So far as the Eleventh and one or two other regiments were concerned, that summer"s campaign, so fraught with incident and tribulation, was now at an end. It would take weeks and months of care to restore their horses to serviceable condition. Others were ordered up to replace the worn-out command, and while an indomitable general pushed fresh columns into the field to track the savages to their winter lairs, the ragged troopers--for all the world like so many beggars a horseback, so many mounted scarecrows--were ordered in to the big garrisons near the supply depots to refit, recuperate, and restore to discipline. Some, officers and men both, had been sent ahead, too weak or ill to remain in the field, and among these, consigned to the tender care of the post surgeon of Fort Cameron, was Lieutenant Davies, over whose condition the doctors shook their heads. Brain fever was the malady, but his system was so reduced by starvation and exposure that even a moderate fever would have been most serious. Not until he had been gone nearly a month did the regiment follow, and then, scattered in detachments to various posts, became busily occupied in the work of rehabilitation. Cameron was a big new frontier fort with few accommodations, over-crowded, too; yet, being the nearest to the field of action, thither had Captain Wilbur Cranston gone just as soon as he was convalescent and able to move. Thither with him went his devoted wife and her devoted cousin and companion, Miss Loomis, for whose reception the subalterns of the infantry guard promptly gave up their frame quarters and moved into tents, and Cranston was there on light duty in charge of the big corral of remount horses when Davies was bundled in and established under Cranston"s roof. There, carefully treated by Dr. Glover and regularly visited, often tenderly nursed, by Mrs. Cranston and her friend, the naturally strong const.i.tution of the young officer triumphed and he began slowly to mend. Meantime, as is or was the way, it fell to the lot of the gentle and sympathetic army wives or maidens at the post to keep the distant mother informed of her boy"s slow progress toward recovery, and presently to answer the importunate letters of another. Mrs. Cranston, a shrewd observer, could not fail to note that as soon as her patient was allowed to read at all it was his mother"s letters, not the great packet in Miss Quimby"s unformed hand, that he eagerly opened. Then when at last he did begin these latter the steady progress of his convalescence was impaired. He became again feverish, restless, and depressed. Too ill and weak as yet to write for himself, he read with grateful eyes his mother"s allusions to the kind and sympathetic missives sent her by Mrs.
Cranston, and occasionally, as happened, by Miss Loomis. Gladly, too, did he avail himself of their services in reply. But when it became necessary presently to answer those of his _fiancee_, there might have been embarra.s.sment but for Mrs. Cranston"s tact. She had begun to feel a strong interest in and respect for her patient. So, too, had her husband, who came daily to sit by his bedside, but who avoided, as much as possible, all reference to the closing days of the campaign.
As yet the young officer had not been told of McGrath"s disappearance, and had not been encouraged to tell of his own experience. Indeed, there was very little he could tell, but his story was frankly imparted to his friend and comrade, Captain Cranston. Much seemed to be a total blank.
He spoke with a shudder of his last look at poor Mullen and Phillips, and at the pale, drawn faces of Captain Devers and the troop,--of another backward glance from near the top of the ridge, then of their losing sight of Devers and his men, and pushing on to the deeper gloom of the east valley. It was then too dark to see, and for half an hour he and McGrath, weary and heart-sick, had scouted northeastward in search of his party. They had seen some flashes as they began the descent and rode in their direction, believing them to be signals, but soon all was darkness, all silence, but for the sigh of the night wind. Conscious of growing faintness, he suggested firing a shot or two as signals, and McGrath obeyed. Then off to the southeast, far from the point where they had seen the first flashes, the shots were answered and distant yells were heard. McGrath considered this ominous, and asked him to wait in a little ravine while he reconnoitred. In ten minutes two or three shots rang out in the direction taken by the sergeant, and presently back he came fast as a staggering horse could bear him, crying, "Indians!
Indians everywhere!" It was all up with Davies"s party, and their only hope was to hasten back to find the command; but the Indians came in chase, and though they plied spur, their poor horses seemed too weak for speed. How far they got he never knew, but remembered a sudden plunge, his horse"s going down, rolling all over him, and nothing more.
"When you parted from Devers," asked Cranston one day, "how far was he from the top of the ridge?--how far to the west?"
And Davies answered, "At least two and a half or three miles."
Over this did Cranston ponder long. It ill accorded with what they wrote him from the front as Devers"s story.
"You write to Mr. Davies"s mother, Agatha," Mrs. Cranston had said. "I haven"t time for both, but I"ll take care of Miss Quimby." Just what might be the tone and tenor of that young lady"s letters to her prostrate lover Mrs. Cranston could not positively say, as no one saw them but himself, but she was ready to hazard a something more than mere conjecture when Miss Quimby took to writing to her as well. As was her wont when moved, Mrs. Margaret unbosomed herself to her lord. "I"ve no patience with the girl," she said. "She"ll worry him to death. If she writes such silly, romantic trash to me, what mustn"t she be saying to him? What on earth can he ever have seen in her?"
