In spite of what Colonel Frazier could say, Captain Lawrence had gone
the long and devious journey to Washington. Those were the days when the
lumbering stage-coach once a week, or a rattling ambulance, bore our
army travellers from the far frontier to San Antonio. Another trundled
and bumped them away to the Gulf. A Morgan Line steamer picked them up
and tossed and rolled with them to the mouth of the Mississippi and
unloaded them at New Orleans, whence by dusty railway journey of
forty-eight hours or more they could hope to reach the North. The
parting between Lawrence and his tall slip of a daughter and boisterous
little Jimmy was something women wept over in telling or hearing, for
only two looked on, well-nigh blinded,--Mrs. Blythe, who had been
devoted to their mother, and old "Mammy," who was devoted to them all. A
month had rolled by, and the letters that came from Lawrence from San
Antonio and Indianola and New Orleans had been read by sympathizing
friends to the children. Then all awaited the news from Washington.
Every one knew he would wire to Department Head-Quarters the moment the
case was settled in his favor; but the days went by without other
tidings, and the croakers who had predicted ill success were mournfully
happy. February passed, March was ushered in; orders came transferring
certain portions of Frazier's big command, and certain new officers
began to arrive to fill the three or four vacancies existing, but the
new captain of Troop "D" of the cavalry had not yet appeared. His fame,
however, had preceded him, and all Fort Worth was agog to meet him.
Brooks knew but a modest bit of his story, and what he knew he kept from
every man but Frazier, yet had had to tell his wife. The Winns were
silent on the subject. Winn himself was a man of few intimates,--a young
first lieutenant of cavalry,--and the tie that bound him to Lawrence was
the fact that he and Kitty Tyrrell were first-cousins, their mothers
sisters, and Winn, a tall, athletic, slender fellow, frank, buoyant,
handsome, and connected with some of the best names in the old army, was
one of the swells of his class at the Point and the beau among all the
young officers the summer of his graduation,--the summer that Laura
Waite, engaged to Brevet Captain Galbraith Barclay of the Infantry, came
from the West to visit relatives at that enchanting spot, spent just six
weeks there, and, after writing letters all one month to close her
absent lover's eyes, wound up by writing one that opened them. She was a
beautiful girl then; she was a lovely-looking woman now, but the bloom
was gone. The brilliant eyes were often clouded, for Harry Winn was "his
aunt Kitty all over," said many a man who knew them both. Their name was
impecuniosity. That Mrs. Winn could tell much about the coming captain
letters from other regiments informed more than one bright woman at
Worth; but that the young matron would tell next to nothing, more than
one woman, bright or blundering, discovered on inquiry. Only one officer
now at the post had ever served with Barclay, and that was Brooks, who
became tongue-tied so soon as it was settled beyond peradventure that
Captain Galbraith Barclay from the unassigned list had been gazetted to
the 12th Cavalry, Troop "D," _vice_ Lawrence, honorably discharged. But
Brooks had letters, so had Frazier, from old officers who had served
with the transferred man. Some of these letters referred to him in terms
of admiration, while another spoke of him unhesitatingly as "more kinds
of a damned fool" than the writer had ever met. Verily, various men have
various minds.
