Ten miles out to the northwest the stream that curved and twisted around
the low _mesa_ of Fort Worth burst its way through a ridge in the
foot-hills, and, brawling and dashing at its rocky banks, rolled out
over the lowlands, foaming at the mouth with the violence of its own
struggles. Far in the heart of the hills it had its source in several
clear, cold springs, while the deep hoarded snows of the harsh winters
fed and swelled it in the springtide until it reached the proportions of
a short-lived torrent. Huge heaps of uprooted trees and tangled
brushwood it deposited along its shores as far down even as the fort,
but nothing was carried below the sutler's. "Ahl's fish that comes to
Fuller's net," said Sergeant McHugh, "an' sorra a sliver av a sardine
iver got away from it." Once in a while, after unusual flood, the
flotsam and jetsam of the creek would be diversified with wagon-bodies,
ranch roofs, camp equipage, and the like, for "the Range," as this odd
upheaval was locally termed, was a famous place for prospectors.
A beautiful stream was the Blanca within its mountain gates, but an
ashen pallor overspread it after its fight for freedom. It was never the
same stream after it got away. It danced and sparkled past pretty nooks
and shaded ravines among the hills, but issued from the gateway, like
the far-famed Stinking River of the Bannocks and Shoshones of
Northwestern Wyoming, a metamorphosed stream. It had a bad reputation.
It was solely responsible for the fact that Worth had been located away
out here in the bald, bleak, open prairie country, instead of among
those bold and beautiful heights to the northwest. "The very spot for a
military post!" said the officers of the earlier scouting parties, as
they camped within the gates in the midst of a lonely glade. "Lovely,"
said the Texan guides, in reply, "so long as you don't mind being
drowned out every spring." It seems that snows would melt of a sudden,
tremendous thunderstorms burst among the crags, and flood and deluge the
valleys, for the Blanca could not with sufficient swiftness discharge
its swollen torrents through that narrow gorge. Beautiful it lay,
ordinarily, as a summer sea, and the bridle-path that wound through the
pass was a favorite route for picnic-parties from Worth. But
storm-clouds would rise and turn summer seas to raging water-demons, and
then the flood that tore through the gates would sweep all before it,
like the unloosed waters of the Conemaugh that awful May of '89.
From Worth to the White Gate the prairie road wound hard and firm, and
before the late excitement several picnic-, riding-, and driving-parties
had paid their spring-time visits. It was quite the thing, too, for such
maids and matrons as were good horsewomen to ride thither in the
lengthening afternoons. Mrs. Frazier had consulted Collabone as to the
earliest date on which Barclay could stand a long drive, as she wished
to give a little _fete_ in his honor, and had planned a picnic to
Barrier Rock, a romantic spot just within the gorge. Collabone had
referred her to his assistant, and that younger officer consulted his
patient before committing himself to reply.
"I don't care to ride in an ambulance, doctor, but I do long to get in
saddle. There's no strain on that leg below the knee. Can't you let me
mount from my back porch here and amble around these fine mornings
before people are up?" And "Funnybone" assented. He and Barclay rode out
together, very cautiously, next morning at reveille, and, finding his
patient benefited by the gentle exercise on such a perfect mount as
either of those Kentucky bays, the doctor said, "Go again; only ride
slowly, and mount and dismount only at the back porch, where you have
only to lower yourself into saddle. Be sure to avoid any shock or jar,
then you're all right."
Hannibal and Mrs. Winn's domestic were the only persons besides
Barclay's orderly to see the start, but had the domestic herself been
alone it would have been sufficient to insure transmission of the news.
First she told her mistress. Later she learned from Hannibal that the
captain was going out to stables next morning the same way, and had
ordered coffee to be ready at reveille. This, too, was conveyed to
Laura, and that evening she sent for the veteran stable sergeant of the
troop to which her husband was temporarily attached, and asked him if
Robin Hood, a pretty little chestnut she used to ride, was still in the
stable. He was, and would Mrs. Winn be pleased to ride? The sergeant
would be glad to see the lady in saddle again. Her handsome side-saddle
was, with her bridle, always kept in perfect order, but for several
months Mrs. Winn had taken no exercise that way.
"I'm going to ride at reveille, sergeant," she confided to the faithful
soldier. "It's so long since I mounted, I wish to try once or twice when
people can't see me." And Sergeant Burns had promised that as soon as
the sentry would release him after gun-fire Robin Hood should be on
hand. He'd be proud to come with him himself.
True to his word, Burns was up at four-fifteen; Robin was groomed and
fed and watered and saddled in style, and ready to start the moment the
sentry was relieved by the morning gun-fire from the imposition of the
order to "allow no horse to be taken out between taps and reveille,
except in the presence of a commissioned officer or the sergeant of the
guard." The sight that met the sergeant's eyes as he cantered around
back of the row of officers' quarters, leading Robin by the rein, was
one he never forgot.
