A Soldier's Trial Part 4

"Why, that's the queer part of it," was the answer. "He says he found the back door open, knocked twice and n.o.body answered, so he walked in the kitchen, laid the bundle on the table and came out and shut the door after him."

Mrs. Ray thought a moment. "I gave Sarah permission to be out, and Minnie was up here helping us. That may have accounted for his knock being unanswered. You went down before I did, 'Cilla," she continued, turning to her niece, who was busy at the desk. "Was Sarah back then? I thought I heard you speak to someone."

"To two of the Bible cla.s.s," said 'Cilla. "They came to say we couldn't have the use of that little room back of the chapel. I don't understand it at all. We offered to clean it out and store the boxes in the cellar, but----" And 'Cilla shrugged her shoulders. She had begun to believe that the chaplain was jealous of her influence over certain intractables in the garrison, and was aiming to thwart her. This view Mrs. Ray could not share. She presently put down her pen and pa.s.sed out into the dining-room.

"It's a dark little hole at best, Pris," said Sandy, "and I offered you a good bright room at the Exchange--the very one your paragon used for about the same purpose when he was stationed here." Sandy _would_ tilt at his cousin's fad at times, and this was a time, for Sandy had been crotchety for a week.

"My paragon, as you call him--my ideal of the soldier as we saw him after Porto Rico," answered 'Cilla, with dignity and precision, "held his cla.s.ses there when the rest of the building was not what it is to-day--a rumshop."

"Not a drop of rum to be had on the premises now, Pris--though there might have been then."

"I don't believe it! _My_ general was an ascetic. No one ever heard of his using liquor--and wine is only liquor in another form."

"Come to the library and I'll show you what your General Ascetic wrote of himself after he was so horribly shot in the Sioux campaign. He said he owed his recovery to a winter in California and drinking plenty of good red wine that made blood."

But Priscilla knew that Sandy "had the papers to prove it," and preferred not to see them, lest her ideals come tumbling. "That might have been necessary and by physician's prescription," said she. "What I condemn is its usage when there is no excuse. I should feel that I was enticing my cla.s.s into temptation if I led them daily to the Canteen, and most of them feel as I do about it. Blenke, for instance--though you don't believe in him, Sandy--when I told him of your offer, he said he would rather not set foot under that roof."

"When was that?" asked Sandy curiously, seeing a chance for a palpable hit. "He was sent to Leavenworth with the guard of those deserters Wednesday morning, and I didn't have it to offer to you until Tuesday afternoon."

"He came that evening to say he was ordered away with the guard detail.

Two of my men have gone. You can see for yourself, Sandy, that for any important duty the total abstainer is chosen."

But Mr. Ray did not answer. He was thinking intently. "Was Blenke one of the two you--spoke of, 'Cilla?" he presently asked.

"No. He came by himself just after they'd gone. He took his leave a very few minutes later. We heard you coming down."

"And where did you receive your visitors, Pris?"

"I spoke with them at the rear door--what other place was there? since you dislike my having soldiers come to the house. Why, Sandy Ray! what are you thinking of? You don't mean----"

"Hus.h.!.+" said Sandy. There were footsteps at the front and laughing voices, and a bang at the gongbell. Minnie, the housemaid, fluttered through the hallway. "Are the ladies at home?" "Mrs. Stone and Mrs.

Dwight!" stage-whispered Priscilla, but in an instant Sandy Ray had found his feet and followed his mother, who was interviewing cook at the kitchen door. "Mrs. Stone and Mrs. Dwight," he echoed, waited until Mrs.

Ray had gone to greet the callers, then bolted through the sacred precincts of Sarah's own domain and into the afternoon suns.h.i.+ne beyond.

There Minnie presently fetched her young master his broad-brimmed campaign hat, wondering why he should look so pale. Making wide detour, Sandy found himself presently within hail of the club. It was but an hour before sunset. The cavalry people were just coming back from stables to supper. There were not five officers on the broad veranda, but among them stood a man in civilian dress, whose back had a strangely familiar look and whose voice, when he whirled about and shouted greeting, sent a thrill of astonishment not unmixed with wrath, nerve racking, through the young soldier's slender frame.

"Hullo, Sandy! Got over being grumpy yet? Come up and see a fellow."

What brought Stanley Foster, of all men, here to Minneconjou now?

