With the opening of the Territory of Kansas the first Regiment of United
States Cavalry, commanded by Colonel E.V. Sumner, had been transferred
to Fort Leavenworth.
The life of the barracks was young Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart.
Colonel Lee had been transferred from West Point to the command of the
Second United States Cavalry on the Mexican Border at the same time that
Stuart's regiment was moved to Kansas.
The rollicking song-loving, banjo-playing Virginian had early
distinguished himself as an Indian fighter. He had been dangerously
wounded, but recovered with remarkable rapidity. His perfect health and
his clean habits stood him in good stead on the day an Indian's bullet
crashed through his breast.
He was a favorite with officers and men. As a cadet he had given promise
of the coming soldier. At the Academy he was noted for his strict
attendance to every military duty, and his erect, soldierly bearing. He
was particularly noted for an almost thankful acceptance of a challenge
to fight any cadet who might feel himself aggrieved. The boys called him
a "Bible Class Man." He was never known to swear or drink. They also
called him "Beauty Stuart," in good natured boyish teasing.
He was the best-looking cadet of his class, as he was the best-looking
young officer of his regiment. His hair was a reddish brown. His eyes a
deep steel blue, his voice clear and ringing.
In his voice the soul of the man spoke to his fellows. He was always
singing--always eager for a frolic of innocent fun. Above all, he was
always eager for a frolic with a pretty girl. He played both the banjo
and the guitar and little he cared for the gathering political feud
which old John Brown and his sons had begun to foment on the frontier.
As a Southerner the struggle did not interest him. It was a foregone
conclusion that the country would be settled by Northern immigrants.
They were pouring into the Territory in endless streams. A colony from
New Haven, Connecticut, one hundred strong, had just settled sixty miles
above Lawrence on the Kansas River. They knew how to plow and plant
their fields and they had modern machinery with which to do it. The
few Southerners who came to Kansas were poorly equipped. Lawrence was
crowded with immigrants from every section of the North. The fields were
white with their tents. A company from Ohio, one from Connecticut, and
one from New Hampshire were camping just outside the town. Daily their
exploring committees went forth to look at localities. Daily new
companies poured in.
Stuart let them pour and asked no questions about their politics. He was
keen on one thing only--the pretty girls that might be among them.
When exploring parties came to Fort Leavenworth, the young Lieutenant
inspected them with an eye single to a possible dance for the regiment.
The number of pretty girls was not sufficient to cause excitement among
the officers as yet. The daughters of the East were not anxious to
explore Kansas at this moment. The Indians were still troublesome at
times.
A rumor spread through the barracks that the prettiest girl in Kansas
had just arrived at Fort Riley, sixty-eight miles beyond Topeka. Colonel
Phillip St. George Cooke of Virginia commanded the Fort and his daughter
Flora had ventured all the way from Harper's Ferry to the plains to see
her beloved daddy.
The news thrilled Stuart. He found an excuse to carry a message from
Colonel Sumner to Colonel Cooke.
He expected nothing serious, of course. Every daughter of Virginia knew
how to flirt. She would know that he understood this from the start. It
would be nip and tuck between the Virginia boy and the Virginia girl.
He had always had such easy sailing in his flirtations he hoped Miss
Flora would prove a worthy antagonist.
As a matter of course, Colonel Cooke asked the gallant young Virginian
to stay as his guest.
"What'll Colonel Sumner say, sir?" Stuart laughed.
"Leave Sumner to me."
"You'll guarantee immunity?"
"Guaranteed."
"Thank you, Colonel Cooke, I'll stay."
Stuart could hardly wait until the hour of lunch to meet the daughter.
He was impatient to ask where she was. The Colonel guessed his anxiety
and hastened to relieve it, or increase it.
"You haven't met my daughter, Lieutenant?" he asked casually.
"I haven't that honor, Colonel, but this gives me the happy
opportunity."
He said it with such boyish fun in his ringing voice that Cooke laughed
in spite of his desire to maintain the strictest dignity. He half
suspected that the young officer might meet his match in more ways than
one.
"She'll be in at noon," the Commander remarked. "Off riding with one of
the boys."
"Of course," Stuart sighed.
He began to scent a battle and his spirits rose. He went to his room,
took his banjo out of its old leather strapped case and tuned it
carefully. He made up his mind to give the young buck out riding with
her the fight of his life while there.
He heard the ring of the girl's laughter as she bade her escort goodbye
at the door. He started to go down at once and begin the struggle.
Something in the ring of her young voice stopped him. There was a joyous
strength in it that was disconcerting. A girl who laughed like that had
poise. She was an individual. He liked, too, the tones of her voice
before he had seen her.
This struck him as odd. Never in his life before had he liked a girl
before meeting her just for a tone quality in her voice. This one
haunted him the whole time he was changing his uniform.
He decided to shave again. He had shaved the night before very late. He
didn't like the suggestion of red stubble on his face. It might put him
at a disadvantage.
He resented the name of Beauty Stuart and yet down in his man soul he
knew that he was vain.
He began to wonder if she were blonde or brunette, short or tall, petite
or full, blue eyes or brown? She must be pretty. Her father was a man of
delicate and finely marked features--the type of Scotch-Irish gentlemen
who had made the mountains of Virginia famous for pretty women and
brainy men.
He heard her softly playing a piano and wondered how on earth they had
ever moved a piano to this far outpost of civilization. The cost was
enormous. But the motive of her father in making such a sacrifice to
please her was more important. His love for her must be unusual. It
piqued his interest and roused again his impulse for a battle royal with
another elusive daughter of his native state.
He made up his mind not to wait for the call to lunch. He would walk
boldly into the reception room and introduce himself. She knew he was
there, of course.
At the first sound of his footstep, her hand paused on the keys and she
turned to greet him, rising quickly, and easily.
