities second to none, it was
nevertheless observed of him at the close of the four years' struggle
that there, at least, was a man who hadn't even mustering or recruiting
service to fall back upon when "brevets" went scattering broadcast over
the army, showering like the rain upon the just and the unjust. He had
lived all through it without having become distinguished for anything
that might become a man, winning a name for himself principally for
consummate skill in getting out of what he was told to do without
getting into a scrape or out of the service. He became a tremendous
paper-fighter in the days that followed, however, and like some of our
war generals, could find the weak points in the armor of his comrades if
he couldn't in that of the enemy. He became a club-room critic of other
fellows' campaigns, companies, or conduct, as probably the most
effective way of diverting attention from his own. He sneered at the war
record of every contemporary who had achieved rank superior to his own,
as with hardly an exception every one of them had done so, and made the
burden of his song among the younger men the blunders, faults, and
follies of the elders. Without a drop of Irish blood in his veins, he
inspired the belief that he must be own cousin to the newly-landed
Hibernian who announced himself as "agin the governmint," for post and
regimental commanders without exception found him the most adroit,
crafty, sinuous, and troublesome of captains,--one who was forever doing
something to try them, yet nothing on which they could try him. Well he
knew his unpopularity and sagely judged his opportunities. The liberties
he had dared with Warren he would not now have ventured with Riggs, or
Black Bill, or old Tintop, one and all of whom had learned to know him
well, and would have been prepared for some such betrayal of the trust
reposed in him.

He had worried Black Bill--long time his post commander--to the verge of
exasperation with his perpetual hair-splitting and quibbling. He had
played his last trump with Tintop early in the campaign, and received
that grizzled veteran's rasping intimation that one more experiment
would lead to arrest and court-martial, and received it with every
appearance of amaze and pain, which might have been effective had not
Hastings been called upon beforehand to give his version of the affair
that led to it. It was one of those constantly recurring examples of
Devers's "cussedness" which led many a stout cavalry officer to set
forth just what he'd do with Devers if he only had him under his
command, yet the very men so confident they could bring him to time were
not infrequently the ones who subsequently found him too adroit for
their straightforward methods. Black Bill told Tintop that Devers was as
bad as the Irishman's flea,--put your thumb on him and he isn't there.
"I'll cinch him," said Tintop in reply, "if he tries any of his damned
nonsense on me." But with every intention of doing his level best,
"Topsy" little knew the infinite resources of the man.

One of Devers's idiosyncrasies was a hatred of doing things as anybody
else did them. This in a service where absolute uniformity was expected
was prolific of no end of chafing. In every garrison where his troop was
stationed he had become notorious. If the other companies turned out in
white gloves at retreat, Devers's would come in gauntlets. When dress
parade, dismounted, was ordered at Fort Birney one mild November
evening, he marched his men out in arctics and fur caps, and claimed
that to be the proper full dress for the season. When Colonel Emerson in
regimental orders lauded the devotion of Sergeant Foley, who swam the
icy Missouri with despatches from Captain Cameron's beleaguered command,
and ordered a handsome collar to be made by the regimental saddler to be
worn thereafter by his gallant gray, now transferred to the band
because of the cuts and scars he had received in that fierce campaign,
Devers similarly decorated Trumpeter Finnegan's bull terrier "Mike," who
swam the Mini Ska in pursuit of his master the night of the wintry dash
on Tall Bull's village, and gravely paraded "Mike" with the troop next
muster day. These and a score of similarly annoying yet hardly
punishable attempts to bring ridicule upon or run counter to the orders
of his commanders, had actually rendered some of his seniors so averse
to having him under them that it often resulted in his being given
independent details, lonely detachment duty, "one-company posts," and
similar isolation which almost any other officer would have shrunk from,
but that Devers really seemed to enjoy, and, from having been so much
his own commanding officer, he was all the less fitted to render prompt
and cheerful obedience to others when they again had to have him. With
any command greater than that of a single troop he had never been
intrusted. There was no end of speculation and chaff around the
camp-fires, therefore, early in the summer, when Devers, most
unwillingly, it was said, was hauled in from some outlying post where he
had nothing to do but hunt, eat, and sleep, and reported for duty on
what turned out to be the toughest of Indian campaigns. What was worse,
he was ordered to report to Tintop, and now, said the boys, there _will_
be fun.