With pallid face, down which the blood was streaming from a cut at the
temple, Captain Barclay was seated on the steps, striving to bind a
handkerchief about his lower leg. Old Hannibal, forgetful of the dignity
of the Old Dominion, was actually running down the back road, in haste,
it seems, to summon the doctor. On the porch, amid some overturned
chairs, two athletic, sinewy young men were grappling, one of them,
Lieutenant Brayton, almost lifting and carrying the other, Lieutenant
Winn, towards his own doorway, both ashen gray as to their faces, both
fearfully excited, both struggling hard, both with panting breath
striving to speak with exaggerated calm.
On this scene, wringing her hands, sobbing with fright and misery,
flitting first to Barclay's side, then back towards her straining
husband, saying wild and incoherent things to both, was Laura Winn.
Burns had the frontiersman's contempt for a chimney-pot hat, and never
seemed one so incongruous as this,--her riding head-gear which in the
midst of her wailings Mrs. Winn clasped to her heaving breast. To make
matters more complicated, the neighborhood was waking up, domestics and
"strikers" were gazing from back porches farther down the row, and
Blythe's big hounds had taken to barking furiously, until that bulky and
bewildered soldier himself came forth, damned them into their kennel,
then hastened in consternation to the aid of Barclay. By this time, too,
Winn had succeeded in making his wife hear him, and was ordering her
within-doors; but like some daft creature she hovered, moaning and
wringing her hands and staring at Barclay, whose eyes were now beginning
to close, and whose form was slowly swaying.
"In God's name, man, what's happened?" demanded Blythe, as he seized and
steadied the toppling form. "Why, you're bleeding like an ox. Your boot
is running over. Drop those horses, Burns, and run for the doctor,
lively," he urged. Needing no further authority, the sergeant turned his
charges loose and scurried after Hannibal.
"Help me carry Barclay in-doors," was the next word. With one warning
order to Winn to keep away, young Brayton broke loose from him and ran
to assist. As though half stupefied, Winn heavily moved a pace or two,
then sank upon a bench and stared. His wife stood gazing in horror at
the trail of blood that followed the three men into the hall, then
faltered over to where the young soldier sat, moaning, "Oh, Harry! Oh,
Harry!" Reaching his side, she laid her hand upon his shoulder and bade
him look at her,--speak to her. He rose slowly to his feet, his face
averted, shook himself free, and, with a shudder, but never uttering a
word in reply, passed into his dark doorway. The nurse-girl, wide-eyed,
met him at the threshold. "Go to your mistress," he said, hoarsely. He
stumbled on through the house, unslung the revolver belted to his waist,
and laid it on the hall table; reconsidered; buckled it firmly on, and,
pulling his hat down over his eyes, drew back the door-bolt and let
himself out upon the front piazza. Crossing the parade, he saw the red
sash of the officer of the day. De Lancy was dragging sleepily back from
his reveille visit to the guard, but the sight of Winn aroused him, and
he quickened his pace and came striding to him.
"Hullo, lad," he hailed, full twenty paces away, "what luck? Got
Marsden, the sergeant tells me.--Why---- Good God! what's happened?"
"Nothing," said Winn, "except, perhaps, I've killed Barclay. Take me to
the colonel."
"You're daft, man!" said De Lancy, instantly, while an awful fear almost
checked the beating of his heart. Then, seizing Winn by the arm, "What
d'ye mean?" he asked.
"Go and see," said Winn, stupidly, as he buried his face in his arms a
moment, then stretched them out full length, and, tossing his head back,
shut his eyes as though to blot out a hateful sight. "Go," he continued;
"then come and take me to the colonel."
And De Lancy started on the run and collided with Brayton at the door.
"For God's sake, go and hurry up 'Funnybone,'" moaned the youngster.
"Here's Barclay bleeding to death."
De Lancy ran his best: guardsmen across the parade stopped and stared,
men in shirt-sleeves rushed out on the barrack stoops and stood and
gazed, and a corporal, with rifle trailed, came running over to see what
was amiss, just as the junior doctor, in cap and overcoat, trousers and
slippers, came bolting out of his hallway and flying up the path. In
front of De Lancy's one slipper went hurtling back through midair, but
the doctor rushed on in stocking-foot. The corporal picked up the shoe
and followed. No one seemed to look for the moment at Winn, who turned
slowly back to the pathway and like a blind man seemed groping his way
towards Frazier's. The officer of the day passed him by on the run,
following at the doctor's heels, with never another look at him. Men
seemed to think only of Barclay. Was it credible that an officer and a
gentleman, as Winn had been regarded, could purposely have dealt that
honored soldier a mortal blow, unless--unless--but who could find words
to frame the thought? Once within Brayton's hallway, De Lancy turned and
slammed shut the door, for others were coming on the run from far across
the parade. Over at the guard-house the men had started for their
breakfast, but hung there, clustered about the sentry-post, gazing over
the criss-cross plat of the parade, and muttering their conjectures as
to the cause of the trouble. The sight of Lieutenant Winn wandering on
down the row, turning from time to time, halting as though uncertain
what he ought to do, while every other officer was running to the other
end of the row, was something they could not understand.
