It was another lovely summer morning, sweet, moist and still. The squadron had been out as usual, but the drill had been anything but snappy or spirited. Every officer knew, and most men decided, that something was weighing heavily on the major's mind, for, though he labored conscientiously through his duties, comments and corrections were few, and, to the surprise of all, he even dismissed the troops some few minutes before the sounding of the recall. Captain Washburn looked back over his shoulder at the tall, spare, sinewy figure riding slowly, even dejectedly, with downcast eyes and troubled visage, back toward the big quarters at the end of the row, and shook his own head as he marveled what would be the outcome of all this foreboding. Minneconjou had breathed freer, for all its subdued chatter, over the elimination of Captain Foster from the column of probabilities. Minneconjou had seen little of the lovely Mrs. Dwight of late, for though she appeared at every dance, several dinners and on many a drive, few women had speech with her, thanks to Foster's incessant supervision, and, looking at another woman without unlimited conversation is not "seeing" her as understood in feminine society. Since Foster's departure the previous day only the doctor and the maid had been admitted to the presence of Mrs. Dwight, though there had been callers with "kind inquiries." It was now time for guard-mounting and the busy routine of another day. One after another prettily gowned matrons and maids began to appear on the verandas and flit from door to door, and the band marched forth and took its station on the parade and the details were being inspected by the sergeants in front of their quarters, while, well over toward the west end of the big quadrilateral, a dozen army-bred lads of various ages, from fourteen down to five, were gleefully surrounding a pair of Indian ponies recently bought for the doctor's twin boys. Prominent in the group, Jimmy Dwight, ever a prime favorite, was bestriding the more promising of the pair, a wall-eyed, surly-looking pinto, and, as perhaps the most accomplished horseman in the lot, was trying to make the unwilling brute show his paces, a thing that only an Indian, as a rule, can successfully do. Officers on their way to their company duty stopped to see the fun. The adjutant paused before signaling to the drum major and said a laughing word of caution to the merry crowd, lest their gleeful shouts and laughter should disturb the dignity of the coming ceremony. The senior surgeon, coming forth from his quarters, Silver Hill's morning journal just received, open in his hand, moved an adjournment to the rear of the administration building. But the colonel himself, likewise provided by a rushing newsboy with a fresh copy of our morning contemporary, sallied forth from his gate and shouted encouragement to the plucky little rider. "Stick to him, Jimmy boy, and you others don't yell so; keep quiet, and the pony will tire of kicking."
Then he and the doctor fell into converse over the telegraphic headline, and then the bugles pealed adjutant's call, the band crashed merrily into "Hands Across the Sea," and the details of the twelve companies came marching jauntily forth upon the green. The colonel, with soldierly appreciation in his eyes, stood watching the sharp, snappy formation of the line, the paper dangling unheeded from his thumb and forefinger, while the surgeon, more alive to the news of the day than the niceties of military duty, turned over the outer page, began to scan the headlines of the inner column, as suddenly, impulsively, unthinkingly startled the colonel by the exclamation "God!" Stone whirled about in sudden anxiety. For a moment the doctor simply stared and read, then glanced at the post commander, and, without a word, handed him the sheet. Stone, too, stared, started, looked quickly into the surgeon's face, and then said: "Let's get inside." So together these veterans of their respective corps quit the field and the sight of men and boys and went to confer within the depth of the vine-shaded veranda.
At that same moment the tall, gaunt form of Major Dwight was seen to issue from the front doorway of the first quarters on the southward line, the field officer's roomy house, and, looking neither to the right nor the left, straight, stern and rigidly erect, he strode forth upon the grassy parade, heading for the merry group about the ponies. The band had ceased its spirited march music. The adjutant had assigned officers and non-commissioned officers to their posts. The lieutenant commanding had ordered "Inspection arms!" and once again the strain of sweet music swept across the green carpeted quadrangle, and Marion Ray, seated on her piazza far down the line, chatting with a neighbor who had just dropped in, lifted her head and listened. It was one of Margaret's old favorites, a song she used to sing and loved to sing, a song played by many an army band for many a year, and it seemed never to grow wearisome or stale—"Happy Be Thy Dreams." With her thoughts all of Margaret and her eyes following her thoughts, she arose, stepped to the rail, looking for little Jim, whom she had recently seen but seldom, and then caught sight of the major a long distance away, bearing straight and swift upon the romping group at the westward end of the parade. Barely twenty minutes before, as she was giving Sandy his coffee, for Sandy had come down late after a restless, almost sleepless night, she had heard Dwight's deep tones at the front gate in earnest conversation with Priscilla, who now had entirely disappeared. More than once of late the two had been in talk over some of Priscilla's schemes, but the housemaid said she thought Miss Sanford had gone now with the major down the row, perhaps to Lieutenant Thornton's. Why should they go thither? Priscilla had been so very silent, subdued and, it was hoped, contrite since the exposure of her correspondence with theBannerthat Mrs. Ray marveled at her early resumption of the old dominant way; for, though low-voiced and almost reluctant, for her, Priscilla's words to the major had been spoken firmly, unflinchingly. Only two or three of these words had reached the ears of her aunt; the others were not sufficiently loud or articulate, but whatever they were, they had led to immediate action, for the major had departed, Priscilla with him, and, anxiously, inspired partially by the music, partially by some indefinable sense of something going sadly amiss, something that should be stopped at once, Marion stepped forward, gazed eastward down the row and saw Priscilla in close conversation with little Mrs. Thornton, only five doors away, and then, all in a flash, she remembered——
Sandy, before starting for his office, had gone back to his room. He at least was on hand and ready to act in case she needed him, but as yet she did not call. Forgetful, for the moment, of her visitor, she stood clasping the rail and staring, inert and even possibly fascinated, along the westward line, following intently and with startled, troubled eyes the major's movements. Others, too, had noted both among the spectators along that front and among the laughing lads themselves. By this time the ponies had been favored with new riders and the riders with every conceivable suggestion as to what to attempt. Jimmy had given place to Harold Winn, and rejoicefully was bidding him clamp tighter with his legs and knees and keep his hands down on the withers, but too late. A sudden lunge with his heels, a dive with his shaggy head, and the spunky little brute, half-savage as a result of all-savage training, had propelled his would-be conqueror sprawling to the edge of the gleaming waters of theacequia, and a shout of mingled delight and derision went up from a dozen boy throats, and Jimmy, helping his playmate, unhurt but shaken, to his feet, caught sight of the loved form speeding toward them over the green, and, bubbling over with fun, laughter, high health and spirits, just as of old went bounding joyously, confidently, to meet him.
Of just what was passing in Oswald Dwight's bewildered mind that morning God alone could judge and tell. All his soldier life he had loved truth and hated a lie. All his fond and confident teaching of his only boy, Margaret's darling and his hope and pride, had been to speak the truth, frankly, fearlessly, fully, first, last and all the time. "Never fear to come to me with anything you may have done. Never let anything tempt you to swerve from the truth and the whole truth. Nothing you can ever say or do will ever so hurt me as will a lie." And so, fearlessly and fully, from the time Jim had begun to prattle he had learned to own his little faults, sure of sympathy and forgiveness. He had learned to strive to conquer them for the sake of the love and trust that was so unfailing, and in response to the grave but ever gentle admonition, and it had been the father's fond belief for years that between him and his only son there lived utter confidence and faith, that Jim would ever shrink from a lie and never from him. Between the two, father and son, never had there seemed to come a shadow, until of late that darkly beautiful face had for the time, at least, replaced—that other. Since then, time and again when Dwight spoke of his pride and trust in Jim, the new wife had listened, unresponsive. Since that last night in Naples, whenever Dwight spoke of his confidence in Jimmy's word she had sometimes looked up appealingly, timidly, as though she longed to believe as he believed, yet could not—quite. Sometimes she had looked away. Once or twice she had ventured a faint negation. Jimmy would notdeliberatelytell a falsehood; oh, she wassureof that, but, like all children, she said, when suddenly accused, the impulse would be to deny, would it not? and then—had not the major observed?—did he not remember—that Jimmy was just a bit—imaginative? Dwight puzzled over her apparent unbelief.
