"Come and dine with us this evening, you two," the "Old Man" was
saying, a few minutes later. He had been home long enough to consult
the "Commanding General," as he frequently referred to that smiling
better half, and to compare notes as to the condition of the larder and
cellar. He had flung conventionality to the winds, as most of us had to
in early Arizona days. "You others," he said, "have suffered so often
from my steaks and stories, you're glad not to be included. To-day I'm
bidding only these two youngsters. You know our dining table holds only
six. No, never mind about the call!" he interposed, with uplifted
hands, one to receive the toddy Briggs was stirring for him, the other
in kindly protest, for both the youngsters were on their feet
confusedly striving to make it understood that they had only been
waiting for the cool of the evening to come to pay their respects. "And
never mind about spike tail and shirt fronts either--come just as you
are!"
"Indeed, I'll _have_ to, sir," said Willett, whose undress uniform
fitted him like a glove and was cut and made by the then expert
military artist of the far East. They had not taken it too kindly,
these others in white cotton sack coats, hewed and stitched by the
company tailor, or even in canvas shooting rig, as was Harris, that the
young aide-de-camp, after brief siesta in the mid-day lazy hour, should
have appeared among them all, fresh-shaved and tubbed, and in
faultless, bran-new, spick-and-span cap and blouse and trousers, with
black silk socks and low-cut patent leather "Oxford ties." Harris,
hammock slung, and moodily studying 'Tonio, looked approvingly, but
made no remark whatever. Stannard, ever blunt and short of speech, had
shoved his hairy hands deep in his trousers' pockets, a thing no sub
would twice venture in his presence, looked Willett over from head to
foot, then, with a sniff, had turned away, but Bentley and Turner had
indulged in whimsical protest, "Gad, man, but you put us all to shame,"
said the surgeon. "I've seen no rig to match that since I came to this
post. It's rarer than rain."
"What _do_ you wear when you call on the commanding officer?" queried
the Latest Arrival, with jovial good-nature. "Thank you, Briggs. That
_was_ a good toddy."
"Never had a family here until this week," said Bentley, "and such
calling as I've done has been in what I happened to have on, and even
then I've wished we dressed like 'Tonio there. Why, Mr. Willett, only
once since I came to this post has there been an officer's daughter
with us. Only twice has there been an officer's wife. Even Mrs. Archer
wouldn't have tried it if the general hadn't been sick."
Willett laughed again, good-naturedly as before. "Well," said he, "in
the field 'The Lost and Strayed' didn't dandy much, but here I had not
even unpacked my trunk; had a whole buckboard to myself after we left
Captain Wickham at the Big Bug, so I just fetched 'em along. This is
light, you see--nothing but serge," and he held forth his arm. "Up
there, of course, we had no use for white. Gunboats and 'plebeskins'
was full dress half the year round----" And just then it had occurred
to him to put that question: "Does it never rain here?" and in so doing
he had appealed rather to Stannard and his fellows of the line, quite
as though he thought Bentley doing too much of the talk, especially
since Bentley's bent was criticising. But Stannard, as we have seen,
had referred back the question, whereat the doctor, defrauded of his
game, yawned languidly and turned over the matter to 'Tonio, thus
dragging Harris, all unwilling, into the tide of talk, and presently
out of his hammock. Next thing noticed of him he had disappeared.
To no man as yet, save the lieutenant-colonel commanding, had Willett
told the purpose of his coming. Late the previous evening Archer had
come to his office to receive the aide-de-camp, and there listened to
his message. "The Old Man" looked up suddenly as he sat in the
lamplight at the rude wooden table that served for his official desk,
surprise and concern mingling in his kindly face.
"The _general_ said that?" he asked.
"No, sir: the adjutant-general who was left in charge. The general is
away hunting."
"I might have known that," said Archer to his inner self. To the
aide-de-camp he merely bowed--bowed most courteously. He liked boys,
and the Lord had seen fit to take back to himself the one lad poor
Archer had liked most, and loved unspeakably.
