to?" howled Mullane over the consequent cups at the sutler"s store and club-room, Fuller aiding and abetting with more liquor. Up the hill to the post lurched the big captain that very afternoon, and into the card-room where some of his cronies were gathered, Bralligan among them, and the untrustworthy Hodge. Any one with half an eye could see there was mischief in the wind, for nothing caused these old-time Hibernian rankers keener suffering than to have their betters settle a question without either court-martial or a fight. Talk and jeering laugh grew louder as potations followed on the heel-taps of their predecessors. The mail from San Antonio got in at five P.M. that evening, and the orderly was distributing letters as the officers returned from stables. Winn, by invitation, had accompanied the major, and was walking home with him, Mullane and a crony or two following at safe distance. Several men saw the light of relief in Winn"s face as he received, opened, and glanced into the missive handed him.
"Has it come?" asked Brooks, in genuine sympathy.
"Yes," answered Winn, almost solemnly. "A check which I am instructed to have cashed by Fuller, as he has all the currency in the county just now."
"I congratulate you with all my heart," said the major. "I suppose you will see Trott to-morrow."
"I shall see him to-night, if you will excuse me, sir. I"ll go at once to the store.--Brayton, will you come with me?"
Fuller was out. It was some minutes before he could be found at the corral. Meantime the two cla.s.smates, reconciled since the long talk between Barclay and Winn, conversed in low, grave tones in Fuller"s private card-room, where none but officers and his cronies were admitted. "The trader looked queer," said Brayton, "when he took the check," but after some fumbling at his safe came back with a thick package of treasury notes, carefully counted out and labelled. On this display of wealth gloated the fishy eyes of Mullane as a moment later he came reeling in, Bralligan and Hodge at his heels.
To his hilarious salutation Brayton gave short answer, Winn none at all.
Winn"s face had clouded again, and all the sad lines of thought and care seemed cutting deep, despite the coming of this much-needed relief.
"Hwat"s ahl the lucre, I say?" shouted the Irish captain, raging at Winn"s tacit snub. "Thousands of dollars, bedad!" Then with leering wink he turned to his half-muddled satellites. "D"ye mind, lads?--ahl that for a plasther to wounded honor,--regular John Bull business over again.
That"s the English way of settlin" a crim. con. case. How much did Barclay think it wurrth, Winn?"
And the next instant he lay floundering on the floor, felled by a furious blow from the subaltern"s fist.
CHAPTER XVII.
Another week opened. In honor of Captain Barclay"s restoration to health, the Fraziers had issued invitations for a picnic to the White Gate. Many of the officers and ladies had accepted. Most of them had been bidden. Captain Mullane had been on sick report four days,--contusions resulting from tumbling from a broken-legged chair, was the explanation; but every Pat in the command had his tongue in his cheek when he spoke of it, and of matters growing out of the "contusions" mentioned. Frazier had heard rumors of the former fracas, and had notified Messrs. Mullane, Bralligan, _et al._ that he would have no duelling in his bailiwick; and deep was the mystery surrounding certain consultations held by night in Mullane"s quarters.
"The blood of that young braggart be on his own head," said Mullane to his henchmen. "And you, Hodge, can console the disconsolate widow."
He had no more doubt of the issue of the contemplated combat, no more compunction in the matter, than had Thackeray"s valiant and inimitable little Gascon, _ne_ Caba.s.se, in his duel with Lord Kew. He had long been the leader of the Hibernian set, and, despite every effort on the part of the witnesses to the affray at the sutler"s to keep the matter a secret, rumors got out, and the Faugh-a-Ballaghs knew their chief had been braved by that hated c.o.xcomb Winn. Every one of them knew further that Mullane must have sent his demand for satisfaction, despite the fact that his "pistol oi," the right, had been damaged by the collision and was not yet in condition for effective service. Everybody who was in the secret knew that Mr. Winn had instantly accepted, naming Brayton as his second, pistols as the weapons, and suggesting his father"s old duelling set, that had seen long years and some service in the old army, as proper to the occasion; the time and place, however, would necessarily depend on the victim of the knock-down blow. All Winn asked and urged was utter secrecy meantime.