But very recently he had noticed other little things that vaguely worried him. Could it be that, as his boy grew older and mingled more with other boys, he was learning to be influenced more by them and less by the father? Could it be that he was seeing, hearing, things, to speak of which he dared not? There might be things of which he would be ashamed. Certainly the father had seen at times, since the homeward voyage, a certain hesitancy on part of the son, and within the past few days, for the first time in Jimmy's life, Dwight had noted symptoms of something like avoidance, concealment, embarrassment,something that told his jealous, over-anxious heart the boy no longer utterly confided in the man. It was late the previous evening when the little fellow had returned with his stanch friend, Sergeant French, and a fine string of trout, happy, radiant, proud of his success, but so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open long enough to undress and get to bed. Dwight had met him at the door, cautioning silence on mamma's account, and the young face that beamed up at his, all delight and eagerness at first, clouded almost instantly at the word. Jimmy did not even care for the tempting supper set aside for him—he had had such a big lunch, he said, in smothered tone, as he prattled eagerly to his father and showed his finny prizes, and sipped at his glass of milk. But Dwight had been brooding over little things that had come to him since Foster's assisted emigration. He had returned straight from his conference with Stone and the surgeon to find Inez reduced to the sofa and smelling salts—to tell her at once that their guest was gone, not because of a fracas with Ray, as Foster had furiously declared, but because of telegraphic orders from Washington that had come, possibly, as the result of Foster's own telegraphic inquiries of Saturday and Sunday. Not for a star would Dwight let his wife suppose that Foster's protracted visit had given him the least uneasiness! But the maid, that pert and flippant young person so much in evidence about the house, so indispensable to Inez, so intangibly a nuisance to him, kept flitting in and out, with her persistent, "Madame should compose herself"; "Madame should not try to talk."
The "young person's" nationality, Dwight believed, was Swiss-Italian, rather than French. They had picked her up in Milan, but her professional interests, it seems, were advanced by the adoption of French methods and mannerisms. She had early striven to establish herself as companion rather than maid, to be called Mademoiselle rather than Félicie, but the dragoon had sharply drawn the line, and in the beginning, at least, the man was master. As ills accumulated, however, and masculine strength deferred to feminine weakness, he succumbed to their wishes, with the result that the ascendency of the domestic was becoming a matter of gossip. Once established at the post, Félicie's swift methods of acquiring knowledge of all that was going on about her, and unlimited means of imparting the same to her mistress, had quite speedily established confidential relations to which the putative master of the house was a stranger. There is a garrison "Service of Security and Information" that differs widely from that of the field—and is even more comprehensive.
Félicie had heard the various versions of the affray at Ray's office. Félicie had heard of the lamentable affair of Georgie Thornton's injury and its cause, and Félicie had been quick to see and suggest how this incident might be utilized in case Master James could not be persuaded to forget that, when he came hurrying in from church the previous day, mamma, who had been too ill to arise at ten o'clock, was in most becoming morning toilettête-à-têtewith Captain Foster in the parlor. Félicie had even assured Madame that she could and would influence Master James accordingly, and this, too, after one unsuccessful attempt on Sunday. Félicie had fairly flown, all sympathy and helpfulness, to fetch Master James fresh, cool water, towels, ice for the back of his neck, a preventive the most assured for nose-bleed, and all this despite Jimmy's repellent silence, for the lad shrank from her instinctively. She had then striven to coax him to promise that he would mention to no man that mamma was dressed and downstairs: it would so annoy the doctor, who had said she should remain in bed, and, indeed, she (Félicie) and the dear captain had remonstrated with mamma, and were even then striving to persuade mamma to return to her room, as later she had to when—Master James came so hurriedly in. The only response had been a blank look of bewilderment and dislike and an uncompromising: "Well, 'spose somebodyasksme?"
All this, of course, was known at the moment only to the three; but, as luck would have it, when Dwight came walking slowly homeward from church with Mrs. Ray, communion service ended, Jim had run to meet them, the nose-bleed already forgotten, and, to the father's "I hope you didn't disturb mamma, my boy. She was trying hard to sleep," the little man had promptly, impulsively responded: "No, indeed, daddy, mamma is up and dressed——" And then he remembered, faltered, blushed.
Dwight did not question his boy about his new mamma. That was another thing from which the father shrank. He saw the lad's sudden confusion, and knew that something was being held back, but it was something that should be held back. In all his teachings as to utter frankness, truth, confidence, he, of course, had never meant that his boy should be a tale-bearer—above all that he should ever come with tales of his new mamma; yet Dwight, unfortunately, had never given him to understand that there were matters, now that the boy was growing older and observant, concerning which no confidences were expected or invited. But it had set him to thinking—to questioning Inez as to her sudden recovery, and again, more pointedly that Monday afternoon between the hour of his visit with the colonel and his ominous symptoms at parade, thereby bringing on a fit of nerves for her and a swimming of the head for himself. It was while he was waiting for Jimmy's home-coming that Félicie—ostentatiously bustling to and fro, all sympathy for Madame in her prostration and anxiety as to M'sieu, the Commandant—had contrived to intimate that Monsieur James had been so imprudent as to rush, all ensanguined, into the presence of Madame, and now and under such circumstances, and in virgin modesty, Félicie's eyelids drooped, "Madame should be spared all possibility of shock or emotion." Under any other circumstances with what a thrill would he have listened to her words! Did not Monsieur conceive? And Madame's heart and sympathies so all-responsive! Had they not already been lacerated by the story of the suffering of the little George, an infant, oh, heaven, the most amiable! But assuredly Monsieur James had apprised his father of all that had taken place. He, too, was an infant the most amiable, and Dwight, overwrought and bewildered, before Jimmy went to his bed that night, had again asked him what all this meant about Georgie Thornton, and, looking squarely into his father's face, with Margaret's soul speaking from his clear, unflinching, fearless eyes, the little man had said again, "Why, daddy, I haven't an idea! I didn't evenhearhe was hurt until you told me."
Then had come a morning's drill following an almost sleepless night, and during drill he had rebuked young Thornton for the faults of his platoon, and after drill had lectured him a bit for seeming neglect or indifference, and even of sullen acceptance of deserved criticism. Then, suddenly, remembering, he ceased his rebuke, turned the subject and asked how was George, and then as they were parting, again asked how it happened, and was again startled by the words: "Ask your own boy, sir," for Thornton, like many an older, stronger, wiser man, accepted unchallenged the views of his wife. Jim had had his breakfast and was gone by the time Dwight reached home, but Félicie, in answer to question, with infinite regret and becoming reluctance owned that Miss Sanford and other witnesses of the unfortunate affair united in saying that Monsieur James had, in a moment of boyish petulance perhaps, swung his jacket full in the face of Monsieur George, never thinking, doubtless, of the cruel, sharp-edged, metal button that should so nearly cut out the eye; and then, terrified at the sight of so much blood, was it not natural that any child should run from the sight and try to forget, and perhapsmightforget, and so deny?
Dwight listened in a daze, spurning the toothsome breakfast set before him; then, rising, took his cap, left the house without another word and, hastening thither, found Priscilla Sanford on the veranda at the Rays'.
