"The main objection to Fort Scott," said Winthrop, when one of his
battalions was finally ordered thither, "is that it's too fashionable
for my taste. What this regiment needs now is more drill and less
dinners." He loved to be epigrammatic. The head-quarters, staff, band,
and six troops had taken station at a big frontier post, two other
troops went with the lieutenant-colonel to a second post, so that that
officer could have a command, and two more with the senior major, but
the Interior Department had moved some thousands of the lately hostile
Indians down close to the line of the railway, where they could be more
readily fed and cared for. Great thereat was the alarm of the settlers,
and great the protest of the cattlemen, whose steers now roamed all over
the prairies within tempting distance of the restless young braves
across the reservation line. Scott was not a cavalry post at all. It had
no suitable stables, and only infantry ordinarily had been stationed
there since the completion of the railway, and thither Devers had been
sent when the final dissolution of the field column took place, and no
one of the field officers wanted him in his command, and he preferred to
be as usual,--alone. But then came the move of the Indians and the cry
of inadequate protection. Tintop had to part with two of his pet
companies--Cranston's and Hay's--at the reluctant orders from department
head-quarters. Still a fourth had to be sent, and Truman was taken from
the lieutenant-colonel and Major Warren despatched from head-quarters to
Scott as commander of this cavalry battalion or squadron at the very
moment when he was clinching his arrangements for long leave of absence.
He went, commanded a month, but persisted in his application. Long years
of service entitled him to the indulgence and it was granted, but
neither the lieutenant-colonel nor senior major would consent to give up
the command of a post to go to Scott as a subordinate to old Colonel
Peleg Stone, an infantry veteran of many a war, both in garrison and in
the field. A shout of merriment was heard in the camp of the cavalry
when the original orders were read distributing the troops to stations.
"Old Pegleg's got his match at last," was the comment of the knowing
ones. "He can't worry Devers half as much as Devers will worry him."
Scott was the innermost and easternmost of all the stations to which the
three regiments of cavalry were distributed. The big, bustling, growing
cattle town of Braska lay but a few miles away. Thriving and populous
ranches surrounded the post on every side, replacing the buffalo,
antelope, and deer of the decade gone by with countless herds of horned
cattle. Braska sported a theatre, an assembly-room, restaurants,
concert-halls and banks--of all kinds. It had the unhallowed features of
the average frontier metropolis and some of the more agreeable traits of
an Eastern city. It contained a very large number of abandoned
characters who were not all half as bad as they were painted, and quite
an array of citizens of high repute who were not all as good as they
looked. As between bad morals and bad manners, society seems to find it
easier to forgive the former, and most of the Eastern men who had come
West to embark in business had charming manners and were welcome
visitors at the fort, welcome companions at every party, picnic, and
dance, most hospitable entertainers in their turn when the fort people
went to town. During the long battle summer Fort Scott was garrisoned by
Colonel "Pegleg," the chaplain, the doctors, the adjutant and
quartermaster, the band, one company of his reliable old corps, the
Fortieth Foot, and the wives and children of pretty much all the rest of
the regiment. Famous campaigners were they of the Fortieth. They hadn't
missed a chance, winter or summer, for ten long years. They had tramped,
scouted, picketed, escorted, explored, surveyed, fought and bled all
over the great Northwest, some of the officers being so incessantly
abroad as to find themselves quite ill at ease at home, many of their
ladies declaring it a difficult matter to know their lords on the rare
occasions of their return, some few, indeed, being accused of having
forgotten them entirely in their absence. These were days the army
little knew before and will never know again,--the decade that followed
the war of the rebellion. Too old to take the field himself, the veteran
colonel at least could take his ease at home, and was quite placid and
content when he had the band to play for him, one company to guard and
"police" the post, and a host of women and children, bereft of their
natural protectors, fluttering about him. When all his companies were
home he had to spend hours at his desk overhauling ration and post and
forage returns, and as he was essentially a "red-tape" soldier,--one
who knew the regulations and recognized nothing else,--he made in busier
times his own life and those of his officers something of a burden. The
summer had been lovely at Scott. Thrice a week on sunshiny afternoons
the band played in its kiosk, and the gallants from town or the
neighboring ranches drove in with their stylish "turnouts" and called on
the ladies at the fort or took them driving over the hard prairie roads,
or danced with them on the waxed floor of the airy assembly-room.
