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 ofamaze 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 transferredto 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, therewillbe 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 everytime 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 theygotout I——" And though Tintop swore savagely through his teeth thatDevers 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 herdto 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 onlycampI 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 thesegallant 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."
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. Otherswere 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 theyoung 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 hisfiancée, 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 atthe 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 youknow 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," answered Mrs. Meg, with flushing cheeks. And that was really before poor Almira's first letter came, and if Mrs. Cranston thought she was right before, she knew it when she read now.
The closing paragraph of a long, almost incoherent missive must suffice. Even Cranston's lips twitched under the heavy thatch of his moustache as he listened. Even we, who like Mrs. Cranston, must admit it wasn't quite kind in her, no matter how natural, to read it afterward to Agatha Loomis, who, although declining to read, did not quite decline to hear at least a line or two.
"If you knew how I suffered—what tortures of anxiety, what nights of sleeplessness and woe, tossing on fevered pillow, tortured with visions of my beloved nobly fallen on the field of battle and pining for the touch of this hand—you would indeed pity me; but my father is inflexible. He refuses his daughter the poor boon of flying to the stricken lover's side,—her husband that is to be. In vain have I pointed out that I ask no sweeter bliss than to share my Percy's lot, for weal or woe, to live in the humblest cot, a tent, a hovel even, with only a crust,—it meets only his scornful refusal. When my arms are eagerly outstretched to enfold my soldier hero, I have to be content with nursing day and night his afflicted mother,whom for his sake I love as I would my own, had she not been taken from me years ago when I was but an unsophisticated child. When I think of you privileged to sit by his delirious bedside, cooling his fevered brow, I envy you as I never thought to envy any woman on earth since, long years ago, my Percy blessed me with his love; and now if after all he should be taken, or if some proud lady should win him from his simple little village maid, there would be no refuge for me but the grave."
"If you knew how I suffered—what tortures of anxiety, what nights of sleeplessness and woe, tossing on fevered pillow, tortured with visions of my beloved nobly fallen on the field of battle and pining for the touch of this hand—you would indeed pity me; but my father is inflexible. He refuses his daughter the poor boon of flying to the stricken lover's side,—her husband that is to be. In vain have I pointed out that I ask no sweeter bliss than to share my Percy's lot, for weal or woe, to live in the humblest cot, a tent, a hovel even, with only a crust,—it meets only his scornful refusal. When my arms are eagerly outstretched to enfold my soldier hero, I have to be content with nursing day and night his afflicted mother,whom for his sake I love as I would my own, had she not been taken from me years ago when I was but an unsophisticated child. When I think of you privileged to sit by his delirious bedside, cooling his fevered brow, I envy you as I never thought to envy any woman on earth since, long years ago, my Percy blessed me with his love; and now if after all he should be taken, or if some proud lady should win him from his simple little village maid, there would be no refuge for me but the grave."
"Now," said Mrs. Cranston, "something besides the bedside is delirious in that case. No wonder the poor fellow is picking up so slowly."
"Well, wait a little," responded her conservative lord and master. "Seems to me a man ought to rejoice in knowing that the arms of lovely woman are outstretched in eagerness to enfold him. Now, if I were he——"
"Yes, if you were he I've no doubt you'd be off to Urbana by first train; but this young man has some sense in his head" (here Cranston began to finger his own skull tentatively), "and in losing his freedom hasn't entirely parted with his wits."
"Was that—my predicament?" asked Cranston, looking plaintively up.
"Well, at least I have to do your thinking for you, and what you have to do is help him here. Have you had any talk with him about—about what Captain Truman and Mr. Gray wrote?"
"Certainly not, Meg," answered Cranston, becoming grave at once, "and I do not mean to until he is well enough to hear it."
"Well, the more I know of him the more I know it's utterly untrue. Hasn't anything been heard yet of Sergeant McGrath?"
"Not a word. Even friendly Indians say they haven't an idea what could have become of him." And Cranston's face was both anxious and troubled.
The matter was indeed one to give him deep concern. The massacre of the little detachment from Warren's battalion late in September—all of them members of Devers's troop—had brought down sharp and deserved criticism, and there was every prospect that the matter would be officially investigated just as soon as the department commander could turn his attention from the rounding up of the hostile band still at large. Meantime, between Warren and his senior troop commander, Captain Devers, strained relations existed,—the former holding to the theory that the responsibility for the disaster lay with Devers and no one else, the latter volubly, plausibly, incessantly protesting against the imputation as utterly unjust, indeed, as utterly outrageous, and moving heaven and earth to unload the entire blame on the shoulders of the absent and defenceless.
Now, as a rule this is an easy matter, almost as easy in the army as out of it, and had his accuser been any other captain in the entire field column, poor Davies might indeed have been prejudged; but with Devers it was different. His idiosyncrasies were notorious. His whole mental and moral fabric was one of antagonism to his fellows in general and his seniors in particular. It was said, and generally said, of him that the mere fact that everybody liked or respected aman was enough to set Devers dead against him. The fact that Mr. Davies had thrown up his graduating leave and sought instant service in the field as a result of the tragedies of the early days of the campaign had won him instantly the interest and good will of officers and men throughout the entire command. He started well, so to speak, and his quiet, reticent, observant, but unobtrusive ways favorably impressed his regimental comrades and led to many a commendatory remark from veteran officers. But there was universal comment, half humorous, half commiserating, upon his assignment to Devers's troop, and Devers knew it. He treated the young man with cool civility at first, but became speedily captious and irritating, rebuking him openly in the presence and hearing of other officers and of enlisted men for matters for which he was not justly blamable. Old Winthrop spoke to Devers about it one day, and spoke seriously. "You'll disgust that young gentleman with the service if you're not careful, Devers," said he, "and be the means of depriving us of a good officer."