As she herself subsequently admitted to her aunt, Priscilla, who had been bred to the doctrine of original sin and innate propensity for evil, who had long thought that the major stood sorely in ignorance as to Jimmy's spiritual needs, and who herself stood solemnly convinced of the truth of the Thornton story, now conceived it her duty to fully and unreservedly answer the major's questions. Had she witnessed the affair? She had in great part, she said, little considering that of the most essential part, the actual blow or slash, she had seen nothing. Was it true that his son was—the assailant? Priscilla answered that, though she was not at that instant where she could herselfseethe blow, she an instant later saw everything, and the relative position of the boys was such that there was no room for doubt it was James who struck. She heard the scream when near the door and at once ran out. And had not Jimmy stopped to offer aid or—do anything? No, Jimmy had rushed on as though bent on overtaking the leaders, as though he never heard what, much farther away, she had heard distinctly. And then Priscilla owned that the look of agony in the father's face was such that her resolution well-nigh failed her.
But, unhappily, not quite. There are possibly no people so possessed with the devil of meddling in the management of other people's children as those who never had any, or else have been phenomenal failures in the rearing of their own. Dwight asked her presently to go with him to the Thorntons', which she did, beginning to tremble now as her eyes studied his face. Mrs. Thornton was on the veranda. Young hopeful, with bandaged forehead, was blissfully chasing a little terrier pup about the yard. She, too, began to tremble; the little wrath and resentment left was oozing from her finger tips as Dwight lifted his cap from the lined and haggard brow and she saw the infinite trouble in his deep-set eyes. But he gave her no time to speak.
"I have come," he said, "to express my deep sorrow at what I must now believe my son has done. I should have come before had—had——" He stumbled miserably. Then, with sudden effort, "I will see Mr. Thornton and make my acknowledgments later, and see the doctor, but first——" Then abruptly he bent, caught Georgie by an arm, lifted the bandage just enough to see the adhesive plaster underneath, muttered something under his breath, dropped his hand by his side, looked appealingly one instant in Priscilla's eyes as though he would ask one more question, never heeding, perhaps never hearing, Mrs. Thornton's: "Oh, Major, I'm sure Jimmy could not have meant it!" Womanlike, all vehemence in accusation at first, all insistence in extenuation now that vengeance threatened. The next moment Dwight was gone, and Priscilla dare not follow the first impulse of her heart to run home and tell Aunt Marion and Sandy, or to run after him. She saw the major turn stiffly in at his own gate, far up the row, saw Aunt Marion come forth, and, like guilty things, the maiden of mature years, the mother of immature mind, held there, shrinking, not knowing what to look for—what to do. They, too, saw Dwight come forth again; but none of the anxious eyes along that anxious line had witnessed what had befallen in the few minutes Dwight spent in presence of his wife. That was known, until some days later, only to Félicie.
She was still abed, sipping her chocolate, and looking but a shade lighter, when he abruptly entered. She could almost have screamed at sight of his twitching face, but he held up warning hand.
"Just a moment, Inez. You had come home—you were on the veranda, I believe; did you see—anything of that—that trouble among the boys yesterday?"
She had seen nothing. She was listening at the moment with downcast lids and heaving bosom to Foster's eager, hurried words. She had heard the shouts of merriment, and faintly heard the screams, and had not even looked to see the cause, but Félicie had found no inapt pupil. Inez buried her face in her jeweled hands. Under the filmy veiling of her dainty nightdress Dwight could see the pretty shoulders beginning to heave convulsively. Was she sobbing? Stepping closer, he repeated the question. "Imustknow," said he.
"Ah, Oswald—how—how can I? You love him so! You love him so much more than—me, and he—he hates me! He shrinks from me! He would not shrink from—poisoning you—against me!"
"Inez, this is childish! Tell me at once what you know—why you—distrust him?"
Again the sobs, the convulsive shoulder-heaving before she would speak, and, as though fired with wrath inexpressible, Dwight started for the door. Then she called him. Félicie was there, all distress, anxiety, concern for Madame. Indeed, Monsieur should refrain—at such a time, and then there were two to talk, each supplementing—reminding the other. It was true that little Monsieur James could not seem to respond to the love of his young mother, this angel, and he was rude and insolent to Félicie, who adored him, and he—he so hurt and distressed Captain Foster, who was goodness itself to him. It was for rudely, positively contradicting the captain she, Inez, had been compelled to send James to his room and require him to remain there until his father's return, not thinking how long the father would be gone on his visit to town, and even then James was obstinate; he would not apologize, although she had striven, and Félicie, too, to make him understand how his father would grieve that the son he so loved could so affront his guest; and they feared, they feared James deceived sometimes his noble father. The Naples incident was brought up again, and Jimmy's odd insistence that an officer had spoken to and frightened her, and then—those little things he had told on the homeward voyage (Heaven knows how true they were!) and then, oh, it wrung their hearts to see the father's grief, but when Jimmy denied all knowledge of the injury to Georgie Thornton, they knew and Jimmy knew—hemusthave known—it was his own doing. Leaving them both in tears, the father flung himself from, the room and down the stairs, and with his brain afire went straightway in search of his son. Good God! To think that, after all his years of hope and prayer and faith and pride—of careful teaching and utter trust—that it should come to this, that the boy on whom his great heart was centered should after all—after all prove a coward and a liar! His eyes seemed clouded. He saw only as through a lurid glass. The sunlight in the crisp, delicious air was clear as crystal, yet there was a blur that seemed to overshadow every object. There was a ringing in his ears that dulled the sweet strains of the song his wife, his own wife, his love, his treasure, Jimmy's mother, used to sing, for now he never heard it. His temples throbbed; his head seemed burning, yet the face was ashen. The twitching lips, bitten into gashes, were blue between the savage teeth marks, and yet at sight of the straight, soldierly form he loved, little Jim had quit his fellows and, to the music of his mother's song—just as of old, beaming, joyous, confident, brimming over with fun and health—had come bounding to meet him.
It had been the father's way at such times to halt, to bend forward with outstretched arms, almost as he had done in Jimmy's earliest toddling baby boyhood, but he never halted now. Erect and stern he moved straight on. It was the boy who suddenly faltered, whose fond, happy, radiant face grew suddenly white and seemed to cloud with dread, whose eager bounding ceased as he neared his sire, and, though the hands as of old went forth to clasp the hand that never yet had failed them, for the first time in his glad young life Jimmy Dwight looked in vain for the love and welcome that had ever been his, for the first time his brave young heart well-nigh ceased its beating, for the first time he seemed to shrink from his father's gaze.
And in fear, too, but not for himself; oh, never for himself! Vaguely, strangely, of late he had begun to feel that all was not well with the father he so loved, and now the look in his father's face was terrible. "Oh, daddy!" he cried, a great sob welling up in his throat, but the answering word checked him instantly, checked his anxious query, turned his dread at the instant into relief, almost into joy. It was not then that his father was ill and stricken. It was that he was angry—angry, and at him, and in the flash of a second, in that one hoarse word—"Home!" he knew what it must be, and though his lips quivered and his eyes filled and again the sobs came surging from his breast, just as of old, all confidence that his word could not be questioned, he strove to find his father's hand, even as homeward now, with Inez and her hellcat of a handmaid peeping trembling through the slats, the father striding, the little fellow fairly running before, the two went hurrying on, and Jimmy, looking back, found tongue, and his one thought found words:
"Oh, daddy, indeed I wasn't—impudent to Captain Foster—to mamma, at least, I didn't mean it! Theywerethere in the parlor when I ran in from church, and he wanted me to promise——"
And then Marion Ray, far down the line, with one cry for Sandy, sprang forward to the gate, for Oswald Dwight, with heavy hand, had struck his little son across the face and stretched him on the turf.