To Mullane there was nothing in the episode over which to brood or worry. As dragoon sergeant in the old days, he had "winged his man"
according to the methods described in "Charles O"Malley" and practised occasionally by his superiors in rank. He had known many a bar-room broil, and was at home with pistol, fists, or sabre,--no mean antagonist when not unsteadied by liquor. He had now a chance of meeting on the field one of the set he secretly hated, "the sn.o.bocracy of the arrumy,"
and he meant to shoot the life out of Harry Winn if straight shooting would do it. That Winn had taken advantage of him and knocked him down when he was drunk was excuse sufficient for the crime he planned; that he had brought the blow upon himself by an insult ten times more brutal was a matter that concerned him not at all. He had no wife or child to worry about: Mrs. Mullane and the various progeny were old enough to look out for themselves, as indeed most of them had long been accustomed to do. Mullane thirsted for the coming meeting, and for the prominence its outcome would give him among all good soldiers all over Texas.
And as for Winn,--he who had come riding home from his successful scout barely a fortnight before, buoyant, hopeful, almost happy,--the change that had come over him was something all men saw and none could fully account for. Cashing the draft from the bank at San Antonio, he had now enough to take Trott"s receipt in full for the value of the stolen stores, even to some recovered plunder, slightly damaged by rough handling and by rain. He would then still have some four hundred dollars, and he asked his wife for certain bills that had been frequently coming to her accompanied by urgent demands. Laura said she had not kept them. Which ought to be paid first? he asked. Which had been longest outstanding? Laura"s reply was that she did not know, but if he had got that money from San Antonio at last she ought to have some to send to Madame Chalmette. She positively had not a dinner-dress fit to be seen. Winn did not even glance at the open doors of a big closet, hung thick with costly gowns his wife had hardly worn at all, but that now, she said, were out of style. There were other matters to be thought of than dinner-gowns, he told her, gravely, and her face clouded at once. She had almost forgotten the troubles of the week gone by.
He went down to his den and sat there thinking. What ought he to do?
what should he do with this money? Every cent of it would be swallowed up if he squared those commissary accounts and turned the balance into checks and sent it off to pay these bills, and then if Mullane"s bullet sped true to its mark, what would there be to take Laura and the baby North? "Home" he dared not say. She had no home: Collabone"s diagnosis of that situation was correct. Then, too, if Mullane"s pistol did not fail him, there would be no way in which that mysterious friend and beneficiary of his father"s could ever be repaid. What right had he to use one cent of this money for any purpose whatever, when another day might be his last? Winn wished he still had the San Antonio check instead of these bulky packages of greenbacks. They were now locked up in Trott"s safe, unbroken, pending action at Department Head-Quarters on the new schedule sent thither, based on the recovery of some of the damaged stores. He thought of it all as, long before gun-fire that morning, the black care of his life came and roused him from his fitful sleep and bade him face his daily, hourly torment. He had risen, and as he softly moved about the room, thoughtful for her, she slept on placidly as a happy child, soundly as slept the nurse and the little one in the adjoining room.
Donning his stable dress, he carried his boots into the hall and down the creaking stairs, and sat there, with solitary candle, at his desk, wearily jotting down inexorable figures. The dawn came stealing in the eastward window: from aloft a querulous little wail was uplifted on the stillness of the summer morning. There was no answering hush of loving, motherly voice. Laura could not stand wakeful nights. He tiptoed swiftly up again to rouse the nurse in case she too slept on, but he heard her hand beating drowsy time on the coverlet, and the soothing "Shoo, shoo, shoo," with which she communicated her own heaviness to her little charge. Laura had turned uneasily, he saw as he peeped in at the open doorway, but again slept soundly, her lovely face now full turned towards him, half pillowed on the white and rounded arm he used to kiss with such rapture in the touch of his lips. Her white brow was shaded by the curling wealth of her soft, shining hair. The white eyelids drooped their long curving lashes over the rounded cheeks, faintly tinged with the rosy hue of youth and health. The exquisite lips, warm, delicately moulded, parted just enough to reveal the white, even, pearly teeth. The snowy, rounded throat and neck and shoulders were enhanced in their beauty by the filmy fabric of her gown, beneath which her full bosom slowly rose and fell in healthful respiration. How beautiful she was, how fair a picture of almost girlish innocence and freedom from all worldly dross or care! Even now, in the light of all the gradual revelation of her shallow, selfish vanity, the heart of the man yearned over and softened to her. If he had only realized,--if he had only known more of the world and life and duty other than mere soldier obligation, how different all might have been! What right had he to ask her to be his wife? She should have wedded a man many years her senior,--one fitted to guide and direct her,--able to lavish luxury upon her. It wasn"t all her fault that she had been so thoughtless, poor girl! What else had her mother been before her? What else could one expect of her?