CHAPTER VII

THE WOLF IN THE SHEEPFOLD

A week rolled on and matters at Minneconjou had become electric. The weather was superb. The sun rose in a cloudless sky long hours before society, as represented at our frontier city and station, followed suit, shook off the fetters of sleep and began bestirring itself for the day.

And days were long in that northern lat.i.tude, long enough for even the most ambitious and enthusiastic of commanding officers intent on the instruction and development of the force intrusted to his care. Yet the days seemed hardly long enough for Oswald Dwight, whose first difference with the post commander was on the subject of morning gunfire and the reveille. To the scandal of the cavalry service, let it be recorded that in the point at issue, without exception the members of Minneconjou's mounted service sided with the easy-going infantryman at the head of affairs, and against their own immediate leader--the over-energetic, the nervously pus.h.i.+ng, prodding, spurring, stirring squadron commander.

During the sweet summer months, all along the broad lands of the Dakotas, the morning gun thundered its salutation to the newborn day as the hands of the clock so nearly lapped at half-past five. What Dwight demanded of Colonel Stone was permission to rout out the cavalry at half-past four. It was broad daylight, said he. It was the cool and beautiful time of the day. The men could have their coffee at once, then march to stables, lead to water,--the steeds having been already fed by the stable guard,--groom for twenty minutes, march back to barracks, get their matutinal scrub, a hearty breakfast and be out to squadron drill when all was still fresh, sparkling and exhilarating before the mountain breeze, the lowland dust, or indeed before garrison society, was astir; then they could all be back in time for guard-mounting and the multifarious drills and duties of the morning. Dwight found his people well up in saddle work, as was to be expected of men long led by so genuine a trooper as "Billy" Ray, but they were correspondingly slack in foot and sabre drill, and Dwight in his day had been one of the famous drillmasters of the --th, and seemed beset with desire to keep up the record now. "What would you be doing from nine to noon?" asked Stone, strumming the desk with his finger tips and studying curiously the pale, keen, eager face of the cavalryman.

"Company drill afoot, sabre drill, setting up--almost anything!" was the impatient answer. "These men are soft, sluggish, torpid. Troopers should be all wire and catgut. I want to put those four commands in perfect trim for anything, Colonel, and I can't do it under five hours' drill a day."

But Stone shook his head. There was no occasion he maintained, for robbing them of an hour of their sleep. They had to work harder than his men, anyhow, and, if anything, should be given more sleep, not less.

"Then put them to bed at ten o'clock--or nine, if need be," said Dwight, impatient of demur; but Stone proved obdurate. "I see no reason for so radical a change," said he, to the relief of the juniors, who feared Dwight's vehement onward nature might prevail over the placidity of Stone; and so the new-made major was fain to content himself with sounding mess call right after reveille, then "Boots and Saddles" in place of "Stables," and, by dispensing with morning grooming, getting his troops into line on the flats to the south and starting a humming squadron drill before seven o'clock.

Time had been in the long-ago happy days when it was quite the thing for Mrs. Ray, Mrs. Truscott, Margaret Dwight, and other women of the old regiment to ride, drive, or stroll out to the ground and watch their soldier-husbands through much of the morning's das.h.i.+ng drill. The effect was good in more ways than one. It keyed up the pride of the men and kept down the profanity of their mentors, some of whom, as was a way in the old days of the mounted service, _would_ break out with sudden and startling blasphemy when things went wildly amiss. It is easy on foot to bring instant order out of apparent chaos. The stark command "Halt!"

does the business; but, given tenscore, high-strung, grain-fed, spirited steeds, tearing at their bits and lunging full gallop in mad race for a charge, it often happens that neither voice nor trumpet, nor tugging, straining bridle arm can prevail, and it is then the air rings with expletives. No one ever heard Truscott swear. He was a model of self-control. Dwight, too, had been renowned for the success with which he handled horses and men and maintained his personal serenity. But Marion Ray more times than a few in the earlier days of her married life had cause to blush for Billy, who, the idol of his men and perhaps the most magnetic drillmaster and troop leader in the regiment, so lost himself in the enthusiasm and dash of squadron drill at the trot or gallop, that his Blue Gra.s.s exhortations could be heard over the thunder of a thousand hoofs, to the entire delight of the sorrel troop, the sympathetic joy of their rivals and the speechless dismay of the pious.

"Tut-tut-tut!" was a dear old chaplain wont to say; "is it not strange that so good a man can use such very bad language?" Yet Captain Ray in private life shrank from profanity as he did from punch. On mounted drill it rippled from his lips with unconscious, unpremeditated fluency.

