CHAPTER XIX.AT THE FORT.
It was an unfortunate thing for May Arlington and her lover that Colonel Montrose, the commandant, was absent from Fort Cimarron when they were brought to that place, and that in his stead was Lieutenant Joel Barlow. It was even more unfortunate for them that Barlow stood to the girl in the relation of a discarded and chagrined lover.
He had but a week before visited that little sod house out on the wide, wind-swept plains, and there had told the girl his love, and she had turned him away. He knew why she had done so, too; he knew that it was because of Ben Stevens.
To Joel Barlow the men who had brought in the prisoners—for they were really prisoners—made their report; and Barlow went forth to see the girl and Stevens.
He felt a secret satisfaction; for his love for the girl, or what he had fancied was love, had turned to hate, and for Ben Stevens he had a feeling that was perfectly ferocious. So he smiled inwardly, and stared at that nugget of gold, as he carefully examined it.
“Yes, it must be returned to the colonel,” he said, but in his eyes there was a light of anxious questioning.
“Put him under guard!” he ordered, when Stevens was brought before him.
“Are you going to hold me for this?” Stevens roared in wrath.
“Put him under guard!” was the answer, and Stevens, still boiling with rage, was led away.
The girl was then told by Barlow that she might go where she willed, within the boundaries of the fort, but that she could not depart until the colonel had arrived and passed on her case.
As if to salve this wound, Barlow conducted her to the rooms of Mrs. McGee, who was the “mother” of the fort; so considered by all the young soldiers, whom she mothered and petted when they were ill, and at other times treated as if they were children. Even the officers feared her when she was angry. She was the only woman at the fort now; the other women—the colonel’s wife and daughter—being away.
Mrs. McGee was red-faced and brawny; she had arms and muscles like a man, and sometimes she proved that she had a temper; but she had a kind heart.
When she saw the suffering girl and heard her story she was roused into indignation.
“There—there!” she said soothingly. “Whin the colonel comes he’ll make it all right. And now you wait here a bit, while I go down and give to that blackguard Joel Barlow a bit av me mind.”
The “bit av her mind” which she gave to Barlow was peppery and fierce. She wasted no words in telling him what she thought of him for keeping the girl there in the fort on such a charge.
“She’s the angel, she is, and it’s yersilf is the bruteand the blackguard!” she cried. “Was yer mother a lady? If she was, let this girl go in reminbrance av yer mother, and be ashamed of yersilf fer havin’ thought fer a minute av doin’ annythin’ else.”
Joel Barlow merely smiled. He knew Mrs. McGee.
“You’re too good to live, mother,” he said; “but I’ll go over and talk with the girl. It is a shame, as you say; but what am I to do? I’m only in the colonel’s place here while he is away, and I have to be mighty careful.”
“Ye ar-re the dirt av the wurruld!” she snorted, in derision. “Don’t I know that the colonel wouldn’t hold her fer wan second?”
“I think I’ll go and see her? Of course you’ll take good care of her, Mother McGee; but perhaps I’d better have a talk with her.”
He set out to have that talk within the next half hour.
Time had so sped since the “arrest” of the girl and her lover that night was now at hand and the shadows of darkness were gathering over the fort.
As Barlow passed along, heading toward the house where Mrs. McGee lived, he came face to face with a young trooper in a dusty uniform, who seemed to have been watching for him to make his appearance.
Seeing this young fellow he turned aside, and the two came together behind a growth of cottonwood trees which grew beside the water pool supplied by the deep well and windmill.
It must be understood that Fort Cimarron was not just one building; rather it was a number of buildings,officers’ quarters, and barracks for the troopers, with stables for the horses, all surrounded by a strong, palisaded wall. Attempts had been made to make the place attractive. One result was the cottonwood trees, planted where the water from the well could keep them growing in that land of drought; and they made a green and pleasant shade.
“Well, Wilkins?” said Barlow harshly, as he stopped with the young trooper behind the cottonwoods.
“It was a mistake; a frightful mistake!” Wilkins stammered. His voice trembled, and he was much wrought up. “Yes, sir, I acknowledge it,” he added; “it was a frightful mistake. But it was, I hope, not irreparable.”
Barlow lifted his hand as if he would strike the trooper in the face.
“Is it what I pay you for, to make mistakes like that?” he demanded angrily. “Aye, it was a frightful mistake; and I’m afraid it will have serious consequences. In Heaven’s name, how did you do it?”
