One soft spring morning, some two weeks later, a little knot of officers
had gathered about the Cranstons' quarters at the cantonment. Under an
awning of tent flies they were conning the papers that had just reached
them and eagerly discussing their contents. Mrs. Cranston, a shade of
anxiety on her winsome, sunburned face, was glancing quickly from one
speaker to another. Through the open door-way in the cool interior Miss
Loomis could be seen bending over the boys as they fidgeted at their
books. Neither felt like studying this day of days, for absorbing news,
and lots of it, had come. To begin with, a general court-martial had
been ordered to meet at Omaha for the trial of Captain Devers, Eleventh
Cavalry, and officers of high rank and distinction were to be his
judges. With Atherton as president of the court there could be no
"monkey business," said Mr. Sanders, by which that young gentleman was
understood to mean that there would be no trifling with the subject. It
was noticeable that neither Riggs nor Winthrop was of the detail, an
omission readily understood, as Devers would unquestionably object, as
was his privilege, to either or both on the ground of bias, prejudice,
or malice, which, whether sustained or not, would lead to their asking
to be excused from serving and so reducing the array. The court had been
ordered from division head-quarters by the lieutenant-general himself,
and its members, as a rule, were summoned from distant posts and
commands, so as to preclude the possibility of the accused captain
saying it was "packed" from the ranks of his enemies. In other words,
except Atherton, the court was made up entirely of officers who had
taken no part in the campaign of the previous summer. It was understood
that the charges were grave and numerous; rumors of misconduct in the
face of the enemy, disobedience of orders, misrepresentation of facts,
etc., being among the items mentioned. Major Warren had been summoned
from abroad a month earlier than he had planned to come. Colonel Peleg
Stone and Mr. Leonard had both been notified that they would be required
as witnesses, so had Captains Cranston, Truman and Hay, Lieutenants
Boynton, Hastings and Davies. The court could not meet before mid-May
because several of the members came from the department of Dakota, far
up the Missouri, but that it was to be a "clinch" at last was the
generally expressed sentiment. Devers had run to the end of his tether,
said Boynton, unfeelingly. "I could add a charge or two myself if I
didn't know he was loaded with them so deep that he can't stagger."
Boynton, limping still, had come back to resume command of the agency
guard, for Davies's wound had proved deep and serious. He had been
stabbed by Red Dog after that warrior was raised to his feet, after
Cranston's skirmishers had swept the field, after Davies thought the
struggle at an end, and was unprepared for the stealthy blow. Nothing
but Brannan's vigilance, and the warning cry which caused the lieutenant
to turn in the nick of time, had saved his life. Red Dog in irons lay in
the log guard-house. Thunder Hawk, on parole,--for White had dared the
wrath of the bureau and refused to let McPhail have him,--walked the
garrison at will. Mr. Davies, still weak and languid, lay in the big
hospital tent, really the most comfortable dwelling at the station, now
that the weather was growing warm, and there, attended by Burroughs and
ministered to by a pathetically pretty wife (who had somewhat recovered
from her panic, now that she was within the stockade of a military post
with lots of men around to watch her and be fascinated), was on the road
to speedy convalescence. He was being allowed occasional visitors, and
while his own comrades vied in their attentions, nothing could exceed
the anxiety of old White, the major commanding. Twice did he have
Thunder Hawk recount to him the details of Davies's calm courage in this
second daring capture, red-handed, of the rebellious chief, and White
went to Cranston like the blunt, outspoken campaigner that he was.
"It begins to look to me," said he, "as if this young fellow had been
most damnably backbitten. You can haul Devers before a court, but what
can we do with these women?"
"You have never told me, major, what these women had to say against
him."
"And I'm not going to," said White. "When a man's ashamed of having
believed a mean story, the sooner he buries it the better. Men like him
don't go round abusing their own wife or insulting anybody else's. It's
my belief that the swarm that buzzes around the throne there at Mrs.
Pegleg's ought to be muzzled, and if the old man hadn't lost his grip in
this seizure he's had, I'd tell him so."
