REACTION
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 it _can't_ be 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 Felicie 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 Felicie 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. What _could_ have 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 that _she_ had
done her _best_ to 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
son _could_ have 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 she _not_
have 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 the
_acequia_, 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 Brule 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."