"I think I shall say--nothing of it," said he, presently, after some
reflection, "and--you can find out, through Harris, all there is to be
told."
And not a word had he said, even to the post adjutant, from the moment
of Willett's reporting to him at nine the night before, yet every man
of the officers' mess knew well that something had sent the young staff
officer to Almy--that something was to be looked into--and every man,
including Harris, felt it in his bones that that something was the
recent and unprofitable scout. That being the case, it placed them all
on the defensive, and Willett, unhappily, upon his mettle.
A silence fell upon the party when it was found Harris was gone. 'Tonio
himself had risen again, had stood gazing awhile along the eastward
mountains, tumbling up toward a brazen sky, then had slowly vanished
from sight round the corner of the adobe wall.
"Sticks closer'n a brother," said Stannard, epigrammatically, with a
look at Turner, his comrade captain, whereat the latter shot a warning
glance, first at Stannard, then toward the unconscious N.A., now
hobnobbing with Briggs at the mess-room door.
"Harris doesn't like the young swell! What's the matter, d'ye s'pose?"
asked Bucketts, the post quartermaster, a man of much weight, but not
too much discrimination.
"Bosh! They're classmates and old chums," was Stannard's quick reply.
"Harris is hipped because his scout was a fizzle, and he simply doesn't
feel like talking."
"All the same, he doesn't like Willett, classmate or no classmate. You
mark my words," persisted the man of mops and brooms, and Stannard, who
had seen the youngster's face as he turned away, knew well the
quartermaster was right. Therefore was it his duty, for the sake of the
regiment, said he, to stand by Harris as hailing from the cavalry. He
scoffed at the quartermaster and began to pace the veranda. 'Twas high
time for evening stables, and the brief and perfunctory grooming the
short-coupled, stocky little mountain climbers daily received. The
herds had been driven in, watering in the shallows as they forded the
stream full fifteen minutes before. There were only the surgeon, the
adjutant, the quartermaster, and Lieutenant Willett seated on the
veranda when Harris presently came back, silent as before, but clad in
undress uniform, as neat and trim as that of the Latest Arrival, if not
so new. Then came General Archer, his daughter, and the meeting. Then,
a few minutes later, the bid to dinner, and then, barely an hour from
that time, the dinner itself--a function the classmates marched to
almost arm in arm when either would rather have been without the other.
The members of what there was of the mess, six officers in all, sat
waiting the summons to their own board, and gazing idly after. Stannard,
the only married captain whose wife had had the nerve to go to that
desolate and distant station, was sitting under his own figurative vine
and fig-tree represented by a pine veranda, about which neither vine
nor fig nor other tree had ever been induced to grow, but that was not
without other extravagances, since it represented to Uncle Sam an
aggregate sum that could be best computed at a shilling a shingle.
Stannard, hearing footsteps on the sandy soil, glanced up from the
columns of an _Alta California_, ten days old, and growled through the
adjacent blinds "They're coming now," whereat there was sound of
rustling skirt within, and between the slats there came a glimpse of
shining, big blue eyes, alive with womanly interest, and parted lips
disclosing two opposing rows of almost perfect teeth, all the whiter by
contrast with the sunburned, "sonsy" face that framed them. Together,
yet separated, this Darby and Joan of the far frontier sat and watched
the coming pair. "Isn't it good to see the real uniform again?" said
she. "Isn't it absurd to think of trying a dinner here?" said he. Then
both subsided as the two young officers stepped upon the resounding
boards of the next veranda to the south, knocked at the commander's
open door and were promptly welcomed.
"Now, Luce, they're going to have a very _nice_ dinner," protested
Mrs. Stannard. "I was in there helping over an hour, and Mrs. Archer's
a wonder! Even if the dinner didn't amount to much, there would be
Lilian."
"They can't eat _her_," persisted, grimly, the man.
