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[Illustration: RED DOG'S ARREST.
_Frontispiece._ _Page 264._]
UNDER FIRE.
BY
CAPT. CHARLES KING, U.S.A.,
AUTHOR OF "THE COLONEL'S DAUGHTER," "MARION'S FAITH," "CAPTAIN BLAKE,"
ETC.
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_
BY C. B. COX.
"A bad dhrill, a wake voice, an' a limp leg--thim three things are the
signs av a bad man."--PRIVATE MULVANEY.
PHILADELPHIA:
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
1895.
COPYRIGHT, 1894,
BY
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA,
U.S.A.
TO
GENERAL WESLEY MERRITT,
U.S. ARMY,
OUR HONORED COLONEL IN THE OLD DAYS AND A VALUED
FRIEND THROUGH ALL THESE LATER
YEARS, THIS STORY
IS
Inscribed.
Trancriber's note: Minor typos have been corrected, and ads moved to the
end of the book.
PREFACE.
It is ten years since "The Colonel's Daughter" ventured before the
public and found so many friends that "Marion's Faith" and later
"Captain Blake" set forth in reinforcement, and even then there came the
call for more. Pelham's old regiment was not the only one to contain
either odd, laughable, or lovable characters, so now the curtain is
raised on the Eleventh Horse,--a command as apocryphal as the --th, yet
equally distinguished in the eyes of those who trod the war-path twenty
years ago.
C. K.
October, 1894.
UNDER FIRE.
CHAPTER I.
It was the last day of Captain Wilbur Cranston's leave of absence. For
three blissful months he had been visiting his old home in a bustling
Western city, happy in the happiness of his charming wife in this her
first long restoration to civilization since their marriage ten years
before; happy in the pride and joy of his father and mother in having
once more under their roof the soldier son who had won an honored name
in his profession, and in their delight in the exuberant health and
antics of two sturdy, plains-bred little Cranstons. The visit proved one
continuous round of home pleasures and social gayeties, for Margaret
Cranston had been a stanch favorite in the days of her girl- and
bellehood, and all her old friends, married and single, rose _en masse_
to welcome her return. Parties, dances, dinners, concerts, theatre and
opera, lectures, pictures, parks, drives and rides,--all the endless
resources of the metropolitan world had been laid at the feet of the
girl who, leaving them to follow her soldier lover to his exile and
wanderings, had returned in the fulness of time, in the flush of
womanhood, a proud wife and proud and happy mother. People could not
understand her choice at the time of her marriage: "Cranston's all
right, but the idea of going to live in a tent or dug-out," was the
popular way of putting it, and people were still unable to understand
how she could have ever found anything to enjoy in that wild life or to
make her wish to see it again. It was, therefore, incomprehensible to
society that she and her two bouncing boys were utterly overwhelmed with
distress at having to remain in so charming a circle, so happy a home,
when it came time for the captain to return. Society even resented it a
little. Juvenile society--feminine--took it amiss that the Cranston boys
should so scorn the arts of peace, and persist furthermore in saying the
buffalo and bear and wolves in the municipal "Zoo" were frauds as
compared with what they had seen "any day" all around them out on the
plains. Tremendous stories did these little Nimrods tell of the big game
on which they had tired of dining, but some of their tales were true,
and that's what made it so hard for junior society masculine, in which
there wasn't a boy who did not honestly and justly hate these young
frontiersmen, even while envying with all his civilized heart. Loud was
the merriment at school over the Cranstons' blunders in spelling and
arithmetic, but what--what was that as offset to their prowess on
pony-back, their skill with the bow and sling-shot, their store of
Indian trinkets, trophies, ay, even to the surreptitiously shown Indian
scalp? What was that to the tales of tremendous adventure in the land of
the Sioux and Apache,--the home of the bear and the buffalo? What
city-bred boy could "hold a candle" to the glaring halo about the head
of two who could claim personal acquaintance with the great war chiefs
Red Cloud and Spotted Tail?--who had actually been to ride and hunt with
that then just dawning demigod of American boyhood,--Buffalo Bill? Sneer
and scoff and cavil as did their little rivals for a time, calumny was
crushed and scoffers blighted that wonderful March morning when, before
the whole assembled school, there suddenly appeared that paragon of
plainsmen, that idol of all well-bred young Westerners, he whom only on
flaring posters or in the glare of the footlights had they been
permitted to see, and smiling, superbly handsome, king of scouts and
Indian-fighters, Buffalo Bill himself stepped into their midst and
clasped the little Cranstons, madly rejoicing, in his arms, while their
father, the cavalry captain, and even the dreaded teacher looked
approvingly on. It was after that episode of no avail for even the
sturdiest of their schoolmates to seek to belittle the Cranston fame.
