In the '70's the frontier was a fact and not a memory, and a woman in
the Far West was a blessing sent direct from heaven, or from the East,
which was much the same thing. Lieutenants besought the wives of their
brother officers to bring out their sisters and cousins and even aunts,
and very weird specimens of the sex sometimes resulted. But even these
could reign as queens, dance, ride, flirt to their hearts' content--also
marry, which is not always the corollary in these days. The outbreak of
a reservation full of Indians was a small thing in comparison with the
excitement occasioned by the expectation of a girl in the post.
There was now at Grant the prospect of a girl, and for days ahead the
bachelors had planned about her. She was Landor's ward,--it was news to
them that he had a ward, for he was not given to confidences,--and she
was going to visit the wife of his captain, Mrs. Campbell. When they
asked questions, Landor said she was eighteen years old, and that her
name was Cabot, and that as he had not seen her for ten years he did not
know whether she were pretty or not. But the vagueness surrounding her
was rather attractive than otherwise, on the whole. It was not even
known when she would arrive. There was no railroad to Arizona. From
Kansas she would have to travel by ambulance with the troops which were
changing station.
There was only Mrs. Campbell who knew the whole story. Landor had gone
to her for advice, as had been his custom since the days before she had
preferred Campbell to him. "Felipa," he said, "writes that she is going
to run away from school, if I don't take her away. She says she will,
and she undoubtedly means it. I have always noticed that there is no
indecision in her character."
Mrs. Campbell asked where she proposed running to.
Landor did not know; but she was part Apache, he said, and Harry Cabot's
daughter, and it was pretty certain that with that blood in her veins
she had the spirit of adventure.
She asked what he had thought of doing about it.
"I've thought of bringing her on here. But how can I? In a bachelor
establishment? My sister won't have her at any terms. She suggested an
orphan asylum from the first, and she hasn't changed her mind."
Mrs. Campbell appliqued a black velvet imp on a green felt lambrequin,
and thought. "Do you ever happen to realize that you have your hands
very full?"
"Yes," he said shortly, "I realize it."
He sat staring over her head for a moment of silence. "I foresaw it when
I told Cabot I'd take her."
"Might not an orphan asylum have been best, after all?"
"It might for me," he said, "but not for her, and I told Cabot I'd do
my best for her." It had seemed to him his plain duty, and he had done
it, and he asked no approbation.
Mrs. Campbell took it as he did, for a matter of course. She wasted no
words in expressing admiration for what he had done, but kept to the
main issue, making herself useful, as women are rarely content to do
when they deal with men, without indulging her taste for the
sentimental. "Suppose I were to take her?" she suggested.