"She looks sweet enough to eat," responded the woman. "You ought to see
her. After a six hours' ride she looks fresh as a daisy, all creamy
white with--but you wouldn't understand----"
"What on earth kept them out so long?"
"Didn't I tell you? Why, they went away to Bennett's ranch. Couldn't
find a vestige of vegetables nearer. Mrs. Bennett has a little patch
where she raises lettuce and radishes. The orderly carried a basket
full of truck, and leaves and flowers, poppies and cactus, you know,
and you've no idea how pretty they've made the table look."
Stannard sniffed. "Take their Sauterne hot or lukewarm?" he asked.
"Fancy a dinner without ice, fruit or cream!"
"Of course they haven't white wine here, Luce! But there's claret--famous
claret, too, and the water in the big _olla's_ even cooler than the
spring. They'll have French dressing for the salad. They have tomato
soup even _you_ couldn't growl at, and roast chicken, with real potatoes,
and _petits pois_, and corn, and olives; then salad cool as the spring;
then there's to be such an _omelette soufflee_--and coffee!--but it's
the way the table _looks_, Luce!"
"Men don't care how a thing looks, so long as it tastes right. How
_does_ it look?"
"So white and fresh, and sprinkled with green and purple and crimson,
the leaves and the poppies, you know. She----" But Mrs. Stannard broke
off suddenly. "What is it, Wettstein?" she asked, for their own
particular _chef_, a German trooper, with elementary culinary gifts,
appeared in the hallway.
"It's Suey, mattam, says would Mrs. Stannard come over a minute. He's
stuck, mattam."
"Stuck! Heavens! how?" cried Mrs. Stannard, up at once in alarm, and
vanishing through the dim light of the blanketed window. The presumably
punctured Chinaman was even then in full flight for his own kitchen
door, some fifty feet away, and Mrs. Stannard followed. No Roman in
Rome's quarrel was ever more self-sacrificing than were our army women
of the old days in their helpfulness. Had the hounds ravished the roast
again, as once already had happened? If so, the Stannard dinner stood
ready to replace it, even though she and her captain had to fall back
on what could be borrowed from the troop kitchen. No, the oven door was
open, the precious chickens, brown, basted and done to a turn, were
waiting Suey's deft hands to shift them to the platter. (No need to
heat it even on a December day.) Mrs. Stannard's quick and
comprehensive glance took in every detail. The "stick" was obviously
figurative--mere vernacular--yet something serious, for Suey's
olive-brown skin was jaundiced with worry, and the face of Doyle, the
soldier striker, as he came hurrying back from the banquet board, was
beading with the sweat of mental torment. Soup, it seems, was already
served, and Doyle burst forth, hoarse whispering, before ever he caught
sight of the visiting angel.
"Sure I _can't_, Suey! _The General's sittin' on it!_"
And Suey's long-nailed Mongolian talons went up in despair as he turned
appealingly to their rescuer.
"Sitting on what, Doyle? Quick!" said Mrs. Stannard.
"The sherry, ma'am! The doctor sent it over wid his comps to s'prise
him, an' my orders was to fill the little glasses when I'd took in the
soup, an' I put it under the barrel chair----"
But Mrs. Stannard had heard enough. Even though convulsed with
merriment, she seized a pencil and scribbled a little line on a card.
"Give this to Mrs. Archer," she said, and a moment later, in the midst
of his first story, the veteran was checked by these placid words from
the head of the table:
"Pardon me, dear, but you are on the lid of the wine cooler. Let Doyle
get at it a moment."
The general was not the nimblest-witted man in the service, but long
experience had taught him the wisdom of prompt observance of any
suggestion that came from his wife. Dropping his napkin, and the thread
of his tale, he rose to his feet. Blushing furiously, Doyle bent, and
with vigorous effort pried off a circular, perforated top, revealing a
dark, cylindrical space beneath, from the depths of which he lifted a
dripping bucket of galvanized iron, and sped, thus laden, away to the
kitchen, to the music of Mrs. Archer's merry laughter and a guffaw of
joy from the general's lips.