Now, that"s just one thing no woman can find out,--what a man can see to admire in one in whom she sees nothing. It didn"t help matters that Cranston, in his conservative, whimsical way, should counsel silence and patience. What woman can be silent under strong provocation? What woman can patiently abide the personal application of a general rule?
"I don"t suppose there ever was a match yet of which some woman didn"t say she couldn"t see what he saw," said Cranston, deprecatingly; and then, with one of his whimsical grins, began to add, "Let"s see, wasn"t it Kitty Benton who said, when she heard of our engagement, that she----" But he got no further in face of his wife"s impetuous outbreak:
"That"s simply hateful in you, Wilbur, and you know it as well as I do.
She knew me only slightly, for we were not in the same set at school at all----"
"Well,--still, didn"t she know you rather better than you do Miss Quimby, whom you never saw at all?"
"I don"t care. I know what she"s like," answered Mrs. Meg, with flushing cheeks. And that was really before poor Almira"s first letter came, and if Mrs. Cranston thought she was right before, she knew it when she read now.
The closing paragraph of a long, almost incoherent missive must suffice.
Even Cranston"s lips twitched under the heavy thatch of his moustache as he listened. Even we, who like Mrs. Cranston, must admit it wasn"t quite kind in her, no matter how natural, to read it afterward to Agatha Loomis, who, although declining to read, did not quite decline to hear at least a line or two.
"If you knew how I suffered--what tortures of anxiety, what nights of sleeplessness and woe, tossing on fevered pillow, tortured with visions of my beloved n.o.bly fallen on the field of battle and pining for the touch of this hand--you would indeed pity me; but my father is inflexible. He refuses his daughter the poor boon of flying to the stricken lover"s side,--her husband that is to be. In vain have I pointed out that I ask no sweeter bliss than to share my Percy"s lot, for weal or woe, to live in the humblest cot, a tent, a hovel even, with only a crust,--it meets only his scornful refusal. When my arms are eagerly outstretched to enfold my soldier hero, I have to be content with nursing day and night his afflicted mother, whom for his sake I love as I would my own, had she not been taken from me years ago when I was but an unsophisticated child. When I think of you privileged to sit by his delirious bedside, cooling his fevered brow, I envy you as I never thought to envy any woman on earth since, long years ago, my Percy blessed me with his love; and now if after all he should be taken, or if some proud lady should win him from his simple little village maid, there would be no refuge for me but the grave."
"Now," said Mrs. Cranston, "something besides the bedside is delirious in that case. No wonder the poor fellow is picking up so slowly."
"Well, wait a little," responded her conservative lord and master.
"Seems to me a man ought to rejoice in knowing that the arms of lovely woman are outstretched in eagerness to enfold him. Now, if I were he----"
"Yes, if you were he I"ve no doubt you"d be off to Urbana by first train; but this young man has some sense in his head" (here Cranston began to finger his own skull tentatively), "and in losing his freedom hasn"t entirely parted with his wits."
"Was that--my predicament?" asked Cranston, looking plaintively up.
"Well, at least I have to do your thinking for you, and what you have to do is help him here. Have you had any talk with him about--about what Captain Truman and Mr. Gray wrote?"
"Certainly not, Meg," answered Cranston, becoming grave at once, "and I do not mean to until he is well enough to hear it."
"Well, the more I know of him the more I know it"s utterly untrue.
Hasn"t anything been heard yet of Sergeant McGrath?"
"Not a word. Even friendly Indians say they haven"t an idea what could have become of him." And Cranston"s face was both anxious and troubled.
The matter was indeed one to give him deep concern. The ma.s.sacre of the little detachment from Warren"s battalion late in September--all of them members of Devers"s troop--had brought down sharp and deserved criticism, and there was every prospect that the matter would be officially investigated just as soon as the department commander could turn his attention from the rounding up of the hostile band still at large. Meantime, between Warren and his senior troop commander, Captain Devers, strained relations existed,--the former holding to the theory that the responsibility for the disaster lay with Devers and no one else, the latter volubly, plausibly, incessantly protesting against the imputation as utterly unjust, indeed, as utterly outrageous, and moving heaven and earth to unload the entire blame on the shoulders of the absent and defenceless.