"That's just where I'm compelled to differ with you, colonel," was the response, and it was this propensity for differing that had led to his sobriquet. "I've had constant and daily opportunity of observing him, and he's mistaken his vocation. That young man should be a missionary or a Sunday-school superintendent. He's too pious for Indian fighting, which is the only thing expected of us."
But for weeks after there was no Indian fighting. What had become of the swarms of red warriors that had swooped upon the front, flank, and rear earlier inthe campaign no one could say. Their trails led all over the northwest, and the pursuing column pushed on night and day in dust and sun-glare, in mud and rain, in pelting hail-storm and darkness, and never once until late in the autumn could they again come within striking distance. By that time the jaunty riders of the early spring-tide were worn to skeletons; the mettlesome horses—those that were left—barely able to stagger through weakness, exhaustion, and starvation. Then like prairie wolves the warriors closed once more about the jaded flanks, waiting, watching every chance of picking off the stragglers. Just one day did Differs's troop get under fire,—a long way from under, said satirical subalterns of a command that sustained some losses,—but so scientifically did the captain handle his men that not a trooper or horse was scratched. Mr. Davies on this occasion commanded a platoon, dismounted on the skirmish line. It was his first affair, and he kept his appropriate thirty paces in rear of his dispersed men to watch and direct their fire, expecting that the enemy would charge or attack or do something, he didn't know just what. He simply behaved as he had been taught at skirmish drill at the Point,—was ready to do his full duty, but having no experience in Indian battle, thought it his business to wait orders, which was precisely what Differs had told him to do, until attacked. All the same, when others twitted Devers on the fact that his troop "didn't seem to get in," that officer did not hesitate to respond that they'd have to settle that with their admiration, Mr. Davies, who was commanding the fighting line, but probably wasn't done saying his prayers. There wasa lively, rattling skirmish next morning between the rear-guard and the Indians, and at one time things looked as though the thinned battalion of their comrades of the —th might be cut off, and some of Devers's regiment thought the rearmost troops ought to be deployed in support of the fellows who were fighting off the warriors, who came charging after them over wave after wave of prairie. But Devers couldn't see it in that light. He was bringing up the rear of his own regiment. Indeed, not until the fatal day of theirdébouchementfrom the Bad Lands and sighting the broad valley of the Ska had Devers's men felt the sting of Indian lead, and then he was not with them.
And now while the worn and ragged commands lay basking day after day in the warm October sunshine at Camp Recovery, and men for the time had nothing to do but eat and sleep and discuss the events of the late campaign, the Eleventh was in turmoil over the tragedy of Antelope Springs.
When Davies was finally found that morning by Warren's scouts, he was lying in a depression of the prairie at least a mile to the west of the point where that long—that fatally long—curtaining ridge sank into the general level of the valley, and therefore full four and a half or five miles away from the point where his little detachment had died fighting, and very nearly two miles south, or west of south, of the point where he and McGrath had last been seen by their comrades,—just at dusk,—just at what looked to be the comb or crest of the ridge from the point where Devers had halted his troop and made the dramatic display of his dead. But what looked to be the crest from the westwas in point of fact not the crest at all. Invisible to the halted command, there lay still farther over to the eastward, where the spur seemed to broaden considerably, a wave that overtopped the westward edge by a dozen feet or more. Supposing from Devers's account that the trail of his command could be found distinctly marked along the westward slope and close under the crest, Warren was searching there with his scouts when attracted by the signals two miles to the south announcing probably important discoveries. He had found some Indian pony tracks, also those of one shod horse, but dropped everything else to go at once in answer to the signals. Then they had borne the unconscious officer southeastward toward the clump of trees at the Springs, placed him in the ambulance, and then came a courier from the general himself directing Major Warren to report to him in person at Birchwood, thirty miles away, and the major went, the ambulance following. And so, to his unspeakable relief, Captain Devers was left once more the senior officer on the ground to continue the search for McGrath, and in the conduct of this he took excellent care that only himself and one or two of his chosen should search any portion of the prairie that might involve running over the trail west of the ravine which he had made the previous day. The scouts and searching parties were kept in the valley and in the timber along the river, not on the back track.Thatsearch Devers conducted in person, and made a rough topographical sketch of the neighborhood as it appeared in his eyes and as he wished it to appear in those of others. Just before dusk, sounding the rally far up the spur, herode to the point where his two hunters had met their fate, and there assembled his men, gathering some fifty troopers, and thence led them in column of twos southward close under the spur and well to the east of the ravine which on the previous day had partially caused his wide departure from the line of direction indicated to him by the major. It was therefore very late, and his men were very tired,—much too tired to sit up and talk,—when they got to camp.