The vision which greeted Stuart stunned him for a moment. A perfect
blonde with laughing blue eyes, exactly the color of his own, slim
and graceful, a smile that was sunlight, and a step that was grace
incarnate.
And yet her beauty was not the thing that stunned him. He had discounted
her good looks from a study of her father's delicate face. It was the
glow of a charming personality that disarmed him at the first glance.
She extended a slender hand with a smile.
"I'm so glad to meet you, Lieutenant Stuart."
He took it awkwardly, and blushed. He mumbled when he spoke and was
conscious that his voice was thick.
"And I'm so glad to see you, Miss Flora."
They had each uttered the most banal greeting. Yet the way in which the
words were spoken was significant.
Never in his life had he heard a voice so gentle, so tender, so
appealing in its sincerity. All desire to flirt, to match wit against a
charming girl vanished. He felt a resistless impulse to protect her
from any fool who would dare try to start a flirtation. She was too
straightforward, too earnest, too sincere. She seemed a part of his own
inmost thought and life.
It was easy to see that while she was the pet of her father, she was
unspoiled. Stuart caught himself at last staring at her in a dazed,
foolish way. He pulled himself together and wondered how long he had
held her hand.
"Won't you play for me, Miss Flora?" he asked at last.
"If you'll sing," she laughed.
"How do you know I sing?"
"How do you know I play?"
"I heard you."
"I heard you, too."
"Upstairs?"
"Just before you came down."
"I had no idea I was so loud."
"Your voice rings. It has carrying power."
He started to say: "I hope you like it," and something inside whispered:
"Behave."
She took the seat at the piano and touched the keys with an easy,
graceful movement. She looked up and smiled. Her eyes blinded him. They
were so bright and friendly.
"What will you sing?"
"_Annie Laurie_," he answered promptly.
Stuart sang with deep tenderness and passion. He outdid himself. And he
knew it. He never knew before that he could sing so well.
On the last stanza the girl softly joined a low, sweet voice with his.
As the final note died away in Stuart's voice, hers lingered a caress.
The man's heart leaped at its tenderness.
"Why didn't you join me at first?" he asked.
"Nobody axed me, sir!" she said.
"Well, I ask you now--come on--we'll do it together!"
"All right," was the jolly answer.
They sang it in duet to the soft accompaniment which she played.
Never had he heard such singing by a slip of a girl. Her voice was rich,
full of feeling and caressing tenderness. He felt his soul dissolving in
its liquid depths.
Throughout the lunch he caught himself staring at her in moments of long
silence. He had for the first time in his life lost his capacity for
silly gaiety.
He roused himself with an effort, and wondered what on earth had come
over him. He was too deeply interested in studying the girl to attempt
to analyze his own feelings. It never occurred to him to try. He was too
busy watching the tender light in her eyes.
He wondered if she could be engaged to the fellow she went riding
with? He resented the idea. Of course not. And when he remembered the
care-free ring to her laughter when she said goodbye, he was reassured.
No girl could laugh a goodbye like that to a man she loved. The tone was
too poised and impersonal.
He asked her to ride with him that afternoon.
"On one condition," she smiled.
"What?"
"That you bring your banjo and play for me when I ask you."
"How'd you know I had a banjo?"
"Caught the final twang as you tuned it on my arrival."
"I'll bring it if you like."
"Please."
He hurried to his room, placed the banjo in its case and threw it over
his shoulder. She had promised to be ready in ten minutes and have the
horses at the door.
She was ready in eight minutes, and leaped into the saddle before he
could reach her side. For the life of him he couldn't keep his eye off
her exquisite figure.
She rode without effort. She had been born in the saddle.
She led him along the military road to the juncture of the Smoky Hill
and Republican rivers. A lover at the Fort had built a seat against a
huge rock that crowned the hill overlooking the fork of the rivers.
Stuart hitched the horses and found the seat. For two hours he played
his banjo and they sang old songs together.
"I love a banjo--don't you?" she asked enthusiastically.
"It's my favorite music. There's no sorrow in a banjo. You can make it
laugh. You can make it shout. You can make it growl and howl and snarl
and fight. But you can't make a banjo cry. There are no tears in it. The
joy of living is all a banjo knows. Why should we try to know anything
else anyhow?"
"We shouldn't," she answered soberly. "The other things will come
without invitation sometime."
For an hour they talked of the deep things of life. He told of his high
ambitions of service for his country in the dark days that might come in
the future. Of the kind of soldier the nation would need, and the ideal
he had set for his soul of truth and honor, of high thinking and clean
living in the temptations that come to a soldier's daily life.
And she applauded his ideals. She told him they were big and fine and
she was proud of him as a true son of Old Virginia.
The sun was sinking behind the dim smoky hills toward the West when she
rose.
"We must be going!"
"I had no idea it was so late," he apologized.
It was not until he reached his room at eleven o'clock after three hours
more of her in the reception room that he faced the issue squarely.
He stood before the mirror and studied his flushed face. A look of deep
seriousness had crept into his jolly blue eyes.
"You're a goner, this time, young man!" he whispered. "You're in love."
He paused and repeated it softly.
"_In love_--the big thing this time. Sweeping all life before it.
Blotting out all that's passed and gripping all that lies beyond--Glory
to God!"
For hours he lay awake. The world was made anew. The beauty of the new
thought filled his soul with gratitude.
He dared not tell her yet. The stake was too big. He was playing for all
that life held worth having. He couldn't rush a girl of that kind. A
blunder would be fatal. He had a reputation as a flirt. She had heard
it, no doubt. He must put his house in order. His word must ring true.
She must believe him.
He made up his mind to return to Fort Leavenworth next day and manage
somehow to get transferred to Fort Riley for two weeks.