what one must do—a commanding officer—isn’t it so, General? In this
war music we play on human instruments, and if a big chord comes out
stronger for the silence of a note, the note must be silenced—that’s
all. It’s cruel, but it’s fighting; it’s the game.”
The General, as if impressed with the tense words, did not respond, and
the other officers stared at the Colonel’s face, as carved, as stern
as if done in marble—a face from which the warm, strong heart seldom
shone, held back always by the stronger will.
The big, fresh-colored young Captain broke the silence. “Has the
General ever heard of the trick Morgan played on Sun Boy, sir?” he
asked.
“Tell the General, Captain Booth,” the Colonel said briefly, and the
Captain turned toward the higher officer.
“It was apropos of what the Colonel said of his inventive faculties,
General,” he began. “A year ago the youngster with a squad of ten men
walked into Sun Boy’s camp of seventy-five warriors. Morgan had made
quite a pet of a young Sioux, who was our prisoner for five months,
and the boy had taught him a lot of the language, and assured him that
he would have the friendship of the band in return for his kindness to
Blue Arrow—that was the chap’s name. So he thought he was safe; but it
turned out that Blue Arrow’s father, a chief, had got into a row with
Sun Boy, and the latter would not think of ratifying the boy’s promise.
So there was Morgan with his dozen men, in a nasty enough fix. He knew
plenty of Indian talk to understand that they were discussing what
they would do with him, and it wasn’t pleasant.
“All of a sudden he had an inspiration. He tells the story himself,
sir, and I assure you he’d make you laugh—Morgan is a wonderful
mimic. Well, he remembered suddenly, as I said, that he was a mighty
good ventriloquist, and he saw his chance. He gave a great jump like
a startled fawn, and threw up his arms and stared like one demented
into the tree over their heads. There was a mangy-looking crow
sitting up there on a branch, and Morgan pointed at him as if at
something marvellous, supernatural, and all those fool Indians stopped
pow-wowing and stared up after him, as curious as monkeys. Then to all
appearances, the crow began to talk. Morgan said they must have thought
that spirits didn’t speak very choice Sioux, but he did his best. The
bird cawed out: “‘Oh, Sun Boy, great chief, beware what you do!’
“And then the real bird flapped its wings and Morgan thought it was
going to fly, and he was lost. But it settled back again on the branch,
and Morgan proceeded to caw on:
“‘Hurt not the white man, or the curses of the gods will come upon Sun
Boy and his people.’
“And he proceeded to give a list of what would happen if the Indians
touched a hair of their heads. By this time the red devils were all
down on their stomachs, moaning softly whenever Morgan stopped cawing.
He said he quite got into the spirit of it, and would have liked to go
on some time, but he was beginning to get hoarse, and besides he was in
deadly terror for fear the crow would fly before he got to the point.
So he had the spirit order them to give the white men their horses and
turn them loose instanter; and just as he got all through, off went the
thing with a big flap and a parting caw on its own account. I wish I
could tell it as Morgan does—you’d think he was a bird and an Indian
rolled together. He’s a great actor spoiled, that lad.”
“You leave out a fine point, to my mind, Captain Booth,” the Colonel
said quickly. “About his going back.”
“Oh! certainly that ought to be told,” said the Captain, and the
General’s eyes turned to him again. “Morgan forgot to see young Blue
Arrow, his friend, before he got away, and nothing would do but that he
should go back and speak to him. He said the boy would be disappointed.
The men were visibly uneasy at his going, but that didn’t affect him.
He ordered them to wait, and back he went, pell-mell, all alone into
that horde of fiends. They hadn’t got over their funk, luckily, and he
saw Blue Arrow and made his party call and got out again all right. He
didn’t tell that himself, but Sergeant O’Hara made the camp ring with
it. He adores Morgan, and claims that he doesn’t know what fear is. I
believe it’s about so. I’ve seen him in a fight three times now. His
cap always goes off—he loses a cap every blessed scrimmage—and with
that yellow mop of hair, and a sort of rapt expression he gets, he
looks like a child saying its prayers all the time he is slashing and
shooting like a berserker.” Captain Booth faced abruptly toward the
Colonel. “I beg your pardon for talking so long, sir,” he said. “You
know we’re all rather keen about little Miles Morgan.”