“Well, the two letters were left on your table, sir, lying close together, and I was in a hurry. You had stepped out, and I thought I hadn’t time to search for you; and so I snatched up the two letters. I got them mixed, and threw to the girl the one that had in it the nugget of gold. But——”
“Curse you for an idiot, Wilkins!” snarled Barlow. “I ought to pistol you for that.”
“Of course, it wasn’t intentional, and——”
“Well, keep your head closed about it!” Barlowsnapped. “Don’t say anything; not a word to anybody.”
He left Wilkins, and went on hurriedly and angrily.
He had not recovered his temper when he reached the house where the girl had been lodged with Mrs. McGee, this particular house being a part of the cook room, for of the things which Mrs. McGee did one was to supervise the cooking at the fort. She met Barlow at the door.
“Can I see her?” he said. “And how is she?”
“A-cryin’ the two eyes out av her head. Bad cess to ye fer that, too! If I was a man, throoper er no throoper, I’d thrash ye fer that, so I would.”
“I’ll just go in and see her.”
He laughed, pushed past the portly form of Mrs. McGee, and then went along the hall until he came to a large room at its farther end.
The girl was in this room, and had lighted the lamp. She stared at him with flushing face as he came in.
“I don’t think I requested your presence,” she said coldly.
“No, but Mrs. McGee told me you were pining for a little comforting, and so I thought I’d call, since I haven’t ceased to regard you in a favorable light, you know. It was only last week, I believe, that I offered you my hand and my heart.”
She turned from him and walked toward the window, and looked out from it across the parade ground.
As she did this his admiration of her sprang full-armed into being again. “Gad, what a girl!” hethought. “Isn’t she a queen? A man could feel proud to have her for his wife.”
“I have come to apologize for what has perhaps seemed to you unnecessary harshness,” he said, in a voice wholly changed, for now it had a sincere ring, and his admiration looked from his eyes.
“It was unnecessary,” she said. “What do you intend to do with me? I have done nothing, and Mr. Stevens has done nothing!”
Barlow’s eyes hardened at that mention of Stevens. Yet when he spoke his voice was kind.
“Miss Arlington, I want you to know how sorry I am about this whole thing,” he urged. “If I were in absolute command here I should not hold either Stevens or you a minute. But you must see that I am not master here. A soldier must learn to obey, before anything else. The regulations make it impossible for me to do anything differently until the colonel comes.”
She turned again toward the window.
“Miss Arlington—May,” he said, his voice lowered, “you remember what I said to you not long ago? Well, I want to repeat it. Why can’t you give a fellow a chance, or a bit of hope? I’m not such a bad lot, and I’m certainly as well situated as this fellow Stevens.”
She turned upon him again with flashing eyes.
“Don’t take advantage of the fact that I must listen,” she said. “You once claimed to be a gentleman!”
“And I am one now.”
“Then don’t bring up that subject again. I never gave you any encouragement, and——”
“May Arlington,” he interrupted, his voice high and sharp now, “you still stick to that, do you? And you scorn me for that fool of a cowboy? Why, I’d have you know that I’m a gentleman, and the son of a gentleman!”
She turned once more to the window and looked out, but her cheeks were red, and one foot tapped the carpet impatiently.
“And——” he ripped out an oath, “I’ll see that Ben Stevens has a hard row to hoe before he gets in a position to marry you!”
“What do you mean?” she demanded.
“Just this! He was found with the nugget, stolen from the colonel, and which the colonel valued highly because it was given to him by Buffalo Bill, the famous border scout. Now, you may tell me what is generally done with a thief? You don’t need to answer. He is sent to prison, and often for a term of years. And that is the journey that Ben Stevens will be taking before another month rolls by.”
The red went out of her cheeks and they became ghastly white.
“You will try to send him to prison?”
“No.” He laughed. “It won’t’ be necessary for me to trouble myself about it; the statements of the troopers who found him with that gold will do that. But if you had spoken to me kindly and fair I might have interested myself in his behalf, and I might have even got him off.” He looked at her with a strangesmile. “And to tell you the truth, May,” he added, “I might still do that—interest myself and get him off without much punishment—if you’d treat me differently. Hadn’t you better think it over? You don’t want Ben Stevens sent to the penitentiary for ten or a dozen years, I know. And that’s just where he is headed for now.”
He turned and stalked from the room, leaving her with cheeks as white as marble.