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A TROOPER GALAHAD
BY CAPTAIN CHARLES KING, U.S.A.
AUTHOR OF "THE COLONEL'S DAUGHTER," "MARION'S FAITH," "CAPTAIN BLAKE,"
"UNDER FIRE," "FROM SCHOOL TO BATTLE-FIELD," ETC.
[Illustration: Logo]
PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1899
COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A.
[Illustration: "Felling him like an ox. Page 107."]
* * * * *
BY CAPTAIN CHARLES KING, U.S.A.
BOOKS FOR BOYS.
TROOPER ROSS, AND SIGNAL BUTTE.
FROM SCHOOL TO BATTLE-FIELD.
_8vo. Cloth, illustrated, $1.50._
NOVELS.
THE COLONEL'S DAUGHTER.
CAPTAIN BLAKE.
FOES IN AMBUSH (_Paper, 50 cents_).
UNDER FIRE.
MARION'S FAITH.
THE GENERAL'S DOUBLE.
_12mo. Cloth, illustrated, $1.25._
TRIALS OF A STAFF OFFICER.
WARING'S PERIL.
A TROOPER GALAHAD.
_12mo. Cloth, $1.00._
KITTY'S CONQUEST.
LARAMIE; OR, THE QUEEN OF BEDLAM.
TWO SOLDIERS, AND DUNRAVEN RANCH.
STARLIGHT RANCH, AND OTHER STORIES.
THE DESERTER, AND FROM THE RANKS.
A SOLDIER'S SECRET, AND AN ARMY PORTIA.
CAPTAIN CLOSE, AND SERGEANT CROESUS.
_12mo. Cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents._
A TAME SURRENDER. A Story of the Chicago Strike.
RAY'S RECRUIT.
_16mo. Polished buckram, illustrated, 75 cents.
Issued in the Lotos Library._
Editor of THE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS DINNER, AND OTHER STORIES.
_12mo. Cloth, $1.25; paper, 50 cents._
AN INITIAL EXPERIENCE, AND OTHER STORIES.
CAPTAIN DREAMS, AND OTHER STORIES.
_12mo. Cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents._
* * * * *
A TROOPER GALAHAD
CHAPTER I.
"Life is full of ups and downs," mused the colonel, as he laid on the
littered desk before him an official communication just received from
Department Head-Quarters, "especially army life,--and more especially
army life in Texas."
"Now, what are you philosophizing about?" asked his second in command, a
burly major, glancing over the top of the latest home paper, three weeks
old that day.
"D'ye remember Pigott, that little cad that was court-martialled at San
Antonio in '68 for quintuplicating his pay accounts? He married the
widow of old Alamo Hendrix that winter. He's worth half a million
to-day, is running for Congress, and will probably be on the military
committee next year, while here's Lawrence, who was judge advocate of
the court that tried him, gone all to smash." And the veteran officer
commanding the --th Infantry and the big post at Fort Worth glanced
warily along into the adjoining office, where a clerk was assorting the
papers on the adjutant's desk.
"It's the saddest case I ever heard of," said Major Brooks, tossing
aside the _Toledo Blade_ and tripping up over his own, which he had
thoughtfully propped between his legs as he took his seat and
thoughtlessly ignored as he left it. "Damn that sabre,--and the service
generally!" he growled, as he recovered his balance and tramped to the
window. "I'd almost be willing to quit it as Pigott did if I could see
my way to a moderate competence anywhere out of it. Lawrence was as good
a soldier as we had in the 12th, and, yet, what can you do or say? The
mischief's done." And, beating the devil's tattoo on the window, the
major stood gloomily gazing out over the parade.
"It isn't Lawrence himself I'm so---- Orderly, shut that door!" cried
the chief, whirling around in his chair, "and tell those clerks I want
it kept shut until the adjutant comes; and you stay out on the
porch.--It isn't Lawrence I'm so sorely troubled about, Brooks. He has
ability, and could pick up and do well eventually, but he's utterly
discouraged and swamped. What's to become, though, of that poor child
Ada and his little boy?"
"God knows," said Brooks, sadly. "I've got five of my own to look
after, and you've got four. No use talking of adopting them, even if
Lawrence would listen; and he never would listen to anything or
anybody--they tell me," he added, after a minute's reflection. "I don't
know it myself. It's what Buxton and Canker and some of those fellows
told me on the Republican last summer. I hadn't seen him since
Gettysburg until we met here."
"Buxton and Canker be--exterminated!" said the colonel, hotly. "I never
met Buxton, and never want to. As for Canker, by gad, there's another
absurdity. They put him in the cavalry because consolidation left no
room for him with us. What do you suppose they'll do with him in the
--th?"
