Straight as an arrow Mr. Blake had sped across the parade, darted
through the east gate, and, turning, had arrived breathless at the
wooden porch of Hayne's quarters. Two bewildered-looking members of the
guard were at the door. Blake pushed his way through the little hall-way
and into the dimly-lighted parlor, where a strange scene met his eyes:
Lieutenant Hayne lay senseless and white upon the lounge across the
room; a young and pretty woman, singularly like him in feature and in
the color of her abundant tresses, was kneeling beside him, chafing his
hands, imploring him to speak,--to look at her,--unmindful of the fact
that her feet were bare and that only a loose wrapper was thrown over
her white night-dress; Captain Rayner was seated in a chair, deathly
white, and striving to stanch the blood that flowed from a deep gash in
his temple and forehead; he seemed still stunned as by the force of the
blow that had felled him; and Buxton, speechless with amaze and heaven
only knows what other emotions, was glaring at a tall, athletic stranger
who, in stocking-feet, undershirt, and trousers, held by three
frightened-looking soldiers and covered by the carbine of a fourth, was
hurling defiance and denunciation at the commanding officer. A revolver
lay upon the floor at the feet of a corporal of the guard, who was
groaning in pain. A thin veil of powder-smoke floated through the room.
As Blake leaped in,--his cavalry shoulder-knots and helmet-cords
gleaming in the light,--a flash of recognition shot into the stranger's
eyes, and he curbed his fearful excitement and stopped short in his
wrath.
"What devil's work is this?" demanded Blake, glaring intuitively at
Buxton.
"These people resisted my guards, and had to take the consequences,"
said Buxton, with surly--yet shaken--dignity.
"What were the guards doing here? What, in God's name, are you doing
here?" demanded Blake, forgetful of all consideration of rank and
command in the face of such evident catastrophe.
"I _ordered_ them here,--to enter and search."
A pause.
"Search what?--what for?"
"For--a woman I had reason to believe he had brought out here from
town."
"_What?_ You infernal idiot! Why, she's his own sister, and this
gentleman's wife!"
The silence, broken only by the hard breathing of some of the excited
men and the moaning cry of the woman, was for a moment intense.
"Isn't this Mr. Hurley?" asked Blake, suddenly, as though to make sure,
and turning one instant from his furious glare at his superior officer.
The stranger, still held, though no longer struggling, replied between
his set teeth,--
"Certainly. I've told him so."
"By heaven, Buxton, is there no limit to your asininity? What fearful
work will you do next?"
"I'll arrest _you_, sir, if you speak another disrespectful word!"
thundered Buxton, recovering consciousness that as commanding officer he
could defend himself against Blake's assault.
"Do it and be---- you know what I _would_ say if a lady were not
present! Do it, if you think you can stand having this thing ventilated
by a court. Pah! I can't waste words on you. Who's gone for the doctor?
Here, you men, let go of Mr. Hurley now. Help me, Mr. Hurley, please.
Get your wife back to her room. Bring me some water, one of you." And
with that he was bending over Hayne and unbuttoning the fatigue-uniform
in which he was still dressed. Another moment, and the doctor had come
in, and with him half the young officers of the garrison. Rayner was led
away to his own quarters. Buxton, dazed and frightened now, ordered the
guards back to their post, and stood pondering over the enormity of his
blunder. No one spoke to him or paid the faintest attention other than
to elbow him out of the way occasionally. The doctor never so much as
noticed him. Blake had briefly recounted the catastrophe to those who
first arrived, and as the story went from mouth to mouth it grew no
better for Buxton. Once he turned short on Mr. Foster and in aggrieved
and sullen tone remarked,--
"I thought you fellows in the Riflers said he had no relations."
"We weren't apt to be invited to meet them if he had; but I don't know
that anybody was in position to know anything about it. What's that got
to do with this affair, I'd like to hear?"
At last somebody took him home. Mrs. Waldron, meantime, had arrived and
been admitted to Mrs. Hurley's room. The doctor refused to go to Captain
Rayner's, even when a messenger came from Mrs. Rayner herself. He
referred her to his assistant, Dr. Grimes. Hayne had regained
consciousness, but was sorely shaken. He had been floored by a blow from
the butt of a musket; but the report that he was shot proved happily
untrue. His right hand still lay near the hilt of his light sword: there
was little question that he had raised his weapon against a superior
officer and would have used it with telling effect.