Louis, the elder, could not invent a whopper so big as to tax the
credulity of the school. Buffalo Bill was "starring it" with his
theatrical company through the States that spring, playing some
blood-curdling, scalp-taking; hair-raising border drama which all boys
eager strove to see, and when his old chum and comrade, the captain,
went to call on him at his hotel, the great chief of scouts would not
rest until together they had gone to see his friends "the boys." That
other parents should have been pestered half to death as a result of
this visitation any one who knows boys has not to be told, and many were
the queries and complaints addressed to the laughing cavalryman upon
that score. Parents, as a rule, had no proper conception of the honest
merit and deserved fame of this transplanted hero, Bill,--were amazed
to learn from Cranston that he was no fraud at all, but a man whom he
and his regimental comrades swore by. A total change had come over the
spirit of the school-boys' dreams. Nothing but Indian raids,
buffalo-hunts, or terrific combats diversified the hour of recess. The
little girls chose romantic prairie names, were either Indian maidens or
ever-ready-to-be-rescued damsels in distress. The boys became
redoubtable chiefs or rival imitation scouts, but Louis Cranston alone
was permitted to play the _rôle_ of Buffalo Bill; in his presence no
other boy dare attempt it.
It was a revolutionized society long before that budding May morning on
which the captain had to take train for the far West, leaving wife and
little ones to his father's care until the long threatened and now
imminent campaign should be over. Then, should God spare his life
through what proved to be the fiercest and most fatal of ten fierce and
fatal summers, they should rejoin him at some distant frontier fort, and
the boys' triumphant reign at school be ended. Loudly did they clamor to
be taken with him. Stoutly did Louis maintain that his pony could keep
up with the swiftest racer in the regiment, and indirectly did he give
it to be understood at school that just as soon as the war really began
he'd be out with "C" troop as he had been in the past. The war had begun
and some savage fighting had already taken place, when the orders were
launched for the Eleventh Cavalry to concentrate for field service.
Cranston wired that he would give up the last ten days of his leave, and
Mrs. Cranston, brave, submissive, but weeping sore at times, set to
packing her soldier's trunk. It was their last evening together for
many a long month, and their friends knew it, and therefore, even if
they called to leave a sympathetic word with the grandparents, they did
not expect to see the captain and his wife. Once or twice the
gray-haired mother had come to twine her arms about her big boy's neck,
or to say that Mr. and Mrs. Somebody had just called, but wouldn't
intrude. It was, therefore, a surprise when towards nine o'clock she
came to announce a caller below,--a caller who begged not to be
denied,--Mrs. Barnard.
"Mrs. _Barnard_!" exclaimed the army wife, in that tone in which
incredulity mingled with surprise tells to the observant ear that no
welcome awaits the announced one.
"_Who is_ Mrs. Barnard?" asked the trooper, looking up from the depths
of his big trunk.
"Oh, her husband owns about half the tenth ward," said Mrs. Cranston the
elder, city bred, "and," hesitatingly, "you've often seen her in
church."
"At church--yes," answered her daughter-in-law, "but no one ever sees
her anywhere else. She has never called on me, has she?"
"No," said the elder lady. "They are old residents, though, and years
ago when the city was new your father and hers--indeed, her husband and
mine--were well acquainted, but we drifted apart as the city grew. She
was Almira Prendergast."
"I'm sure I never heard of her when I was a girl, though, of course, I
was away at school a good deal. Every one knows her by sight now because
she's the most conspicuous woman in church. She dresses magnificently,"
said Mrs. Cranston the younger. "I couldn't help noticing her diamonds
last Sunday."
"They must have been big, Meg," put in the captain, reflectively, as he
was getting himself out of his smoking-jacket. "Let's see,--ours is a
hundred-dollar pew down near the foot of the side aisle, and hers a
thousand-dollar box-stall just in front of the centre. Could they flash
all that distance? They'd be useful for signalling----"
"Wilbur! I do wish you wouldn't mingle church and cavalry slang. It's
downright irreverent, and at the bottom of your heart you're anything
but an irreverent man."
"I won't," said the captain, solemnly; "at least I'll try to separate
the ideas--they are a trifle incongruous--if you'll tell me how at that
distance you could mingle your devotions with appraisal of Mrs.
