AT THE FORT.
It was an unfortunate thing for May Arlington and her lover that
Colonel Montrose, the commandant, was absent from Fort Cimarron when
they were brought to that place, and that in his stead was Lieutenant
Joel Barlow. It was even more unfortunate for them that Barlow stood
to the girl in the relation of a discarded and chagrined lover.
He had but a week before visited that little sod house out on the
wide, wind-swept plains, and there had told the girl his love, and
she had turned him away. He knew why she had done so, too; he knew
that it was because of Ben Stevens.
To Joel Barlow the men who had brought in the prisoners--for they
were really prisoners--made their report; and Barlow went forth to
see the girl and Stevens.
He felt a secret satisfaction; for his love for the girl, or what he
had fancied was love, had turned to hate, and for Ben Stevens he had
a feeling that was perfectly ferocious. So he smiled inwardly, and
stared at that nugget of gold, as he carefully examined it.
“Yes, it must be returned to the colonel,” he said, but in his eyes
there was a light of anxious questioning.
“Put him under guard!” he ordered, when Stevens was brought before
him.
“Are you going to hold me for this?” Stevens roared in wrath.
“Put him under guard!” was the answer, and Stevens, still boiling
with rage, was led away.
The girl was then told by Barlow that she might go where she willed,
within the boundaries of the fort, but that she could not depart
until the colonel had arrived and passed on her case.
As if to salve this wound, Barlow conducted her to the rooms of Mrs.
McGee, who was the “mother” of the fort; so considered by all the
young soldiers, whom she mothered and petted when they were ill, and
at other times treated as if they were children. Even the officers
feared her when she was angry. She was the only woman at the fort
now; the other women--the colonel’s wife and daughter--being away.
Mrs. McGee was red-faced and brawny; she had arms and muscles like a
man, and sometimes she proved that she had a temper; but she had a
kind heart.
When she saw the suffering girl and heard her story she was roused
into indignation.
“There--there!” she said soothingly. “Whin the colonel comes he’ll
make it all right. And now you wait here a bit, while I go down and
give to that blackguard Joel Barlow a bit av me mind.”
The “bit av her mind” which she gave to Barlow was peppery and
fierce. She wasted no words in telling him what she thought of him
for keeping the girl there in the fort on such a charge.
“She’s the angel, she is, and it’s yersilf is the brute and the
blackguard!” she cried. “Was yer mother a lady? If she was, let this
girl go in reminbrance av yer mother, and be ashamed of yersilf fer
havin’ thought fer a minute av doin’ annythin’ else.”
Joel Barlow merely smiled. He knew Mrs. McGee.
“You’re too good to live, mother,” he said; “but I’ll go over and
talk with the girl. It is a shame, as you say; but what am I to do?
I’m only in the colonel’s place here while he is away, and I have to
be mighty careful.”
“Ye ar-re the dirt av the wurruld!” she snorted, in derision. “Don’t
I know that the colonel wouldn’t hold her fer wan second?”
“I think I’ll go and see her? Of course you’ll take good care of her,
Mother McGee; but perhaps I’d better have a talk with her.”
He set out to have that talk within the next half hour.
Time had so sped since the “arrest” of the girl and her lover that
night was now at hand and the shadows of darkness were gathering over
the fort.
As Barlow passed along, heading toward the house where Mrs. McGee
lived, he came face to face with a young trooper in a dusty uniform,
who seemed to have been watching for him to make his appearance.
Seeing this young fellow he turned aside, and the two came together
behind a growth of cottonwood trees which grew beside the water pool
supplied by the deep well and windmill.
It must be understood that Fort Cimarron was not just one building;
rather it was a number of buildings, officers’ quarters, and
barracks for the troopers, with stables for the horses, all
surrounded by a strong, palisaded wall. Attempts had been made to
make the place attractive. One result was the cottonwood trees,
planted where the water from the well could keep them growing in that
land of drought; and they made a green and pleasant shade.
“Well, Wilkins?” said Barlow harshly, as he stopped with the young
trooper behind the cottonwoods.
“It was a mistake; a frightful mistake!” Wilkins stammered. His
voice trembled, and he was much wrought up. “Yes, sir, I acknowledge
it,” he added; “it was a frightful mistake. But it was, I hope, not
irreparable.”
Barlow lifted his hand as if he would strike the trooper in the face.
“Is it what I pay you for, to make mistakes like that?” he demanded
angrily. “Aye, it was a frightful mistake; and I’m afraid it will
have serious consequences. In Heaven’s name, how did you do it?”