Would she miss him? he wondered. Not long,--not long, thank G.o.d! Beauty such as hers would soon win for her and baby home and comfort such as he could never give. That was all over. Something almost like a sob rose from his heart as he bent and softly touched with his lips the floating curl above her temple, then turned back to resume his work and reface his troubles. Thank G.o.d, Mullane"s pistol would soon end them all and save him from the sin that was in his soul the day he took his own revolver with him. She was sleeping still when the morning gun shook the shutter of her window and he went forth to meet the sorrows of another day, as he had met those of the past,--alone.
The air was strangely still, yet the smoke from the kitchen chimneys back of the barracks settled downward about the adobe capping or drifted aimlessly along the roof-trees. Down in the stream-bed and over about the low bluffs of the farther sh.o.r.e, swallows and sand-martins were shooting and slanting about their nests in clamorous, complaining gyration. The flag, run up to the topmast at the crack of the gun, hung limp and lifeless, without so much as a flutter. Away to the northwest, over the pine crests of the range, a belt of billowy cloud gleamed snow-white at their summits, but frowned dark and ominous underneath.
Huge ma.s.ses of c.u.mulus, balloon-like, thrust distended cheeks to the morning kiss of the sun; but these were well down to the west. The orient and the zenith skies were fleckless. Over at the stables two four-mule teams were hitching in, and army-wagons were being laden with tentage, luncheon-baskets, ice, boxes of bottled beer, band instruments, and the like, all going ahead to the White Gate, while Frazier"s bandsmen were to follow in another as soon as they had finished breakfast. Their duty would be to set up the tents, the dancing-pavilion, and the lunch-tables on the level green in a lovely dell a mile within the gates, and have everything in readiness against the coming of the joyous party from the post. It was planned to carry the women-folk and such men as couldn"t ride in the available ambulances and spring wagons, while the cavaliers would canter along on horseback.
They would lunch at one, dance, fish, and flirt through the afternoon hours, have a supplementary bite and beer towards five o"clock, and drive homeward before dark. "Captain Barclay, as the guest of honor,"
said Mrs. Frazier, would go with her and "Manda in her own vehicle, a venerable surrey. The colonel would drive, and Miss Frazier, now withdrawn by a maternal order from the supposed compet.i.tion, in order that "Manda"s charms might concentrate, was bidden to ride. Winn had no thought of going. Mrs. Frazier had no thought that it would be possible for him or Laura to go,--the latter being reported ill in bed,--and therefore had found it easier to comply with the colonel"s dictum that they must be invited, and she did it by dropping in and bidding "Miss Purdy" say to her mistress that she had called to inquire for her, and was so sorry, so very sorry, that her illness would prevent her coming to the picnic, whereupon Laura herself had appeared in becoming _negligee_ at the head of the stairs and smilingly a.s.sured the nonplussed lady that she was so much better she thought it really might do her good to go. But of this she said no word to Harry until, returning from stables at seven o"clock, he was surprised to find her up and dressing.
On the homeward way he had met Mr. Bralligan, whom he pa.s.sed without recognition, but not without mental note of the unusual circ.u.mstance, Bralligan being a late riser, as a general thing, and having no business at Barclay"s quarters anyhow. Brayton awaited him on the piazza and drew his arm within his own.
"Mullane sends word that he"ll be ready at sunrise to-morrow, Harry, and I have said we were ready any time."
But the young fellow"s voice trembled a bit as he anxiously scanned his cla.s.smate"s grave, solemn face. It couldn"t be that Winn was weakening, losing his nerve. It couldn"t be that. But had his trouble so weighed upon him that he really welcomed the possible coming of the end?
Brayton"s was a hard lot just now. a.s.siduously he was hiding from his own captain all indications of the forthcoming meeting. Somehow he felt that Barclay would not hesitate to disclose the project to the post commander, and then every cad in Texas would jeer and crow and say it was Winn and he who crawfished. Barclay had noted that Winn seemed avoiding him again, and spoke of it to Brayton, who answered that Winn was avoiding everybody: he was blue and depressed about his affairs.