The General lifted his head suddenly. “Miles Morgan?” he demanded. “Is
his name Miles Morgan?”
The Colonel nodded. “Yes. The grandson of the old Bishop—named for
him.”
“Lord!” ejaculated the General. “Miles Morgan was my earliest friend,
my friend until he died! This must be Jim’s son—Miles’s only child.
And Jim is dead these ten years,” he went on rapidly. “I’ve lost track
of him since the Bishop died, but I knew Jim left children. Why, he
married”—he searched rapidly in his memory—“he married a daughter of
General Fitzbrian’s. This boy’s got the church and the army both in
him. I knew his mother,” he went on, talking to the Colonel, garrulous
with interest. “Irish and fascinating she was—believed in fairies and
ghosts and all that, as her father did before her. A clever woman, but
with the superstitious, wild Irish blood strong in her. Good Lord! I
wish I’d known that was Miles Morgan’s grandson.”
The Colonel’s voice sounded quiet and rather cold after the General’s
impulsive enthusiasm. “You have summed him up by his antecedents,
General,” he said. “The church and the army—both strains are strong.
He is deeply religious.”
The General looked thoughtful. “Religious, eh? And popular? They don’t
always go together.”
Captain Booth spoke quickly. “It’s not that kind, General,” he said.
“There’s no cant in the boy. He’s more popular for it—that’s often so
with the genuine thing, isn’t it? I sometimes think”—the young Captain
hesitated and smiled a trifle deprecatingly—“that Morgan is much of
the same stuff as Gordon—Chinese Gordon; the martyr stuff, you know.
But it seems a bit rash to compare an every-day American youngster to
an inspired hero.”
“There’s nothing in Americanism to prevent either inspiration or
heroism that I know of,” the General affirmed stoutly, his fine old
head up, his eyes gleaming with pride of his profession.
Out through the open doorway, beyond the slapping tent-flap, the keen,
gray eyes of the Colonel were fixed musingly on two black points which
crawled along the edge of the dulled silver of the distant river—Miles
Morgan and Sergeant O’Hara had started.
* * * * *
“Sergeant!” They were eight miles out now, and the camp had disappeared
behind the elbow of Black Wind Mountain. “There’s something wrong with
your horse. Listen! He’s not loping evenly.” The soft cadence of eight
hoofs on earth had somewhere a lighter and then a heavier note; the ear
of a good horseman tells in a minute, as a musician’s ear at a false
note, when an animal saves one foot ever so slightly, to come down
harder on another.
“Yessirr. The Lieutenant’ll remimber ’tis the horrse that had a bit of
a spavin. Sure I thot ’twas cured, and ’tis the kindest baste in the
rigiment f’r a pleasure ride, sorr—that willin’ ’tis. So I tuk it. I
think ’tis only the stiffness at furrst aff. ’Twill wurruk aff later.
Plaze God, I’ll wallop him.” And the Sergeant walloped with a will.
But the kindest beast in the regiment failed to respond except with a
plunge and increased lameness. Soon there was no more question of his
incapacity.
Lieutenant Morgan halted his mount, and, looking at the woe-begone
O’Hara, laughed. “A nice trick this is, Sergeant,” he said, “to start
out on a trip to dodge Indians with a spavined horse. Why didn’t you
get a broomstick? Now go back to camp as fast as you can go; and that
horse ought to be blistered when you get there. See if you can’t really
cure him. He’s too good to be shot.” He patted the gray’s nervous head,
and the beast rubbed it gently against his sleeve, quiet under his hand.
“Yessirr. The Lieutenant’ll ride slow, sorr, f’r me to catch up on ye,
sorr?”
Miles Morgan smiled and shook his head. “Sorry, Sergeant, but there’ll
be no slow riding in this. I’ll have to press right on without you;
I must be at Massacre Mountain to-night to catch Captain Thornton
to-morrow.”
Sergeant O’Hara’s chin dropped. “Sure the Lieutenant’ll niver be
thinkin’ to g’wan alone—widout _me_?” and with all the Sergeant’s
respect for his superiors, it took the Lieutenant ten valuable
minutes to get the man started back, shaking his head and muttering
forebodings, to the camp.
