"Why, _Mr._ Ray! What can be the hurry? Why start this evening?"
"Why not?" he laughed. "Dandy and I can reach the Chug and put up with old Phillipse to-night, and gallop on to Laramie to-morrow. Once there, it won"t take me long to find my way out to the regiment."
"Why, the whole country is full of Indians!" expostulated Mrs. Stannard.
"The major writes in this very letter that no one ventures north of the Platte."
"How did the letter come in, then? and how is communication kept up?"
asked the lieutenant, showing his white teeth in his amus.e.m.e.nt.
"Oh! couriers, of course; but they are half-breeds, and have lived all their life in that country."
"Well, I can wriggle through if they can. One thing is certain, it won"t be for lack of trying. So, whatever you may have to send to the major, get ready; the lightning express leaves at 4.30. I must go and report my movements to the commanding officer, and then will come back to you. Is the adjutant here?" he asked, looking around at the party of infantrymen who were standing waiting for a chance to excuse themselves, and leave the ladies to the undisputed possession of their evident favorite. Mr.
Warner bowed:
"At your service, Mr. Ray."
"Will you come and present me to the colonel? I will be back in ten minutes, Mrs. Stannard; and, Mrs. Truscott, remember it is over a year since I saw you last,--and you gave me good luck the last time I went out scouting." With that, and a general bow by way of parting courtesy, Mr. Ray took himself and the post adjutant off. For a moment there was silence. Everybody gazed after him except Gleason.
"Isn"t that just too characteristic of Mr. Ray for anything?" exclaimed Mrs. Turner. "I wonder if any other officer would be in such a hurry to risk his scalp in chasing the regiment? _You_ wouldn"t, would you, Mr.
Gleason?" she added, with the deliberate and mischievous impertinence she knew would sting, and meant should sting, and felt serenely confident that her victim could not resent. He flushed hotly:
"My duties are with my troop, Mrs. Turner, and Mr. Ray"s with his. When my troop goes I go with it. When his went--he didn"t. That"s all there is to it."
"But he couldn"t go, Mr. Gleason, as you well know," replied Mrs.
Turner; and evidently Mrs. Stannard, too, was eager to ask him what he had to say _now_ about Mr. Ray"s staying behind. To tell the truth, he was more dismayed by Ray"s appearance than he dare admit even to himself. He was startled. He had grave reason for not wanting to meet him again, and as the officers were scattering he seized a pretext, called to one of them that he wished to speak with him a moment, and hurried away. When Ray returned from the colonel"s quarters, he had the field to himself, and that they might have him--their regimental possession--to themselves, Mrs. Stannard begged the younger ladies to usher him into the parlor, where they could be secure against interruption until he had to start.
Gleason"s business with his infantry friend was of slight moment, apparently, as he speedily left him and wended his way to the quarters of the commanding officer. Old Colonel Whaling was just coming forth, and they met at the gate.
"You sent me an inquiry a few moments ago, sir, which I could not answer at the time," said the lieutenant, in his blandest manner. "I see that Mr. Ray has arrived to speak for himself. May I ask if he was wanted for anything especial?" And Gleason looked very closely into the grizzled features of the commandant.
"Some letters for him had been sent with my mail--and a telegram. I inferred that he must be coming, and thought you might know. Rather a spirited young fellow he seems to be. I was quite startled at his notion of riding alone in search of the regiment. How soon does he start? I see his horse there yet."
"He spoke of going in a few moments, sir. You see we have been so much accustomed to this sort of thing in Arizona that there is nothing unusual in it to us. Still, I hardly expected Mr. Ray would be going--or rather--there were some matters which he left unsettled that I supposed would prevent his going. You didn"t happen to notice where his letters were from, I suppose?" asked the lieutenant, tentatively.
The colonel would have colored had he been younger, but his grizzled old face had long since lost its capacity for blushing. He felt that it grew hot, however, and Gleason"s insinuation cut, as Gleason knew it would.
Old Whaling was morbidly inquisitive as to the correspondence of his officers, and could rarely resist the temptation of studying postmarks, seals, superscription, and general features of all letters that came through his hands.
"Not--not especially," he stammered.
Gleason saw his advantage and pursued it. He spoke with all apparent hesitancy and proper regret.