Few people slept that night along officers' row. Never had Warrener
heard of such excitement. Buxton knew not what to do. He paced the floor
in agony of mind, for he well understood that there was no shirking the
responsibility. From beginning to end he was the cause of the whole
catastrophe. He had gone so far as to order his corporal to fire, and he
knew it could be proved against him. Thank God, the perplexed corporal
had shot high, and the other men, barring the one who had saved Rayner
from a furious lunge of the lieutenant's sword, had used their weapons
as gingerly and reluctantly as possible. At the very least, he knew, an
investigation and fearful scandal must come of it. Night though it was,
he sent for the acting adjutant and several of his brother captains,
and, setting refreshments before them, besought their advice. He was
still commanding officer _de jure_, but he had lost all stomach for its
functions. He would have been glad to send for Blake and beg his pardon
for submitting to his insubordinate and abusive language, if that course
could have stopped inquiry; but he well knew that the whole thing would
be noised abroad in less than no time. At first he thought to give
orders against the telegraph-operator's sending any messages concerning
the matter; but that would have been only a temporary hinderance: he
could not control the instruments and operators in town, only three
miles away. He almost wished he had been knocked down, shot, or stabbed
in the _mêlée_; but he had kept in the rear when the skirmish began, and
Rayner and the corporal were the sufferers. They had been knocked
"endwise" by Mr. Hurley's practised fists after Hayne was struck down by
the corporal's musket. It was the universal sentiment among the officers
of the ----th as they scattered to their homes that Buxton had "wound
himself up this time, anyhow;" and no one had any sympathy for him,--not
one. The very best light in which he could tell the story only showed
the affair as a flagrant and inexcusable outrage.
Captain Rayner, too, was in fearful plight. He had simply obeyed orders;
but all the old story of his persecution of Hayne would now be revived;
all men would see in his participation in the affair only additional
reason to adjudge him cruelly persistent in his hatred of the young
officer, and, in view of the utter ruthlessness and wrong of this
assault, would be more than ever confident of the falsity of his
position in the original case. As he was slowly led up-stairs to his
room and his tearful wife and silent sister-in-law bathed and cleansed
his wound, he saw with frightful clearness how the crush of
circumstances was now upon him and his good name. Great heaven! how
those words of Hayne's five years before rang, throbbed, burned, beat
like trip-hammers through his whirling brain! It seemed as though they
followed him and his fortunes like a curse. He sat silent, stunned,
awe-stricken at the force of the calamity that had befallen him. How
could he ever induce an officer and a gentleman to believe that he was
no instigator in this matter?--that it was all Buxton's doing, Buxton's
low imagination that had conceived the possibility of such a crime on
the part of Mr. Hayne, and Buxton's blundering, bull-headed abuse of
authority that had capped the fatal climax? It was some time before his
wife could get him to speak at all. She was hysterically bemoaning the
fate that had brought them into contact with such people, and from time
to time giving vent to the comforting assertion that never had there
been a cloud on their domestic or regimental sky until that wretch had
been assigned to the Riflers. She knew from the hurried and guarded
explanations of Dr. Grimes and one or two young officers who helped
Rayner home that the fracas had occurred at Mr. Hayne's,--that there had
been a mistake for which her husband was not responsible, but that
Captain Buxton was entirely to blame. But her husband's ashen face told
her a story of something far deeper: she knew that now he was involved
in fearful trouble, and, whatever may have been her innermost thoughts,
it was the first and irresistible impulse to throw all the blame upon
her scapegoat. Miss Travers, almost as pale and quite as silent as the
captain, was busying herself in helping her sister; but she could with
difficulty restrain her longing to bid her be silent. She, too, had
endeavored to learn from her escort on their hurried homeward rush
across the parade what the nature of the disturbance had been. She, too,
had suggested Clancy, but the officer by her side set his teeth as he
replied that he wished it had been Clancy. She had heard, too, the
message brought by a cavalry trumpeter from Mr. Blake: he wanted Captain
Ray to come to Mr. Hayne's as soon as he had seen Mrs. Ray safely home,
and would he please ask Mrs. Stannard to come with him at the same time?
Why should Mr. Blake want Mrs. Stannard at Mr. Hayne's? She saw Mr.
Foster run up and speak a few words to Mrs. Waldron, and heard that lady
reply, "Certainly. I will go with you now." What could it mean? At last,
as she was returning to her sister's room after a moment's absence, she
heard a question at which her heart stood still. It was Mrs. Rayner who
asked,--
"But the creature was there, was she not?"
The answer sounded more like a moan of anguish:
"The creature was his sister. It was her husband who--"
But, as Captain Rayner buried his battered face in his hands at this
juncture, the rest of the sentence was inaudible. Miss Travers had heard
quite enough, however. She stood there one moment, appalled, dropped
upon the floor the bandage she had been making, turned and sought her
room, and was seen no more that night.
Over the day or two that followed this affair the veil of silence may
best be drawn, in order to give time for the sediment of truth to settle
through the whirlpool of stories in violent circulation. The colonel
came back on the first train after the adjournment of the court, and
could hardly wait for that formality. Contrary to his custom of
"sleeping on" a question, he was in his office within half an hour after
his return to the post, and from that time until near tattoo was busily
occupied taking the statements of the active participants in the affair.