Then Mrs. Winn, in riding-habit, came suddenly forth upon her piazza,
and, gazing wildly up and down, caught sight of her husband, now some
fifty paces away along the gravel walk. Stretching forth her arms to
him, she began to call aloud, "Harry! Harry! please come back!" He never
turned. She ran down the steps and out to the gate and called him,
louder, louder, so that they could hear the voice all over the garrison
in the sweet, still morning air; but on he went, doggedly now, faster
and faster. She gathered up her clinging skirts in one hand, and,
pleading still, followed after. Not until he had mounted the steps at
the colonel's did the young officer turn again; then with uplifted hand
and arm he stood warning her back. Something in the attitude, something
in the stern, quivering white face, seemed at last to bring to her the
realization of the force of his unspoken denunciation.
"Harry! Harry!" she cried. "Oh, come and let me tell you. You don't
understand! I meant no wrong! I was only going for a ride,--not with
him,--not with him, Harry!" And so, pleading, weeping, she followed
almost to the colonel's gate before the door was opened from within and
Winn was swallowed up in the darkness of the hall.
By this time some inkling of the trouble had been borne to Collabone,
ever an early riser. As he came hastily forth from his quarters, the
first thing he saw was the drooping form of Mrs. Winn, weeping at the
colonel's gate. Seizing her arm with scant ceremony, he whirled her
about and bore her homeward, she sobbing out her story as they sped
along, he listening with clouded, anxious face.
"Go back to your room, Mrs. Winn," he said, so solemnly and warningly
she could not but heed. "Go to your baby. I'll go first next door, then
I'll find your husband." She shrank within the hallway, and threw
herself, weeping miserably, upon the sofa in the pretty parlor,--the
parlor where she had so fascinated Hodge. There the sound of her baby's
wailing reached her in an interval of her own, and she called to the
nurse to do something to comfort that child. There was no answer. "Miss
Purdy," with clattering tongue and eager eyes and ears and half a dozen
sympathizing neighbors, was out in rear of the house, deaf to demands of
either mother or child; there Collabone found her, and sent her
scurrying within before the fury of his wrath.
"Now, this will not do, Mrs. Winn," he said, as, following, he lifted
the moaning woman from the sofa. "You must go to your room,--to your
child, as I told you. Captain Barclay will soon be all right. He has
lost much blood, but the hemorrhage is checked. Now I will go for Mr.
Winn. It's a bad business, but don't make it worse by any
more--nonsense." With that he not too gently pushed her up the first few
stairs, then turned abruptly and hastened away to Frazier's.
In the hall he found that gray-haired, gray-faced veteran listening
stupidly to Winn.
"I don't understand, sir," he was saying. "You struck him--with what?"
"I don't know," said Winn. "They say I've killed him. I have come to
surrender myself." His eyes were as dull and leaden as his heart.
"It's not so bad," burst in the doctor. "Barclay fell or was knocked
over a chair, and the jar reopened his wound. He fainted from loss of
blood, but it's checked now."
"But--how?--why?" the colonel was stammering. Over the balustrade aloft
popped one head night-capped, and two with touseled hair, and blanched
faces were framed in all three, and gasping words were heard, and
whisperings as of awe-stricken, news-craving souls. "Where did this
occur, and when did you return, sir?"
"On the back porch of my--of our quarters, colonel,--when I got back,
just before gun-fire."
"And what possible excuse or explanation have you, sir? What could
warrant such--such conduct?" demanded Frazier, as though at a loss for
suitable words. Yet, even as he asked, his wife's predictions reasserted
themselves, and he glanced uneasily aloft.
"Come into the parlor, colonel," implored Collabone. "Say no more here.
Let me explain. It's all a wretched mistake." And, half pushing, half
pulling, but all impelling, the doctor succeeded in hustling the post
commander and the inert, unresisting subaltern within the parlor. Then,
to the infinite disgust of the colonel's wife, he shut--yes,
slammed--the door.
A quarter of an hour later, in close arrest, Lieutenant Winn returned to
his own roof and locked himself in his den. Mrs. Winn, kneeling at the
keyhole, pleaded ten minutes for admission, all in vain; then she sent
her maid for Dr. Collabone and Mrs. Faulkner, and went straightway to
bed.