There was no one near enough to reach them at the moment. Jimmy was on his feet again in an instant, dazed, half-stunned, breathless, but still unbelieving. Father could not have heard. Father would surely hear; but now the father's hand had seized his arm, and, when the boy again began to gasp his plea, it was almost dragging him across theacequia. Blood was beginning to trickle from the corner of the piteous little mouth. There was foam upon the set and livid lips of the man. "Silence! You've lied enough!" was the savage order, as Dwight thrust the boy through the gate. "Not there, sir!" as Jimmy, dumbly striving to show his loyalty, his obedience, his unshaken trust, would have run on up the steps. "To the cellar!" and in fury he pointed to the walk that circled the house, and Jimmy hurried on. They had vanished from sight as Marion Ray, with terror in her eyes, came almost running up the row, Priscilla and Mrs. Thornton staring, speechless and miserable, after her. A lone trooper, an humble private soldier, riding in from the westward gate, had sprung from saddle, thrown the reins over a post and, with consternation in his face, had started after them. It was young Hogan, faithful henchman of the Rays, still borne on the rolls of Ray's old squadron. They were in the cellar, under the rear of the quarters, when he reached them, and Jimmy's jacket was lying on the floor, while the lad, with streaming, pleading eyes, was looking up in his father's face.
"Your shirt, too, sir!" Dwight ordered, as Hogan came bounding in.
"For the love o' God, Major, don't bate the boy! Sure he never knew he did it, sir. I saw——"
"Out of here, you!" was the furious answer. "Out or I'll——" And in his blind rage the officer grasped the unresisting soldier by the throat and hurled him through the doorway whence he came. "Off with that shirt!" he again shouted, as he turned. It was already almost off. Ah, how white and smooth and firm was that slender, quivering little body, as, for the last time the streaming eyes were imploringly uplifted, the slender arms upraised, the sobbing prayer poured forth only to be heard—only to be heard.
"Face the window! Turn your back, sir!" was the sole answer through the set teeth, while with sinewy hand the father swung a yard-long strip of leather, some discarded stirrup strap the boys had left upon the bench, and poor Hogan, with a cry and curse upon his lips, rushed again to the front in search of aid. One savage swish, one sharp, cruel, crashing snap, one half-stifled, piteous scream, and then the doorway was suddenly darkened, the maddened man was thrust aside, and, breathless, panting, but determined and defiant, Marion Ray had flung herself upon the bent and shrinking child, her fond arms clasping the bared and quivering back to her wildly throbbing heart, her own brave form thrust between her precious charge and the again uplifted scourge. "Jimmy boy, my darling!" she sobbed, as strong and safe and sure she held him. Then, with her blue eyes blazing, she turned on him.
"Oswald Dwight, are you mad?"
Then again the door was darkened as Sandy Ray came limping in. One glance was enough. The strap was wrenched from the father's hand and hurled to the open, empty, black-mouthed furnace. Then both hands were needed, for Dwight, just as on Monday evening at parade, had begun to sway and was groping for support. There was no one to interpose, no one to interfere, when Marion Ray, having at last stilled poor Jimmy's heavy sobbing and bathed his face and hands and helped him to dress, led him unresisting away to her little home, for Madame "in her condition"—as Félicie explained individually to the dozen men and women who thronged the major's quarters that unhappy morning—was prostrated, desolated, distracted by the tragedy that had come to arrive. It was as well, perhaps, that at last it manifested itself what monster was this who held this angel in bondage—the monster himself, meantime, having been led to his room by Dr. Wallen. There, half-dazed, half-raving, he resisted and declaimed until at last their measures took effect, both doctors being with him now, and he was partially disrobed and compelled to lie down upon the bed. There one or both of them sat and watched the rest of the livelong day. There, finally, after nightfall a trained nurse took station with attendants in readiness in the hallway, for delirium had set in and Dwight's condition was declared critical.
Bad as it was, this was by no means the sole topic of talk for Minneconjou's seething population. Among the women, Mrs. Ray stood foremost as heroine of the occasion, and half the feminine element of the garrison had been to call and congratulate and praise her before the day was done. But Marion was in no mood for either. It had come to her as a vital question what to do with Priscilla. Sandy had charged his cousin in so many words with having deliberately incited Major Dwight to his furious and unreasoning assault, so Sandy regarded it, upon his only son, and Sandy had for a week or more been looking upon Dwight as a wronged and injured man. Priscilla, as we know, had virtually and virtuously admitted much of her error to Aunt Marion, but persisted that though they both, Mrs. Thornton and she, considered that it was high time Jimmy was punished instead of petted, they never dreamed to what length the father would go. "Punished for what?" indignantly demanded Aunt Marion. "For his having so cruelly hurt Georgie Thornton, and then denying all knowledge of it," was the reply. Words are inadequate to describe the indignation with which Mrs. Ray heard and answered. Jimmy never knew it at the time or heard, until late that night, of what had happened. Hogan, and others for that matter, saw the entire affair. Jimmy was whirling his English-made jacket about his head as he raced in pursuit of the leader, never realizing that Georgie Thornton, swift almost as himself, was close at his right hand. The button had cut its keen-edged way without so much as a shock or pause. Jimmy never even suspected it. In that, as in everything else, said she, he had told his father the entire truth, though Mrs. Ray herself hardly dreamed how much he had to tell. So by noontime Priscilla had again shut herself in her room to ponder over the miscarriage of her excellent intentions, and to pray, as well she might, for future guidance.
But while at the Rays', and possibly at the Dwights', there was little thought or talk of any other topic all the morning, all over the garrison was buzzing a second story that started soon after the newsboy from town, cantering out on his cow pony just before guard-mounting, sold his three dozenStarsinside of an hour and sent him back for more. The colonel and surgeon were first to receive and read. Dwight received, but never read, and other majors, captains and subalterns—not to mention non-commissioned officers and privates—chased the newsboy in eagerness to buy. It was a paragraph on an inside page, modest and moderate enough in itself—for the frontier press has learned to know the army and not to defame it—but it stirred a sensation at Minneconjou its editor refused to start in town. In brief, it was as follows:
Just as we go to press a dispatch is received from a representative of theStar, who left last night on the westbound Flyer. The train was flagged at Fort Siding and boarded, with the assistance of a ranchman, by Captain Stanley Foster, of the Cavalry, lately visiting friends at Minneconjou. The officer was bruised, bleeding, and well-nigh exhausted, but managed to tell that he had been held up while driving, had been forcibly carried out on the open prairie, and brutally beaten by ruffians whom he declares to be soldiers, all strangers to him with one exception. The captain names as ringleader a prominent and well-known young officer of the post.Dr. Fowler, of Sagamore Heights, was called by wire, met the train at the Pass, and went on with the injured man. The story, of course, sounds incredible, and cannot as yet be substantiated.
Just as we go to press a dispatch is received from a representative of theStar, who left last night on the westbound Flyer. The train was flagged at Fort Siding and boarded, with the assistance of a ranchman, by Captain Stanley Foster, of the Cavalry, lately visiting friends at Minneconjou. The officer was bruised, bleeding, and well-nigh exhausted, but managed to tell that he had been held up while driving, had been forcibly carried out on the open prairie, and brutally beaten by ruffians whom he declares to be soldiers, all strangers to him with one exception. The captain names as ringleader a prominent and well-known young officer of the post.
Dr. Fowler, of Sagamore Heights, was called by wire, met the train at the Pass, and went on with the injured man. The story, of course, sounds incredible, and cannot as yet be substantiated.
It was just after lunch time when a messenger came to the Rays. The surgeon asked if the lieutenant could come to Major Dwight a moment, and the doctor himself met Sandy at the door. The veteran's face was very grave. He had known the young officer but a few months. He had known his father long. "Are you feeling fit for a hard interview?" he asked.
"If need be. What's the matter?"
"Dwight is in a fearful frame of mind, and the Lord only knows how it is to end. Dwight realizes now that Jimmy was entirely innocent of any knowledge of that thing the Thorntons charged him with. Your mother sent Hogan and a trumpeter up here. Both had seen the whole affair, and Dwightwouldsee them. He never could have rested till he got the facts. We have persuaded him that he must not question his wife, and that French cat says she cannot leave her mistress an instant. He's raging now to see you, and I reckon it's no use trying more sedatives until you are off his mind. Will you come in?"