Presently, however, there came a man who could tell lots about Barclay,
whether he knew anything or not, and that was one of the new transfers,
Lieutenant Hodge by title and name. Hodge said he had served with the
30th along the Union Pacific, and had met Barclay often. In his original
regiment Mr. Hodge had been regarded as a very monotonous sort of man, a
fellow who bored his hearers to death, and the contrast between his
reception in social circles in the regiment he had left, and that
accorded him here at Worth so soon as it was learned that he knew
Barclay, inspired Mr. Hodge to say that _these_ people were worth
knowing; they had some life and intelligence about them. The gang he had
left in Wyoming were a stupid lot of owls by comparison. For a week
Hodge was invited to dinner by family after family, and people dropped
in to spend the evening where he happened to be, for Hodge held the
floor and talked for hours about Barclay, and what he had to tell was
interesting indeed; so much so, said Brooks, that some of it was
probably a preposterous lie. To begin with, said Hodge, Captain Barclay
was rich, very rich, fabulously rich, perhaps; nobody knew how rich, and
nobody would have known he was rich at all, judging from the simplicity
and strict economy of his life. In fact, it was this simplicity and
strict economy that had given rise to the belief that existed for a
year or two after he joined the 30th that he was hampered either with
debts or with dependent relatives. Relatives they knew he had, because
sisters sent their boys to visit him at Sanders, and he took them
hunting, fishing, etc.; from these ingenuous nephews the ladies learned
of others, nephews, nieces, sisters, cousins, aunts, who wrote long
letters to Uncle Gal, and the mail orderly said he left more letters at
Captain Barclay's quarters than at anybody's else. So Fort Sanders
dropped the theory of debts and adopted that of dependants, and that
held good for the first year of his service with them. He had joined
from the volunteers, where he had risen to the grade of major. He was
"pious," said Hodge,--wouldn't drink, smoke, chew, play cards, or
swear,--thought they ought to have services on Sunday. He left the
roistering bachelors' mess soon after his reaching the post, and had
ever since kept house, his cook and housemaid being one old darky whom
he had "accumulated" in the South during the war,--a darky who had been
well-taught in the household of his old master, and who became
extravagantly attached to the new. Hannibal could cook, wait at table,
and tend door to perfection, but he had to learn the duties of second
girl when his master joined the 30th in far Wyoming, and that was the
only time a breach was threatened. Hannibal's dignity was hurt. He had
been body-servant in the antebellum days, butler, cook, coachman, and
hostler, but had never done such chores as Marse Barclay told him would
fall to his lot when that reticent officer set up his modest
establishment. Hannibal sulked three days, and even talked of leaving.
The lieutenant counted out a goodly sum, all Hannibal's own, and told
him that he would find the balance banked in his name in the distant
East whenever he chose to quit; then Hannibal broke down, and was
speedily broken in. All this had Hodge heard when the dames of Sanders
and those of Steele or Russell were comparing notes and picnicking
together along that then new wonder of the world, the Union Pacific. But
all this was only preliminary to what came later.
Little detachments, horse and foot, were scattered all over the line of
the brand-new railway while it was being built; every now and then the
Indians jumped their camps and working-parties, and in the late fall of
'67 Barclay had a stiff and plucky fight with a band of Sioux; he was
severely wounded, but beat them off, and was sent East to recuperate.
Now came particulars Hodge could not give, but that letters could and
did. It was while Barclay was convalescing at Omaha Barracks that he met
Miss Laura Waite,--a beautiful girl and a garrison belle. She was ten
years his junior. This was her first winter in army society. She had
spent her girl years at school, and now was having "simply a heavenly
time," if her letters could be believed. Her father was a field officer
of cavalry with rather a solemn way of looking at life, and her mother
was said to be the explanation of much of his solemnity,--she being as
volatile as he was staid. She too had been a beauty, and believed that
beauty a permanent fixture. But Laura was fresh and fair, sweet and
winsome, light-hearted and joyous, and the father for a time took more
pride in her than he did in his sons. Major Waite was in command of the
cantonment from which the relief party was sent when the news came that
Barclay and his little detachment were "corralled." Major Waite became
enthusiastic over the details of the cool, courageous, brainy defence
made by the young officer against tremendous odds, covered him with all
manner of thoughtful care and attention when he was brought into the
cantonment, then, when the winter soon set in and the camp broke up, and
Waite went back to Omaha Barracks, he took Barclay with him to his house
instead of the hospital, and the rest followed as the night the day.
Barclay spent a month under the major's roof, won his esteem and
friendship, but left his heart in the daughter's hands. If ever a man
devotedly loved a beautiful, winsome young girl, that man was Galbraith
Barclay; if ever a girl's father approved of a man, that man was
Barclay; and if ever a man had reason to hope that his suit would win
favor in a father's eyes, that man was Barclay; yet it did not. Major
Waite's reply to the modest yet most manful plea of Lieutenant Barclay
to be permitted to pay his addresses to the major's daughter surprised
every one to whom Mrs. Waite confided it, and they were not few. The old
soldier begged of the younger not to think of it, at least just yet. But
when it transpired that the younger had been most seriously thinking of
it and could think of nothing else, then the major changed his tune and
told him what he did not tell his wife; and that only became known
through the father's own intemperate language long months after. He told
Barclay he knew no man to whom he would rather intrust his daughter's
happiness, but he feared, he believed, she was still too young to know
her own mind, too young to see in Barclay what he saw, and he urged that
the young officer should wait. But Barclay knew his own mind. He was
able, he said, to provide for her in comfort either in or out of the
army, which few possible aspirants could say. He would listen to no
demur, and then at last the father said, "Try your fate if you will, but
let there be no thought of marriage before she is twenty,--before she
can have had opportunity of seeing something of the world and of other
men,--not these young whippersnappers just joining us here."