It was quiet riding on alone. There were a few miles to go before
there was any chance of Indians, and no particular lookout to be kept,
so he put the horse ahead rapidly while he might, and suddenly he
found himself singing softly as he galloped. How the words had come
to him he did not know, for no conscious train of thought had brought
them; but they surely fitted to the situation, and a pleasant sense
of companionship, of safety, warmed him as the swing of an old hymn
carried his voice along with it.
“God shall charge His angel legions
Watch and ward o’er thee to keep;
Though thou walk through hostile regions,
Though in desert wilds thou sleep.”
Surely a man riding toward—perhaps through—skulking Indian hordes,
as he must, could have no better message reach him than that. The bent
of his mind was toward mysticism, and while he did not think the train
of reasoning out, could not have said that he believed it so, yet the
familiar lines flashing suddenly, clearly, on the curtain of his mind,
seemed to him, very simply, to be sent from a larger thought than his
own. As a child might take a strong hand held out as it walked over
rough country, so he accepted this quite readily and happily, as from
that Power who was never far from him, and in whose service, beyond
most people, he lived and moved. Low but clear and deep his voice went
on, following one stanza with its mate:
“Since with pure and firm affection
Thou on God hast set thy love,
With the wings of His protection
He will shield thee from above.”
The simplicity of his being sheltered itself in the broad promise of
the words.
Light-heartedly he rode on and on, though now more carefully; lying
flat and peering over the crests of hills a long time before he crossed
their tops; going miles perhaps through ravines; taking advantage of
every bit of cover where a man and a horse might be hidden; travelling
as he had learned to travel in three years of experience in this
dangerous Indian country, where a shrub taken for granted might mean a
warrior, and that warrior a hundred others within signal. It was his
plan to ride until about twelve—to reach Massacre Mountain, and there
rest his horse and himself till gray daylight. There was grass there
and a spring—two good and innocent things that had been the cause of
the bad, dark thing which had given the place its name. A troop under
Captain James camping at this point, because of the water and grass,
had been surprised and wiped out by five hundred Indian braves of the
wicked and famous Red Crow. There were ghastly signs about the place
yet; Morgan had seen them, but soldiers may not have nerves, and it was
good camping ground.
On through the valleys and half-way up the slopes, which rolled here
far away into a still wilder world, the young man rode. Behind the
distant hills in the east a glow like fire flushed the horizon. A
rim of pale gold lifted sharply over the ridge; a huge round ball of
light pushed faster, higher, and lay, a bright world on the edge of the
world, great against the sky—the moon had risen. The twilight trembled
as the yellow rays struck into its depths, and deepened, dying into
purple shadows. Across the plain zigzagged the pools of a level stream,
as if a giant had spilled handfuls of quicksilver here and there.
Miles Morgan, riding, drank in all the mysterious, wild, beauty, as a
man at ease; as open to each fair impression as if he were not riding
each moment into deeper danger, as if his every sense were not on
guard. On through the shining moonlight and in the shadow of the hills
he rode, and, where he might, through the trees, and stopped to listen
often, to stare at the hill-tops, to question a heap of stones or a
bush.
At last, when his leg-weary horse was beginning to stumble a bit, he
saw, as he came around a turn, Massacre Mountain’s dark head rising
in front of him, only half a mile away. The spring trickled its low
song, as musical, as limpidly pure as if it had never run scarlet. The
picketed horse fell to browsing and Miles sighed restfully as he laid
his head on his saddle and fell instantly to sleep with the light of
the moon on his damp, fair hair. But he did not sleep long. Suddenly
with a start he awoke, and sat up sharply, and listened. He heard the
horse still munching grass near him, and made out the shadow of its
bulk against the sky; he heard the stream, softly falling and calling
to the waters where it was going. That was all. Strain his hearing as
he might he could hear nothing else in the still night. Yet there was
something. It might not be sound or sight, but there was a presence, a
something—he could not explain. He was alert in every nerve. Suddenly
the words of the hymn he had been singing in the afternoon flashed
again into his mind, and, with his cocked revolver in his hand, alone,
on guard, in the midnight of the savage wilderness, the words came that
were not even a whisper:
“God shall charge His angel legions
Watch and ward o’er thee to keep;
Though thou walk through hostile regions,
Though in desert wilds thou sleep.”