This was three days after its occurrence; and Captain Rayner, though up
and able to be about, had not left his quarters. Mrs. Rayner had
abandoned her trip to the East, for the present at least. Mr. Hayne
still lay weak and prostrate in his darkened room, attended hourly by
Dr. Pease, who feared brain-fever, and nursed assiduously by Mrs.
Hurley, for whom Mrs. Waldron, Mrs. Stannard, and many other ladies in
the garrison could not do enough to content themselves. Mr. Hurley's
wrist was badly sprained and in a sling; but the colonel went purposely
to call upon him and to shake his other hand, and he begged to be
permitted to see Mrs. Hurley, who came in pale and soft-eyed and with a
gentle demeanor that touched the colonel more than he could tell. Her
cheek flushed for a moment as he bent low over her hand and told her how
bitterly he regretted that his absence from the post had resulted in so
grievous an experience: it was not the welcome he and his regiment would
have given her had they known of her intended visit. To Mr. Hurley he
briefly said that he need not fear but that full justice would be meted
out to the instigator or instigators of the assault; but, as a something
to make partial amends for their suffering, he said that nothing now
could check the turn of the tide in their brother's favor. All the
cavalry officers except Buxton, all the infantry officers except Rayner,
had already been to call upon him since the night of the occurrence, and
had striven to show how distressed they were over the outrageous
blunders of their temporary commander. Buxton had written a note
expressive of a desire to see him and "explain," but was informed that
explanations from him simply aggravated the injury; and Rayner, crushed
and humiliated, was fairly in hiding in his room, too sick at heart to
want to see anybody, and waiting for the action of the authorities in
the confident expectation that nothing less than court-martial and
disgrace would be his share of the outcome. He would gladly have
resigned and gone at once, but that would have been resigning under
virtual charges: he _had_ to stay, and his wife had to stay with him,
and Nellie with her. By this time Nellie Travers did not want to go. She
had but one thought now,--to make amends to Mr. Hayne for the wrong her
thoughts had done him. It was time for Mr. Van Antwerp to come to the
wide West and look after his interests; but Mrs. Rayner had ceased to
urge, while he continued to implore her to bring Nellie East at once.
Almost any man as rich and independent as Steven Van Antwerp would have
gone to the scene and settled matters for himself. Singularly enough,
this one solution of the problem seemed never to occur to him as
feasible.
Meantime, the colonel had patiently unravelled the threads and had
brought to light the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It made a
singularly simple story, after all but that was so much the worse for
Buxton. The only near relation Mr. Hayne had in the world was this one
younger sister, who six years before had married a manly, energetic
fellow, a civil engineer in the employ of an Eastern railway. During
Hayne's "mountain-station" exile Hurley had brought his wife to Denver,
where far better prospects awaited him. He won promotion in his
profession, and was now one of the principal engineers employed by a
road running new lines through the Colorado Rockies. Journeying to Salt
Lake, he came around by way of Warrener, so that his wife and he might
have a look at the brother she had not seen in years. Their train was
due there early in the afternoon, but was blocked by drifts and did not
reach the station until late at night. There they found a note from him
begging them to take a carriage they would find waiting for them and
come right out and spend the night at his quarters: he would send them
back in abundant time to catch the westward train in the morning. He
could not come in, because that involved the necessity of asking his
captain's permission, and they knew his relations with that captain. It
was her shadow Buxton had seen on the window-screen; and as none of
Buxton's acquaintances had ever mentioned that Hayne had any relations,
and as Hayne, in fact, had had no one for years to talk to about his
personal affairs, nobody but himself and the telegraph-operator at the
post really knew of their sudden visit. Buxton, being an unmitigated
cad, had put the worst interpretation on his discovery, and, in his
eagerness to clinch the evidence of conduct unbecoming an officer and a
gentleman upon Mr. Hayne, had taken no wise head into his confidence.
Never dreaming that the shadow could be that of a blood-relation, never
doubting that a fair, frail companion from the frontier town was the
explanation of Mr. Hayne's preference for that out-of-the way house and
late hours, he stated his discovery to Rayner as a positive fact, going
so far as to say that his sentries had recognized her as she drove away
in the carriage. If he had not been an ass as well as a cad, he would
have interviewed the driver of the carriage; but he had jumped at his
theory, and his sudden elevation to the command of the post gave him
opportunity to carry out his virtuous determination that no such
goings-on should disgrace his administration. He gave instructions to
certain soldier clerks and "daily-duty" men employed in the
quartermaster, commissary, and ordnance offices along Prairie Avenue to
keep their eyes open and let him know of any visitors coming out to
Hayne's by night, and if a lady came in a carriage he was to be called
at once. Mr. Hurley promised that on their return from Salt Lake they
would come back by way of Warrener and spend two days with Hayne, since
only an hour or two had they enjoyed of his company on their way West;
and the very day that the officers went off to the court came the
telegram saying the Hurleys would arrive that evening. Hayne had already
talked over their prospective visit with Major Waldron, and the latter
had told his wife; but all intercourse of a friendly character was at an
end between them and the Rayners and Buxtons; there were no more gossipy
chats among the ladies. Indeed, it so happened that only to one or two
people had Mrs. Waldron had time to mention that Mr. Hayne's sister was
coming, and neither the Rayners nor Buxtons had heard of it; neither had
Nellie Travers, for it was after the evening of her last visit that Mrs.