"Yet I understood that he had received more than enough to settle those commissary accounts," said the captain.
"Oh, yes," answered Brayton, "but there are other matters." How could he tell Barclay that he thought Winn"s love and faith in his wife were dead and gone? How could he tell him that Winn would touch no dollar of the money until he had first met and satisfied another claim? Barclay"s suspicions would have been aroused at once.
But Winn was having another trouble now. Laura had set her heart on going to the picnic, and for no other reason, she declared, than that she must show the women there was nothing amiss. If he and she, either or both, should fail to attend the Fraziers" entertainment, every one would say he still believed her guilty of having a rendezvous with Barclay at that unearthly hour, and that she was unforgiving.
As he had done many a time before, Winn yielded. What mattered it? There might be only that day for him. He could accomplish nothing by absenting himself. He could aid in brushing away any cloud upon her name by going and being devoted to her. So go they did, and women who watched with wary and suspicious eyes long remembered how fond and lover-like were Winn"s attentions to his beautiful wife; how often on the way he rode to the side of that ambulance to say some little word to her; how anxiously he seemed to scan that lowering westward sky, for by the time they reached the Blanca gorge the cloud-banks were climbing to the zenith and the westward heavens were black as the cinder-patches along the heights about them, where fir and spruce and stunted pine had strewn the slopes with dry, resinous carpet, too easily ignited by the sparks from hunter"s pipe or campfire. At two o"clock, Blythe, Brooks, and Frazier, clambering a rocky ridge to the southeast of the lovely picnic cove, looked gravely at the blackening sky, then gravely into one another"s faces. "I think we ought to start at once," said the colonel. "That"s no place to be caught in a storm." And he pointed downward as he spoke.
At their feet was the deep, gra.s.sy valley, hemmed by precipitous bluffs.
The greensward at the base of the barrier ridge was soft and velvety. A richer soil nourished the roots of the bunch-gra.s.s, and all men knew that more than once in bygone days the sudden swelling of the brawling waters that came foaming and swirling down the ravine from the depths of the crested heights within had turned that beautiful little sheltered nook into a deep lake that slowly emptied itself through the narrow, twisting, rocky gorge that ended at the White Gate. On the level turf the dancers were merrily footing it even now to the music of an inspiring quadrille, the pretty gowns of the women, the uniforms of the men, adding brightness to the picture. Below the camp the mules and horses were placidly grazing close by the inner opening of the gorge, the white covers of the wagons and the snowy canvas of the two or three tents adding to the picturesqueness of the scene. All at the feet of the watching group was life, laughter, and careless joy; all beyond that merry scene a black and ominous heaven, frowning down on gloomy pine and rocky hill-side. The ceaseless clamor of the seething waters, as they turned whirling into the tortuous gorge, rose steadily above the throb and thrill of the dance-music, and aloft those relentless clouds sailed sternly eastward over the sky.
Still the smoke from the camp-fires settled back and shrank about the earth, as though dreading the encounter with the sleeping forces of the air. Then, as the watchful eyes of the elders turned once more up the mountain side, there came a cry from Brooks. "By G.o.d! it"s coming! There isn"t a second to lose!"
Frazier, following the direction of that pointing finger, looked upward, saw the crestward firs and pines and cedars bending, quivering before a blast as yet unfelt below, saw sheets of ashen vapor come sailing over the hill-tops and sweeping down the rocky sides, saw the whole mountain face turn black as in a single minute, as though hiding from the storm that came roaring down the slope, then lighting up the next instant in dazzling, purplish glare, as a zigzag bolt of lightning ripped the storm-cloud in twain, and in the instant, with crash and roar as of a thousand cannon rolled into one, let loose the deluge sleeping in its depths. As though Niagara were suddenly turned upon the hill-side, a vast volume of water swept downward, hissing, foaming, rolling over the rocks, and the leaping spray dashed high in air, as the black wealth of waters came surging down into the ravine.