Well, there was. It took a week of persistent "cinching" to get Devers
and his troop to understand that they were no longer an independent
body, but must serve under the orders of a colonel or major. He had at
first been put in Bell's battalion, and every time the colonel pointed
out a fault Devers "thought" that was as Major Bell wanted it, and when
Bell called his attention to some irregularity, Devers had understood
Colonel Winthrop to say that that was the way it should be done. Bell
finally said that he'd be damned if he wouldn't rather have no command
at all than one with Devers in it. The first day Devers's horses were
herded to graze far out on the slopes,--five hundred yards beyond those
of any other troop,--and Tintop said he wished Captain Devers hereafter
not to allow his herd to be driven beyond those of the rest of the
regiment. Next day they were kicking up a dust not fifty yards from
Tintop's tent,--as far inside the cordon as they had been outside
before,--and Devers plausibly explained that he wanted to be sure he
wasn't too far away. The third day, after a long march with Indians on
every hand, Tintop ordered "double guards and side lines when the herds
went out to graze." The horses of the other troops were ridden out by
the men to good grazing-ground some five hundred yards from the bivouac
fires, and there the riders slipped off and the side lines were slipped
on; but Devers's horses were side-lined as soon as unsaddled, and then
the poor brutes, thus hobbled fore and aft, were driven, painfully
lurching, out to graze. Tintop boiled over at the sight of so
unhorsemanlike a proceeding and rode wrathfully at Devers to rebuke him.
"Why, colonel," said Devers, "I wouldn't have done it for the world, but
Mr. Gray was so positive in saying it must be done when they went out, I
couldn't do otherwise. Of course if he'd said when they _got_ out I----"
And though Tintop swore savagely through his teeth that Devers knew
well just what was meant, as did every other troop commander, he
couldn't prove it. Next day, before the side lines were put on, in some
mysterious way Devers's herd was stampeded and ran six miles before they
could be rounded up, and he explained it was all because they weren't
side-lined in the first place, as they were always accustomed to being,
and as the regulations required they should be in the Indian country.
This was another thing to make Tintop blaspheme. Every day for a week
something was amiss, and, having gone to the length of his own tether,
Devers took to saying that it was all Mr. Davies's fault or Sergeant
Somebody's,--"Mr. Davies had just joined and was utterly inexperienced."
Then Tintop gave Devers positive orders not to content himself with
telling people to do thus and so, but to see that the orders were
obeyed, and Devers then took his pipe and his blankets and
ostentatiously spent hours of the afternoon out on the open prairie, a
monument to the severity and exactions of his colonel. And still the
horses, all of them, got far out on the foot-hills, and Tintop ordered
him a day or two later, when on Scalp Creek, not to let his herd get
more than half a mile away from the troop fires, as they had no tents,
and then Devers had his herd-guards build fires and boil coffee far out
on the prairie, and claimed that those were his troop fires, and
therefore his herd was within reasonable distance of them. Then Tintop
swore another oath and ordered Devers not to let his horses graze more
than half or less than quarter of a mile from his own head-quarters
fire, and as there followed a few days of hot weather, Devers sent his
herd to the foot-hills again, claiming that there was no longer a
head-quarters fire to regulate by, which proved to be a fact, as in such
warm weather there was no need of one. Then, one day, Tintop in so many
words ordered the captain hereafter not to do as he thought, but simply
as his colonel said, and this led to the final incident, still more
side-splitting,--one that the boys in the regiment never tired of
telling. Tintop with his battalion was sent on a seven days' scout,
during which he ordered all the troop commanders, until further
instruction, not to permit their herds to graze more than five hundred
yards from camp. Three days later, what was his wrath to find Devers's
herd almost a mile away down the stream, and close by the tents of Major
Roome's battalion of Foot that had been for a week placidly awaiting the
return of the cavalry! Tintop had halted and unsaddled some distance
up-stream. There wasn't a shred of canvas with the regiment while on
this brisk raid, nor was there need of it in such perfect weather, and
Tintop with Gray by his side stood fuming in the midst of surrounding
cook fires, when Devers came placidly up in obedience to the summons of
the orderly, and many an ear was brought to bear and bets were given and
taken that this time Devers would catch it and no rebate. "How is it,
sir," demanded Tintop, "that in defiance of my positive orders you allow
your herd to go so far away?"