Barnard's diamonds."
"I didn't. If you'd gone to church yourself you'd understand these
things. I couldn't help it. I simply happened to be next to her
afterwards--at communion."
"Oh, I see," said Cranston, giving a jab at his thinning hair with the
thickest and stiffest of brushes. "That does bring us to close quarters,
doesn't it?" Then with provoking deliberation he rearranged his necktie
and began pulling on his coat. "Hum, let's see," he went on, his eyes
twinkling and his lips twitching ominously, "anything wrong about Mrs.
B., mother mine, or with the millionaire husband? No? I see: just some
of those people one meets at the Lord's table and nobody else's."
"Wilbur!" exclaimed Mrs. Cranston, in tones of horror. "Indeed, indeed,
mamma, he isn't a bit like that out on the frontier. It's only when he
gets into civilized church circles that he says these outrageous things.
If you could hear him read the burial service over some of our poor
fellows as I have heard him, you'd know he lacked no reverence at all.
He's queer,--he always has been about these social distinctions. You
know and I know they are inevitable."
But leaving wife and mother to deplore his conduct and comfort each
other with the assurance that he really knew better and wasn't as bad as
he painted himself, which was occasionally in lurid colors, as must be
admitted, Captain Cranston went down-stairs with a certain stiffness of
gait which his intimates were well aware was attributable entirely to a
war reminiscence of Pickett's parapet at Five Forks, but which nine out
of ten, uninitiated, ascribed to military _hauteur_. He was still
smiling his whimsical, teasing smile, for, though a devoted son,
husband, and father, Wilbur Cranston was at times a trial to his
feminine connections, and entertained on matters of church and state
some views that were incompatible with those of high society. With
opportunities second to none other when he joined the pioneer circle in
the early days, Mr. Cranston, senior, had but moderately prospered from
a worldly point of view. Eminent in his profession, he was destitute of
any instinct of accumulation. He was a man the whole county
honored,--whose word was his bond, whose purse-strings had never known a
knot,--who had made large moneys in the law and spent them in charity,
until now, occupying a social position at the top of the ladder, he
lived but modestly in the house that was once the envy of all his
neighbors, many of whom once, and more than once, the beneficiaries of
his charity, now looked down upon him from the colossal heights of their
wheat elevators or sixteen-story office blocks. "The Cranstons were
among our oldest and best people," said Society; "it is too bad they are
so poor." For there had been a time when the old lawyer's health failed
and practice was forbidden, and when Wilbur, once the recipient of a
liberal allowance, felt called upon not only to resign that, but often
to help from a captain's pay. Better times had come, and the soldier son
had been able to make investments for himself and for his father in far
Western mining property that yielded good return; but even when known as
one of the few well-to-do men in his regiment, Cranston had persisted in
a certain simplicity of living that some people could not understand.
There were officers who had married wealthy women,--women whose gowns
were superb, whose parlors and tables were richly furnished, whose
household establishments put to shame those of three-fourths of their
companions; whereas Cranston, even when he was able to dress his family
fashionably and furnish his quarters elaborately, would not do it.
"Every year," said he, "some of our most promising young officers are
going to the devil because they or their wives try to dress or to
entertain as do their wealthy neighbors. It's all wrong, and I won't set
the example. It's getting to be the curse of our army, Meg, and if I had
my way I'd introduce a law the reverse of that in force in foreign
armies. Over there no officer can marry unless he and his bride-elect
can show that they will have over a certain income to live upon. In a
republican army like ours no man ought to be commissioned unless he will
agree to live on less than a fixed amount for each successive grade."
They called him "Crank Cranston" in the Eleventh for quite a while, but
without affecting in the faintest degree his sturdy stand. Margaret's
gowns continued simple and inexpensive, and their mode of living modest
as any subaltern's, and many women spoke of them as "close" and "mean,"
but many men wished openly they had Cranston's moral courage. At home,
too, better times had come. There was the old homestead, and Mr.
Cranston as counsel of certain big corporations had his easy salary and
little work. There was no anxiety, but there should be, said he, no
extravagance.