Waldron was told.
Hayne ran with his telegram to the major, and the latter had introduced
himself and Major Stannard to Mrs. Hurley when, after a weary wait of
some hours, the train arrived. Blake, too, was there, on the lookout for
some friends, and he was presented to Mrs. Hurley while her husband was
attending to some matters about the baggage. The train went on eastward,
carrying the field-officers with it. Blake had to go with his friends
back to the post, and Mr. and Mrs. Hurley, after the former had attended
to some business and seen some railway associates of his at the hotel,
took the carriage they had had before and drove out to the garrison,
where Private Schweinkopf saw the lady rapturously welcomed by
Lieutenant Hayne and escorted into the house, while Mr. Hurley remained
settling with the driver out in the darkness. It was not long before the
commanding officer _pro tem_, was called from the hop-room, where the
dance was going on delightfully, and notified that the mysterious
visitor had again appeared, with evident intention of spending the
night, as the carriage had returned to town. "Why, certainly," reasoned
Buxton. "It's the very night he would choose, since everybody will be at
the hop: no one will be apt to interfere, and everybody will be
unusually drowsy and less inclined to take notice in the morning." Here
was ample opportunity for a brilliant stroke of work. He would first
satisfy himself she was there, then surround the house with sentries so
that she could not escape, while he, with the officer of the day and the
corporal of the guard, entered the house and confronted him and her.
_That_ would wind up Mr. Hayne's career beyond question: nothing short
of dismissal could result. Over he went, full of his project, listened
at Hayne's like the eaves-dropping sneak he was, saw again the shadow of
the graceful form and heard the silvery, happy laugh, and then it was
he sent for Rayner. It was near midnight when he led his forces to the
attack. A light was now burning in the second story, which he thought
must be Sam's; but the lights had been turned low in the parlor, and the
occupants had disappeared from sight and hearing. By inquiry he had
ascertained that Hayne's bedroom was just back of the parlor. A man was
stationed at the back door, others at the sides, with orders to arrest
any one who attempted to escape; then softly he stepped to the front
door, telling Rayner to follow him, and the corporal of the guard to
follow both. To his surprise, the door was unlocked, and a light was
burning in the hall. Never knocking, he stepped in, marched through the
hall into the parlor, which was empty, and, signalling "Come on" to his
followers, crossed the parlor and seized the knob of the bedroom door.
It was locked. Rayner, looking white and worried, stood just behind him,
and the corporal but a step farther back. Before Buxton could knock and
demand admission, which was his intention, quick footsteps came flying
down the stairs from the second story, and the trio wheeled about in
surprise, to find Mr. Hayne, dressed in his fatigue uniform, standing at
the threshold and staring at them with mingled astonishment,
incredulity, and indignation. A sudden light seemed to dawn upon him as
he glanced from one to the other. With a leap like a cat he threw
himself upon Buxton, hurled him back, and stood at the closed door
confronting them with blazing eyes and clinching fists.
"Open that door, sir!" cried Buxton. "You have a woman hidden there.
Open, or stand aside."
"You hounds! I'll kill the first man who dares enter!" was the furious
answer; and Hayne had snatched from the wall his long infantry sword and
flashed the blade in the lamplight. Rayner made a step forward, half
irresolute. Hayne leaped at him like a tiger. "Fire! Quick!" shouted
Buxton, in wild excitement. Bang! went the carbine, and the bullet
crashed through the plaster overhead, and, seeing the gleaming steel at
his superior's throat, the corporal had sent the heavy butt crashing
upon the lieutenant's skull only just in time: there would have been
murder in another second. The next instant he was standing on his own
head in the corner, seeing a multitude of twinkling, whirling stars,
from the midst of which Captain Rayner was reeling backward over a chair
and a number of soldiers were rushing upon a powerful picture of
furious manhood,--a stranger in shirt-sleeves, who had leaped from the
bedroom.
Told as it was--as it had to be--all over the department, there seemed
but one thing to say, and that referred to Buxton: "Well! _isn't_ he a
phenomenal ass?"