"A cloud-burst, by all that"s holy!" screamed Brooks, as he sprang down the gra.s.sy side of the bluff. "Up with you, up the hill-side, for your lives!" The dancers, faltering through the sudden flutter of the band, for the first time looked upward, and saw the peril. Then, men and women, bandsmen and "strikers," the camp made a wild rush up the eastward hill-side. Another blinding flash, another thunderous roar that seemed to shake and loosen the rocks about them, and in that second of brilliant, dazzling glare the watchers could see the white wall of the Blanca come spray-tossing, seething, whirling huge logs and trees on its outermost wave, tumbling them end over end, now deep-engulfed, now high in air,--one immense, furious moving mountain of raging water, sweeping towards them from the depths of the chasm. Then, rolling and frothing over its puny banks in the valley below, a chocolate flood, foam-crested, spread right and left through the deserted camp, licking up the cookfires, sweeping camp-chairs and tables off their legs, bodily lifting wagons and ambulances and sending them waltzing to the wild music of the storm over the flats where twinkled dainty-slippered feet the moment before, then bore them away towards the inner mouth of the gorge just in time to mix them up with such frantically struggling mules as through native obstinacy had resisted the impulse to scamper to higher ground while yet there was time. Worst sight of all, right there in the midst of the logs, chairs, wagon-beds, that came swirling beneath them, was a despairing woman"s struggling form, revealed by a woman"s white dress.
"Merciful G.o.d!" shrieked Mrs. Faulkner; "it"s Laura Winn. She went up towards the falls not ten minutes ago."
Vain fool! What could have been her object? Barclay, never dancing, had been looking smilingly on. Both the Frazier girls had been led, not too willing, away by partners. Four sets had been formed, and Mrs. Winn, pleading fatigue, had asked to be excused, had sauntered past Barclay"s seat, and, before his eyes, had turned up the narrow, winding, sheltered pathway by the Blanca. Had she dreamed it possible that he would follow?
Follow her he did not. Was it--a far more charitable thought--in search of Harry she had gone? Sombre and absent-minded, he had earlier slipped away among the trees, avoiding even Brayton. But now Barclay was seen on the near side of the torrent, limping up and along the steep slope, in imminent danger of slipping in, swinging in his hand a long lariat that he had drawn from the nearest wagon when the wild up-hill fight began.
They remembered later that he was the last man out of the hollow.
Already Brooks, Brayton, De Lancy, and half a dozen men were hurrying along the hill-side to aid, but Brayton reached him first and seized his arm just as another cry went up from the hill-top,--just as from the opposite side of the seething torrent the tall figure of Harry Winn came bounding through the stunted trees, and, hatless, wild-eyed, he seemed searching the tossing ma.s.s of wreckage on the bosom of the waters.
Another instant still a white hand was waved aloft in their midst; then a white arm encircling a log, a terror-stricken white face, all showed dimly one moment before again borne underneath, hidden by the yellow body of a whirling ambulance, and in that one instant, far leaping, Winn plunged into the torrent and struck out savagely to reach his wife.
Vain, hopeless effort! Eddying in huge circle at the rocky shoulder just above the entrance to the gorge, the wild waters near the eastward sh.o.r.e bore their burden, jarring and crushing, close under the heights on which were cl.u.s.tered the panic-stricken revellers from Fort Worth. But on the farther side, as it narrowed towards the entrance, the hissing torrent tore like a mill-horse on its way. Into this heaving flood leaped Winn, and, before the eyes of screaming women and helpless, horror-stricken men, was sucked into the rush and whirl of foaming waves sweeping resistless through the rocky canon, away towards the fair White Gate, away out and beyond the lovely foot-hills, tossed and battered and crushed by whirling logs, dragged under by the branches of uprooted trees, borne away at last, rolling, gasping, still feebly, faintly struggling, until on the broad lowlands the torrent spent the fury of its concentrated spite, and, swiftly still, but no longer raging as when curbed and held by the barrier gate, the Blanca foamed away to strew the tokens of the fearful storm right and left for miles along its banks, and to land all that was mortal of Harry Winn, bruised, battered, yet so placid in death that strong men"s voices broke when telling how they found him, resting with weary head upon his arm on the sandy flat that lay just beneath the little summer-house on the overhanging bluffs,--just where Laura had looked down over the misty shallows from that very height the morning her soldier husband had reached his home at reveille and found her--wanting.
They bore her wailing home that night, widowed and crying, Woe is me!
yet with what wild thoughts throbbing through her brain! Who was it that came leaping to her aid as she felt herself again dragged under in that swirling eddy? Whose voice was it that rang upon her drowning ears?