"Really," said some of the ladies, "if it hadn't been for our friends
from town and the ranches I don't know what we should have done." What
some of them--ay, many of them--did was to gather their little broods
about them morn and night and pray to the Father in heaven for the life
and safety of the father in the field,--to lead pure and patient and
faithful lives, striving to keep their little house in order against his
coming, to teach his children to honor and love his name, to guard that
name from any and every possibility of reproach. What others did was to
accept most liberally the parting injunction, "not to mope, but try to
have a good time and be brave and cheerful," while the soldier went his
way. From this it was an easy step to accept as liberally the proffered
attention of the gentlemen with the charming manners from Braska and
Braska County. It was a gay post, a fashionable post, a frivolous post,
for the tone of garrison life depends immeasurably upon its social
leader, the wife of the commanding officer, and Mrs. Stone was but
little older than her husband's daughters. The latter were East at
school or visiting their own mother's relatives. The former had been a
belle at home and was glad to continue her belledom on the plains. There
were times when Mrs. Stone and the colonel lent the countenance of their
presence to charming little dinners and lunches, or after theatre to
suppers at the leading restaurant in town. There were times when some of
the ladies accepted refreshment there without such official
accompaniment. "Really, one had to drive very frequently to Braska even
if there was no actual shopping, for there was nowhere else to go," was
an oft-heard remark at Scott that summer. But breathes there a woman who
cannot find excuse for shopping? And shopping was hungry work and the
drive was long, the air keen, bracing, appetizing. What more natural
than that Mr. Courtenay and Mr. Fowler of the bank, Mr. Willett or Mr.
Burtis of the Cattle Club,--such charming dancers these,--should
sometimes, indeed frequently, suggest just a little bite, just a hot
bird and a cold bottle at Cresswell's? Such delicious salads as he could
concoct out of even canned shrimp or lobster, such capital oysters as
came to him, fresh, three times a week from Baltimore, such delicious
champagne, so carefully iced. What possible harm could there be in Mrs.
Flight and Mrs. Darling and Mrs. Watson's going together, mind you, and
lunching with their friends? "Why, the ladies at Fort Russell all do the
same thing every time they go to Cheyenne!" said Mrs. Flight, when taken
to task about it. "When I was up there visiting Fanny Turner last month
we thought _nothing_ of it!" All the same Mrs. Wright and Mrs. Leonard
and others of their standard not only wouldn't go driving alone with
the gentlemen from town, but declined to go to Cresswell's with anybody.
And Mrs. Wright's bonny face flushed and her eyes flashed when she said
why. As to what the ladies of the --th did out at Russell, that was not
her business. "Nevertheless," said Mrs. Wright, "I'll warrant you that
Mrs. Stannard, or Mrs. Freeman, or Mrs. Truscott did nothing of the
kind, and I don't care what Mrs. Flight says or Mrs. Turner does."
And then the whole regiment came flocking home, and there was joy and
gladness unspeakable in many a little army household and some
modification thereof in others, and presently Devers and his troop
arrived after a long, long march, and Devers began giving "Pegleg"
something more to think about. The resources of the quartermaster's
department were insufficient to fill that ambitious dragoon's
requisitions. There wasn't anything he didn't want for his men, his
horses, or himself, and the next thing Pegleg knew he was involved just
as he was told he would be in a voluminous warfare with the troop
commander, and was minded of a saying attributed to the wag of the --th
Cavalry, a certain Lieutenant Blake, who knew Devers well and shared the
universal opinion of him. An officer had talked of challenging Devers in
by-gone days when vestiges of the code still lingered, but Blake scouted
the idea. "The only pistol he can fight with is the epistle," said
Blake. So Blake was another detestation of Devers, and doubtless for
good reason. He was forever getting a laugh on the captain when they
happened to come together, and, contentious and critical as he was, the
big dragoon couldn't abide being laughed at. Somebody once referred to
Devers as reminding her of a Hercules on horseback, which prompted Blake
to respond, "Hercules! yes, by Jove, of the Farnese variety," whereat
there was a guffaw among the men present who knew anything of art, and a
general titter on every hand, for no one was ignorant of Devers's wide
physical departure from artistic lines. But Tom Hollis and others of his
ilk only caught the "far knees" part of it, which, however, was quite
enough. Blake would have been a comfort to old Stone this breezy, wintry
December, but in default of native wit to aid him wrestle with his acute
antagonist, the colonel begged that if only one more cavalryman should
be sent to the post in response to the new outcry for protection, he
should come in the shape of a field officer to straighten out Devers.