"How came you to put it there, sir?" demanded he, a moment later, as
Doyle circumnavigated the table, filling, as ordered, the five little
glasses with fragrant Amontillado. "I must tell you, gentlemen, this is
one of the pleasant surprises that most admirable woman yonder is
forever putting up on me. Life would be a desert without such."
"Indeed it wasn't mine!" expostulated madam, "though I'm deeply
indebted to somebody. Who was it, Doyle?"
"Docther Bentley, ma'am. He said I was to keep it dark, ma'am--'an' in
the coolest place I could find----"
But here the peals of laughter silenced the words and rang the glad
tidings to listening, waiting ears in the kitchen that all was well.
Mrs. Stannard scurried away to explain to her Luce, and the dinner went
blithely on.
"You did right, Doyle! you did right!" shouted the general, "and we'll
drink the doctor's health. Keep it dark, indeed! Haw, haw, haw!" And
then nothing would do but he must tell the story of this precious and
particular chair. Furniture, even such as he bought at San Francisco,
and would live to a green old age along the Pacific, came speedily to
pieces in the hot, dry atmosphere of Arizona. Little enough there was
of cabinet ware, to be sure, because of the cost of transportation; but
such as there was, unless riveted in every seam and joint, fell apart
at most inopportune moments. Bureaus and washstands, tables, sofas and
chairs, were forever shedding some more or less important section, and
the only reliable table was that built by the post carpenter, the
quartermaster.
And so these pioneers of our civilization, the men and women of the
army, had had no little experience in cabinetmaking and upholstering.
While the emigrants and settlers, secure under its wing, could turn
swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks, as saith the
Scriptures, their soldier folk turned clothing boxes into couches, soap
boxes into cradles, and pork barrels into _fauteuils_. Chintz and
calico, like charity, covered a multitude of sins, as declared in
unsightly cracks and knotholes. The finest reclining chair in all Camp
Almy belonged to the doctor, a composite of condemned stretchers and
shelter tent. The best dining-room set was sawed out from sugar
barrels, and, being stuffed with old newspapers and gayly covered with
cheese cloth and calico, rivaled in comfort, if not in airy elegance,
the twisted woodwork of Vienna. When it was known that Mrs. and Miss
Archer had descended upon the camp, and their beloved commander had
next to nothing by way of furniture with which to deck their army home,
every officer hastened to place his household goods--such "C. and G.E."
as did not belong to the hospital--at the general's disposal. The
Stannards sent three riveted, cane-bottomed, dining-room chairs and
their spare room outfit complete. Captain Turner, whose fair-complected
partner had not yet ventured to these destructive suns, sent bedstead
and bureau, the latter without knobs, but you could pry the drawers
open with the point of a sabre. The post trader drove up from the store
with a lot of odds and ends. Even the bachelors were keen to do
something. All of which Mrs. Archer most gratefully and smilingly
accepted and made mental note of for future return in kind. But, in
spite of the Stannards' contribution, the general stood firmly to his
prerogative and sat close on his throne--"The finest dining chair in
all Arizona, sir," as he often declared. "Sawed out from a standard oak
whiskey barrel at Old Port Buford in '58, according to my own ideas and
lines, and sound as a dollar to-day, sir, and it's only been covered
three times in all. Look at it!" And here, with a flourish, he would
whip off the seat. "Combination chair and butler's pantry, sir. Used to
keep my whiskey and tobacco there when the redskins had the run of the
post and thought nothing of searching our quarters. And now Doyle's
used it as the doctor prescribed, and then gone and forgotten it! Haw,
haw, haw! By Jove, but that's capital sherry! Cool almost as if it had
been iced! Harris, my boy, you don't drink!"
There was a moment's silence. Then the young officer answered, simply,
yet almost apologetically:
"Why--I never have, sir."