He gave a contented sigh and lay down. What was there to worry
about? It was just his case for which the hymn was written. “Desert
wilds”—that surely meant Massacre Mountain, and why should he not
sleep here quietly, and let the angels keep their watch and ward? He
closed his eyes with a smile. But sleep did not come, and soon his eyes
were open again, staring into blackness, thinking, thinking.
It was Sunday when he started out on this mission, and he fell to
remembering the Sunday nights at home—long, long ago they seemed now.
The family sang hymns after supper always; his mother played, and the
children stood around her—five of them, Miles and his brothers and
sisters. There was a little sister with brown hair about her shoulders,
who always stood by Miles, leaned against him, held his hand, looked up
at him with adoring eyes—he could see those uplifted eyes now, shining
through the darkness of this lonely place. He remembered the big,
home-like room; the crackling fire; the peaceful atmosphere of books
and pictures; the dumb things about its walls that were yet eloquent
to him of home and family; the sword that his great-grandfather had
worn under Washington; the old ivories that another great-grandfather,
the Admiral, had brought from China; the portraits of Morgans of half
a dozen generations which hung there; the magazine table, the books
and books and books. A pang of desperate homesickness suddenly shook
him. He wanted them—his own. Why should he, their best-beloved, throw
away his life—a life filled to the brim with hope and energy and high
ideals—on this futile quest? He knew quite as well as the General or
the Colonel that his ride was but a forlorn hope. As he lay there,
longing so, in the dangerous dark, he went about the library at home
in his thought and placed each familiar belonging where he had known
it all his life. And as he finished, his mother’s head shone darkly
golden by the piano; her fingers swept over the keys; he heard all
their voices, the dear never-forgotten voices. Hark! They were singing
his hymn—little Alice’s reedy note lifted above the others—“God shall
charge His angel legions——”
Now! He was on his feet with a spring, and his revolver pointed
steadily. This time there was no mistaking—something had rustled in
the bushes. There was but one thing for it to be—Indians. Without
realizing what he did, he spoke sharply.
“Who goes there?” he demanded, and out of the darkness a voice answered
quietly:
“A friend.”
“A friend?” With a shock of relief the pistol dropped by his side, and
he stood tense, waiting. How might a friend be here, at midnight in
this desert? As the thought framed itself swiftly the leaves parted,
and his straining eyes saw the figure of a young man standing before
him.
“How came you here?” demanded Miles sternly. “Who are you?”
Even in the dimness he could see the radiant smile that answered him.
The calm voice spoke again: “You will understand that later. I am here
to help you.”
As if a door had suddenly opened into that lighted room of which he
dreamed, Miles felt a sense of tranquillity, of happiness stirring
through him. Never in his life had he known such a sudden utter
confidence in any one, such a glow of eager friendliness as this
half-seen, mysterious stranger inspired. “It is because I was lonelier
than I knew,” he said mentally. “It is because human companionship
gives courage to the most self-reliant of us;” and somewhere in the
words he was aware of a false note, but he did not stop to place it.
The low, even voice of the stranger spoke again. “There are Indians on
your trail,” he said. “A small band of Black Wolf’s scouts. But don’t
be troubled. They will not hurt you.”
“You escaped from them?” demanded Miles eagerly, and again the light of
a swift smile shone into the night. “You came to save me—how was it?
Tell me, so that we can plan. It is very dark yet, but hadn’t we better
ride? Where is your horse?”
He threw the earnest questions rapidly across the black night, and the
unhurried voice answered him. “No,” it said, and the verdict was not to
be disputed. “You must stay here.”
Who this man might be or how he came Miles could not tell, but this
much he knew, without reason for knowing it; it was some one stronger
than he, in whom he could trust. As the new-comer had said, it would
be time enough later to understand the rest. Wondering a little at his
own swift acceptance of an unknown authority, wondering more at the
peace which wrapped him as an atmosphere at the sound of the stranger’s
voice, Miles made a place for him by his side, and the two talked
softly to the plashing undertone of the stream.
Easily, naturally, Miles found himself telling how he had been
homesick, longing for his people. He told him of the big familiar room,
and of the old things that were in it, that he loved; of his mother;
of little Alice, and her baby adoration for the big brother; of how
they had always sung hymns together Sunday night; he never for a moment
doubted the stranger’s interest and sympathy—he knew that he cared to
hear.