But this seizure of Pegleg's had indeed proved a serious matter. So far
from recovering his accustomed spirits, the old colonel seemed to grow
feebler and less inclined to move about with every day. One morning he
sent word to Captain Devers that he would not leave his bed, as he felt
too weak, and that night it was that Leonard got back from Chicago. When
told by Pollock, who met him at the railway station, that Devers was
again in command, Leonard stepped into the telegraph-office and wrote a
message which he showed to nobody. Within thirty-six hours Lieutenant
Archer of the department staff reached Fort Scott with orders from the
general commanding. Captain Pollock was placed in command of the post
and Devers in close arrest. The next day Mr. Langston came out from
Braska and was closeted an hour with Leonard at the adjutant's office,
and then, taking advantage of a returning escort and ambulance, the
civilian lawyer left for the agency. Even while the group of officers at
Cranston's was eagerly discussing the news, he had made his bow to a
deeply blushing Mira over at the hospital tent, and was seated by
Davies's side. "Business first, pleasure afterwards," hummed Cranston to
himself when he heard of the arrival, and noted how Meg's bright eyes
dilated.
"Business, indeed!" thought she. "I know the business that brings him
here, despite Agatha's assumption of sublime indifference."
But grave though some of the older faces grew as the news was read, and
eager and excited as were some of the younger, it was not because of the
long-prophesied trial of Captain Devers. The papers, letters, and
despatches were full of detail of the serious condition of affairs to
the northwest. Inspired by the success of the Sioux in their grand
uprising of the previous year, and reasoning that they had little to
lose and everything to gain by similar methods, a big tribe had cut
loose from its reservation and taken the field, one band of it prudently
massacring all the white men to be found in their neighborhood as
necessary preliminary to the move. This was bad to begin with, but
worse was to follow. The other agencies were overrun by a number of
young Indians of what might be termed the unreconstructed class, and
these, excited by reports brought in by runners from the openly hostile,
were slipping off in scores to join them. Already had the epidemic
struck McPhail's "angels." Already had Mac, with long face and longer
story, been up to see Major White and beg for cavalry to be sent in
pursuit. White said it was preposterous. The renegades had two or three
days' start to begin with, and if pursued, all they had to do was to
hide in the Bad Lands and pick off their pursuers. Cavalry could only go
there in single file. Ten Indians could hold the narrow, tortuous trail
against ten hundred troops. Relations were strained between Mac and the
military anyhow. Everybody knew by this time that he had lied about
Boynton and Davies, and had striven to make it appear, and with no
little success, too, so far as Eastern newspapers were concerned, that
all the turbulence and rioting at Ogallalla was caused by the arrogance
of the army. Then Mac pointed out that if something weren't done to
drive those renegades back, all the young braves over at the big
reservation beyond the Mini Ska would follow suit. Already the cattlemen
were complaining. Already settlers were drifting in to Pawnee station
and Minden on the railway to the west, and besieging old Tintop at
regimental head-quarters at Fort Ransom, and stirring up "screamers" in
the columns of the infantile dailies at Butte and Braska, alleging
apathy on part of the authorities and cowardice on that of the cavalry.
Already letters had passed between the officers of the Eleventh at the
cantonment and their comrades at Ransom. "If we have to take the field
again this summer let us try to get together as a regiment and not be
split up in all manner of crowds," was the cry. What Cranston and Truman
dreaded, too, was that they might be squadroned with some of the --th
under Major Chrome. The --th was all right, but Chrome was so horribly
slow that his own comrades chafed under his command, and Atherton really
wanted him to retire and get "a live man" in his place. Truman, Hay, and
Cranston felt certain that it would not be a fortnight before they were
ordered into the field. Tintop and Gray were sure of it. Captain Fenton
and others at Ransom were talking of sending their families East, and
now the question that agitated Cranston was, what to do with his dear
ones? It was all well enough to have them at the cantonment while the
cavalry were there, but with all the troops in the field except a single
company of infantry, he did not dare leave them. They must go back to
Scott.
No wonder then that Mrs. Cranston's bonny face was clouded this sweet
spring morning. No wonder the boys could not pin their vagrant thoughts
to the books before them while snatches of the low, eager talk came
drifting in through the open door. No wonder Miss Loomis went about her
work with conscious effort, but when told of the arrival of Robert
Langston, the woman in her knew he would not go until he had seen and
spoken with her.