"I feared that he might have been recalled, or his going arrested by orders from division headquarters, or from Fort Leavenworth. Some things with regard to the purchase of one lot of horses, of which I disapproved, were being looked into when I came away, and when----Well, colonel, it is against the rule of our regiment, to talk to outsiders of one another" ("Like--ahem!" was old Whaling"s muttered comment as he recalled what he had heard of Gleason"s revelations at the store), "and I would not allude to this but that, as commanding officer, you will be sure to hear of it all. You see the princ.i.p.al dealer with whom we did business is a brother-in-law of Mr. Ray"s,--a fellow named Rallston,--and some of his horses wouldn"t pa.s.s muster anywhere; but--well, Ray was with him day after day, and kept aloof from Buxton and myself, and there was some money transaction between them, and there"s been a row. At the last moment Rallston came to me to complain that he had been cheated, and what I"m afraid of is that Ray promised to secure the acceptance of a lot of worthless horses by the board for some five hundred dollars cash advanced him by Rallston. He was hot about it, and swore he would bring matters to General Sheridan"s notice instantly.
That is what made me so guarded in the reply I sent you. I owe you this explanation, colonel, but trust you will consider it confidential."
Whaling looked greatly discomposed but unquestionably interested. He eyed Gleason sharply and took it all in without a word.
"I thought some of his letters might have been from Leavenworth," said Gleason, after a pause.
"One of them was,--that is, I think I saw the office mark,--but nothing official has reached me on the matter. I"m sorry to hear it, very; for both your colonel and Major Stannard spoke in highest terms of Mr. Ray when they were here."
"Oh, Ray has done good service and all that sort of thing, but when a fellow of his age gets going downhill with debts and drinking and cards--well, you know how it has been in your own regiment, colonel."
"He don"t look like a drinking man," said the colonel. "I never saw clearer eyes or complexion in any fellow."
"Ye-es; he looks unusually well just now."
And just at that moment as they stood there talking of him, Mrs.
Stannard"s door opened and he came forth, the three ladies following. He did look well,--more than well, as he turned with extended hand to say good-by. "Dandy," his lithe-limbed sorrel, p.r.i.c.ked up his dainty, pointed ears and whinnied eagerly as he heard his step on the piazza, giving himself a shake that threatened the dislocation of his burden of blankets, canteen, and saddle-bags. The ladies surrounded him at the gate. Mrs. Stannard"s kind blue eyes were moistening. How often had she said good-by to the young fellows starting out as buoyantly as Ray to-day, thinking as she did so of the mothers and sisters at home! How often had it happened that they came back maimed, pallid, suffering, or--not at all! She had always liked Ray, he was so frank, so loyal, so true, and more than ever she liked now to show her friendship and regard since he had been slandered. Mrs. Truscott and Miss Sanford stood with arms entwined about each other"s waist,--the sweetest and best of them have that innate, inevitable coquetry,--and Mrs. Stannard bent forward to rearrange the silken knot at his throat, giving it an approving pat as she surveyed the improvement. Ray smiled his thanks.
"Do you remember the night at Sandy, Mrs. Truscott, the last scout we started out on, and how you came to see us off and wish me good luck?"
"As well as though it were only yesterday," she answered.
"We _had_ good luck. It was one of the best scouts ever made from Sandy, and the Apaches caught it heavily. It was a success all through except our--our losing Tanner and Kerrigan. Jack"s. .h.i.t was to be envied."
She shuddered and drew closer to Miss Sanford"s side.
"Oh, Mr. Ray! I cannot bear to think of that fight. I won"t wish you good luck again. You always expect it to mean unlimited meetings with the Indians. I pray you may not see one."
"Then I appeal to you, Miss Sanford. Shall I confess that your name is one I have envied for the last five years? No, don"t be amazed! We Kentuckians always a.s.sociate it now with two of our grandest horses,--Monarchist and Harry Ba.s.sett. Why, I"m going to ride the old Sanford colors myself this summer. See,--the dark blue?" he laughed, pointing to his breast.
"Then you should be among the first coming home," she answered, brightly, "and that isn"t your custom, I"m told."
"But in this case the whole regiment will be wearing the dark blue; so there will be no distinction. I won"t beg for a ribbon. It"s bad luck. I stole the ta.s.sel of Miss Pelham"s fan in Arizona and wore it on the next dash; we never saw an Indian, and she married a fellow who stayed at home. All the same, Miss Sanford, if you hear of the --th doing anything especially lively this summer, remember that one fellow in the crowd rides his best to win for the sake of your colors. _Au revoir._ Come, Dandy, you scamp; now for a scamper to the Chug."
He sprang lightly into saddle, waved his hat to them, then bent low, as by sudden impulse, and held out his hand.
"G.o.d bless you, Mrs. Stannard!" he said; and looking at her in half surprise, they saw her eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears.
Another moment and he had turned Dandy"s head to the west, and was tripping up the road past the adjutant"s office. They saw him raise his gauntleted hand in salute to the post commander, and heard his voice call out, ringingly, "Good-day, colonel." They saw that between him and Mr. Gleason no sign of recognition pa.s.sed, and they stood in silence watching him until, turning out at the west gate, he struck a lope and disappeared behind the band quarters, out on the open prairie.