It was a surprise to him that Laura should accept Mr. Barclay. She came
to him, her father, all happy smiles and tears and blushes, and told him
how proud and glad a girl she was, because she thought her lover the
best and noblest man she ever dreamed of except her own dear old dad.
For a time Waite took heart and hoped for the best, and believed her and
her mother, as indeed they believed themselves; and when Barclay went
back to Sanders at the end of January he was a very happy man, and Laura
for a week a very lonely girl. Then youth, health, elasticity, vivacity,
opportunity, all prevailed, and she began to take notice in very joyous
fashion. She did not at all recognize the doctrine preached by certain
mammas and certain other damsels, that she as an engaged girl should
hold aloof now and give the other girls, not so pretty, a chance. The
barracks were gay that winter: Laura danced with the gayest, and when
Barclay got leave in April and came down for a fortnight he found
himself much in the way of two young gentlemen who danced delightfully,
a thing he could not do at all. Yet he had sweet hours with his
sweetheart, and grew even more deeply in love, so beautiful was she
growing, and went back to Sanders a second time thinking himself
happiest of the happy, or bound to be when, in the coming autumn, he
could claim her as his own. But Waite was troubled. He was to take the
field the 1st of May; his troops would be in saddle and on scout away to
the west all summer long; his wife and daughter were to spend those
months at the sea-shore and in shopping for the great event to come in
November. He had a long, earnest talk with Barclay when once more the
devoted fellow came to see the lady of his love on the eve of her
departure for the East, but Barclay looked into her radiant, uplifted
eyes, and could not read the shadow of coming events, of which she was
as ignorant as he. In May he led his men on the march to the Big Horn,
and in June she led with Cadet Lieutenant Winn the german at the
graduation hop at West Point. Then Winn was assigned to duty, as was the
custom of the day, one of two or three young graduates chosen as
assistant instructors during the summer camp. He had an hour to devote
to drill each morning and a dozen to devote to the girls, and Laura
Waite, with her lovely face and form, was the talk of the brilliant
throng of visitors that summer. She and her mother returned to the Point
as guests of some old friends there stationed, a visit which was not on
the original programme at all. Winn took the girl riding day after day,
and to hops week after week. The shopping for the wedding went on
betweentimes, and Winn even escorted them to the city and took part in
the shopping. In fine, when November came, in spite of the furious
opposition of her father, in spite of his refusal to attend the ceremony
or to countenance it in any way, Winn, _vice_ Barclay, honorably
discharged, appeared as groom, and bore his bride away to a round of
joyous festivities among army friends in New Orleans and San Antonio
before their final exile to the far frontier. From that day to this no
line had ever come from the angered and aging man, even when Laura's
baby girl was born. Funds he sent from time to time,--he knew he'd have
to do that, as he told her mother and she told her friends,--and then,
just as more funds were much needed because of pressing claims of
creditors whose bills had not been paid from previous remittances, Winn
being much in the field and Laura becoming disburser general in his
absence, the major suddenly died, leaving a small life insurance for his
disconsolate widow and nothing to speak of for his children. They had
sucked him dry during his busy life.