The day of Red Dog's capture was still fresh in the minds of Cranston's
household, as indeed in that of every household at the cantonment. With
field-glasses they had marked the threatening gathering at the distant
village, and the ominous advance in line. Old White had his men in ranks
in less than no time, and the cavalry column, masked by the agency
buildings, was sent at brisk trot to the eastward, so that McPhail's
messenger, spurring at mad gallop for aid, met them midway. Cranston's
troop was instantly deployed into long skirmish line at the gallop, and
the affair was practically over by the time Major White, leaving the
infantry battalion to guard the post, had reached the scene. Meantime
the composure of the mothers and children left at the cantonment was in
no wise augmented by the panic-stricken guise of the arriving refugees,
Mrs. McPhail, with her children, and Mira being the first to appear. It
so happened that the Cranstons' bungalow, being near the eastern end of
the line, proved the natural refuge of the first wagon-load, and that
Mrs. Cranston and Miss Loomis were the angels who thus had to minister
to their weaker sisters. Even then, when nearly "dead with terror," as
she expressed it, Mira would gladly have gone somewhere else, but as
Mrs. McPhail promptly bundled herself and her youngsters out of the
wagon and under the shelter of the Cranstons' wing, there was nothing
left for Mira but to follow suit. Dr. Burroughs came promptly to see
what he could do for her. Both Mrs. Cranston and Miss Loomis mastered
their own anxiety in the effort to comfort these weaklings, and as no
sounds of battle came from the eastward, and the watchers on the roofs
reported Red Dog's people as scattering for their tepees before the
advance of the cavalry, comparative composure was gradually being
restored when the first messenger came in from the front, a corporal of
Cranston's troop, whom the boys hailed with eager acclaim.
"Everything's all right, mum," he blithely saluted Mrs. Cranston. "We've
got old Red Dog again,--Lieutenant Davies nabbed him," he added, with
prompt recognition of Mira's lovely face. "They want Dr. Burroughs to
come down to the agency though." And as the doctor mounted the trooper
said something more in a low tone, glancing furtively at Mrs. Davies as
he did so. Burroughs nodded, but rode rapidly away, the corporal after
him. Mrs. McPhail became instantly lachrymose. Dr. Burroughs wanted at
the agency? That could mean only one thing,--Mr. McPhail must be
wounded, he was always so impetuous. In vain Mrs. Cranston strove to
soothe her. She ran out on the roadway in front and hailed the very next
party straggling in,--the wife and the cook of the agency clerk,
importuning them to say was Mac badly hurt.
"Mac ain't hurt at all," said the new arrivals, hot after a long and
needless tramp. "How was he to get hurt? It's Loot'nant Davies that's
shot. Red Dog tried to kill him."
And here Mira promptly and appropriately shrieked and fainted.
Nor was she of use when presently restored to a limp and dejected
consciousness. Other messengers had come by this time. Dr. Burroughs had
examined Mr. Davies's hurts. He was stabbed, not shot. It was serious,
not dangerous. He was being made comfortable at home, where Captain
Cranston said it was perfectly safe for Mrs. Davies to join him, and
the ambulance was speedily ready to take her to the bedside of her
wounded hero, but again poor Mira's nerves gave way. She could not go to
that dreadful place, so much nearer those frightful savages. Oh, why,
why hadn't they brought her Percy here? Even Mrs. McPhail was no such
coward as that. She drove back without her, and not for hours after was
Mira strong enough to go. By that time he was sleeping placidly when,
trembling still and pathetically pale, Mira was escorted to his bedside,
and that night Mrs. Cranston had her revenge.
"Agatha Loomis," said she, "you declared all along that he did perfectly
right in marrying that--that--in marrying _her_. What do you say now?"
And Miss Loomis said--nothing.
They had been talking of Davies again this very morning before the mails
and Langston came. No sooner had he been well enough to move than he
asked to be sent up to the garrison. He was no longer commander of the
guard, and no longer entitled to the house. What was more, he must
decline to serve McPhail in any such capacity again, and had had a
letter written to department head-quarters representing the facts, and
one was received from the general promising that another officer should
be detailed immediately. Furthermore, Mr. Davies announced that Mrs.
Davies simply could not stand the life at that point. Then Boynton
expressed a desire to return to it, as he was now able to stump around a
little, and he enjoyed chaffing McPhail, and so the wounded second
lieutenant of Devers's troop was shifted to the hospital tent put up
for his accommodation at the cantonment, and there Mira was made far
more comfortable than many an army wife had been, awaiting the day when
they could with safety be started on the road to Scott, now his proper
station.
"Langston's paying the Parson a mighty long visit," exclaimed Mr.
Sanders, unslinging his sabre and flopping down into the first
camp-chair on his way back from morning drill. "Mrs. Cranston, what do
you want to bet y'all go back to Scott inside of a week?"
"I like it very much better here, especially as our going to Scott would
mean 'y'all' were to be again in the field," was the laughing reply.
"Well, I like duty here better, but I do hanker for a waltz on that old
waxed floor. Think, we haven't had a dance since we came."