"He's got," said he, "too damn much individuality for me."
And not only had more cavalry come, but the major had come and gone. If
anything, said Stone, Devers was more unbearable than before, as he now
had over two hundred men to represent instead of a little more than
fifty. Fort Scott was in the height of the holiday festivities, Captain
and Mrs. Cranston with Miss Loomis and the boys were just settling into
the new quarters when Lieutenant and Mrs. Davies were announced as _en
route_ to join.
And now arose a serious question. Who was to receive and entertain the
new-comers until they were able to furnish and move into their own
quarters? If any one, his own captain should be the first to tender
hospitality, but Captain Devers made no move whatsoever. He had a large
and interesting family of his own, which was sufficient excuse. There
were now two classmates of Davies at the post, both in the Fortieth, but
they were youngsters, only a few months in service, who roomed together
in the upper story of old Number Three, and lived at the bachelor mess,
which comprised the contract doctor, the sutler's clerk, and certain of
the quartermaster's employés. The boys would give "Dad" the best they
had and gladly, but they hadn't anything. Even the iron bunks on which
they slept were borrowed from the hospital. "How can a fellow invite a
bride to occupy his one room when he don't own C. and G. E. enough to
furnish a hen-coop?" And by C. and G. E., the army abbreviation for camp
and garrison equipage, the youngster meant to imply that he had no
furniture beyond a camp-chair and a trunk. Cranston himself would gladly
have taken them in but for two reasons,--he had not a vacant room under
his roof, and Margaret did not seem to wish it. It must be confessed
that there had been an outburst heard only by him--confided only to
him--when Mrs. Cranston received, a few weeks after the letter which
sadly told of Davies's mother's death, the brief and possibly
constrained note from her late patient announcing his approaching
marriage to Miss Quimby, who he said had been utterly devoted to poor
mother during her declining days and those of her brief but painful
illness. Margaret could not bear to speak of it to Miss Loomis. It was
Agatha herself who calmly asked, "And when is he to be married?" In
answering Mrs. Cranston found it impossible to conceal that she thought
it both quixotic and unnecessary. Miss Loomis quietly but decidedly took
the opposite view. No honorable man could have done otherwise. They had
long been engaged. It was not only their own but his mother's choice.
She was young, beautiful, deeply in love with him. He had long been in
love with her. Doubtless they would be very happy, as they deserved to
be. Margaret flared up again: "I believe he's doing it as he does
everything else,--from sheer sense of duty, and that you advised him
to." A random shot which went nearer the mark than the archer supposed,
for Miss Loomis flushed in an instant, and made no reply. "Well!" said
Mrs. Cranston, "she longs only to share the humblest cot, the rudest
habitation with her beloved. We'll see how she'll take to frontier
life."
A detachment of thirty troopers had been ordered kept at the new agency
eighty miles to the north, and thither to his supreme disgust had
Lieutenant Boynton of the Eleventh been banished in command, with the
promise of relief soon after Christmas. Cranston wrote asking permission
to use the lieutenant's vacated rooms for the new-comers, saying he
would provide servants and such fittings as would be needed. Boynton
wired back yes, of course, and the dreary bachelor den was made as
habitable as Mrs. Cranston's busy hands and brain could make it. Other
kindly women lent their aid, as well as pillow shams, towels,
comforters, bed linen, lamps, wardrobe, bureau, rocking-chairs, lounge,
etc. The Davieses were to breakfast and lunch with the Cranstons each
day, and to be invited round to dinner until their own cot was ready.
And in thus wise did traditional army hospitality vindicate itself.