The Winns did not invite Mr. Hodge to dinner, and were not bidden to
meet him. Laura was still in light mourning for her father, and for days
she really heard very little of Hodge's revelations regarding her
discarded Wyoming lover. It was through the nurse-girl, an old soldier's
daughter, that she first began to glean the chaff of the stories
flitting from house to house, and to hear the exaggeration of Hodge's
romancings about Captain Barclay's wealth, for that, after all, proved
the most vividly interesting of the travellers' tales he told. Barclay
proved to be, said Hodge, an expert mineralogist and geologist, and this
was of value when a craze for dabbling in mining stocks swept over
Sanders. Barclay, who lived so simply in garrison, was discovered
(through a breach of confidence on the part of the officiating
clergyman, that well-nigh led to another breach) to be the principal
subscriber to the mission church being built in Laramie City. It
suddenly became known that Barclay had a balance in the local bank and
reserve funds at the East, whereupon promoters and prospectors by the
dozen called upon him at the fort and strove to induce him to take stock
in their mines. Nine out of ten were sent to the right-about, even
those who called his attention to the fact that Colonel This and Major
That were large shareholders. One or two he gave ear to, and later got
leave of absence and visited their distant claims. He was out
prospecting, said Hodge, half the time in the fall of '68. The ventures
of the other officers seemed to prove prolific sources of assessments.
The Lord only knows how much fun and money the mine-owners of those days
got out of the army. But they failed to impress the puritanical captain,
and by the summer of '69 they ceased to do business in his neighborhood,
for before sending good money after bad, officers had taken to
consulting Barclay, and many an honest fellow's hoarded savings were
spared to his wife and children, all through Barclay's calm and patient
exposition of the fallacy of the "Company's" claims.
Then, said Hodge, when Channing, of the 27th, was killed by Red Cloud's
band back of Laramie Peak, and his heart-broken widow and children were
left penniless, somebody found the money to send them all to their
friends in New England and to see them safely established there. And
when Porter's wife was taken so ill while he was away up north of the
Big Horn, and the doctor said that a trained nurse must be had in the
first place, there came one from far Chicago; and later, after Porter
reached the post, overjoyed to find his beloved one slowly mending and
so skilfully guarded, the doctors told him she must be taken to the
sea-shore or the South, and, though every one at Sanders knew poor
Porter had not a penny, it was all arranged somehow, and Emily Porter
came back the next winter a rosy, blooming, happy wife. No one knew for
certain that all the needed money came from Barclay, but as the Porters
seemed to adore him from that time on, and their baby boy was baptized
Galbraith Barclay, everybody had reason to believe it. If Mrs. Winn ever
wanted to experience the exhilaration of hearing what other people
thought of her, she had only, said Mr. Hodge in confidence, to turn Mrs.
Porter loose on that subject.
Then, too, said Hodge, there was Ordnance Sergeant Murphy and his
family, burned out one winter's night with all their savings, and the
old man dreadfully scorched in trying to rescue his strong box from the
flames. It must have been Barclay who looked after the mother and kids
all the time the old man was moaning in hospital. They moved him into a
newly furnished and comfortable shack inside of a fortnight, and the
Murphys had another saint on their domestic calendar, despite the
non-appearance of his name in the voluminous records of their Church.
All this and more did Hodge tell of Barclay, as in duty bound, he said,
after first telling what other fellows long said of him,--that he was
close and mean, a prig, a namby-pamby (despite the way he fought
Crow-Killer's warlike band), a wet blanket to garrison joys, etc., etc.;
and yet they really couldn't tell why. He subscribed just as much to the
hop fund, though he didn't hop,--to the supper fund, though he didn't
sup,--to the mess fund for the entertainment of visiting officers,
though he didn't drink,--to the dramatic fund, though he couldn't
act,--to the garrison hunt, though they said he couldn't ride. But he
declined to give one cent towards the deficiency bill that resulted when
Sanders entertained Steele at an all-night symposium at the sutler's and
opened case after case of champagne and smoked box after box of cigars.
"It was a senseless, soulless proceeding," said he, with brutal
frankness. "Half the money you drank or smoked up in six hours could
have clothed and fed all the children in Sudstown for six months."
"Lord, but they were mad all through," said Hodge, when describing it.
"There wasn't a name they didn't call him all that winter."
"And yet I hear," said Mrs. Tremaine, a woman Fort Worth loved and
looked up to as the --th did to Mrs. Stannard, "that for a long time
past they have called him Sir Galahad instead of Galbraith."
"Oh," said Hodge, "that's one of old Gleason's jokes. He said they
called him 'Gal I had' when he went to Omaha and 'Gal I hadn't' when he
got back,"--a statement which sent Major Brooks swearing _sotto voce_
from the room.
"I don't know which I'd rather kick," said he, "Hodge or Gleason. I'd
rejoice in Barclay's coming if it weren't--if Lawrence were only here,
if Winn were only away."