"The men had some good music the other evening; why didn't you suggest a
waltz on the prairie to Mrs. Davies?"
"Well, I did think of it. She looks bored to death. I saw her just now
as I came by. She was yawning in the shade of the tent fly while
Langston and the Parson were chatting inside." Why don't you and Miss
Loomis go over there and cheer her up sometimes? was the question he
checked just as it trembled on his lips. Some brief inspiration of
discretion warned him that that was ground too sacred for his blundering
intrusion. "She seems downright lonely," he concluded, somewhat lamely
and suggestively. "I don't think Mrs. Davies is cut out for this kind of
army life. Here comes Langston now." He needn't have made that
announcement. Mrs. Cranston was watching, waiting for him, and she
glanced quickly to see where Miss Loomis was. That young lady, however,
never looked up from the slate whereon Louis's hieroglyphics were in mad
arithmetical tangle, even when she heard Langston's courteous greeting
to the lady of the house and his inquiries for the captain, and heard
them without evidence of any emotion whatsoever.
"The captain is at the stables, Mr. Langston. We are so glad to see you.
I'll send him word in a moment. Do sit down and tell us all the news
from Braska," said Mrs. Cranston, hospitably.
"I will do all that most gladly, Mrs. Cranston, but the matter on which
I desire to see him at once is urgent, and perhaps Mr. Sanders will walk
over to the stables with me. Then, may I not call and see you later?"
"By all means! and will you not dine with us? A real campaign dinner,
you know, but we shall be so pleased to have you."
Langston's face fairly glowed. "I'll be here in half an hour, if I may,
but I must see the captain at once, and will go. I trust--Miss
Loomis--is well."
"Very well, and quite able to answer for herself," said Mrs. Cranston,
mischievously, while Langston's eyes eagerly searched the door-way and
dim interior; but Miss Loomis was nowhere in sight, and chose to appear
to be not within hearing.
"Why didn't you come or speak?" said Meg, reproachfully, the moment he
was gone.
"I was busy. These are school days," was the calm reply, one that would
have been no comfort to Langston, who walked rather ruefully on with the
subaltern. The business with Cranston proved interesting.
"You have a young trooper, Brannan, whom I need to see confidentially,
and at once. May I do so, captain?"
"Certainly. Send Corporal Brannan here," said the troop commander,
wondering what new complication had involved this wayward son; and
presently, erect and soldierly, with a fine tan on his cheek and
brand-new chevrons on his sleeves, "lanced for bravery in the field," as
the troopers expressed it in those days, the young soldier stood
attention before them.
"You probably do not remember me, Corporal Brannan," said Langston, in
courteous tone, "but I remember you favorably and well for the day at
Bluff Siding last June." And the light in the young soldier's eyes
indicated that he recalled the civilian. "Your captain knows something
of the matter on which I wish to see you, and I have asked him to remain
here with us." And now an anxious, troubled look crept over Brannan's
face, some swift overshadowing from the coming cloud. "You have never
yet told any one whose knife it was that cut you that day."
Brannan's lips moved and he turned even paler, but he said no word.
"Well, corporal, the time seems to have come when instead of keeping
silence to protect another man you may have to speak for your own sake."
Brannan glanced quickly, anxiously, from one face to another, from the
lawyer to his troop commander, as though appealing to the latter to say
how could that be. Presently he faltered, "I don't understand." "Well,
I will tell you, in part at least. Your captain and I know something of
your past history, and I do not think you will have cause to regret that
fact. We know that you were at Dr. Powlett's at the time Mr. Davies was
assaulted and robbed near his Urbana home. You had there been on terms
of intimacy with young Powlett, who disappeared after much disreputable
doing. You soon enlisted, and were for a time very intimate with a
recruit, Howard, who corresponded with the description I have of
Powlett. You both had frequent letters,--you from your mother and he
from several sources. Then came a disagreement and you held yourself
apart from him and his new chum, a young fellow called Paine, and, while
you continued loyal to an old friendship and kept silent as to Howard's
past, he was less considerate of you. There was serious trouble between
yourself and Sergeant Haney and Howard the night you reached Fort Scott
after the campaign, and you were ordered confined. I have heard there at
Scott a story I do not believe. Will you not tell your captain and me
the real cause?"