"The Lord knows, as I said before. He never rode anything but a hobby in
his life. I don't wonder Lawrence couldn't tolerate preaching from him.
But what I don't understand is, who made the allegation. What's his
offence? Every one knows that he's in debt and trouble, and that he's
had hard lines and nothing else ever since the war, but the court
acquitted him of all blame in that money business----"
"And now to make room for fellows with friends at court," burst in the
colonel, wrathfully, "he and other poor devils with nothing but a
fighting record and a family to provide for are turned loose on a year's
pay, which they're to have after things straighten out as to their
accounts with the government. Now just look at Lawrence! Ordnance and
quartermaster's stores hopelessly boggled----"
"Hush!" interrupted Brooks, starting back from the window. "Here he is
now."
Assembly of the guard details had sounded a few moments before, and all
over the sunshiny parade on its westward side, in front of the various
barracks, little squads of soldiers armed and in full uniform were
standing awaiting the next signal, while the porches of the low wooden
buildings beyond were dotted with groups of comrades, lazily looking on.
Out on the greensward, broad and level, crisscrossed with gravel walks,
the band had taken its station, marshalled by the tall drum-major in his
huge bear-skin shako. From the lofty flag-staff in the centre of the
parade the national colors were fluttering in the mountain breeze that
stole down from the snowy peaks hemming the view to the northwest and
stirred the leaves of the cottonwoods and the drooping branches of the
willows in the bed of the rushing stream sweeping by the southern limits
of the garrison. Within the enclosure, sacred to military use, it was
all the same old familiar picture, the stereotyped fashion of the
frontier fort of the earliest '70s,--dull-hued barracks on one side or
on two, dull-hued, broad-porched cottages--the officers' quarters--on
another, dull-hued offices, storehouses, corral walls, scattered about
the outskirts, a dull-hued, sombre earth on every side; sombre sweeping
prairie beyond, spanned by pallid sky or snow-tipped mountains; a
twisting, winding road or two, entering the post on one front, issuing
at the other, and tapering off in sinuous curves until lost in the
distance; a few scattered ranches in the stream valley; a collection of
sheds, shanties, and hovels surrounding a bustling establishment known
as the store, down by the ford,--the centre of civilization, apparently,
for thither trended every roadway, path, track, or trail visible to the
naked eye. Here in front of the office a solitary cavalry horse was
tethered. Yonder at the sutler's, early as it was in the day, a dozen
quadrupeds, mules, mustangs, or Indian ponies, were blinking in the
sunshine. Dogs innumerable sprawled in the sand. Bipeds lolled lazily
about or squatted on the steps on the edge of the wooden porch, some in
broad sombreros, some in scalp-lock and blanket,--none in the garb of
civil life as seen in the nearest cities, and the nearest was four or
five hundred miles away. Out on the parade were bits of lively color,
the dresses of frolicsome children to the east, the stripes and facings
of the cavalry and artillery at the west; for, by some odd freak of the
fortunes of war, here, away out at Fort Worth, had come a crack light
battery of the old army, which, with Brooks's battalion of the cavalry,
and head-quarters' staff, band, and six companies of the --th Infantry,
made up the garrison,--the biggest then maintained in the Department
immortalized by Sheridan as only second choice to Sheol. It was the
winter of '70 and '71, as black and dreary a time as ever the army knew,
for Congress had telescoped forty-five regiments into half the number
and blasted all hopes of promotion,--about the only thing the soldier
has to live for.
And that wasn't the blackest thing about the business, by any means. The
war had developed the fact that we had thousands of battalion commanders
for whom the nation had no place in peace times, and scores of them, in
the hope and promise of a life employment in an honorable profession,
accepted the tender of lieutenancies in the regular army in '66, the war
having broken up all their vocations at home, and now, having given four
years more to the military service,--taken all those years out of their
lives that might have been given to establishing themselves in
business,--they were bidden to choose between voluntarily quitting the
army with a bonus of a year's pay, and remaining with no hope of
advancement. Most of them, despairing of finding employment in civil
life, concluded to stay: so other methods of getting rid of them were
devised, and, to the amaze of the army and the dismay of the victims, a
big list was published of officers "rendered supernumerary" and
summarily discharged. And this was how it happened that a gallant,
brilliant, and glad-hearted fellow, the favorite staff officer of a
glorious corps commander who fell at the head of his men after three
years of equally glorious service, found himself in far-away Texas this
blackest of black Fridays, suddenly turned loose on the world and
without hope or home.