"Why, colonel, you distinctly said they mustn't be herded over five
hundred yards from camp. Of course if I'd been allowed to think I
probably wouldn't have done it, but I sent mine down there accordingly.
That's the only _camp_ I see,--this is only a bivouac." And all Tintop
could ejaculate in response was, "Well, may I be damned!"

These and a host of similar stories had come to Warren's ears in the
course of the campaign, and he had laughed at them as had everybody
else, for after all no man could say that actual harm had occurred as a
result of Devers's experiments. So curiously are we constituted that
when it is only the commander who is braved or his adjutant who is
ruffled, the bulk of the line can bear it with equanimity. Therefore,
while Tintop, Black Bill, Riggs, and his seniors generally could never
refer to Devers except with sympathetic swear words, there were not a
few of the officers junior in rank to his who found no little fun in all
these incidents. Like most stories in or out of the army, they were
perhaps exaggerative, but, like smoke, they could not exist without
smouldering fire. If there were any speculation about Devers in the
regiment, it was as to how he would behave if he ever did get into a
fight, or what would happen in the event of his some day squirming out
of an order on which vital issues depended. "You'll go too far yet,
Devers," said a soldier who strove conscientiously to be his friend and
counsellor, "and when you do, where will be the commander under whom you
have ever served to say a good word for you?"

And now on this fatal September morning that ominous warning was ringing
in his ears again and again. Down in the bottom of his brooding heart he
knew, and well knew, that had he obeyed, as he should have obeyed,
Warren's orders, this catastrophe could not have occurred, and that he
more than any other man on earth was responsible for the death of these
gallant fellows, who, whether they looked up to him or not, were by the
stern discipline of the service dependent on him for the expected
support. If he could realize this, how much the quicker would others be
to attach the blame to him! how much the more necessary must it be to
lose no time in diverting suspicion elsewhere! The fatal propensity to
distort or disobey, which perhaps he could have downed had Tintop or
Riggs been there, he could not resist with Warren,--an envied
contemporary, presumably new to his idiosyncrasies. Nor would he, of
course, even with him, have disobeyed could he have foreseen the fatal
consequences. That would have been risking too much. But now that he had
disobeyed, and in all probability would be held accountable for the
catastrophe, his one road to safety and to acquittal lay in saddling all
possible responsibility on some one else,--preferably Davies. This, if
Davies were silent in death, would not be difficult. Whatsoever others
might think or say, they could prove nothing. If, however, Davies turned
up alive and alert, then matters might be grave indeed. No wonder he
climbed again and again the westward bank and levelled his glasses at
the dull-hued ridge against the brilliant westward sky, frequently
giving vent to loud denunciation of the leaders in the mismanaged
campaign. It was nearly ten o'clock before his dead were laid
away,--before anything occurred that looked like discovery of the
missing pair. Then came new excitement.

Far down toward the point where the distant spur seemed to sink to the
general level of the prairie one or two of Warren's scouts could be seen
rapidly spurring, as though in answer to signals. Presently they, too,
began waving their hats to those searching higher up the ridge. Then all
disappeared over on the westward side. Something evidently had been
found, and Devers's men, their work completed, were grouped eagerly up
the bank. Over half an hour in mingled hope and suspense they waited,
and then there rode in a mounted messenger.