When Mr. Gleason touched his cap to the colonel and started to rejoin the ladies, they saw him coming. n.o.body said a word, but the three ladies re-entered the house, Mrs. Truscott last; but it was Mrs.
Stannard who turned back in the hall and shut the door. When Gleason reached the front gate he concluded not to enter, but went on down the row.
CHAPTER X.
A JUNE SUNDAY.
It is a cloudless Sunday morning, the longest Sunday in that month of longest days, warm, balmy, rose-bearing June. Only a few hours" high is the blazing G.o.d of day, but his beams beat fiercely down on a landscape wellnigh as arid as the Arizona our troopers knew so well. Not a breath of air is stirring. Down in the shallow valley to the right, where the cottonwoods are blistering beside the sandy stream-bed, a faint column of smoke rises straight as the stem of a pine-tree until it melts into indistinguishable air. The sandy waste goes twisting and turning in its fringe of timber southeastward along a broad depression in the face of the land, until twenty odd miles away it seems brought up standing by a barrier of rugged hills that dip into the bare surface at the south, and go rising and falling, rolling and tumbling, higher and raggeder, to the north. All the intervening stretches are bare, tawny, sun-scorched, except those fringing cottonwoods. All those tumbling heights are dark and frowning through their beards of gloomy larch and pine. Black they stand against the eastern sky, from the jagged summits at the south to where the northernmost peak,--the Inyan Kara,--the Heengha-Kaaga of the Sioux, stands sentinel over the sisterhood slumbering at her feet. These are the Black Hills of Dakota, as we see them from the breaks of the Mini Pusa, a long day"s march to the west. Here to our right, southeastward, rolls the powdery flood of the South Cheyenne, when earlier in the season the melting snows go trickling down the hill-sides. But to-day only in dry and waving ripples of sand can we trace its course. If you would see the water, dig beneath the surface.
Here behind us rolls another sandy stream, dry as its Dakota name implies,--Mini Pusa: Dry Water,--and to our right and rear is their sandy confluence. Southward, almost to the very horizon, in waves and rolls and ridges, bare of trees, void of color, the earth unfolds before the eye, while, as though to relieve the strain of gazing over the expanse so illimitable in its monotony, a blue line of cliffs and crags stretches across the sky line for many degrees. Beyond that, out of sight to the southeast, lies the sheltered, fertile valley of the upper White Earth River; and there are the legal homes of thousands of the "nation"s wards," the bands of the Dakotas--Ogallalla and Brule, led by Red Cloud and Spotted Tail. There, too, are clothed and fed and cared for a thousand odd Cheyennes. Just over that ridge at its western end, where it seems to blend into the general surface of upland prairie, a faint blue peak leaps up into the heated air,--"Old Rawhide,"--the landmark of the region. Farther off, southwestward, still another peak rises blue and pale against the burning distance. "Tis far across the Platte, a good hundred miles away. Plainsmen to this day call it Larmie in that iconoclastic slaughter of every poetic t.i.tle that is their proud characteristic. All over our grand continent it is the same. The names, musical, sonorous, or descriptive, handed down as the heritage of the French missionaries, the Spanish explorers, or the aboriginal owners, are all giving way to that democratic intolerance of foreign t.i.tle which is the birthright of the free-born American. What name more grandly descriptive could discoverer have given to the rounded, gloomy crest in the southern sierras, bald at the crown, fringed with its circling pines,--what better name than Monte San Mateo--Saint Matthew,--he of the shaven poll?
Over a century the t.i.tle held. Adaptive Indian, Catholic Mexican, acceptive dragoon, one and all respected and believed in it. But then came the miner and the cowboy, and with them the new vocabulary. Monte San Mateo slinks in unmerited shame to hide its heralded deformity as Baldhead b.u.t.te. What devilish inspiration impelled the Forty-Niners to d.a.m.n Monte San Pablo to go down to eternity as Bill Williams" Mountain?
Who but an iconoclast would rend the sensitive ear with such barbarities as the _Loss Angglees_ of to-day for the deep-vowelled Los Angeles of the last century? Who but a Yankee would swap the murky "Purgatoire" for Picketwire, and make Zumbro River of the Riviere des...o...b..es of brave old Pere Marquette? And so, too, it goes through all the broad Northwest.
Indian names, beautiful in themselves even though at times untranslatable, are tossed contemptuously aside to be replaced by the homeliest of every-day appellations, until the modern geography of Wyoming, Dakota, Montana, and Idaho bristles with innumerable Sage, Boxelder, Horse, and Pine Creeks.