That evening, when John Folsom, half an hour earlier than the stipulated
time, drove the girls and their friend, Lieutenant Loomis, out to the
fort, Major Burleigh was left to his own devices, and his face plainly
showed that he was far from pleased with the way things were going. The
news that Marshall Dean had been placed in arrest by order of the
commanding officer of Fort Emory, following as it did close on the heels
of the tidings of that young officer's prompt and soldierly handling of
the crisis at the ranch, made Folsom boil over with wrath. His first
word was one of caution, however. "Hush!" he said, "Speak low. Yonder
stands his sister. The girls must not know yet." Then, leading the way
into the library and closing the door behind them, he demanded all
particulars Lannion could give him, which were few enough.
"The lieutenant halted the troop outside the post," said the indignant
ranchman, "had it dismount there while he rode on in to report to the
commanding officer for instructions. The colonel was taking his nap
after lunch, and the adjutant was at the office, and what does he do but
get up from his desk solemn-like, and when the lieutenant says 'I report
the arrival of Troop "C" at the post, sir,' the adjutant didn't answer a
word, but reached out and got his sabre and began buckling it around
him, and then he put on his cap and gloves, and says he, 'Lieutenant
Dean, I'm sorry, but my instructions are to place you in close arrest,
by order of Colonel Stevens.' Why, you could have knocked me down with
the kick of a gopher I was so dumfounded! The lieutenant he didn't say
anything for a minute, but turned white and looked like he could have
knocked the top of the adjutant's head off. 'An officer will be sent to
take charge of the troop,' said the adjutant, 'an' I suppose you'd
better confine yourself to your tent, as the colonel means to have them
camp there a day or two, until he hears from Captain Brooks as to
quarters.' 'Well, will you have the goodness to say what charges have
been laid against me?' said Mr. Dean, and the adjutant hemmed, and
hawed, and 'lowed that the colonel hadn't formerly drawn 'em up yet, but
that a copy would be served on him as soon as they were ready."
"Then I said I'd go right in and find you, and that's all I know."
And then it was that Folsom turned on Burleigh, with gloom in his eye,
and said: "By the Eternal, Major Burleigh, I hope you've had nothing to
do with this!"
"Nothing in the world, I assure you, Mr. Folsom, I--I deeply regret it.
Though, as I have told you, I can hardly be surprised, after what has
been said, and--d what I have seen." But the major could not squarely
meet the gaze in the keen eyes of the old trader, nor could the latter
conceal his suspicions. "I know you wish to hear all the particulars of
the affair at the ranch from this gentleman," said the major uneasily,
"so I will leave you with him for the present," and backing out into the
hall he turned to the foot of the winding staircase where Elinor had met
her friend. The girls were still there, their faces clouded with
surprise and anxiety. It was an opportunity not to be lost.
"Pray do not be troubled, Miss Folsom," said Burleigh, advancing upon
them with outstretched hand, "er, Mr. Folsom merely wants to hear
further details from Lannion. I wish to extend my congratulations to you
and, ah, this young lady, first upon the fortunate escape of _your_
brother," and he bowed over his distended stomach to Elinor, "and second
upon the part played by _yours_," and he repeated the bow to Jess, who,
however, shrank away from the extended hand. "It will go far to
counteract the stories that I--ah, er--believe you know about--that were
in circulation, and most unjustly, doubtless, at--er--his expense."
"Who put them in circulation, Major Burleigh?" asked Pappoose, her brown
eyes studying his face as unflinchingly as had her father's gaze a
moment before.
"That, my dear young lady I--er--cannot surmise. They are mostly
imaginative, I dare say."
But Miss Folsom looked unmollified, Miss Dean agitated, and Burleigh
himself had many a reason for feeling ill at ease. Just at the time of
all others when he most desired to stand on good terms with the
well-to-do old trader and his charming daughter he found himself the
object of distrust. He was thinking hard and far from hopefully as a
moment later he hastened down the street.
"Tell them to send up my buggy, quick," were his orders as he stepped
within his office doorway. Then lowering his voice, "Has Captain Newhall
returned?" he asked the chief clerk.
"The captain was here, sir. Left word he needed to take the first
train--freight or construction, it made no difference--to Cheyenne and
expected to find a letter or package from you, and there's two telegrams
in from Department Headquarters on your desk, sir."