On the other hand, neighbor Barnard, who in by-gone days, tin
dinner-pail in hand, tramped cheerily by the lawyer's rose-trellised
home long hours before the household was awake, and who in his early
struggles to maintain his little lot and roof had often availed himself
of his neighbor's known liberality, had been surely and steadily
climbing to wealth and honors, was now among the ranking capitalists of
the great and growing city, and a few years back had been united in
marriage to the admiration of his early school days,--Almira
Prendergast, who, disdaining him in the early 50's and wedding the youth
of her choice, was overwhelmed with joy to find in the days of want and
widowhood, fifteen years later, that Barnard had been faithful to his
ideal, had remained single for her sake, and so at last had she
consented to accept him and the control of his household. A pew in the
"First Presbyterian" had been for years his habitual resort on the
Sabbath, but as time wore on and wealth accumulated and the lady of his
love assumed more and more the leadership in all matters, spiritual and
domestic, he saw his establishment blossoming into unaccustomed
splendor, he met new people, later comers from the distant East, and
dropped the old, the friends of his boy days. He never meant to. He was
engrossed in his affairs. He let Mrs. Barnard "run the machine," as he
used to phrase it, knowing nothing of that sort of thing himself, and
Almira's buxom beauty, attired now in splendor hitherto undreamed of,
was rapidly rising into prominence in the new and growing circle wherein
the old families revolved but seldom, but the errant orbits of Eastern
stars were quick entangled; and some few years after their marriage a
new and gorgeous edifice having been erected by the congregation of St.
Jude's, and a daughter having been born to Barnard, the man of money
heard without surprise and with little resistance his wife's change of
faith in revealed religion. St. Jude's, a parochial offspring of old and
established St. Paul's down-town, had become an ecclesiastical necessity
in the growing north side. The Cranstons transferred their pew, as did
others, to follow a favorite rector and his gospel closer to home. Mrs.
Barnard experienced a long projected change of heart because the
acknowledged leaders of the social circle herded thither, and Barnard
followed as his wife might lead. The great memorial window in the south
transept, through whose hallowed purpling the noon-day sunshine
streamed rich and mellow on the gray head in that prominent central pew,
was the devout offering of Thomas Barnard and Almira, his wife, in
testimony of their abandonment of the faith of their fathers and the
adoption of that which in school days they had held to be idolatrous.
Wilbur Cranston well recalled how in his school days Tom Barnard's
honest, sturdy form went trudging by at nightfall from the long day's
labor with the railway gang of which he was "boss," but Tom was a
division superintendent when the lawyer's boy came home from West Point
on furlough just as the war dogs began their growling along the border
States. And now Tom Barnard owned all the tenth ward and most of the
railroad, did he? And it was Tom Barnard's wife, a fair, fat penitent in
sealskin and sables, who drove by in such a magnificent sleigh and style
to humble herself at the altar by the side of such as we, whose social
shoes she was as yet held unworthy to unlatch? Wilbur remembered how
once, some years before, when his father's affairs were straitened and
his own were cramped, when Meg and the baby actually and sorely needed
change, but she sturdily refused to leave him and go East because of the
expense, he had bethought him of Tom Barnard, the rising railway man,
and wrote him a personal note explaining the situation and asking
through his influence if such a thing as a pass for himself and wife
could be obtained over certain roads east of the Missouri, and the
answer came, written by a secretary, brief and to the point. Mr. Barnard
enclosed pass over the Q. R. & X. for Mr. Cranston and wife, but did not
feel in a position to ask favors of any other road. And now Tom
Barnard's wife had come almost at the last moment of his stay and begged
that he would not refuse to see her. What on earth could she want?
A boy with a telegram had just entered and was at the open door as the
captain reached the hall. Under the gas lamp without Cranston saw the
carriage standing by the curb--a livery team, not the beautiful roans
that had caught his trooper eye the first Sunday of his leave when he
went to church with mother and Meg. The message was sharp and clear
enough in all conscience:
"We march at once. You can catch us at Fetterman.
GRAY, _Adjutant_."
"So old Winthrop goes in command and Bob Gray as adjutant," he mused.
"Then I've no minute to waste."
His step was quicker, his bearing unconsciously more erect and
soldierly, as he entered the parlor and found himself facing the lady.
"I ask your pardon for keeping you waiting, Mrs. Barnard. I was in the
midst of packing when you came, as I must go West at once."
She had not risen from the easy-chair,--a comfortable old family relic
which stood opposite the old-fashioned piano. She leaned forward,
however, so that the sealskin mantle, which the warmth of the room and
the length of her wait had prompted her to throw back, settled down from
her shoulders in rich and luxurious folds. She gave him, half extended,
a hand, which he lifted and lowered once after the fashion of the day
and then released. He remembered her now perfectly,--the Almira
Prendergast the big boys used to say was by long odds the prettiest girl
in the days when half a dozen big brick ward schools were all the town
afforded, but he did not say so, nor did she care to have him.