Pursuing its homeward march, the main column under the general commanding had gone on through the wild hill country, and not until nearly a month had elapsed was the scene of the tragedy revisited. The officer who went thither with an escort, and Captain Devers and Corporal Finucane and Troopers Boyd and Howard, had had pointed out to him the scene of the massacre itself, then, far up the spur, the spot where Mullen and Phillips were shot, and from thence the trail of Davies's little squad as it marched away on its fatal errand toward the Springs, and the trails of the various parties. Off to the southwest went Truman in chase of the murderers,—off after Truman went Calvert and the invalid corps,—off straight to the south—to the river—along the westward side of the ridge, far to the east of the ravine and close under the crest, went another; that, he was assured, was the trail made by Captain Devers. Many of these trails, said the officer's report, were now dim and nearly effaced, "but there can be no mistaking that of Captain Devers along the spur,—it is quite sharp and clear. It isn't more than five hundred yards from the point where Mr. Davies and Sergeant McGrathhad disappeared over the ridge to the nearest point on the trail, where—while Captain Devers couldn't be sure—his troopers are positive Mr. Davies had left to return to his men, and where they are also positive the captain had again enjoined upon him the necessity of vigilance, and reminded him that as it was growing dark he could no longer see, and must therefore depend upon his lieutenant to keep him informed of what was going on over on that side, as under his new orders he, Captain Devers, must now go on and bury his dead. Mr. Davies and his sergeant must have seen the attack just as soon as they got back across the ridge, but what they did and why they had not instantly warned their captain remains a mystery. At all events it would seem that Captain Devers," so concluded the report, "had conscientiously carried out his instructions, though he might perhaps, if unburdened with his dead, have kept higher up towards the crest, and should perhaps have detached a couple of flankers to keep communication, and so relied less on Lieutenant Davies, who was at least inexperienced in frontier warfare." The officer could not understand how it was that in broad daylight Major Warren when searching had failed to see Devers's trail. It certainly was there. And so the old, old story was told again. The absent it was who had to take care of himself, and Devers was inferentially "whitewashed" and Davies held to explain, when convalescent, and McGrath to substantiate his statement if McGrath ever again turned up on earth. Otherwise there could be no substantiation until the judgment day. Now, McGrath, lost in the thick of an Indian fight, was as apt to be foundalive, or found at all, as a pin in a mill-pond. Davies, broken by the campaign and sore smitten with brain fever, had but one chance in a hundred of recovery. All things considered, therefore, it may be conceded that Captain Devers was a very gifted man.
But Devers wasn't the first man, or the last, to count on another fellow's death or disappearance to cloak his own crime. It gave him a queer turn to hear that Cranston and his wife and niece had undertaken the building up of the absent patient. He hated Cranston,—his junior as an officer, but infinitely his superior as a soldier. He feared him when word came out to the homeward marching command that Cranston said Davies was on the mend and would soon be on the war-path. But he drew another long breath of relief when there reached them the news that General Sheridan himself had telegraphed directing Davies to hasten home, that his mother was dying. When next that young officer appeared upon the scene and reported for duty, it was in midwinter at Fort Scott, a big, brilliant, sunshiny post, the head-quarters of an infantry regiment, the station of a cavalry battalion, whose major, Warren, had gone on long leave abroad, whose senior captain, Devers, was its commanderpro tempore, whose other captains, Cranston, Truman, and Hay, were present for duty; so were most of their subalterns, so were most of the infantry officers, so were the wives and families of nine-tenths of the array, for it was a much-married garrison, and there was not a little talk and speculation when it was announced that Lieutenant Davies would come accompanied by his bride.
"The main objection to Fort Scott," said Winthrop, when one of his battalions was finally ordered thither, "is that it's too fashionable for my taste. What this regiment needs now is more drill and less dinners." He loved to be epigrammatic. The head-quarters, staff, band, and six troops had taken station at a big frontier post, two other troops went with the lieutenant-colonel to a second post, so that that officer could have a command, and two more with the senior major, but the Interior Department had moved some thousands of the lately hostile Indians down close to the line of the railway, where they could be more readily fed and cared for. Great thereat was the alarm of the settlers, and great the protest of the cattlemen, whose steers now roamed all over the prairies within tempting distance of the restless young braves across the reservation line. Scott was not a cavalry post at all. It had no suitable stables, and only infantry ordinarily had been stationed there since the completion of the railway, and thither Devers had been sent when the final dissolution of the field column took place, and no one of the field officers wanted him in his command, and he preferred to be as usual,—alone. But then came the move of the Indians and the cry of inadequate protection. Tintop had to part with two of his pet companies—Cranston's and Hay's—at the reluctant orders from department head-quarters. Still a fourthhad to be sent, and Truman was taken from the lieutenant-colonel and Major Warren despatched from head-quarters to Scott as commander of this cavalry battalion or squadron at the very moment when he was clinching his arrangements for long leave of absence. He went, commanded a month, but persisted in his application. Long years of service entitled him to the indulgence and it was granted, but neither the lieutenant-colonel nor senior major would consent to give up the command of a post to go to Scott as a subordinate to old Colonel Peleg Stone, an infantry veteran of many a war, both in garrison and