Now, as a rule this is an easy matter, almost as easy in the army as out of it, and had his accuser been any other captain in the entire field column, poor Davies might indeed have been prejudged; but with Devers it was different. His idiosyncrasies were notorious. His whole mental and moral fabric was one of antagonism to his fellows in general and his seniors in particular. It was said, and generally said, of him that the mere fact that everybody liked or respected a man was enough to set Devers dead against him. The fact that Mr. Davies had thrown up his graduating leave and sought instant service in the field as a result of the tragedies of the early days of the campaign had won him instantly the interest and good will of officers and men throughout the entire command. He started well, so to speak, and his quiet, reticent, observant, but un.o.btrusive ways favorably impressed his regimental comrades and led to many a commendatory remark from veteran officers.
But there was universal comment, half humorous, half commiserating, upon his a.s.signment to Devers"s troop, and Devers knew it. He treated the young man with cool civility at first, but became speedily captious and irritating, rebuking him openly in the presence and hearing of other officers and of enlisted men for matters for which he was not justly blamable. Old Winthrop spoke to Devers about it one day, and spoke seriously. "You"ll disgust that young gentleman with the service if you"re not careful, Devers," said he, "and be the means of depriving us of a good officer."
"That"s just where I"m compelled to differ with you, colonel," was the response, and it was this propensity for differing that had led to his sobriquet. "I"ve had constant and daily opportunity of observing him, and he"s mistaken his vocation. That young man should be a missionary or a Sunday-school superintendent. He"s too pious for Indian fighting, which is the only thing expected of us."
But for weeks after there was no Indian fighting. What had become of the swarms of red warriors that had swooped upon the front, flank, and rear earlier in the campaign no one could say. Their trails led all over the northwest, and the pursuing column pushed on night and day in dust and sun-glare, in mud and rain, in pelting hail-storm and darkness, and never once until late in the autumn could they again come within striking distance. By that time the jaunty riders of the early spring-tide were worn to skeletons; the mettlesome horses--those that were left--barely able to stagger through weakness, exhaustion, and starvation. Then like prairie wolves the warriors closed once more about the jaded flanks, waiting, watching every chance of picking off the stragglers. Just one day did Differs"s troop get under fire,--a long way from under, said satirical subalterns of a command that sustained some losses,--but so scientifically did the captain handle his men that not a trooper or horse was scratched. Mr. Davies on this occasion commanded a platoon, dismounted on the skirmish line. It was his first affair, and he kept his appropriate thirty paces in rear of his dispersed men to watch and direct their fire, expecting that the enemy would charge or attack or do something, he didn"t know just what. He simply behaved as he had been taught at skirmish drill at the Point,--was ready to do his full duty, but having no experience in Indian battle, thought it his business to wait orders, which was precisely what Differs had told him to do, until attacked. All the same, when others twitted Devers on the fact that his troop "didn"t seem to get in," that officer did not hesitate to respond that they"d have to settle that with their admiration, Mr. Davies, who was commanding the fighting line, but probably wasn"t done saying his prayers. There was a lively, rattling skirmish next morning between the rear-guard and the Indians, and at one time things looked as though the thinned battalion of their comrades of the --th might be cut off, and some of Devers"s regiment thought the rearmost troops ought to be deployed in support of the fellows who were fighting off the warriors, who came charging after them over wave after wave of prairie. But Devers couldn"t see it in that light. He was bringing up the rear of his own regiment. Indeed, not until the fatal day of their _debouchement_ from the Bad Lands and sighting the broad valley of the Ska had Devers"s men felt the sting of Indian lead, and then he was not with them.
And now while the worn and ragged commands lay basking day after day in the warm October sunshine at Camp Recovery, and men for the time had nothing to do but eat and sleep and discuss the events of the late campaign, the Eleventh was in turmoil over the tragedy of Antelope Springs.
When Davies was finally found that morning by Warren"s scouts, he was lying in a depression of the prairie at least a mile to the west of the point where that long--that fatally long--curtaining ridge sank into the general level of the valley, and therefore full four and a half or five miles away from the point where his little detachment had died fighting, and very nearly two miles south, or west of south, of the point where he and McGrath had last been seen by their comrades,--just at dusk,--just at what looked to be the comb or crest of the ridge from the point where Devers had halted his troop and made the dramatic display of his dead.