Cruel was no word for it. Entering the army before the war, one of the
few gifted civilians commissioned because they loved the service and
then had friends to back them, Edgar Lawrence had joined the cavalry in
Texas, where the first thing he did was to fall heels over head in love
with his captain's daughter, and a runaway match resulted. Poor Kitty
Tyrrell! Poor Ned Lawrence! Two more unpractical people never lived. She
was an army girl with aspirations, much sweetness, and little sense. He
was a whole-souled, generous, lavish fellow. Both were extravagant, she
particularly so. They were sorely in debt when the war broke out, and
he, instead of going in for the volunteers, was induced to become
aide-de-camp to his old colonel, who passed him on to another when he
retired; and when the war was half over Lawrence was only a captain of
staff, and captain he came out at the close. Brevets of course he had,
but what are brevets but empty title? What profiteth it a man to be
called colonel if he have only the pay of a sub? Hundreds of men who
eagerly sought his aid or influence during the war "held over him" at
the end of it. Another general took him on his staff as aide-de-camp,
where Lawrence was invaluable. Kitty dearly loved city life, parties,
balls, operas, and theatres; but Lawrence grew lined and gray with care
and worry. The general went the way of all flesh, and Lawrence to Texas,
unable to get another staff billet. They set him at court-martial duty
at San Antonio for several months, for Texas furnished culprits by the
score in the days that followed the war, and many an unpromising army
career was cut short by the tribunal of which Captain and Brevet
Lieutenant-Colonel Lawrence was judge advocate; but all the time he had
a skeleton in his own closet that by and by rattled its way out. Time
was in the war days when many of the men of the head-quarters escort
banked their money with the beloved and popular aide. He had nearly
twelve hundred dollars when the long columns probed the Wilderness in
'64. It was still with him when he was suddenly sent back to Washington
with the body of his beloved chief, but every cent was gone before he
got there, stolen from him on the steamer from Acquia Creek, and never a
trace was found of it thereafter. For years he was paying that off,
making it good in driblets, but while he was serving faithfully in
Texas, commanding a scout that took him miles and miles away over the
Llano Estacado, there were inimical souls who worked the story of his
indebtedness to enlisted men for all it was worth, and, aided by the
complaints of some of their number, to his grievous disadvantage. He
came home from a brilliant dash after the Kiowas to find himself
complimented in orders and confronted by charges in one and the same
breath. The court acquitted him of the charges and "cut" his accusers,
but the shame and humiliation of it all seemed to prey upon his spirits;
and then Kitty Tyrrell died.
"If that had only happened years before," said the colonel, "it would
have been far better for Lawrence, for she conscientiously believed
herself the best wife in the world, and spent every cent of his income
in dressing up to her conception of the character." Once the most
dashing and debonair of captains, poor Ned ran down at the heel and
seemed unable to rally. New commanders came to the department, to his
regiment, and new officials to the War Office,--men "who knew not
Joseph;" and when the drag-net was cast into the whirlpool of army names
and army reputations, it was set for scandal, not for services, and the
old story of those unpaid hundreds was enmeshed and served up seasoned
with the latest spice obtainable from the dealers rebuked of that
original court. And, lo! when the list of victims reached Fort Worth in
the reorganization days, old Frazier, the colonel, burst into a string
of anathemas, and more than one good woman into a passion of tears, for
poor Ned Lawrence, at that moment long days' marches away towards the
Rio Bravo, was declared supernumerary and mustered out of the service of
the United States with one year's pay,--pay which he could not hope to
get until every government account was satisfactorily straightened, and
this, too, at a time when the desertion of one sergeant and the death of
another revealed the fact that his storehouses had been systematically
robbed and that he was hopelessly short in many a costly item charged
against him. That heartless order was a month old when the stricken
soldier reached his post, and then and there for the first time learned
his fate.
Yes, they had tried to break it to him. Letters full of sympathy were
written and sent by couriers far to the north; others took them on the
Concho trail. Brooks and Frazier both wrote to San Antonio messages
thence to be wired to Washington imploring reconsideration; but the deed
was done. Astute advisers of the War Secretary clinched the matter by
the prompt renomination of others to fill the vacancies just created,
and once these were confirmed by the Senate there could be no appeal.
The detachment led by Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Lawrence, so later said
the Texas papers, had covered itself with glory, but in its pursuit of
the fleeing Indians it had gone far to the northeast and so came home by
a route no man had dreamed of, and Lawrence, spurring eagerly ahead,
rode in at night to fold his motherless little ones to his heart, and
found loving army women aiding their faithful old nurse in ministering
to them, but read disaster in the tearful eyes and faltering words that
welcomed him.
Then he was ill a fortnight, and then he had to go. He could not, would
not believe the order final. He clung to the hope that he would find at
Washington a dozen men who knew his war record, who could remember his
gallant services in a dozen battles, his popularity and prominence in
the Army of the Potomac. Everybody knows the favorite aide-de-camp of a
corps commander when colonels go begging for recognition, and everybody
has a cheery, cordial word for him so long as he and his general live
and serve together. But that proves nothing when the general is gone.