in the field. A shout of merriment was heard in the camp of the cavalry when the original orders were read distributing the troops to stations. "Old Pegleg's got his match at last," was the comment of the knowing ones. "He can't worry Devers half as much as Devers will worry him." Scott was the innermost and easternmost of all the stations to which the three regiments of cavalry were distributed. The big, bustling, growing cattle town of Braska lay but a few miles away. Thriving and populous ranches surrounded the post on every side, replacing the buffalo, antelope, and deer of the decade gone by with countless herds of horned cattle. Braska sported a theatre, an assembly-room, restaurants, concert-halls and banks—of all kinds. It had the unhallowed features of the average frontier metropolis and some of the more agreeable traits of an Eastern city. It contained a very large number of abandoned characters who were not all half as bad as they were painted, and quite an array of citizens of high repute who were not all as good as they looked. As betweenbad morals and bad manners, society seems to find it easier to forgive the former, and most of the Eastern men who had come West to embark in business had charming manners and were welcome visitors at the fort, welcome companions at every party, picnic, and dance, most hospitable entertainers in their turn when the fort people went to town. During the long battle summer Fort Scott was garrisoned by Colonel "Pegleg," the chaplain, the doctors, the adjutant and quartermaster, the band, one company of his reliable old corps, the Fortieth Foot, and the wives and children of pretty much all the rest of the regiment. Famous campaigners were they of the Fortieth. They hadn't missed a chance, winter or summer, for ten long years. They had tramped, scouted, picketed, escorted, explored, surveyed, fought and bled all over the great Northwest, some of the officers being so incessantly abroad as to find themselves quite ill at ease at home, many of their ladies declaring it a difficult matter to know their lords on the rare occasions of their return, some few, indeed, being accused of having forgotten them entirely in their absence. These were days the army little knew before and will never know again,—the decade that followed the war of the rebellion. Too old to take the field himself, the veteran colonel at least could take his ease at home, and was quite placid and content when he had the band to play for him, one company to guard and "police" the post, and a host of women and children, bereft of their natural protectors, fluttering about him. When all his companies were home he had to spend hours at his desk overhauling ration and post and forage returns, and ashe was essentially a "red-tape" soldier,—one who knew the regulations and recognized nothing else,—he made in busier times his own life and those of his officers something of a burden. The summer had been lovely at Scott. Thrice a week on sunshiny afternoons the band played in its kiosk, and the gallants from town or the neighboring ranches drove in with their stylish "turnouts" and called on the ladies at the fort or took them driving over the hard prairie roads, or danced with them on the waxed floor of the airy assembly-room. "Really," said some of the ladies, "if it hadn't been for our friends from town and the ranches I don't know what we should have done." What some of them—ay, many of them—did was to gather their little broods about them morn and night and pray to the Father in heaven for the life and safety of the father in the field,—to lead pure and patient and faithful lives, striving to keep their little house in order against his coming, to teach his children to honor and love his name, to guard that name from any and every possibility of reproach. What others did was to accept most liberally the parting injunction, "not to mope, but try to have a good time and be brave and cheerful," while the soldier went his way. From this it was an easy step to accept as liberally the proffered attention of the gentlemen with the charming manners from Braska and Braska County. It was a gay post, a fashionable post, a frivolous post, for the tone of garrison life depends immeasurably upon its social leader, the wife of the commanding officer, and Mrs. Stone was but little older than her husband's daughters. The latter were East at school or visiting their ownmother's relatives. The former had been a belle at home and was glad to continue her belledom on the plains. There were times when Mrs. Stone and the colonel lent the countenance of their presence to charming little dinners and lunches, or after theatre to suppers at the leading restaurant in town. There were times when some of the ladies accepted refreshment there without such official accompaniment. "Really, one had to drive very frequently to Braska even if there was no actual shopping, for there was nowhere else to go," was an oft-heard remark at Scott that summer. But breathes there a woman who cannot find excuse for shopping? And shopping was hungry work and the drive was long, the air keen, bracing, appetizing. What more natural than that Mr. Courtenay and Mr. Fowler of the bank, Mr. Willett or Mr. Burtis of the Cattle Club,—such charming dancers these,—should sometimes, indeed frequently, suggest just a little bite, just a hot bird and a cold bottle at Cresswell's? Such delicious salads as he could concoct out of even canned shrimp or lobster, such capital oysters as came to him, fresh, three times a week from Baltimore, such delicious champagne, so carefully iced. What possible harm could there be in Mrs. Flight and Mrs. Darling and Mrs. Watson's going together, mind you, and lunching with their friends? "Why, the ladies at Fort Russell all do the same thing every time they go to Cheyenne!" said Mrs. Flight, when taken to task about it. "When I was up there visiting Fanny Turner last month we thoughtnothingof it!" All the same Mrs. Wright and Mrs. Leonard and others of their standard not only wouldn't go driving alonewith the gentlemen from town, but declined to go to Cresswell's with anybody. And Mrs. Wright's bonny face flushed and her eyes flashed when she said why. As to what the ladies of the —th did out at Russell, that was not her business. "Nevertheless," said Mrs. Wright, "I'll warrant you that Mrs. Stannard, or Mrs. Freeman, or Mrs. Truscott did nothing of the kind, and I don't care what Mrs. Flight says or Mrs. Turner does."