"The major's compliments to Captain Devers," he said, "and he'll wait
for the captain and his troop over yonder. I'm to show the way."

"Have they found anything?" asked Devers.

"Yes, sir,--Mr. Davies; but he's more dead than alive. There is no sign
of McGrath."

"Do you mean Mr. Davies is wounded?"

"No, sir. He seems just dazed-like."

"That's what I said all along," spoke the captain, loudly, so that it
was heard by all the soldiers near at hand. "He never tried to rejoin
his detachment. He never had any nerve. He probably saw what was going
on and hid himself, never daring even to let us know. Damn these
psalm-singing, Sunday-go-to-meeting soldiers anyhow! Here, Howard," he
continued, turning to a young trooper who stood silently at his horse's
head, "you come with me. Lead on, corporal. Sergeant Haney, mount the
troop and follow." And with that the captain rode away.

For a moment, as the men were bringing up their horses and leading them
into line, there was silence. Looking after the three horsemen now well
out on the prairie to the west, the party saw that the messenger was
riding some distance in advance, and that Howard, a recruit who joined
with the detachment early in the campaign, was now side by side and
evidently in conversation with the captain. It had been a summer of
campaigning in which not only the nicer distinctions as between officer
and man--not only all symbols of rank and uniform--had gradually
disappeared, but with them, little by little, some of the first
principles of good order and military discipline. Officers had been
heard openly condemning or covertly sneering at the seniors in command.
It was not strange that the rank and file should fall into similar ways.

"Never had any nerve, is it?" muttered Private Dooley, after a moment.
"Boy and man I've soldiered in this regiment longer than you, Captain
Differs, and I know an officer and a gentleman when I see wan, and it's
the public opinion av more than wan private that there's more av both in
that young feller's starvin' stummick than in your whole damn overfed,
bow-legged carcass. How's that, Brannan?" said he, turning to his next
neighbor, a wan, sad-faced recruit.

"Shut up there, Dooley!" ordered Sergeant Haney, briefly. "No more of
that! Count fours."




CHAPTER X.


So far as the Eleventh and one or two other regiments were concerned,
that summer's campaign, so fraught with incident and tribulation, was
now at an end. It would take weeks and months of care to restore their
horses to serviceable condition. Others were ordered up to replace the
worn-out command, and while an indomitable general pushed fresh columns
into the field to track the savages to their winter lairs, the ragged
troopers--for all the world like so many beggars a horseback, so many
mounted scarecrows--were ordered in to the big garrisons near the supply
depots to refit, recuperate, and restore to discipline. Some, officers
and men both, had been sent ahead, too weak or ill to remain in the
field, and among these, consigned to the tender care of the post surgeon
of Fort Cameron, was Lieutenant Davies, over whose condition the doctors
shook their heads. Brain fever was the malady, but his system was so
reduced by starvation and exposure that even a moderate fever would have
been most serious. Not until he had been gone nearly a month did the
regiment follow, and then, scattered in detachments to various posts,
became busily occupied in the work of rehabilitation. Cameron was a big
new frontier fort with few accommodations, over-crowded, too; yet, being
the nearest to the field of action, thither had Captain Wilbur Cranston
gone just as soon as he was convalescent and able to move. Thither with
him went his devoted wife and her devoted cousin and companion, Miss
Loomis, for whose reception the subalterns of the infantry guard
promptly gave up their frame quarters and moved into tents, and Cranston
was there on light duty in charge of the big corral of remount horses
when Davies was bundled in and established under Cranston's roof. There,
carefully treated by Dr. Glover and regularly visited, often tenderly
nursed, by Mrs. Cranston and her friend, the naturally strong
constitution of the young officer triumphed and he began slowly to
mend. Meantime, as is or was the way, it fell to the lot of the gentle
and sympathetic army wives or maidens at the post to keep the distant
mother informed of her boy's slow progress toward recovery, and
presently to answer the importunate letters of another. Mrs. Cranston, a
shrewd observer, could not fail to note that as soon as her patient was
allowed to read at all it was his mother's letters, not the great packet
in Miss Quimby's unformed hand, that he eagerly opened. Then when at
last he did begin these latter the steady progress of his convalescence
was impaired. He became again feverish, restless, and depressed. Too ill
and weak as yet to write for himself, he read with grateful eyes his
mother's allusions to the kind and sympathetic missives sent her by Mrs.
Cranston, and occasionally, as happened, by Miss Loomis. Gladly, too,
did he avail himself of their services in reply. But when it became
necessary presently to answer those of his _fiancée_, there might have
been embarrassment but for Mrs. Cranston's tact. She had begun to feel a
strong interest in and respect for her patient. So, too, had her
husband, who came daily to sit by his bedside, but who avoided, as much
as possible, all reference to the closing days of the campaign.