Ray pondered a moment, then, "Go ahead," said he.
They found Dwight pacing the floor like a caged and raging lion. He whirled on the two the moment they entered, Wallen vainly preaching self-control and moderation. The misery in the man's face killed the last vestige of Ray's antipathy. It was something indescribable.
"Sandy, I'm in hell, but—it's the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth I must have. Did you—before you joined us at the Grand in Naples—did you meet—did you see Mrs. Dwight?"
"Yes," said Ray.
Dwight halted, resting his shaking hand on the back of a chair, and the shake went down through the back and legs to the very floor.
"Where? How?"
"In front of Cook's Bank. Mrs. Dwight was in an open carriage; why shouldn't I speak to her?" And the head went up and back, so like his father.
"No reason whatever, but why should she lie? Tell me that! Why should she swear that my boy, Margaret's boy, lied? Oh, my God, tell me that!"
"Major, Major!" pleaded Wallen, with outstretched hand. "This will never do. This——"
"Let him alone," said the senior bluntly. "It's got to come."
"Because," said Ray, looking straight at his man, "I was fool enough to fall in love with her the same time you did at Manila. Perhaps she thought I'd be blackguard enough to follow her after she became your wife."
"You—you met her—called upon her—at the Grand, I remember."
"I did, and I'd do the same thing again. I wanted my letters, and I had a right to them. She said that she had burned them all, and that ended it. There's never been a line between us since. I have never seen her since—when I could decently avoid it. I hope to God I'll never have to see her—again."
"There, there, Dwight, that's more than enough," said Dr. Waring, watching narrowly the working features. "Thank you, Ray. Nothing more could be asked or expected." Then,sotto voce, "Get out quick!" and Ray, every nerve athrill, passed forth into the hallway, passed another door, which quickly opened, and out came Félicie, finger on lip, eyes dilated, one hand held forth in eager appeal.
"Oh, Monsieur—Mr. Ray, just one second, I implore—Madame implores. She beg to see you." And the hand just grazed his arm, as he burst impetuously, angrily by. "You go to ——" was on his furious lip, but he bit the words in twain and bolted down the stairs and out into the open air, mopping his heated brow.
The adjutant was coming swiftly up the row. He had hastened forth from a vine-covered piazza well toward the eastward end just as Ray, with heart still hammering, came limping again into the glare of the sunlight. As they neared each other—the staff officer with quick, springy step, the subaltern somewhat halting and lame—the latter caught sight of a sabre swinging at the senior's hip. What but one thing at that hour of the day could this portend? One moment brought the answer:
"Mr. Ray, I reg——" with reddened cheek and blinking eyes, began the adjutant, who liked him well. Then, with sudden effort, "I—you are hereby placed in close arrest and confined to your quarters—by order of Colonel Stone."
That colonel was a very unhappy man. "All the devils in the calendar," said he, "have broken loose here at Minneconjou. My cavalry commander has gone stark, staring mad, and it takes four men to hold him. His wife cannot stay under the same roof and live, says the maid. Madame must repose herself, or die. Mrs. Stone says she might take the mistress under our roof, but she'll be damned if she'll take the maid—at least she meant that. I said it. The maid says the mistress will die if they are separated an instant, which suggests a happy end to one of our troubles, and the cause of all the rest; and to cap the climax, Billy Ray's boy has done the maddest thing ever dreamed of in Dakota. Why, doctor, I tell you itcan'tbe doubted! Foster wires the identification was complete. He dropped the handkerchief that hid his face. Department Headquarters wired at once to slap him in arrest and investigate, and the further we look the worse it looks for Ray—and then, by gad, he denies the whole thing and demands a court-martial! Was ever a man so mixed as I am!"
It was even as Stone said. Dwight was for the time being, at least, as mad as a maniac. "Brain fever," said the wiseacres about the post, "superinduced by sunstroke abroad and scandal at home." Since Tuesday night he had recognized no one, had raved or muttered almost incessantly, and at times had struggled fiercely with his attendants in the effort to leave his bed. Mrs. Dwight's room adjoined that in which he lay, and Félicie had incurred the wrath of the doctor by urging that Madame's condition demanded that Monsieur be removed to hospital or to some remote apartment about the neighborhood. To take him to hospital meant that a score of sick or semi-convalescents should be disturbed. If Madame could not sleep where she was, let Madame move. There was nothing on earth the matter with, Madame but nerves—and a nuisance in shape of a maid, said the doctor, whereat Félicie had proclaimed him, too, a monster, and fled to Madame. Mrs. Stone had indeed come and offered Mrs. Dwight shelter under the colonel's roof, but she said at the same time the colonel drew the line at the maid, and told Wallen he would not tolerate that bunch of frippery and impudence. Mrs. Dwight was in dread and misery. Whatcouldhave happened to so prostrate her beloved husband? No, a thousand times no, she could not think of leaving him! What she needed was restoratives—something to give her strength that she might hie to his bedside and tenderly nurse and care for him. She had had too much restorative, swore Wallen, when he heard this tale. "We've shut off the champagne with which that hussy had been dosing her—not that she didn't demand it—and now it's Katzenjammer as much as anything else. If anybody is to move, let the maid move her to the spare room on the floor below—where Foster slept." But Inez could not think of moving so far from her husband's side.
Of Dwight's sudden insanity (so most of Minneconjou regarded it) and his furious treatment of little Jim the garrison spoke with bated breath and infinite compassion and distress. Nothing but mental derangement could account for it. Mrs. Thornton and Priscilla, it may be conjectured, did not confide to their neighbors any too much of their share in the matter, Mrs. Thornton assuring all who questioned her thatshehad done herbestto assure the major that Jimmy could not possibly have purposely or knowingly struck her boy, which was partially true; and Priscilla had declined all conversation on the subject, save with her aunt, and Mrs. Ray, it may be surmised, was not the woman to tell broadcast of her niece's responsibility in the premises, whatever she might later say to Oswald Dwight. Moreover, Marion Ray was not then in mood to talk confidentially with anyone outside of her own doors, for the misfortune—the wrong—that had come to Sandy had well-nigh overwhelmed her.
Like the man he was, Stone had called at the house the moment she intimated through his own messenger that she was in readiness to see him. The adjutant before returning to report his action to the post commander had so far departed from the strict letter of his duty as to confidentially inform the dazed young officer that the order had come by wire from St. Paul. It was not the colonel's doing.
Sandy was in his room, "cooling off," as he said, when, with all his own troubles and others' deeds upon his head and clouding his honest old face, the post commander himself came in, took the mother's hand and led her to a seat. "It can't upset you more than it has me, my friend," said he. "I s'pose the explanation of it all is that they met somehow—accidentally, perhaps—renewed the quarrel; Sandy was possibly getting the worst of it and the men, whoever they were, couldn't stand that, for they worshiped him, and pitched in. There are few of our fellows, especially in the cavalry, that don't just love Sandy. There are some here that hate Foster," and then Stone stopped, astounded, confused, for Marion Ray, with rising color, interrupted:
"Why, Colonel Stone, you speak as though you thought it possible that my soncouldhave been concerned in this affair!"
For an instant the colonel struggled for words, his red face mottling in the violence of his emotion.
"Why, how can I help it, Mrs. Ray, with all I have heard? But—but I'm more than glad you don't. What does he say?"
"That he never dreamed of such a thing," was the brief answer, and Stone hitched half a dozen different ways in his chair.
"Colonel Leale, Department Inspector, was on that train," said Stone slowly, "and reported Foster's story verbatim, I suppose, to department headquarters, where the arrest was ordered at once, and they demand that we apprehend the confederates. The general's away, and there isn't a man at headquarters that smelt powder in the Civil War—or they'd know confederates weren't so precious easy to apprehend. The men who might have been implicated all swear they were in town at the time and can prove an alibi; and unless Sandy will tell, who can?"