And then the whole regiment came flocking home, and there was joy and gladness unspeakable in many a little army household and some modification thereof in others, and presently Devers and his troop arrived after a long, long march, and Devers began giving "Pegleg" something more to think about. The resources of the quartermaster's department were insufficient to fill that ambitious dragoon's requisitions. There wasn't anything he didn't want for his men, his horses, or himself, and the next thing Pegleg knew he was involved just as he was told he would be in a voluminous warfare with the troop commander, and was minded of a saying attributed to the wag of the —th Cavalry, a certain Lieutenant Blake, who knew Devers well and shared the universal opinion of him. An officer had talked of challenging Devers in by-gone days when vestiges of the code still lingered, but Blake scouted the idea. "The only pistol he can fight with is the epistle," said Blake. So Blake was another detestation of Devers, and doubtless for good reason. He was forever getting a laugh on the captain when they happened to come together, and, contentious and critical as he was, the big dragoon couldn't abide beinglaughed at. Somebody once referred to Devers as reminding her of a Hercules on horseback, which prompted Blake to respond, "Hercules! yes, by Jove, of the Farnese variety," whereat there was a guffaw among the men present who knew anything of art, and a general titter on every hand, for no one was ignorant of Devers's wide physical departure from artistic lines. But Tom Hollis and others of his ilk only caught the "far knees" part of it, which, however, was quite enough. Blake would have been a comfort to old Stone this breezy, wintry December, but in default of native wit to aid him wrestle with his acute antagonist, the colonel begged that if only one more cavalryman should be sent to the post in response to the new outcry for protection, he should come in the shape of a field officer to straighten out Devers. "He's got," said he, "too damn much individuality for me."
And not only had more cavalry come, but the major had come and gone. If anything, said Stone, Devers was more unbearable than before, as he now had over two hundred men to represent instead of a little more than fifty. Fort Scott was in the height of the holiday festivities, Captain and Mrs. Cranston with Miss Loomis and the boys were just settling into the new quarters when Lieutenant and Mrs. Davies were announced asen routeto join.
And now arose a serious question. Who was to receive and entertain the new-comers until they were able to furnish and move into their own quarters? If any one, his own captain should be the first to tender hospitality, but Captain Devers made no move whatsoever. He had a large and interesting family of his own,which was sufficient excuse. There were now two classmates of Davies at the post, both in the Fortieth, but they were youngsters, only a few months in service, who roomed together in the upper story of old Number Three, and lived at the bachelor mess, which comprised the contract doctor, the sutler's clerk, and certain of the quartermaster's employés. The boys would give "Dad" the best they had and gladly, but they hadn't anything. Even the iron bunks on which they slept were borrowed from the hospital. "How can a fellow invite a bride to occupy his one room when he don't own C. and G. E. enough to furnish a hen-coop?" And by C. and G. E., the army abbreviation for camp and garrison equipage, the youngster meant to imply that he had no furniture beyond a camp-chair and a trunk. Cranston himself would gladly have taken them in but for two reasons,—he had not a vacant room under his roof, and Margaret did not seem to wish it. It must be confessed that there had been an outburst heard only by him—confided only to him—when Mrs. Cranston received, a few weeks after the letter which sadly told of Davies's mother's death, the brief and possibly constrained note from her late patient announcing his approaching marriage to Miss Quimby, who he said had been utterly devoted to poor mother during her declining days and those of her brief but painful illness. Margaret could not bear to speak of it to Miss Loomis. It was Agatha herself who calmly asked, "And when is he to be married?" In answering Mrs. Cranston found it impossible to conceal that she thought it both quixotic and unnecessary. Miss Loomis quietly but decidedly took theopposite view. No honorable man could have done otherwise. They had long been engaged. It was not only their own but his mother's choice. She was young, beautiful, deeply in love with him. He had long been in love with her. Doubtless they would be very happy, as they deserved to be. Margaret flared up again: "I believe he's doing it as he does everything else,—from sheer sense of duty, and that you advised him to." A random shot which went nearer the mark than the archer supposed, for Miss Loomis flushed in an instant, and made no reply. "Well!" said Mrs. Cranston, "she longs only to share the humblest cot, the rudest habitation with her beloved. We'll see how she'll take to frontier life."
A detachment of thirty troopers had been ordered kept at the new agency eighty miles to the north, and thither to his supreme disgust had Lieutenant Boynton of the Eleventh been banished in command, with the promise of relief soon after Christmas. Cranston wrote asking permission to use the lieutenant's vacated rooms for the new-comers, saying he would provide servants and such fittings as would be needed. Boynton wired back yes, of course, and the dreary bachelor den was made as habitable as Mrs. Cranston's busy hands and brain could make it. Other kindly women lent their aid, as well as pillow shams, towels, comforters, bed linen, lamps, wardrobe, bureau, rocking-chairs, lounge, etc. The Davieses were to breakfast and lunch with the Cranstons each day, and to be invited round to dinner until their own cot was ready. And in thus wise did traditional army hospitality vindicate itself. There was that still unexplainedsomething hanging over Davies's head, but as yet he knew nothing of it,—had never heard of the allegations so vehemently, volubly laid at his door when Captain Devers had his own portals to clear. Nor was the latter now given to faintest reference to the matter. This at first glance may seem inconsistent, yet has its explanation. As matters now stood there would be no further inquiry into that wretched business. If Davies were once to know his good name had been attacked, and that his explanation of his failure to reach his men or give notice of their plight had been aspersed, somebody might put him up to demanding a court of inquiry. Devers had even concluded it a diplomatic move to treat the lieutenant with a courtesy hitherto withheld. Mrs. Devers was already instructed to be particularly civil to the bride.