“Well, the two letters were left on your table, sir, lying close
together, and I was in a hurry. You had stepped out, and I thought I
hadn’t time to search for you; and so I snatched up the two letters.
I got them mixed, and threw to the girl the one that had in it the
nugget of gold. But----”
“Curse you for an idiot, Wilkins!” snarled Barlow. “I ought to pistol
you for that.”
“Of course, it wasn’t intentional, and----”
“Well, keep your head closed about it!” Barlow snapped. “Don’t say
anything; not a word to anybody.”
He left Wilkins, and went on hurriedly and angrily.
He had not recovered his temper when he reached the house where the
girl had been lodged with Mrs. McGee, this particular house being a
part of the cook room, for of the things which Mrs. McGee did one was
to supervise the cooking at the fort. She met Barlow at the door.
“Can I see her?” he said. “And how is she?”
“A-cryin’ the two eyes out av her head. Bad cess to ye fer that, too!
If I was a man, throoper er no throoper, I’d thrash ye fer that, so I
would.”
“I’ll just go in and see her.”
He laughed, pushed past the portly form of Mrs. McGee, and then went
along the hall until he came to a large room at its farther end.
The girl was in this room, and had lighted the lamp. She stared at
him with flushing face as he came in.
“I don’t think I requested your presence,” she said coldly.
“No, but Mrs. McGee told me you were pining for a little comforting,
and so I thought I’d call, since I haven’t ceased to regard you in a
favorable light, you know. It was only last week, I believe, that I
offered you my hand and my heart.”
She turned from him and walked toward the window, and looked out from
it across the parade ground.
As she did this his admiration of her sprang full-armed into being
again. “Gad, what a girl!” he thought. “Isn’t she a queen? A man
could feel proud to have her for his wife.”
“I have come to apologize for what has perhaps seemed to you
unnecessary harshness,” he said, in a voice wholly changed, for now
it had a sincere ring, and his admiration looked from his eyes.
“It was unnecessary,” she said. “What do you intend to do with me? I
have done nothing, and Mr. Stevens has done nothing!”
Barlow’s eyes hardened at that mention of Stevens. Yet when he spoke
his voice was kind.
“Miss Arlington, I want you to know how sorry I am about this whole
thing,” he urged. “If I were in absolute command here I should not
hold either Stevens or you a minute. But you must see that I am not
master here. A soldier must learn to obey, before anything else. The
regulations make it impossible for me to do anything differently
until the colonel comes.”
She turned again toward the window.
“Miss Arlington--May,” he said, his voice lowered, “you remember what
I said to you not long ago? Well, I want to repeat it. Why can’t you
give a fellow a chance, or a bit of hope? I’m not such a bad lot, and
I’m certainly as well situated as this fellow Stevens.”
She turned upon him again with flashing eyes.
“Don’t take advantage of the fact that I must listen,” she said. “You
once claimed to be a gentleman!”
“And I am one now.”
“Then don’t bring up that subject again. I never gave you any
encouragement, and----”
“May Arlington,” he interrupted, his voice high and sharp now, “you
still stick to that, do you? And you scorn me for that fool of a
cowboy? Why, I’d have you know that I’m a gentleman, and the son of a
gentleman!”
She turned once more to the window and looked out, but her cheeks
were red, and one foot tapped the carpet impatiently.
“And----” he ripped out an oath, “I’ll see that Ben Stevens has a
hard row to hoe before he gets in a position to marry you!”
“What do you mean?” she demanded.
“Just this! He was found with the nugget, stolen from the colonel,
and which the colonel valued highly because it was given to him by
Buffalo Bill, the famous border scout. Now, you may tell me what is
generally done with a thief? You don’t need to answer. He is sent to
prison, and often for a term of years. And that is the journey that
Ben Stevens will be taking before another month rolls by.”
The red went out of her cheeks and they became ghastly white.
“You will try to send him to prison?”
“No.” He laughed. “It won’t’ be necessary for me to trouble myself
about it; the statements of the troopers who found him with that gold
will do that. But if you had spoken to me kindly and fair I might
have interested myself in his behalf, and I might have even got him
off.” He looked at her with a strange smile. “And to tell you the
truth, May,” he added, “I might still do that--interest myself and
get him off without much punishment--if you’d treat me differently.
Hadn’t you better think it over? You don’t want Ben Stevens sent to
the penitentiary for ten or a dozen years, I know. And that’s just
where he is headed for now.”
He turned and stalked from the room, leaving her with cheeks as white
as marble.