The major turned thither with solemn face, and read them both, his back
to his subordinate, his face to the light, and growing grayer every
moment. One was a curt notification that ten thousand dollars would be
needed at once at Warrior Gap to pay contractors and workmen, and
directing him to send the amount from the funds in his keeping. The
other read as follows:
"Have all transportation put in readiness for immediate field service.
Every wheel may be needed."
This he tossed carelessly aside. Over the first he pondered deeply, his
yellow-white face growing dark and haggard.
Ten thousand dollars to be sent at once to Warrior Gap! Workmen's pay!
Who could have predicted that? Who could have given such an order? Who
would have imagined payment would have to be made before July, when some
reasonable amount of work had been done? What could laborers do with
their money up there, even if they had it? It was preposterous! It was
risky to attempt to send it. But what was infinitely worse--for him--it
was impossible. The money was practically already gone, but--not to
Warrior Gap.
Those were days when inspectors' visits were like those of other angels,
few and far between. The railway was only just finished across the great
divide of the Black Hills of Wyoming. Only as far as Cheyenne was there
a time schedule for trains, and that--far more honored in the breach
than the observance. Passengers bound west of that sinfully thriving
town were luckier, as a rule, if they went by stage. Those were days,
too, in which a depot quartermaster with a drove of government mules and
a corral full of public vehicles at his command was a monarch in the
eyes of the early settlers; and when, added to these high-priced
luxuries, he had on deposit in various banks from Chicago to Cheyenne,
and even here at Gate City, thousands of dollars in government
greenbacks expendible on his check for all manner of purposes, from
officers' mileage accounts to the day laborer's wages, from bills for
the roofing of barracks and quarters to the setting of a single
horseshoe, from the purchase of forage and fuel for the dozen military
posts within range of his supply trains down to a can of axle grease.
Every one knew Burleigh's horses and habits were far more costly than
his pay would permit. Everybody supposed he had big returns from mines
and stocks and other investments. Nobody knew just what his investments
were, and only he knew how few they were and how unprofitable they had
become. Those were days when, as now, disbursing officers were forbidden
to gamble, but when, not as now, the law was a dead letter. Burleigh had
gambled for years; had, with little remorse, ruined more than one man,
and yet stood now awe-stricken and dismayed and wronged by Fate, since
luck had turned at last against him. Large sums had been lost to players
inexorable as he himself had been. Large sums had been diverted from the
government channels in his charge, some to pay his so-called debts of
honor, some to cover abstractions from other funds, "robbing Peter to
pay Paul," some to silence people who knew too much; some, ay, most of
it, in fact, to cover margins, and once money gets started on that grade
it slips through one's fingers like quicksilver. At the very moment when
Anson Burleigh's envious cronies were telling each other he stood far
ahead of the world, the figures were telling him he stood some twenty
thousand dollars behind it, and that, too, when he was confronted by two
imperative calls for spot cash, one for ten thousand to go to Warrior
Gap, another for a sum almost as big to "stake" a man who never yet had
turned an honest penny, yet held the quartermaster where he dare not say
so--where indeed he dare not say no.
"If you haven't it you know where you can get it--where you have often
got it before, and where you'd better get it before it's too late;"
these were words said to him that very morning, in tones so low that
none but he could bear; yet they were ringing in his head now like the
boom of some tolling bell. Time was when he had taken government money
and turned it into handsome profit through the brokers of San Francisco
and Chicago. But, as Mr. John Oakhurst remarked, "There's only one thing
certain about luck, and that is it's bound to change," and change it
had, and left him face to face with calamity and dishonor. Where was he
to raise the ten thousand dollars that must be sent to the post
quartermaster at Warrior Gap? The end of the fiscal year was close at
hand. He dare not further divert funds from one appropriation to cover
shortages in another. He could borrow from the banks, with a good
endorser, but what endorser was there good enough but John Folsom?--the
last man now whom he could bear to have suspect that he was in straits.