As yet the young officer had not been told of McGrath's disappearance,
and had not been encouraged to tell of his own experience. Indeed, there
was very little he could tell, but his story was frankly imparted to his
friend and comrade, Captain Cranston. Much seemed to be a total blank.
He spoke with a shudder of his last look at poor Mullen and Phillips,
and at the pale, drawn faces of Captain Devers and the troop,--of
another backward glance from near the top of the ridge, then of their
losing sight of Devers and his men, and pushing on to the deeper gloom
of the east valley. It was then too dark to see, and for half an hour he
and McGrath, weary and heart-sick, had scouted northeastward in search
of his party. They had seen some flashes as they began the descent and
rode in their direction, believing them to be signals, but soon all was
darkness, all silence, but for the sigh of the night wind. Conscious of
growing faintness, he suggested firing a shot or two as signals, and
McGrath obeyed. Then off to the southeast, far from the point where they
had seen the first flashes, the shots were answered and distant yells
were heard. McGrath considered this ominous, and asked him to wait in a
little ravine while he reconnoitred. In ten minutes two or three shots
rang out in the direction taken by the sergeant, and presently back he
came fast as a staggering horse could bear him, crying, "Indians!
Indians everywhere!" It was all up with Davies's party, and their only
hope was to hasten back to find the command; but the Indians came in
chase, and though they plied spur, their poor horses seemed too weak for
speed. How far they got he never knew, but remembered a sudden plunge,
his horse's going down, rolling all over him, and nothing more.

"When you parted from Devers," asked Cranston one day, "how far was he
from the top of the ridge?--how far to the west?"

And Davies answered, "At least two and a half or three miles."

Over this did Cranston ponder long. It ill accorded with what they wrote
him from the front as Devers's story.

"You write to Mr. Davies's mother, Agatha," Mrs. Cranston had said. "I
haven't time for both, but I'll take care of Miss Quimby." Just what
might be the tone and tenor of that young lady's letters to her
prostrate lover Mrs. Cranston could not positively say, as no one saw
them but himself, but she was ready to hazard a something more than mere
conjecture when Miss Quimby took to writing to her as well. As was her
wont when moved, Mrs. Margaret unbosomed herself to her lord. "I've no
patience with the girl," she said. "She'll worry him to death. If she
writes such silly, romantic trash to me, what mustn't she be saying to
him? What on earth can he ever have seen in her?"

Now, that's just one thing no woman can find out,--what a man can see to
admire in one in whom she sees nothing. It didn't help matters that
Cranston, in his conservative, whimsical way, should counsel silence and
patience. What woman can be silent under strong provocation? What woman
can patiently abide the personal application of a general rule?

"I don't suppose there ever was a match yet of which some woman didn't
say she couldn't see what he saw," said Cranston, deprecatingly; and
then, with one of his whimsical grins, began to add, "Let's see, wasn't
it Kitty Benton who said, when she heard of our engagement, that
she----" But he got no further in face of his wife's impetuous outbreak:

"That's simply hateful in you, Wilbur, and you know it as well as I do.
She knew me only slightly, for we were not in the same set at school at
all----"

"Well,--still, didn't she know you rather better than you do Miss
Quimby, whom you never saw at all?"

"I don't care. I know what she's like

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