Another thing had Devers done, and done most diplomatically. Realizing his own narrow escape and suspecting his unpopularity in the regiment, though little dreaming (which of us does?) how ill he was really regarded, the temporary battalion commander began making friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, so to speak, and exerting himself to show his juniors how courteous and considerate he could be in that capacity. As a general rule it is the subaltern who makes the greatest outcry against the disciplinary measures of his captain, or the captain who most vehemently condemns the policy of his colonel, who proves in turn the most inconsiderate and annoying of superiors. But Devers was shrewd,—"wise in his generation." He knew his reign must be short at best. He felt that he had a difficult rôle to play. He hadalways been an outspoken "company rights" man as opposed to the federalizing policy of the battalion or regimental commander. He had bitterly resented in the past any or all interference with his management of his troop, yet had been an unsparing critic of everybody else's system, and, as we have seen, a nimble and active opponent of anything like control on the part of his commander. Of him it had been predicted that he would immediately begin to "boss" the entire battalion and require his brother captains to conform to his own ways of conducting troop affairs. He had always made it a point to try to be cordial to other fellows' lieutenants, but was never liked by his own. Mr. Hastings cordially hated him, but Hastings had his peculiarities, too. As for the captains, Hay and Devers hadn't been on speaking terms for two years. Truman could not like him, yet had had no open rupture. Cranston and he were personally and officially antagonistic. One and all, the officers regarded this detail under his command as one of the most unpromising of their experience, and could hardly contain themselves when Warren left. As for Warren, his relations with the senior troop commander had been of the stiffest and most formal character ever since the close of the campaign.
But just as he had baffled his own commanders in the past, so now did Devers baffle all. Far from interfering or assuming control, he did so only when in actual command at mounted inspection or drill, and then in the most courteous way of which he was capable. He declined to overhaul or inspect the quarters or stables of the other troops, which, as battalioncommander, it was really his duty to do at least once a month. "I have always held that the captain should not be spied upon," he said, "and I have too much confidence in the ability and sense of duty of you gentlemen to differ now."
Hay was amazed, so was everybody up at head-quarters. Colonel Tintop didn't know what to make of it. Cranston presently decided he had solved the mystery, but kept his theory to himself. Truman, a little later, arrived at a like conclusion, and was for giving it abroad, but Cranston counselled reticence. An appeal to Truman's regimental pride was always effective.
"Never mind what's at the bottom of it all, old man. We're getting along smoothly and swimmingly, just like a happy family. Let's keep up the illusion and fool these fellows of the Fortieth awhile longer," said he, and Truman promised. But these fellows of the Fortieth were not so easily fooled. They had been on the campaign and knew a thing or two themselves, and as Devers and the adjutant speedily locked horns again and Devers said some unjustifiable things, the infantry retorted, and the infantry weapon had a longer range. It was the very day of Davies's arrival with his bride that this smouldering fire burst forth. Devers was in the adjutant's office snarling about the neglect of the post quartermaster to pay any attention to his requisitions. Now, it was an aide-de-camp and a cavalry officer who had been sent to the scene of the affair at Antelope Springs to compare the situation there with Devers's description and rough sketch, and a cavalry officer who had written what was practicallya vindication of Devers's course. Stung by the language of the captain, the adjutant, himself a veteran soldier of years of war service such as Devers had never rendered, looked up from his desk and sharply asked what was Devers's complaint at the expense of his regimental comrade,—the quartermaster.
"What I mean," said Devers, "is simply this: that just so long as we have to appeal to an infantry staff officer I can never get my stables whitewashed."
"We-l-l," said Mr. Leonard, looking his man squarely in the eye, "I am inclined to think that the cavalry staff officer is sometimes given to too much 'whitewashing,' and if an infantryman had been sent instead of a cavalryman the most discreditable affair of the late campaign would not have been, as it was, whitewashed entirely."
"If somebody had whitewashed old Differs's face he couldn't have turned a sicker shade," said Tommy Dot, the only other infantryman present at the moment. Cranston was there, so was Devers's own lieutenant, Mr. Hastings, and the thing couldn't be overlooked. The adjutant was as big and powerful a man as Devers, more so if anything, and his black eyes were snapping like coals, and his mouth was rigid as the jaws of a steel-trap as he rose and squarely confronted the irate captain, and Devers knew and knew well that more than his match was there before him.
"This is something you'll have to answer for, Mr. Leonard," said he, in tones that trembled, despite every effort at self-control. "You are witness to the language, Captain Cranston, Mr. Hastings."
"The language will be publicly repeated, sir," saidLeonard, "if you desire more witnesses." But by this time the colonel at his desk in the adjoining room seemed to catch a whiff of the impending crisis, and could be heard calling his adjutant. "I'll return in a moment, sir," said Leonard, and he did, but when he returned Devers was gone.
And now the questions were, what will Devers do about it? and what will Davies say when he hears what Devers has done? There could be no fight, except on paper, for that was Devers's only field. He had gone forth in evident wrath and excitement, bidding Cranston and Hastings to follow. Hastings as his subaltern went without a word. Cranston said he had come to transact certain business and would follow when that was done. Devers was tramping up and down in front of his quarters; Hastings, with embarrassed mien and moody face, leaning, his hands in his pockets, against the fence.
"What do you think of that as an insult to the cavalry?" asked Devers of his junior, as Cranston with his usual deliberation came finally to the spot.
"I think it provoked, sir, by your slur on the infantry."
"I merely generalized," answered Devers. "He insulted both Archer and me." Archer, by the way, was the aide-de-camp in question.
"Well, then I presume Archer and you can settle it," said Cranston, coolly.