Folsom was reported to be worth two hundred thousand dollars, and that
lovely girl would inherit half his fortune. There lived within his
circle no man, no woman in whose esteem Burleigh so longed to stand
high, and he had blundered at the start. Damn that young cub who dared
to lecture him on the evils of poker! Was a boy lieutenant to shame him
before officers of the general's staff and expect to go unwhipped? Was
that butt-headed subaltern to be the means of ruining his prospects
right here and now when he stood so sorely in need of aid? Was the devil
himself in league against him, that that boy's sister should turn out to
be the closest friend old Folsom's daughter ever had--a girl to whom
father and daughter both were devoted, and through her were doubtless
interested in the very man he had been plotting to pull down? Burleigh
savagely ground his teeth together.
"Go and hurry that buggy," he ordered, as he crushed the sheet of paper
on which he had been nervously figuring. Then, springing up, he began
pacing his office with impatient stride. A clerk glanced quickly up from
his desk, watched him one moment with attentive eye, and looked
significantly at his neighbor. "Old man's getting worse rattled every
day," was the comment, as the crash of wheels through loose gravel
announced the coming of the buggy, and Burleigh hastened out, labored
into his seat, and took the whip and reins. The blooded mare in the
shafts darted forward at the instant, but he gathered and drew her in,
the nervous creature almost settling on her haunches.
"Say to Captain Newhall when he gets back-that I'll see him this
evening," called Burleigh over his shoulder. "Now, damn you, _go_--if
you want to!" and the lash fell on the glistening, quivering flank, and
with her head pointed for the hard, open prairie, the pretty creature
sped like mad over the smooth roadway and whirled the light buggy out
past the scattered wooden tenements of the exterior limits of the
frontier town--the tall white staff, tipped by its patch of color
flapping in the mountain breeze, and the dingy wooden buildings on the
distant bluff whirling into view as he spun around the corner where the
village lost itself in the prairie; and there, long reaches ahead of
him, just winding up the ascent to the post was a stylish team and trap.
John Folsom and the girls had taken an early start and got ahead of him.
Old Stevens was up and about as Folsom's carriage drove swiftly through
the garrison and passed straight out by the northeast gate. "I'll be
back to see you in a moment," shouted the old driver smilelessly, as he
shot by the lonely colonel, going, papers in hand to his office, and
Stevens well knew he was in for trouble. Already the story was blazing
about the post that nothing but the timely arrival of Dean and his men
had saved Folsom's ranch, and Folsom's people. Already the men,
wondering and indignant at their young leader's arrest, were shouting
over the sutler's bar their paeans in his praise, and their denunciation
of his treatment. Over the meeting of sister and brother at the latter's
little tent let us draw a veil. He stepped forth in a moment and bade
his other visitors welcome, shook hands eagerly with Loomis and urged
their coming in, but he never passed from under the awning or "fly," and
Folsom well knew the reason.
"Jump out, daughter," he said to Pappoose, and Loomis assisted her to
alight and led her straight up to Dean, and for the first time in those
two years the ex-cadet captain and the whilom little schoolgirl with the
heavy braids of hair looked into each other's eyes, and in Dean's there
was amaze and at least momentary delight. He still wore his field rig,
and the rent in the dark-blue flannel shirt was still apparent. He was
clasping Miss Folsom's hand and looking straight into the big dark eyes
that were so unusually soft and humid, when Jessie's voice was heard as
she came springing forth from the tent:
"Look, Nell, look! Your picture!" she cried, as with the bullet-marked
_carte de visite_ in her hand she flitted straight to her friend.
"Why, where did this come from?" asked Miss Folsom in surprise, "and
what's happened to it?--all creased and black there!" Then both the
girls and Loomis looked to him for explanation, while Folsom drove away,
and even through the bronze and tan the boy was blushing.
"I--borrowed it for a minute--at the ranch just as Jake came in wounded,
and there was no time to return it, you know. We had to gallop right
out."
"Then--you had it with you in the Indian fight?" cried Jess, in
thrilling excitement. "Really? Oh, Nell! How I wish it were mine. But
how'd it get so blackened there--and crushed? You haven't told us."
"Tell you some other time, Jess. Don't crowd a fellow," he laughed. But
when his eyes stole their one quick glance at Elinor, standing there in
silence, he saw the color creeping up like sunset glow all over her
beautiful face as she turned quickly away. Lannion had told them of the
close shave the lieutenant had had and the havoc played by that bullet
in the breast pocket of his hunting shirt.