"You still speak as though he could have had something to do with the assault, Colonel. I'll call him to speak for himself." So Sandy came down. Colonel and subaltern were left together, and Marion, with sore, wounded and anxious heart, stepped into her own little snuggery to look at the picture of her far-away husband (ah, how she missed him and needed him!) and of Maidie, her sweet and winsome daughter, now Mrs. Stuyvesant of Gotham, of Sandy in the cadet uniform of his yearling days and the khaki of Manila, of Billy, Junior, now far away studying for the entrance exams at the famous Academy. Of the four beings she most devotedly loved, only one was with her now, her deeply, doubly wronged Sandy, whose impetuous, indignant tones she could hear so distinctly as he told his own story to the colonel's sympathetic ear. So distinctly indeed could she hear her own boy that for a moment she failed to hear Margaret's little Jim, standing patiently, pathetically at the threshold; but at sight of his sorrowful face her arms went out to him instantly. Jim could think—speak—of nothing but his father, his father who, they all told him, was so ill that he would not know his own blessed boy, who could not have known him or himself or anybody that dreadful morning! Love and anxiety, utter trust and forgiveness, were uppermost in the loyal little heart, and Marion, speechless, held and rocked him in her arms as she listened to his broken words and to the sound of the brave young voice in the parlor. Oh, what would shenothave to tell in that next letter to her husband, now so many a weary league of land and sea beyond possibility of call!
A badgered man was Stone, as he tramped back homeward, taking a short cut across the parade, ostensibly to look at the patchwork along theacequia, the morning's task of the fatigue details, but only too obviously to avoid the eyes and greetings of the many women along the row. Sandy Ray's story was told in utter sincerity, so far as Stone could judge. Yet how was it to help him? Sandy admitted having set forth westward up the valley, having ridden lazily out beyond the butts of the rifle range, and then over the southward range to the prairie. He was gone fully two hours, he said. The moon was so low when he returned that, after leaving his horse with the man in the stables, he could only barely see the sentry on No. 3 some distance up the post, and the sentry apparently did not see—he certainly did not challenge—him at all. That was bad. It would have been so much better if No. 3 had seen, recognized and could vouch for him. Stone did not tell Sandy of the sentry's story. He wished to think that over. Sandy said that the sentry at the stables was some distance down his post and the only man with whom he spoke was this unrecognized soldier, presumably on duty at the quartermaster's stables, where the lieutenant's mount was kept and cared for. No, Sandy didn't know his name, he didn't even notice him particularly. Two or three men, he thought, were smoking their pipes at the corral corner, away from stables, as required, and one of these had come forward as he neared the gate, and asked should he take the lieutenant's horse. Ray thanked him, dismounted and turned away. Now, what bothered the colonel was that both the sergeant in charge and each one of the four men previously questioned declared he did not know the hour at which Lieutenant Ray returned. They had gone to bed at or before 10:30, leaving the door on the bolt, so that Hogan or the lieutenant himself could easily enter. One man, in fact, went so far as to say that coming down from the Canteen about 10:30 he could have sworn almost it was Lieutenant Ray who was slowly climbing the slope to the post of No. 3, and the rear of the officers' quarters. This accorded in a degree with the statement of Schmitz. What good was Sandy's story to do him if Foster firmly adhered to the statement made to the Department Inspector?
There was to have been a dance at the Assembly room Tuesday evening, but no one seemed to feel like dancing even among an indomitable few of the lassies and younger officers with whom, lads and lassies both, Sandy Ray had been vastly popular. The night wore on, dark, overcast, with the wind blowing fitfully from the Sagamore, slamming doors in resounding hallways and carrying the watch calls of the sentries weirdly over the eastward prairie. Earlier in the evening little groups appeared in some few of the verandas, but gradually broke up and went within doors long before the signal "Lights out." The officer of the day and the adjutant, under instruction from the post commander, had been questioning the three worthies who had been out the night before about the time of the alleged assault on Captain Foster. To a man they stoutly maintained that the signs and scars of battle, borne by one or two of their number, were due entirely to the free-for-all affair that occurred at that disreputable dive southwest of Silver Hill, some four miles away from the post. Virtuously were they indignant that anyone should suppose that they were in any way concerned in so abominable a transaction as the "doing-up" of an officer of the army who so recently had been the guest of their honored major. But two of them were troopers with shady records, men who had been but a short time at the station, and one of these had formerly served an enlistment in Dwight's old regiment, the —th. The adjutant was of opinion that he must have known Foster in those days and might well have been one of quite a number of men, none of whom liked and some of whom hated the imperious and abusive lieutenant. The —th had had few of Foster's stamp since the days of Canker and Gleason, and his case was therefore the more conspicuous. The two officers were talking of this as slowly they strolled homeward up the northwest side of the parade, when, faint and wind-buffeted, the call of the sentry at the main gate caught their ears. No. 2 wanted the corporal and No. 1 promptly echoed, although already the corporal was going on the jump. There was a ring and vim to the cry that told its own story. The sentry saw something that demanded instant attention. It was not half a minute before the corporal came racing back to the guard-house, nor a full minute before the bugler of the guard came chasing in pursuit of the officer of the day. "A fire, sir," he cried, "'way out beyond the Flats!"
Together the officers hastened eastward across the parade, and even before they reached the gate the cause of the alarm became visible. The low-hanging, swift-driven clouds blackening the valley were taking on a lurid glare, and, once at the gate the fire could be distinctly seen. "Well, if that isn't a blessing!" cried the adjutant gleefully. "It's Skid's old hog ranch, as sure as you're born!"
It was useless, of course, to send aid even if aid had been desirable. Ever since Silver Hill became the county seat and a mining town of much importance, Skidmore's dive had been the bane of the community. Driven from town by a vigilance committee made up of the best citizens, the divekeeper had resumed business beyond the corporate limits and at a point where he could draw custom from three different sources, the town, the fort and the agency, for only a few miles beyond the Cheyenne were the supply depot and buildings of the Minneconjou tribe, their brethren of Brulé being far over to the southeast and the Ogalallas at Red Cloud. Many a desperate deed had been charged to the gang ever hovering about these unsavory walls of Skidmore's, many a poor fellow had been beaten and drugged and robbed, more than one good soldier had met his death-blow in brutal affray beneath its grimy roof, and still it lived, detested but unhampered. There was no good reason why the fort should send a soul to the rescue of such a concern. There was many a reason why the town would not. Stone ordered a sergeant with a small party to ride over, "See if any of our men are there and find out what has taken place and the extent of the damage," which he hoped was total, "and report on your return."
It was after twelve when they got back, bringing a grimy fellow-soldier who had had a narrow escape, the gratifying intelligence that there wasn't so much as a shingle left unconsumed, and the unwelcome announcement that the proprietor said he didn't care a damn. He had leased and was going to open up next week, anyhow, in the old rookeries at the ford, right under the nose of Uncle Sam, yet without his jurisdiction. They brought, also, rather a remarkable piece of news—the wife and daughter of the manager had been rescued from burning alive by one of the colonel's own men—Private Blenke, of Company "C."