"It's evident your sympathy for your patient has blinded your sense of justice to—to the rest of the regiment. I looked for more loyalty from you, Cranston."
"It is my loyalty to the regiment and my sense of justice that refuse to be blinded by you, Devers. I cannot reconcile Mr. Davies's story with your report, and I do not see how Archer could, if indeed he ever saw Davies's story or heard of it."
"Captain Cranston, yourprotégémay thank heaven that I haven't yet preferred charges against him for that affair," said Devers, white with passion.
"It has always been my belief, Captain Devers, that charges should have been preferred, and the sooner that it is done the sooner will Davies be cleared. I presume that you can want nothing further of me." And Cranston walked calmly on.
And that evening the bride arrived. "The Parson's" classmates drove over to the railway to meet the happy pair and escort them to the post. The ladies, one and all, had done their best to brighten up the absent Boynton's quarters so as to make a fitting habitation for the new-comers to their ranks. The officers had passed the word, as was the expression, to keep from Davies, for the present at least, all mention of these affairs in which his name was involved. Somebody at division head-quarters must have had an eye on the situation, for there came a letter from a trusted aide of the lieutenant-general to old "Pegleg" reminding him of the gratitude we all owed the young man's noble father, and bidding him lend a helping hand to Davies, and see that his life wasn't made a burden to him by his troop commander. The general evidently knew of Devers's idiosyncrasies, but Mrs. Devers herself came early to join the circle of helping hands, and announced that she would be there to welcomethe bride to her temporary nest; and she was there in the crisp, cold starlight when the ambulance with its spanking team drove briskly into the big quadrangle, and in warm furs and happy blushes and half-shy delight, a very pretty girl was lifted from the dark interior and presented to the little knot of hospitable friends awaiting her coming.
Within the week of their arrival, thanks to the energetic movements of Mr. Davies, the new couple were established in Number 12, the outermost of the long row of officers' quarters, the one nearest the open prairie and farthest from the official and social centre of the post, but the best they could hope for on the rank of a junior lieutenant in a crowded garrison. Even this roost was not to be entirely their own, for Acting Assistant Surgeon Burroughs occupied the rear room aloft, and had he chosen to fight for his rights, would probably have been accorded the entire floor, but like everybody else he was eager to make everything pleasant for the bride. Davies had expected no such luck, and had duly explained to her that a combined dining-, sitting-, and bedroom, and an out-door kitchen was absolutely all that they could expect, and more than they were really entitled to. But Almira had enthusiastically declared, as she had written, that even an Indian lodge in some vast wilderness shewould rather share with her Percy than a palace with a prince royal. That there was a halo of romance about this marriage was something everybody in the Fortieth had heard and many in the Eleventh believed. All manner of theories and not a few stories had been put in circulation, and no end of questions propounded of Captain Cranston's household—who were believed to know all the facts—and not a few of the fair bride herself, who showed no unreadiness to enter into particulars, but had evidently been cautioned to curb her confidences. Taking a leaf from the journalism of the day, let us congratulate the reader on having now laid before him or her the first and only authentic record of the facts in the case,—let us proudly await the commendation due their herald.
It was no part of Percy Davies's plan when he left the roof of his devoted nurses at Cameron to return to the regiment within two months a married man, but other forces had been at work. A halo of heroism had been thrown about his head by the events of the summer. The papers of his State had made much of his prompt and soldierly tender of service. It was before the day of illustrated daily journalism, or his picture might have appeared in several papers, all, presumably, copies from the same photograph, and no two of them recognizably alike. According to local predictions he was on the high-road to fame, rank, and promotion, and Almira's romance was redoubled, and her importance in the community, in her own eyes at least, immeasurably enhanced. One paper indeed had referred poetically to the lovely bride from whose entwining arms at the call of duty the heroicyouth had torn himself, and the pen-picture drawn of Almira was as flattering as the wood-cut might have been frightful. Then something occurred that turned her head as nothing had before. Who should write to her but rich Aunt Almira, her own dear dead mother's long-talked-of sister, now the wife of the great railway magnate, and Aunt Almira urged her niece to come and visit her, and Almira went, as pretty a village maid as ever set foot in a Pullman car; but Aunt Almira looked aghast at the rural cut of her garments, even though she gasped with envy over her complexion. She drove her lovely niece forthwith to a great mart where all manner of feminine wear was in readiness for immediate donning, and Almira was in a heaven of bliss and her aunt in corresponding spell of complacency over the improvement instantly effected. This, however, was only a temporary arrangement. To her own milliner, mantua-makers and modistes, and what not, the happy, blushing girl was next transported, and Urbana looked upon her with envy and delight when at the close of that changeful moon she was restored to friends and fireside. Aunt Almira had given her niece a party, to which came famous officers of the army, stationed in the city, to say nice things to her about her hero lieutenant and honeyed words about herself. There was a reception at which three cavaliers appeared in blue and gold, with medals on their broad chests, great braids and loops of glittering cord pendent from their armored shoulders. (Percy at that time, in the rags of his first uniform and a shocking bad hat and the wreck of a pair of soldier boots, cold and wet, faint and starving, was staggering throughthe Bad Lands, dragging his skeleton horse behind him.) A great military band was playing thrilling waltz music, and a young lieutenant-colonel swung her twice around the whirling parlor and helped her to champagne and praised her waltzing, which he declared perfect,—and indeed she had enjoyed excellent teaching, but, alas! at the hands of Powlett, not Percy, who would not dance at all. Yes, the aide-de-camp helped her to champagne and more flattery. There was a military wedding in a great cathedral church one evening where some of Percy's classmates in glittering uniforms served as ushers and crowded about her to talk of "Dad," as they called him, and to dance with her and marvel among themselves later at her beauty, her unsophistication, and at her being his choice. She went back to Urbana at the end of the month, believing army life to be one long round of balls, parties, music, dancing, champagne,—army men heroic gallants in gorgeous attire who danced divinely and said the sweetest things ever whispered into dainty ears. She went back with Aunt Almira's promise to provide still more raiment for hertrousseau, and finally with Aunt Almira's tearful tale that her heart, too, was with the Eleventh, wherein her own beloved boy, her idolized black sheep, was a trooper serving his country on a private's pay and under the name of Brannan; and then, with a start, Almira bethought her of certain wild, raving letters that she had left hidden at home,—letters she had never spoken of to anybody,—letters that had come to her from time to time in the spring and early summer and then suddenly ceased, as Percy's had, entirely, for there were long weeks thatbattle year when the field column was cut off from all communication with friends and home, and these letters, too, had told of Brannan,—told things she would not, could not tell Aunt Almira,—could not indeed tell anybody, for her letters, though signed Bertie, were written by another trooper, whose address was Howard.