“There is a hymn,” Miles said, “that we used to sing a lot—it was
my favorite; ’Miles’s hymn,’ the family called it. Before you came
to-night, while I lay there getting lonelier every minute, I almost
thought I heard them singing it. You may not have heard it, but it has
a grand swing. I always think”—he hesitated—“it always seems to me as
if the God of battles and the beauty of holiness must both have filled
the man’s mind who wrote it.” He stopped, surprised at his own lack of
reserve, at the freedom with which, to this friend of an hour, he spoke
his inmost heart.
“I know,” the stranger said gently. There was silence for a moment, and
then the wonderful low tones, beautiful, clear, beyond any voice Miles
had ever heard, began again, and it was as if the great sweet notes of
an organ whispered the words:
“God shall charge His angel legions
Watch and ward o’er thee to keep;
Though thou walk through hostile regions,
Though in desert wilds thou sleep.”
“Great Heavens!” gasped Miles. “How could you know I meant that? Why,
this is marvellous—why, this”—he stared, speechless, at the dim
outlines of the face which he had never seen before to-night, but
which seemed to him already familiar and dear beyond all reason. As
he gazed the tall figure rose, lightly towering above him. “Look!” he
said, and Miles was on his feet. In the east, beyond the long sweep of
the prairie, was a faint blush against the blackness; already threads
of broken light, of pale darkness, stirred through the pall of the air;
the dawn was at hand.
“We must saddle,” Miles said, “and be off. Where is your horse
picketed?” he demanded again.
But the strange young man stood still; and now his arm was stretched
pointing. “Look,” he said again, and Miles followed the direction with
his eyes.
From the way he had come, in that fast-growing glow at the edge of the
sky, sharp against the mist of the little river, crept slowly half
a dozen pin points, and Miles, watching their tiny movement, knew
that they were ponies bearing Indian braves. He turned hotly to his
companion.
“It’s your fault,” he said. “If I’d had my way we’d have ridden from
here an hour ago. Now here we are caught like rats in a trap; and who’s
to do my work and save Thornton’s troop—who’s to save them—God!” The
name was a prayer, not an oath.
“Yes,” said the quiet voice at his side, “God,”—and for a second there
was a silence that was like an Amen.
Quickly, without a word, Miles turned and began to saddle. Then
suddenly, as he pulled at the girth, he stopped. “It’s no use,” he
said. “We can’t get away except over the rise, and they’ll see us
there;” he nodded at the hill which rose beyond the camping ground
three hundred yards away, and stretched in a long, level sweep into
other hills and the west. “Our chance is that they’re not on my trail
after all—it’s quite possible.” There was a tranquil unconcern about
the figure near him; his own bright courage caught the meaning of its
relaxed lines with a bound of pleasure. “As you say, it’s best to stay
here,” he said, and as if thinking aloud—“I believe you must always be
right.” Then he added, as if his very soul would speak itself to this
wonderful new friend: “We can’t be killed, unless the Lord wills it,
and if he does it’s right. Death is only the step into life; I suppose
when we know that life, we will wonder how we could have cared for this
one.”
Through the gray light the stranger turned his face swiftly, bent
toward Miles, and smiled once again, and the boy thought suddenly of
the martyrdom of St. Stephen, and how those who were looking “saw his
face as it had been the face of an angel.”
Across the plain, out of the mist-wreaths, came rushing, scurrying,
the handful of Indian braves. Pale light streamed now from the east,
filtering over a hushed world. Miles faced across the plain, stood
close to the tall stranger whose shape, as the dawn touched it, seemed
to rise beyond the boy’s slight figure wonderfully large and high.
There was a sense of unending power, of alertness of great, easy
movement about him; one might have looked at him, and looking away
again, have said that wings were folded about him. But Miles did not
see him. His eyes were on the fast-nearing, galloping ponies, each
with its load of filthy, cruel savagery. This was his death coming;
there was disgust, but not dread in the thought for the boy. In a few
minutes he should be fighting hopelessly, fiercely against this froth
of a lower world; in a few minutes after that he should be lying here
still—for he meant to be killed; he had that planned. They should not
take him—a wave of sick repulsion at that thought shook him. Nearer,
nearer, right on his track came the riders pell-mell. He could hear
their weird, horrible cries; now he could see gleaming through the
dimness the huge head-dress of the foremost, the white coronet of
feathers, almost the stripes of paint on the fierce face.