The Lost Wagon Part 34

"Worn out."

"Follow us. We'll take it slow."

Joe followed the troopers up the trail, and the lights of Laramie shone through the storm. Guarded by armed soldiers, the gate was open and Joe drove through into the stockade. The sergeant with the lantern came beside the wagon again.

"Can we get quarters?" Joe asked. "We have a sick youngster with us."

"Want to go to the hospital?"

"No!" Emma said.

One of the soldiers rode ahead, and Joe swung his tired team to follow the sergeant. Lamp light brightened windows, and Joe halted the mules.

The sergeant dismounted.

"Here you are. Bring the youngster in."

Joe helped Emma from the wagon and into an officer's quarters, where the soldier who had ridden ahead had lighted an already-laid fire. There were cots and blankets, and Emma unwrapped the shawl that enfolded her sick baby. She looked around her at the kind anxious face of the soldier standing ready to help, at the good, stout walls of the room they were in, at the warm fire where all the children would soon be gathered, and at Joe, hovering over her now, wanting so much to protect her, to protect them all. A smile of hope lighted her face.

"She'll be all right now, Joe. She needed the fire and a real rest.

She'll have it, now."

"Do you want the doctor?" the sergeant asked.

Emma said cheerfully, "We really don't need him right now. Would he come later if she should take a turn for the worse?"

"Certainly."

Barbara entered with Carlyle, and the sergeant swung to come face to face with her. For a moment, but only for a moment, he lost his brisk military bearing while a delighted grin flickered across his lips. Emma watched, and now that she was no longer under tension she could afford to be mischievous.

"Sergeant--?"

"Dugan, ma'am."

"Thank you, Sergeant Dugan. We're the Tower family and this is our daughter, Barbara."

"You sure are welcome, miss!" Sergeant Dugan breathed.

Joe brought the rest of his sleepy, fretful family in, and left Emma and Barbara to put them to bed while he went outside with Sergeant Dugan.

The soldier examined the mules with the practiced eye of a man who knew animals.

"They certainly are done," he agreed. "We'd better take them to the stables where they can have hay and grain. The cow can go in the corral."

Thankfully, Joe permitted the soldiers to take care of the mules and the cow.

The Towers had come through the first portion of their journey. That much was over now, and his family was safe and out of the storm. He wanted to be with them, to watch them bask in the warmth of the fire, to share with them the well-being of this wonderful, though temporary, shelter.

CHAPTER TEN

Snedeker's

The tower family, Joe thought with a smile, had never been as well off as it was right now. Baby Emma had come through her illness, and was thriving. They hadn't been a.s.signed an orderly, but most of the time among the soldiers who were off duty, they had from four to fifteen.

Joe's smile widened and his eyes sparkled. Some of the officers and noncoms had their wives with them and some of the enlisted men had squaws to whom, Joe presumed, they were married.

But Laramie was an isolated fort. Most of the soldiers were young, out for a taste of adventure, and they found little enough. Even patrols into Indian country became monotonous after one made a sufficient number of them, and winter duty at the fort was routine.

Bringing Barbara among so many lonely youngsters who hadn't expected to see a girl until emigrant trains started coming through in the spring created a situation which had all the explosive potentialities of a match held too near an open powder keg and was, at the same time, amusing.

Wood was the fuel used at Laramie, but Joe hadn't had to cut or carry any. The wood box was always filled, and at least five times a day some youngster who had elected to wear his country's uniform dropped in to see if the Towers didn't need any more. The water pails invariably brimmed over, and they were always full because the men of Laramie had decided that nothing but the freshest water was good enough. When Barbara went to the sutler's store, she was always attended by an escort large enough to form a good-sized patrol and she could not carry even the smallest parcel back. Every evening, until Emma shooed them out, their quarters overflowed with soldiers eager to do anything at all as long as they could be near Barbara.

Joe did not worry about her; any soldier who offered an insolent remark, or even an insolent look, to Barbara, would have been overwhelmed by a sufficient number of her protectors. But, aside from the fact that Joe wanted to winter at Snedeker's and not at Laramie, the affair had its more serious aspects. Only last night Privates Haggerty and Jankoski, vying for the honor of walking closest to Barbara when she went to the store, had left each other with blackened eyes and bleeding noses and they'd promptly been clapped into the guardhouse for their pains.

Probably there would be other fights; Joe understood that Private Brown did not gaze with a kindly eye on Corporal Lester. Lester had filled the water pails just as Brown was on his way to do it.

Joe chuckled out loud. Sitting across the breakfast table from him, Emma raised an inquiring eye.

"I was thinking of those two crazy kids, Haggerty and Jankoski, and the fight they had over Bobby last night," he explained.

"Sh-h." Emma nodded toward the bedroom in which Barbara still slept.

"She'll hear you."

Joe lowered his voice. "I didn't mean to talk so loud. It looks to me, if we don't get Bobby out of here, as though the Army will be at war with itself."

"Yes, dear," Emma smiled abstractedly and Joe saw that her mind was elsewhere. He leaned back in his chair, looking idly at his empty plate.

Then he rose to get his coat.

"Are you going out?" Emma asked.

"Yes. I'm getting the wagon back into shape."

Emma asked casually, "Joe, do you know anything about this young man, Hugo Gearey?"

Joe shrugged. "I've seen him around."

"But you don't know where he came from?"

He was a little surprised. "Why should I?"

"Can you find out?"

"Now look, I can't just walk up to Gearey and ask him where he comes from and what he did there."

"You might," she pointed out, "ask Sergeant Dugan or Sergeant Dunbar."

He looked closely at her. "Why do you want to know about Gearey, Emma?"

She avoided his eyes. "Just a woman's curiosity. Will you find out?"