After such joys under Aunt Almira's roof, life at home became insupportable. Mrs. Quimby said it was Almira herself, not the life. Clash followed clash; there came sneers, tears, squabbles, rows, and at last practical banishment. Old Quimby could stand it no longer. Almira went to live with her prospective mother-in-law, who was not sorry, and who, hearing for weeks only her side of the story, believed all she said about home troubles and their inciting cause. She could not hear enough about Percy, and so who so welcome as Almira, who never tired of the topic, or of the telling of the officers she had met and all they had said of him and of his spirited conduct. Even a great general, she said, had been presented, and before all the company had drawn her to his broad-sashed, button-studded bosom and kissed her mantling cheek, as was his way with every pretty girl he met,—Almira did not mention that. And then these two women, invalid mother and impatient daughter-in-law elect, were drawn closely together by tidings of Percy's illness, Percy's careful nursing, etc., then of Percy's slow convalescence. They could not go to him, because Mrs. Davies was far too feeble. Almira raved about going,—wanted to go,—wept, implored, and ranted, but her father was implacable and Mrs. Davies opposed. The latter was sure everything was being done that couldbe done and she needed Almira. But from the very first Almira was suspicious of Mrs. Cranston and Miss Loomis, jealous of their attention, fearful of their influence. Percy, she cried, not she, would prove faithless. She would gladly, willingly, eagerly fly to his side, nurse him night and day, dwell with him in bliss and a wigwam if need be; but he—he was cold—he was changing—he would prove faithless to his humble, adoring village maid, and then there would be nothing left for her but despair. Then as his convalescence progressed she became insistent and Mrs. Davies weaker. Almira poured forth her plaint to her aunt by letter. Aunt Almira gave another dinner, to which some of the staff were bidden, and a mellow symposium it was, and over the oft-replenished champagne glasses did the kindly woman tell of Mrs. Davies's craving to see her boy once more, and how the boy would ask no favors, though her husband, the magnate, offered to send to the lieutenant passes all the way from Cheyenne. Two Almiras prevailed, and the last month of the mother's life was blessed and gladdened by the presence of her devoted son. Almost the last promise asked of him was that there should be no delay in the marriage of her dear children, as she called them, though the poor soul had many a misgiving now as to whether Almira, after all, would prove a worthy helpmate for her earnest, duteous son. Indeed, she at one time had thought to ask that they might be united before her eyes, but Almira's wedding garment wasn't ready, and Almira, who had urged all speed, was not prepared for speed so great as that. She, too, secretly nourished the idea of a military wedding and a bigchurch. Davies never meant to retreat from his obligation, but he had hoped to make the girl fully understand what was before her,—what army life and its duties were really like,—but his every effort to talk with her gravely and earnestly met with reproach and tears. She didn't care what it was, all she asked was to share his lot, no matter how poor, how humble. It was he who, after for years making her love him so, was now doubting and distrusting her. She knew how it would be when those other women, instead of her, had been chosen to nurse and care for him. They had usurped her place. They had undermined her. That—that Miss Loomis whom he was holding up as a model to her—all this time! He'd break her heart, and she'd just go—anywhere except home—and die. She had no home. She had given up everybody—everything for him, and now he was tiring of her. Well, it was pretty trying, but Davies strove to explain and to undeceive. He didn't take her in his arms and kiss away her tears as he ought to have done, and plead and pet and soothe as she planned he should do, poor child. It wasn't his way. He strove to appeal to her judgment and to her common sense, but could not reach them. And then came to him the great sorrow of his mother's death, peaceful, placid, hopeful though it was,—and then when she was laid away and he faced the world again, he found that there were outstanding claims against the homestead of which, through motives of kindness, both his mother and himself had been kept in ignorance during her life. Unless he could pay regularly the interest on a large sum the old place his father loved must go. It hadever been Percy's plan to hold it, and in the fulness of time to return perhaps to take his father's place in the church, at any rate to strive to do so in the community. He had planned to lease it until he and Almira should be ready to go to housekeeping there if she remained faithful all these years, but now only by pinching could he hope to save it at all.