Whose strong arms had clasped and sustained her and held her head above water, while other strong hands, hauling at the lariat made fast about his waist, drew them steadily to sh.o.r.e? Then angels came and ministered to her,--the women,--while the men cl.u.s.tered about her dripping hero, Galahad. Only for a moment, though, for there was mounting bareback in hot haste and thundering away at mad gallop, despite the drenching rain, for he who had saved the wife implored those who could ride to haste and save the husband.
All Fort Worth again went into mourning with the setting of that woful sun. It had borne its fill and more of battle and of sudden death.
And people resurrected Hodge"s stories later on, though Hodge himself was readily excused. They recalled how Channing"s widow and little ones were cared for after that officer"s untimely death in the shadows of old Laramie Peak. They recalled Porter"s ailing wife and the sea-side sojourn, and the old ordnance sergeant"s family burned out at Sanders.
It wasn"t many days before the lovely, drooping widow of poor Harry Winn was quite well enough to be sent the long journey to the North; yet some weeks elapsed before she would consent, she said, to be torn from her beloved"s grave. When, gently as possible, she was told in July that the quarters she still occupied were needed for her husband"s successor, she proposed to spend a few weeks with Mr. and Mrs. Faulkner, but they were forced to limit that visit to a few days. There was no reason why she could not have started in June, for that devoted mother, Mrs. Waite, had dropped temporarily the pursuit of Senators and Representatives in Congress a.s.sembled, and wired that she would meet her daughter in New Orleans, and the commanding general at San Antonio notified her that abundant means for all her homeward journeying for self and nurse and baby were in his hands. She thought she ought to stay until all poor Harry"s affairs were straightened out; and Frazier had to say that that, too, was all attended to. Yet all the while she seemed to think that she could not sufficiently thank the heroic Captain Barclay, and begged to see him for that purpose, also to consult him, day after day, until--was there collusion?--he suddenly received orders to proceed to San Antonio on court-martial duty, and was on his way before she knew it,--before, said the Fraziers, she could get ready to go with him. Nor was he there when she pa.s.sed through, under Fuller"s escort, to the Gulf, nor did she see him once again in Texas. Letters, fervently grateful letters, came to him from Washington, whither she had flitted, and where, it is reported, she was to have a clerkship. But when people spoke of her to Barclay he smiled gravely and had nothing to say. All her late husband"s accounts were declared settled and closed within a very few months, and all men knew by that time whose hand it was that had lifted the burden; yet Laura Waite had lost the last vestige of her power where Galbraith Barclay was concerned.
Long before the fall set in, Barclay returned to his post of duty, eagerly welcomed by officers and men, except the Faugh-a-Ballaghs.
Somebody had sent from San Antonio a marble headstone for Winn"s lonely grave in the little cemetery. Somebody had secured for his widow that clerkship in the Treasury Department, which within another year she left to wed a veteran admirer of her mother, to the unappeasable wrath of that well-preserved matron and the secret joy of "Manda Frazier, who thought that now perhaps the eyes of Galahad would open to her own many charms of mind and person. Yet they did not. Somebody in a childish, sprawling hand was writing letters every week to the doughboy trooper, who by that time had the best drilled company at Worth, owing, said the Faugh-a-Ballaghs, when forced to admit the fact, to Brayton"s abilities and to an Irish sergeant. Barclay"s weekly mail was bigger than that of anybody else except the commanding officer, whose missives, however, were mainly official, and the number of letters penned in feminine or childish hands seemed, like Galahad"s G.o.dchildren, ever on the increase.
Mrs. Blythe came back from leave, bonnier than ever, and blissful beyond compare in the possession of secrets she could not share with even her oldest cronies, yet that leaked out in ways no man could hope to stop.
Ned Lawrence"s children were well, happy, thriving,--little Jim at Barclay"s home with other G.o.dsons, two or three, where a widowed sister cared for them as for her own, so said Mrs. Blythe when fairly cornered, while Ada was at a famous old Connecticut school not far from the Barclay homestead.
"Good heavens!" said Blythe, one day in late October, "these women have powers of divination that would be priceless at police head-quarters.
Why, they"ve got hold of facts I thought only Mrs. Blythe and I knew,--facts that Barclay would have kept concealed from every one, but that we simply can"t deny."