But what looked to be the crest from the west was in point of fact not the crest at all. Invisible to the halted command, there lay still farther over to the eastward, where the spur seemed to broaden considerably, a wave that overtopped the westward edge by a dozen feet or more. Supposing from Devers"s account that the trail of his command could be found distinctly marked along the westward slope and close under the crest, Warren was searching there with his scouts when attracted by the signals two miles to the south announcing probably important discoveries. He had found some Indian pony tracks, also those of one shod horse, but dropped everything else to go at once in answer to the signals. Then they had borne the unconscious officer southeastward toward the clump of trees at the Springs, placed him in the ambulance, and then came a courier from the general himself directing Major Warren to report to him in person at Birchwood, thirty miles away, and the major went, the ambulance following. And so, to his unspeakable relief, Captain Devers was left once more the senior officer on the ground to continue the search for McGrath, and in the conduct of this he took excellent care that only himself and one or two of his chosen should search any portion of the prairie that might involve running over the trail west of the ravine which he had made the previous day. The scouts and searching parties were kept in the valley and in the timber along the river, not on the back track. _That_ search Devers conducted in person, and made a rough topographical sketch of the neighborhood as it appeared in his eyes and as he wished it to appear in those of others. Just before dusk, sounding the rally far up the spur, he rode to the point where his two hunters had met their fate, and there a.s.sembled his men, gathering some fifty troopers, and thence led them in column of twos southward close under the spur and well to the east of the ravine which on the previous day had partially caused his wide departure from the line of direction indicated to him by the major.
It was therefore very late, and his men were very tired,--much too tired to sit up and talk,--when they got to camp.
Pursuing its homeward march, the main column under the general commanding had gone on through the wild hill country, and not until nearly a month had elapsed was the scene of the tragedy revisited. The officer who went thither with an escort, and Captain Devers and Corporal Finucane and Troopers Boyd and Howard, had had pointed out to him the scene of the ma.s.sacre itself, then, far up the spur, the spot where Mullen and Phillips were shot, and from thence the trail of Davies"s little squad as it marched away on its fatal errand toward the Springs, and the trails of the various parties. Off to the southwest went Truman in chase of the murderers,--off after Truman went Calvert and the invalid corps,--off straight to the south--to the river--along the westward side of the ridge, far to the east of the ravine and close under the crest, went another; that, he was a.s.sured, was the trail made by Captain Devers. Many of these trails, said the officer"s report, were now dim and nearly effaced, "but there can be no mistaking that of Captain Devers along the spur,--it is quite sharp and clear. It isn"t more than five hundred yards from the point where Mr. Davies and Sergeant McGrath had disappeared over the ridge to the nearest point on the trail, where--while Captain Devers couldn"t be sure--his troopers are positive Mr. Davies had left to return to his men, and where they are also positive the captain had again enjoined upon him the necessity of vigilance, and reminded him that as it was growing dark he could no longer see, and must therefore depend upon his lieutenant to keep him informed of what was going on over on that side, as under his new orders he, Captain Devers, must now go on and bury his dead. Mr. Davies and his sergeant must have seen the attack just as soon as they got back across the ridge, but what they did and why they had not instantly warned their captain remains a mystery. At all events it would seem that Captain Devers," so concluded the report, "had conscientiously carried out his instructions, though he might perhaps, if unburdened with his dead, have kept higher up towards the crest, and should perhaps have detached a couple of flankers to keep communication, and so relied less on Lieutenant Davies, who was at least inexperienced in frontier warfare."
The officer could not understand how it was that in broad daylight Major Warren when searching had failed to see Devers"s trail. It certainly was there. And so the old, old story was told again. The absent it was who had to take care of himself, and Devers was inferentially "whitewashed"
and Davies held to explain, when convalescent, and McGrath to substantiate his statement if McGrath ever again turned up on earth.
Otherwise there could be no substantiation until the judgment day. Now, McGrath, lost in the thick of an Indian fight, was as apt to be found alive, or found at all, as a pin in a mill-pond. Davies, broken by the campaign and sore smitten with brain fever, had but one chance in a hundred of recovery. All things considered, therefore, it may be conceded that Captain Devers was a very gifted man.
But Devers wasn"t the first man, or the last, to count on another fellow"s death or disappearance to cloak his own crime. It gave him a queer turn to hear that Cranston and his wife and niece had undertaken the building up of the absent patient. He hated Cranston,--his junior as an officer, but infinitely his superior as a soldier. He feared him when word came out to the homeward marching command that Cranston said Davies was on the mend and would soon be on the war-path. But he drew another long breath of relief when there reached them the news that General Sheridan himself had telegraphed directing Davies to hasten home, that his mother was dying. When next that young officer appeared upon the scene and reported for duty, it was in midwinter at Fort Scott, a big, brilliant, sunshiny post, the head-quarters of an infantry regiment, the station of a cavalry battalion, whose major, Warren, had gone on long leave abroad, whose senior captain, Devers, was its commander _pro tempore_, whose other captains, Cranston, Truman, and Hay, were present for duty; so were most of their subalterns, so were most of the infantry officers, so were the wives and families of nine-tenths of the array, for it was a much-married garrison, and there was not a little talk and speculation when it was announced that Lieutenant Davies would come accompanied by his bride.
CHAPTER XI.
"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 ent.i.tled 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 a.s.sembly-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 a.s.sembly-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 f.a.n.n.y 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 t.i.tter 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 d.a.m.n 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 cla.s.smates 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 employes. 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.