There was that still unexplained something hanging over Davies's head,
but as yet he knew nothing of it,--had never heard of the allegations so
vehemently, volubly laid at his door when Captain Devers had his own
portals to clear. Nor was the latter now given to faintest reference to
the matter. This at first glance may seem inconsistent, yet has its
explanation. As matters now stood there would be no further inquiry into
that wretched business. If Davies were once to know his good name had
been attacked, and that his explanation of his failure to reach his men
or give notice of their plight had been aspersed, somebody might put him
up to demanding a court of inquiry. Devers had even concluded it a
diplomatic move to treat the lieutenant with a courtesy hitherto
withheld. Mrs. Devers was already instructed to be particularly civil to
the bride.
Another thing had Devers done, and done most diplomatically. Realizing
his own narrow escape and suspecting his unpopularity in the regiment,
though little dreaming (which of us does?) how ill he was really
regarded, the temporary battalion commander began making friends of the
mammon of unrighteousness, so to speak, and exerting himself to show his
juniors how courteous and considerate he could be in that capacity. As a
general rule it is the subaltern who makes the greatest outcry against
the disciplinary measures of his captain, or the captain who most
vehemently condemns the policy of his colonel, who proves in turn the
most inconsiderate and annoying of superiors. But Devers was
shrewd,--"wise in his generation." He knew his reign must be short at
best. He felt that he had a difficult rôle to play. He had always been
an outspoken "company rights" man as opposed to the federalizing policy
of the battalion or regimental commander. He had bitterly resented in
the past any or all interference with his management of his troop, yet
had been an unsparing critic of everybody else's system, and, as we have
seen, a nimble and active opponent of anything like control on the part
of his commander. Of him it had been predicted that he would immediately
begin to "boss" the entire battalion and require his brother captains to
conform to his own ways of conducting troop affairs. He had always made
it a point to try to be cordial to other fellows' lieutenants, but was
never liked by his own. Mr. Hastings cordially hated him, but Hastings
had his peculiarities, too. As for the captains, Hay and Devers hadn't
been on speaking terms for two years. Truman could not like him, yet had
had no open rupture. Cranston and he were personally and officially
antagonistic. One and all, the officers regarded this detail under his
command as one of the most unpromising of their experience, and could
hardly contain themselves when Warren left. As for Warren, his relations
with the senior troop commander had been of the stiffest and most formal
character ever since the close of the campaign.
But just as he had baffled his own commanders in the past, so now did
Devers baffle all. Far from interfering or assuming control, he did so
only when in actual command at mounted inspection or drill, and then in
the most courteous way of which he was capable. He declined to overhaul
or inspect the quarters or stables of the other troops, which, as
battalion commander, it was really his duty to do at least once a
month. "I have always held that the captain should not be spied upon,"
he said, "and I have too much confidence in the ability and sense of
duty of you gentlemen to differ now."
Hay was amazed, so was everybody up at head-quarters. Colonel Tintop
didn't know what to make of it. Cranston presently decided he had solved
the mystery, but kept his theory to himself. Truman, a little later,
arrived at a like conclusion, and was for giving it abroad, but Cranston
counselled reticence. An appeal to Truman's regimental pride was always
effective.
"Never mind what's at the bottom of it all, old man. We're getting along
smoothly and swimmingly, just like a happy family. Let's keep up the
illusion and fool these fellows of the Fortieth awhile longer," said he,
and Truman promised. But these fellows of the Fortieth were not so
easily fooled. They had been on the campaign and knew a thing or two
themselves, and as Devers and the adjutant speedily locked horns again
and Devers said some unjustifiable things, the infantry retorted, and
the infantry weapon had a longer range. It was the very day of Davies's
arrival with his bride that this smouldering fire burst forth. Devers
was in the adjutant's office snarling about the neglect of the post
quartermaster to pay any attention to his requisitions. Now, it was an
aide-de-camp and a cavalry officer who had been sent to the scene of the
affair at Antelope Springs to compare the situation there with Devers's
description and rough sketch, and a cavalry officer who had written what
was practically a vindication of Devers's course. Stung by the language
of the captain, the adjutant, himself a veteran soldier of years of war
service such as Devers had never rendered, looked up from his desk and
sharply asked what was Devers's complaint at the expense of his
regimental comrade,--the quartermaster.