Whoever it was who planned or placed Fort Minneconjou, one blunder at least could be laid at his door—that it had enabled the enemy to "locate" almost at the door of the fort. An odd condition of things was this that resulted from the discovery of precious metals in the magnificent tract misnamed the Black Hills—black presumably only in the dead of winter, when their pine-crested peaks and ridges stood boldly against the dazzling white of the Dakota snows. In '75 the Sioux had bartered their secret to chance explorers, and Custer came down with his scouting columns and confirmed the glittering rumor. In '76 the Sioux squared accounts with Custer afar to the northwest in the affair of the Little Big Horn, but while they were about it the miner and settler swarmed in behind and staked out claims and cities from which they could never be driven, for Crook's starved horses and starving men were fortunately so numerous they kept the southward tribes of the savage confederation too busy to bother with settlers.Theycould be settled later, after the warriors had dealt by Crook as they did by Custer. When winter came, however, with Sitting Bull and the Uncapapas thrust beyond the British line, and Crazy Horse, raving, done to death by the steel of the guard he so magnificently defied, with Red Cloud disarmed and deposed, with Dull Knife disabled, with Lame Deer doubled up by the sturdy Fifth Infantry, and old Two Moons hiding his light in some obscure refuge of the wilderness, and the old men, the women and children herded on the reservation under the rifles of the army and the young men scattered or slain, there was nothing left for the hard-fighting, proud-spirited lords of the Hills—Ogalalla, Brulé and Minneconjou—but sullen acceptance of the great father's terms; and in this wise came Silver Hill to the heart of the fair valley, nestling under the screen of the Sagamore and its eastward spurs and the shield of Uncle Sam, who sliced off for military purposes a block from the Minneconjou reserve, and by way of compliment and consolation named the cantonment therein established after the tribe thereof dispossessed. All went swimmingly for the emigrant, the miner, the settler and the subsequent supremacy of the white man until in course of time a big post had to be built to replace the old log barracks, and from motives of economy, in order to reduce to a minimum the expense of hauling supplies and materials of the quartermaster's department, the new buildings were planted at the extreme eastern edge of the reservation, and before the first coat of paint was dry on the lintels the opposite bank of the stream, a short pistol shot from the line, was planted thick with shacks, shanties and saloons, and every known device of the devil to prey upon the soldier.
In the five years that followed, that particular quarter section of what soon became South Dakota was a storm center of villainy, especially when the bi-monthly payday came round. By scores the soldiers were drugged and robbed, by dozens they were beaten and bullied. By twos and threes they were set upon, slugged and not infrequently someone was murdered. No jury could be found in those days to convict a civilian of any crime against the life or property of a servant of Uncle Sam. There came a time when two of the best men of the garrison, veteran sergeants, having been shot to death in cold blood by a brace of desperadoes in front of Skidmore's saloon, the garrison turned out almost to a man. The murderers fled to town on the horses of their victims; fifty troopers followed, while over fifty tore Skidmore's to shreds. Silver Hill had a riot that night, in which two deputy marshals bit the dust; so did two or three troopers, but that didn't matter. The majesty of the law that turned the original murderers loose had been violated by a brutal and ungovernable soldiery, six of whom were later surrendered to be tried for their crimes by a jury of their sworn enemies, while their commanding officer was tried for his commission by a jury of his peers. The soldiers were sent to civil prison and the colonel to military Coventry—estopped from further promotion, and Silver Hill (pronounced with an "e" in those days) for as much as a month exulted and rejoiced with exceeding joy. Then a new general came to the command. Then Silver Hill thrust its hands deep in its pockets and whistled in dismay, for the general's first deed was to order Minneconjou's big garrison into summer camp long marches away, to leave only men enough at the post to take care of the property and thus to defraud the denizens of fringing settlement, known to the Army as Thugtown, of some thousandsper mensemof hard-earned cash—very hard. Moreover, when winter set in, the garrison was distributed much to the betterment of Meade, Laramie, Robinson, Niobrara, etc., and to the howling protest of the sturdy settlers of Silver Hill, "thus robbed," said their eloquent representative in Congress assembled, "of the protection assured them by the national government." It was rich to hear the appalling description given that December of the perils and privations of the people of the southwestern section of the Dakotas. The Sioux were on the point of rising and butchering the helpless and scattered settlers, said Senator Bullion, and to do the county justice it must be owned that it did its level best to stir up the Minneconjous, but those "troubled waters" had been stirred too much in the past and refused now to boil over at the beck of the politicians, so what could not be done in one way was worked in another. The cat, in shape of the command, came back, and with the onward march of civilization men and women of a higher class were drawn to Silver Hill, and the "e" from the last part of its name.
And then in army circles there came to the front a man with a head on his shoulders and a hand on the steering gear. In the interest of civilization and civilian dealers Congress had cleaned out the old-time sutler shop, which was no deplorable loss, and transferred the traffic of his successor, the post trader, to his ubiquitous rival, the publican. "The soldier's pay comes from the people and should return to the people," said the advocates of the measure, and the soldier non-voter, having about as many friends at the seat of government as a crow in a corn field, matters at Minneconjou speedily became bad as ever, for, reform having started at Silver Hill, the gamblers and harpies being kicked from its corporate limits, these philosophers,—the flotsam and jetsam of the frontier,—lost little cash and less time before settling again, and in greater numbers, on the skirts of Uncle Sam.
And then it was that, after a year or two of turmoil and trouble, "in our day there lived a man" who solved the problem, dealt rum, the flesh and the devil the worst blow known to the combination, and started under the auspices of the post Exchange the common sense and only successful system ever tried in the army, known to the Press and its civilian readers by the name of the Canteen.
And then again after a few years of peace, prosperity and contentment, good order and discipline, after the man whose monument is inscribed "The Soldier's Friend," his good work finished, was gathered to his fathers, the resultant years of thought and experiment were overthrown in a day. A congress of women over-mastered a congress of men. Exit the Canteen: Re-enter the grog shop, the hell and the hog ranch. Burned out at the borders of Silver Hill, the way blazed for him and his vile retinue of swindlers and strumpets by the best intentions that ever paved the streets of sheol, back to the gates of Fort Minneconjou came the saloon and its concomitants—and the day of order and discipline was done.
"I wouldn't say a word against it," protested Colonel Stone to the grave-faced Inspector sent out from St. Paul to investigate the first killing, "if, when they shut upourshop they had shut upthose!" and with clinching fist he struck savagely at empty space and the swarming row of ramshackle tenements beyond the stream. "Of what earthly good was it to anybody, I ask you,—except the distiller and dealer in liquors,—to close our guarded, homelike tables and reopen that unlimited unlicensed hell?"
A new road to Silver Hill, albeit roundabout, had become a necessity. The old well-worn beeline through by way of the ford had become impracticable for women and children and self-respecting people in general. It was skirted for some two hundred yards by tenements and tenants not easily described in these pages. The colonel had been jeered at by painted sirens at upper windows. Priscilla Sanford, starting one morning to town, turned crimson at the shrill acclaim of the scarlet sisterhood, two of whom had kissed their hands to her. Stone, when he heard of it, would have leveled the shack with the ground, but the mournful plight of his predecessor, condemned for not preventing what Stone would almost precipitate, gave him timely pause. Sandy might have sallied forth and shot somebody not feminine, but Sandy was still in arrest. The paymaster had come and gone. So had most of the money; so, worse luck, after two days of salooning, had gone no less than fifty of the garrison. In nearly two years Minneconjou had not had as many desertions as resulted from those two days.
But, sorrowful to relate, among the first to go and the last to be heard from were two of Priscilla's trusties—gone no man could say whither—and in addition to this catastrophe something had strangely, surely gone amiss with her paragon, Blenke—Blenke the scholarly, Blenke the writer and linguist—and Priscilla's world was reeling under her well-shod feet.