Colonels who eagerly welcomed and shook hands with the aide-de-camp and
talked confidentially with him about other colonels in days when he rode
long hours by his general's side, later passed him by with scant notice,
and "always thought him a much overrated man." Right here at Fort Worth
were fellows who, six or seven years before, would have given a month's
pay to win Ned Lawrence's influence in their behalf,--for, like
"Perfect" Bliss of the Mexican war days, Lawrence was believed to write
his general's despatches and reports,--but who now shrank uneasily out
of his way for fear that he should ask a favor.
Even Brooks, who liked and had spoken for him, drew back from the window
when with slow, heavy steps the sad-faced, haggard man came slowly along
the porch. The orderly sprang up and stood at salute just as adjutant's
call sounded, and the band pealed forth its merry, spirited music. For
a moment the new-comer turned and glanced back over the parade, now
dotted with little details all marching out to the line where stood the
sergeant-major; then he turned, entered the building, and paused with
hopeless eyes and pallid, careworn features at the office doorway. His
old single-breasted captain's frock-coat, with its tarnished silver
leaves at the shoulders, hung loosely about his shrunken form. The
trousers, with their narrow welt of yellow at the seam, looked far too
big for him. His forage-cap, still natty in shape, was old and worn. His
chin and cheeks bristled with a stubbly grayish beard. All the old alert
manner was gone. The once bright eyes were bleary and dull. Neighbors
said that poor Ned had been drinking deep of the contents of a demijohn
a sympathetic soul had sent him, and half an eye could tell that his lip
was tremulous. The colonel arose and held out his hand.
"Come in, Lawrence, old fellow, and tell me what I can do for you." He
spoke kindly, and Brooks, too, turned towards the desolate man.
"You've done--all you could--both of you. God bless you!" was the
faltering answer. "I've come to say I start at once. I'm going right to
Washington to have this straightened out. I want to thank you, colonel,
and you too, Brooks, for all your willing help. I'll try to show my
appreciation of it when I get back."
"But Ada and little Jim, Lawrence; surely they're not ready for that
long journey yet," said Frazier, thinking sorrowfully of what his wife
had told him only the day before,--that they had no decent winter
clothing to their names.
"It's all right. Old Mammy stays right here with them. She has taken
care of them, you know, ever since my poor wife died. I can keep my old
quarters a month, can't I?" he queried, with a quivering smile. "Even if
the order isn't revoked, it would be a month or more before any one
could come to take my place. Mrs. Blythe will look after the children
day and night."
Frazier turned appealingly to Brooks, who shook his head and refused to
speak, and so the colonel had to.
"Lawrence, God knows I hate to say one word of discouragement, but I
fear--I fear you'd better wait till next week's stage and take those
poor little folks with you. I've watched this thing. I know how a dozen
good fellows, confident as yourself, have gone on to Washington and
found it all useless."
"It can't be useless, sir," burst in the captain, impetuously. "Truth is
truth and must prevail. If after all my years of service I can find no
friends in the War Office, then life is a lie and a sham. Senator Hall
writes me that he will leave no stone unturned. No, colonel, I take the
stage at noon to-day. Will you let Winn ride with me as far as Castle
Peak? I've got to run down and see Fuller now."
"Winn can go with you, certainly; but indeed, Lawrence, I shall have to
see you again about this."
"I'll stop on the way back," said Lawrence, nervously. "Fuller promised
to see me before he went out to his ranch." And hastily the captain
turned away.
For a moment the two seniors stood there silently gazing into each
other's eyes. "What can one do or say?" asked the colonel, at last. "I
suppose Fuller is going to let him have money for the trip. He can
afford to, God knows, after all he's made out of this garrison. But the
question is, ought I not to make poor Lawrence understand that it's a
gone case? He is legally out already. His successor is on his way here.
I got the letter this morning."
"On his way here? Who is he?" queried the major, in sudden interest.
"They didn't know when Stone came through San Antonio ten days ago."
"Man named Barclay; just got his captaincy in the 30th,--but was
consolidated out of that, of course."
"Barclay--Barclay, you say?" ejaculated the major, in excitement. "Well,
of all the----"
"Of all the what?" demanded the colonel, impatiently. "Nothing wrong
with him, I hope."
"Wrong? No, or they wouldn't have dubbed him Galahad. But, talk about
ups and downs in Texas, this beats all. Does Winn know?"
"I don't know that any one knows but you and me," answered the veteran,
half testily. "What's amiss? What has Winn to do with it?"
"Blood and blue blazes! Why, of course you couldn't know. Three years
ago Barclay believed himself engaged to a girl, and she threw him over
for Winn, and now we'll have all three of them right here at Worth."