"What I mean," said Devers, "is simply this: that just so long as we
have to appeal to an infantry staff officer I can never get my stables
whitewashed."
"We-l-l," said Mr. Leonard, looking his man squarely in the eye, "I am
inclined to think that the cavalry staff officer is sometimes given to
too much 'whitewashing,' and if an infantryman had been sent instead of
a cavalryman the most discreditable affair of the late campaign would
not have been, as it was, whitewashed entirely."
"If somebody had whitewashed old Differs's face he couldn't have turned
a sicker shade," said Tommy Dot, the only other infantryman present at
the moment. Cranston was there, so was Devers's own lieutenant, Mr.
Hastings, and the thing couldn't be overlooked. The adjutant was as big
and powerful a man as Devers, more so if anything, and his black eyes
were snapping like coals, and his mouth was rigid as the jaws of a
steel-trap as he rose and squarely confronted the irate captain, and
Devers knew and knew well that more than his match was there before him.
"This is something you'll have to answer for, Mr. Leonard," said he, in
tones that trembled, despite every effort at self-control. "You are
witness to the language, Captain Cranston, Mr. Hastings."
"The language will be publicly repeated, sir," said Leonard, "if you
desire more witnesses." But by this time the colonel at his desk in the
adjoining room seemed to catch a whiff of the impending crisis, and
could be heard calling his adjutant. "I'll return in a moment, sir,"
said Leonard, and he did, but when he returned Devers was gone.
And now the questions were, what will Devers do about it? and what will
Davies say when he hears what Devers has done? There could be no fight,
except on paper, for that was Devers's only field. He had gone forth in
evident wrath and excitement, bidding Cranston and Hastings to follow.
Hastings as his subaltern went without a word. Cranston said he had come
to transact certain business and would follow when that was done. Devers
was tramping up and down in front of his quarters; Hastings, with
embarrassed mien and moody face, leaning, his hands in his pockets,
against the fence.
"What do you think of that as an insult to the cavalry?" asked Devers of
his junior, as Cranston with his usual deliberation came finally to the
spot.
"I think it provoked, sir, by your slur on the infantry."
"I merely generalized," answered Devers. "He insulted both Archer and
me." Archer, by the way, was the aide-de-camp in question.
"Well, then I presume Archer and you can settle it," said Cranston,
coolly.
"It's evident your sympathy for your patient has blinded your sense of
justice to--to the rest of the regiment. I looked for more loyalty from
you, Cranston."
"It is my loyalty to the regiment and my sense of justice that refuse to
be blinded by you, Devers. I cannot reconcile Mr. Davies's story with
your report, and I do not see how Archer could, if indeed he ever saw
Davies's story or heard of it."
"Captain Cranston, your _protégé_ may thank heaven that I haven't yet
preferred charges against him for that affair," said Devers, white with
passion.
"It has always been my belief, Captain Devers, that charges should have
been preferred, and the sooner that it is done the sooner will Davies be
cleared. I presume that you can want nothing further of me." And
Cranston walked calmly on.
And that evening the bride arrived. "The Parson's" classmates drove over
to the railway to meet the happy pair and escort them to the post. The
ladies, one and all, had done their best to brighten up the absent
Boynton's quarters so as to make a fitting habitation for the new-comers
to their ranks. The officers had passed the word, as was the expression,
to keep from Davies, for the present at least, all mention of these
affairs in which his name was involved. Somebody at division
head-quarters must have had an eye on the situation, for there came a
letter from a trusted aide of the lieutenant-general to old "Pegleg"
reminding him of the gratitude we all owed the young man's noble father,
and bidding him lend a helping hand to Davies, and see that his life
wasn't made a burden to him by his troop commander. The general
evidently knew of Devers's idiosyncrasies, but Mrs. Devers herself came
early to join the circle of helping hands, and announced that she would
be there to welcome the bride to her temporary nest; and she was there
in the crisp, cold starlight when the ambulance with its spanking team
drove briskly into the big quadrangle, and in warm furs and happy
blushes and half-shy delight, a very pretty girl was lifted from the
dark interior and presented to the little knot of hospitable friends
awaiting her coming.