"Perhaps I ought to begin by apologizing for taking up your time," she
said, as though not knowing how to begin; and then he saw that heavy
lines of grief and anxiety had eaten their way underneath her dark and
luminous eyes,--ravages that no tinsel could cover or wealth dislodge.
"Was it the driver you spoke to at the door? I heard you say wait. I had
already told him; but it isn't my carriage," she went on deprecatingly.
"Our horses cannot stand night work, the coachman says, and there's
always something the matter with them when they are most needed."
She was looking at him appealingly, as though she hoped he might suggest
some way of helping her to say what had brought her thither--besides a
livery carriage; but Cranston had taken a seat and was waiting, the
telegram crushed in his hand. At last she spoke again.
"You--went to West Point, didn't you?"
"I? Yes."
"Well, then, you could tell me, couldn't you, how to get my boy there?"
"You mean by-and-by when he is old enough?"
"No. I mean now,--at once,--this week in fact."
"W--ell. That is hardly possible, Mrs. Barnard. Cadets are admitted only
in June or September, and only then when there's a vacancy in their
congressional district. But, pardon me. How old is your boy?"
"He is twenty-one,--my eldest,--my first husband's."
"And you wanted to make a soldier of him?" asked Cranston, smilingly.
"Indeed, no! It's the last thing on earth I'd have chosen, nor would he,
I am sure, if he were in his right mind."
"Oh, well, then I shouldn't worry about it, Mrs. Barnard. In this
country, you know, no one has to be a soldier unless he very much wants
to, and very often then he can't. And no boy who isn't in his right mind
could get into the Point even if given a cadetship. What made you think
of it?"
"Why, it seemed--at least I was told--it was the only way out of the
trouble he is in. He--is already in the army, but I'm told it isn't so
bad if one is an officer."
Cranston kept his face with admirable gravity.
"Then I assume that he has enlisted. If he is only just twenty-one and
enlisted without your consent before his birthday, you can still have
him out."
"Oh, we've tried that," said Mrs. Barnard, gravely, "but he had tried
twice before he was twenty-one, and they refused him until he brought
papers to prove his age. Then when he did enlist and we attempted to
have it annulled, they confronted us with these. They refused to believe
our lawyer."
"Well, pardon me, which was right, the papers or the lawyer?"
"The paper. It was my own letter; but I didn't suppose they had it
when--when we sought to have him released as not of legal age."
Cranston smiled. "Was it Mr. Barnard's proposition or the lawyer's?"
"Well, the lawyer said at first there was no other way that he knew of,
we'd have to do that. Of course you understand I wouldn't ordinarily
authorize an untruth, but--consider the degradation."
"The degradation of--having to--authorize the untruth?"
"No; of his enlisting,--becoming a soldier. I thought I'd had to suffer
a good deal, but I never looked for that."
And then Cranston saw her eyes were full of tears.
She had tried lawyers. She had used money. She had invoked the influence
of powerful friends. Each and everyone consulted assured her that the
case could be settled in a twinkling. They would get the boy discharged
at once. Then one after another all had failed, and then some one
suggested to see him, Cranston; he was a regular, perhaps he could help.
It was hard to think of her son as a soldier, but, said she, if he had
to be, for a time at least, why not get him out of where he was and put
him at West Point? She had come, she said, to tell Cranston the whole
story, and then he could have kicked himself for the momentary amusement
she had caused him.
Ah, what an old, time-worn story of mother love, mother spoiling, mother
sorrow! Her bonny boy, her first-born, wild, impulsive, self-indulgent,
overindulged as was his father before him, he had gone the pace from
early youth; had been sent to and sent from one school after another;
had filled and forfeited half a dozen clerkships; tampered with cards
and drink and bad company. Mr. Barnard had been willing to do
anything--everything for him, but he had dishonored every effort, broken
every compact, failed in every trial, forfeited every trust. At last
there had been hot and furious words, expulsion from the house and home,
a life of recklessness, gambling and drinking on moneys wrung from her
until her patience and supplies both had given out. Then some darker
shadow,--arrest and incarceration, one more appeal to mother, one more,
on her knees, from mother to husband, a compromised case, a quashed
indictment, temporary residence at a resort for cure of inebriates--the
one condition exacted by Barnard--and prompt relapse, when discharged,
into his former habits,--disgraceful arrest because of some trouble into
which he had been led while drinking. This, all this she had borne, but
never dreamed, said she, that worse still could follow,--that he could
sink so low as to become a soldier.