"Well, sir, it was about my writing-case," said the corporal, in low and
hesitant voice. "I kept mother's letters and some pictures and things I
valued in it. It went with me up to the Big Horn camp all right, but
when we started on the campaign and cut loose from the wagons I had to
turn it over to Sergeant Haney. I saw him lock it in the big company
chest, and the night we got into Scott with the wagons and that chest
was unloaded, over three months afterwards, I asked for it at once, and
I had been kept back with the wagons, and I'd been drinking a little,
for it was a bitter cold march, and Haney and Howard gave me more
liquor and told me I'd better not take it until I'd quit drinking. We
had trouble that night later, and I was confined for abusing the
sergeant and being drunk, though I could prove I hadn't abused him, and
that it was just the other way, and that I was only slightly affected by
the liquor. The next day I sent word from the guard-house for my case,
and the reply came that the sergeant gave it to me the previous night. I
knew he hadn't and said so. They answered that I was drunk and must have
lost it, and that was all the satisfaction I got."
"Why didn't you tell me about this at the time, Brannan?" asked
Cranston, kindly.
"I meant to, sir, the moment I got out, but they fixed things so as to
send me direct from the guard-house with Lieutenant Boynton's detachment
to the agency, and when I wrote from there to Howard and Haney both,
they answered that they had a clue, and if I'd only keep quiet they'd
get it sure, and the man who stole it from me. I never told mother about
it,--it shamed me so. I was afraid the liquor was drugged, and--it might
be true, though I thought I knew everything that happened." Then he
stopped abruptly.
"Go on," said Langston, with deep interest in his keen, shrewd face.
"There is even more to this than I thought. What followed?"
"I got tired waiting, and there was a chance to go to Scott with the
mail rider and I took it, and a bitter cold ride it proved to be. We
couldn't get coffee on the way, the rider and I, but we could get
whiskey, worse luck, for he had it with him, and so I had been drinking
when we reached the post, and made my demand of Haney. He put me off
with more liquor and soft words. Then I threatened to appeal to Captain
Cranston or Lieutenant Davies, and the next thing they had me in
hospital with Paine to watch me. I had been drinking enough to make me
mad with suffering for more by that time."
"Well, did you never appeal to Captain Devers?"
"No, sir; there was no use in doing that," said Brannan, coloring
uneasily as he spoke. "I beg Captain Cranston's pardon for saying so of
an officer, but no one could hope for justice in 'A' Troop unless he was
solid with Sergeant Haney."
"And you have never seen your writing-case to this day?" continued
Langston.
"Never, sir."
"Well, one thing more. Now that you know Howard's character,--know him
to have deserted and to have striven to injure you in many a way, will
you still persist in saying he did not wield the knife that slashed
you?"
"I have said, sir, that I knew no one in all the recruits who would have
used a knife on me."
"True! You put it well, Brannan," said Langston, with a smile of deep
meaning, "and among simple-minded military folk the answer would be
enough, perhaps, but not to a lawyer. Would you declare that Howard did
not wield the knife that slashed you--but was meant for Lieutenant
Davies?"
And Brannan colored still deeper. "I cannot say anything about him, sir;
at least not now."
"Very well. Then it is useless to ask just now what you know of his
past?"
"Yes, sir."
"All right, Brannan. It is my belief that in the near future that
writing-case of yours will turn up, and I mean to stay to see it, for
when it does you'll need us both."
But Langston's hope for a speedy and brilliant coup was dashed by the
news that came that very night. Forty-eight hours thereafter a little
caravan of army wagons, Concords and ambulances, with an infantry
escort, was slowly wending its way southward toward the welcoming roofs
of old Fort Scott, with the wives and children of several families, with
Mira and her newest friend, Mrs. Plodder, with the tall, martial-looking
civilian riding in close attendance on the Cranston's equipage, basking
in the life-giving sunshine and in the thrill and hope and sweet unrest
of an ever-growing love, devoted and insistent in spite of vague and
jealous dread, for there was not the feeblest flicker of encouragement
in Miss Loomis's calm and oft-averted eyes. Langston asked himself in
the still hours of the starlit night, camping on the banks of Dismal
River, was it possible that her heart was following some soldier in the
dusty column, riding hard, riding fast long miles away to the northwest
now, eager to overtake the comrade soldiery already on the flank of the
foe, and bear a trooper's part in the battle summer so suddenly to open.
Even Percy Davies, laughing at the feeble protest of Dr. Burroughs, and
heartily congratulated by old White himself, had donned his field dress
and climbed stiffly into saddle, to ride once more with the fighting
column, to the savage disappointment of his one red foe at the
cantonments, and the utter confusion of other foes at Scott.