To begin with, how came Blenke, the impeccable, the would-be candidate for transfer to the cavalry and aspirant for commission, to be sojourning even for an hour at so disreputable a spot as Skidmore's? Blenke, it will be remembered, had a forty-eight hour pass to enable him to visit Rapid City on important personal business. Blenke was supposed to have taken the westbound Flyer on Monday—the Flyer that flew five hours late. Blenke was supposed to be spending all Tuesday, or most of it, in the heart of the Hills. Blenke was not due at the post until the afternoon of Wednesday, and was not expected to leave Rapid City until Wednesday morning; yet here he was, of all places in the world, at that hog ranch on Tuesday night. Stone sent a patrol over at 1A. M.with a spare horse and invitation for Private Blenke to return at once and account for his eccentric orbit at office hours in the morning. The patrol trotted over, nothing loath, but Blenke had disappeared. "Gone to town for a doctor," said the abandoned few still groping about the smoldering ruins. So the patrol returned without him. It was represented that Blenke had scorched his face, singed off his eyebrows and burned his hands in his gallant essay to save the women. But this was all hearsay evidence.
When Blenke did appear on Wednesday afternoon his hands were bandaged, his face was disfigured a bit, but his eyes were as deep and mournful, his dignity and self-poise quite as unimpeachable, as before. He seemed grieved, indeed, that his captain and colonel both so sharply questioned him. He had intended going to Rapid City, but at the last moment in town received information rendering his visit unnecessary, indeed inadvisable. A man with whom he had had business associations in the past, and who owed him much money, had been there, but had headed him off by promising to meet him in Silver Hill. The train came, but not the man, yet the conductor said such a man had boarded the train at the Junction and must have dropped off as they slowed up for town after passing Bonner's Bluff. Blenke had spent most of Monday night and all of Tuesday in further search. Tuesday evening came a clue. The evasive "party" had been seen at Skid's drinking heavily, and Blenke hastened thither in partial disguise, he said, and was there when late Tuesday night the shrieks from Skidmore's private quarters told of peril. The drunken crowd in the bar at first took no heed. Shrieks were things of frequent occurrence, but Blenke had rushed, found the shack all ablaze within, and with difficulty and much personal risk had succeeded in pulling out Mrs. Skidmore and her terrified child.
Blenke by manner, not by words, continued to convey to his inquisitors that he took it much amiss that a soldier who had done such credit to his uniform and the service should on his return be subjected to such rigid cross-questioning, and be treated with such obvious suspicion. But both colonel and captain had more to ask. Had he seen aught of the trio from the fort who claimed to have spent Monday evening at Skidmore's? Blenke declared he had not. He had spent that evening searching about town; but he had heard of them, yes. There was no little talk among the cowboys, tramps, toughs, and ranchmen in and about Skidmore's concerning a party of soldiers that had been there hours Monday evening "raising the devil." There had been a rough-and-tumble fight, too, but Blenke virtuously disclaimed all personal knowledge of the men or their misdemeanors. Asked to name some of the places he had visited Monday evening and Tuesday in town, Blenke unhesitatingly mentioned as many as a dozen. The adjutant jotted them down, and when the colonel sent an officer in to investigate, it was found that Blenke's statement, like his manner, was irreproachable. Moreever, it was found by the testimony of certain hangers-on at Skidmore's that the story told by the incarcerated trio was equally true. They had been seen about the premises, drinking, card-playing, loafing, early in the evening, and "off and on" all of the evening, until toward 10:30 o'clock they became so ugly and quarrelsome and had so little money left that Skid refused them further admission, even to wash the blood from their battered faces. If the purpose of the examination was to connect these men, any of them, with the assault upon Foster, it had certainly failed.
Even when Foster's verbatim statement came, duly type-written and vouched for, and further examination was made, and Blenke and the three worthies were further investigated, nothing was admitted and little learned. Foster's statement was read by the adjutant and received in grim silence by the colonel and one or two seniors called in for the occasion. Smarting under the indignity with which he had been treated, said Foster, and finding the Flyer would not be along before ten or half-past ten, he decided to take a buggy, drive out to the post and seek an interview with the colonel and certain other officers. It was due to his honor that his statement be heard. He ordered his traps sent to the train, so that if delayed he could drive thither at once, or even have the ranchman caretaker at Fort Siding "flag the train." Barely two miles out from town he overtook some soldiers apparently drunk; one of them reeled almost under his horse's nose; he pulled up in dismay, and instantly they attacked him on all sides at once. He was knocked senseless, and when he came to himself they were all out on the southward prairie. He could see the lights of the fort far away. He was propped against a wheel and they were wrangling among themselves. He was bleeding, dazed, had been cruelly beaten, but his wits were returning. The moonlight was clear, and suddenly, in a row that broke out among them, they fell upon each other, and a young, slight-looking man, who seemed to be their leader, in striving to quell the row, lost the handkerchief that hid his face. His light raincoat was torn open, revealing the uniform of a lieutenant of cavalry. The form, features, the dark little mustache, all that he could see, were certainly those of Lieutenant Ray. Staggering to his feet, he unhappily drew their attention again to himself, and then he was slugged and knocked senseless and knew no more until he was being helped aboard the Pullman. One of the men he vaguely remembered having seen before, but the only one of the party he could have recognized was Lieutenant Ray. All Minneconjou, he said, knew of the fracas between them that day; but few, perhaps, had heard the lieutenant's threats, and in this brutal fashion had he fulfilled them.
Copies of this, of course, had gone to Department Headquarters. The commander was expected back at the end of the week from his tour of inspection at Yellowstone Park. Sandy could not be held in close arrest beyond the eighth day; but that the affair would have to be thoroughly investigated by general court everybody felt and said. Indeed, Ray himself would be content with nothing less. But what a solemn time was this for Marion, his devoted mother; indeed for all at Minneconjou.
Up at the "ranking" end of the row Oswald Dwight lay in the grasp of a burning fever that, coupled with what had gone before, had weakened his reason and might well end his life. Under the same roof, visited at intervals by the charitable, the sympathetic or the merely inquisitive of their sex and station, Mrs. Dwight and her inseparable companion, Félicie, made their moan and told their woeful tale to all comers. Inez had been, she said, suffering all the torments of purgatory, and to many eyes she looked it. Her husband, in his mad delirium, would not have her near him:heraved of the wife of his youth. She wept for his boy who had been taken from her, his proper, his natural, his legal protector at such a time. Inez was horrified to think of the outrage upon Captain Foster, their attached and devoted friend. Inez would never believe, she said, that such a gentleman as Mr. Ray could stoop to so vile a vengeance, to the level of the assassin, but Félicie had other views. The episode of that blood-stained gauntlet had been by no means forgotten, and was dinned into the ears of those who would listen, with infinite vim and pertinacity; this, too, despite the fact that Ray denied having worn gauntlets that evening—having worn them, in fact, that summer. They were no longer "uniform" for cavalry officers, and he had not set eyes on that glove or its mate for over a month. Possibly during the move from the major's quarters to the humble home of the subaltern, but certainly somehow, Ray had lost several items that, before the change in uniform, had been in frequent use, but of late would hardly be missed, and of these were the gauntlets.
So there was distress—anxiety—sorrowing in more than one of the many households at Minneconjou, and in the midst of it all Priscilla, who had thought her burden, self-inflicted though it was, quite as much as she could bear, was confronted with another. Blenke, who had been nervous, excitable, almost ill on the very few occasions she had seen him since his return; Blenke, who had promised to confide to her, his benefactress, the cause of his worries, the story of his woes; Blenke, whose mournful eyes had blazed with a fine fury when told by Hogan, who couldn't abide him, of Miss Sanford's salutation from the window of the reoccupied rookery at the ford; Blenke, who could never set foot on the floor of the Canteen, turned up missing one night at check rollcall, two hours after taps, was suddenly and most unexpectedly stumbled on by the officer of the day making his rounds at 3A. M.: not, as might have happened to men of less indomitable virtue, coming from the direction of Skidmore's, but almost at the very opposite end of the garrison, at the rear gateway of the field officers' quarters, No. 2, so obviously obfuscated, so utterly limp, that he could give no account of himself whatever, was wheeled to the guard-house in a police cart and dumped on the slanting bunk of the prison room with a baker's dozen of the "Skidmore guard" sleeping off their unaccustomed drunk.