What Captain Cranston would have said to a man who had come to him with
such a tale, and with such unflattering conception of the profession he
was proud of, need not here be recorded. It was a mother, helpless,
sorrowing, and honest at least in her impression of the step taken by
her recreant boy. She had come craving help and counsel, not instruction
in the injustice of her estimates. Quivering, trembling, weeping, the
heart-sick woman in her magnificent robes had opened the flood-gates of
her soul and poured out to this comparative stranger the story of her
son's depravity. Aloft, two women listened awe-stricken to her sobs.
Cranston brought her water, made her drink a little wine, and bade her
take comfort, and amazed her by saying that at last her boy had shown a
gleam of manhood, a promise of redemption. She looked up through her
tears in sudden amaze. How was that possible? He must have been drunk
when he did it, and couldn't have been anything but drunk ever since.
Cranston patiently explained that so far from being drunk, the boy must
have been perfectly sober or they couldn't have taken him. He had been
frequently to the recruiting office, according to her account, and must
have been sober at such times, or they would have discouraged his coming
again. He couldn't have been drinking to any extent since enlistment or
he could not be where she said he was, and knew he was, on daily duty as
clerk in the office of the adjutant at the barracks. So far from its
indicating downfall, degradation, it was the one ray of hope of better
days. She looked at him, joy and incredulity mingling in her swimming
eyes. "Then why does everybody I've consulted, even our rector, urge me
to leave no stone unturned to get him out of it, even if we have to buy
him a place at West Point?" was her query. And again Cranston found it
hard to control his muscles--and his temper. Had it come to this?--that
here in his old home the accepted idea of the regular soldier was that
of something lower than the refuse of the prisons and reformatories? He
could only tell her that it was because they knew no better. Up to the
time of her boy's determination to enter the army had there been one
single moment in the last five years when he had been free from his
habits of drinking? asked Cranston. No, not one. And yet that step was
her conception of final degradation. What had occurred, he asked, to
make her feel renewed anxiety, to cause her to seek a cadetship for him?
Because the boy had written that recruits were soon to be sent to
cavalry regiments out on the plains, and he had asked to go. The thought
was terror. And Mrs. Barnard had learned that a congressman from the
interior of the State had a cadetship to dispose of, but he lived at
Urbana, the very place where poor Harry had spent his two months in the
retreat, and then had disbehaved so afterwards. And Mr. Goss, the
congressman, wanted references,--wanted him to pass examination, which
he could not do, because he's only been a little while at school. Harry
wrote a beautiful hand, and had read everything--everything, but he
hated anything like arithmetic as a study, and Cranston had to smile and
tell her that that in itself put West Point out of the question. But,
said he, if he has ambition and ability, why not encourage him to
persevere where he is and win commission from the ranks as many another
boy had done? Bless the mother heart! That, too, had occurred to her,
but they had told her it would take two years at least, whereas Harry
was a born leader, a born commander. That boy could step right out now
and command an army if need be, she said, and no doubt believed it; but
when she wrote to Mr. Cooper about it (and Mr. Cooper it seems was
Colonel Cooper, the boy's commanding officer), that gentleman replied
that while the young soldier had certainly conducted himself in a most
exemplary way and had given promise of being an ornament to the
service,--"He used those very words," said she, producing the colonel's
letter. "See, 'an ornament to the service,'"--still, the colonel could
hardly promise that the boy could rise above the grade of sergeant
inside of two years.
Cranston recognized the handwriting, and took the letter. "I know
Colonel Cooper," he said, "and he means just exactly what he writes.
Mrs. Barnard, I am glad you came. I am glad to take a weight off your
mind. I wish your friends and advisers were here that I might say this
in their presence, especially our good rector, but I say to you with all
my heart, I congratulate you on the step your boy has taken. I honestly
believe he has done better for himself than you could do for him, and I
advise you to let him go and learn campaigning on the frontier. It will
make a man of him if anything will," and he added under his breath, "or
kill him."
"And if you meet my boy, you'll help him? You'll be a friend to him?"
she smiled through her tears. "God bless you for so helping me."
"I'll help him every way I know how," said Cranston.
And so they parted. She infinitely comforted, he oddly impressed. But
Mrs. Barnard felt that fate was still against her and her boy when, four
weeks later, flashed the news of savage battle with the Sioux, of
Captain Cranston shot through the body and fearfully wounded in the
fierce encounter.