Just as in the old days, therefore, wives, sisters, and sweethearts of the das.h.i.+ng hors.e.m.e.n of Minneconjou were now riding, driving, or strolling out to the edge of the drill ground and enjoying the spirited scene. It gave them an hour of bracing air and sparkling dew and early suns.h.i.+ne and a wonderful appet.i.te for breakfast. Mrs. Ray did not go.

Neither her husband nor her son had now any part in the panorama, and, looking from her window she could see all she cared to see of what might be going on--and more. The sound of Sandy's boot-heels overhead told her that he, too, was up and observant, though Sandy, when Priscilla, as usual precipitate, managed to refer to it at the breakfast table, parried the tongue thrust with a tale about "best light for shaving."

No, there were none of Mrs. Ray's little household who went forth to see the early squadron drill, but there were others--many others--and most observed, if not most observant of these, was the beautiful young wife of the squadron commander and her invariable escort, Dwight's former fellow-campaigner, their fellow-voyager of the _Hohenzollern_, and now their very appreciative guest, Captain Stanley Foster, only just promoted to his troop in the --th Cavalry and waiting orders at Minneconjou.

Mrs. Dwight was not much given to walking. She could dance untiringly for hours, but other pedestrianism wearied her. Mrs. Dwight was as yet even less given to riding. She explained that the major preferred she should wait a while until her horse and English horse equipment came.

Lieutenant Scott, who had met her in Manila, said he had a little tan-colored Whitman that would just suit her, whereat Mrs. Dwight, between paling and coloring, took on something of a tan shade over her dusky beauty and faltered that "the Major preferred the English--to the forked-seat--for a lady." It would seem as though she desired it forgotten that her normal way of riding was astride, whereas more than half her auditors, the officers at least, regarded that as the proper and rational seat for her s.e.x. Mrs. Dwight, caring neither to walk nor to ride, therefore was quite content to appear for two or three successive mornings in a lovely little phaeton with a pony-built team in front, a pygmy "tiger" behind and a presentable swain beside her. The fourth morning brought a rain and no drill, the fifth no rain nor Mrs.

Dwight, nor did she again appear at that early hour despite the fact that the drills daily became more das.h.i.+ng and picturesque. Her interest, she explained, had been rather on her husband's account, but she knew so little about such matters she felt her inferiority to _real_ army ladies who had been born and bred to and understood it, and then after dancing so late she wondered how anybody _could_ be up so early.

The major himself, probably, could not have stood it, but he, not being a dancing man, had taken to skipping away to bed at or before eleven on such nights as Minneconjou tripped the light fantastic toe, but "Inez so loved to dance" he considerately left her to finish it, with Foster to fetch her home; which Foster did.

But, of the few elders at Minneconjou who had personal knowledge of Dwight's prowess as a cavalry drillmaster in by-gone days, and of the many who, being told thereof, had gone forth to see and to enjoy, there lived now not one who had not suffered disappointment. So far from being the calm, masterful, yet spirited teacher and leader, clear and explicit in his instructions and serene and self-controlled where men and horses became nervous and fidgety, Dwight proved strangely petulant and querulous. His tone and manner were complaining, nagging, even snarling.

Nothing seemed to please him. Troop leaders, subalterns and sergeants were forever coming in for a rasping, and each successive day the command paced slowly, sedately homeward, cooling off after a hot drill, looking more and more sullen and disgusted. Officers dismounted at the Club, quaffed "shandygaff" and sometimes even "Scotch and soda" in silent sense of exasperation. The men rode away to stables, rubbed down and, as they plied the wisps, said opprobrious things between their set teeth. As for the horses, they took counsel together when turned out to herd and settled it to their satisfaction that something was sorely amiss with the major--who had at last begun to swear.

And something was sorely amiss with Dwight, as anyone who noted his brilliant, restless eyes, his haggard face and fitful manner could not fail to see. It was at this stage of the proceedings, as Stone squarely owned up later, that he as post commander should have taken Dwight to task, even to the extent of administering correction. But the strongest soldier is sometimes disarmed at sight of a fellow's suffering, and, for fear of adding one pang, will suppress a needed word. Thus it happens that occasionally a commander pa.s.ses unrebuked a soldier's fault. Thus it happens time and again that men, stern and unflinching in dealing with their fellows, submit in silence to years of a woman's abuse, because "she's such a sufferer."

But here was something Stone might, and possibly should, have done and thereby measurably cleared the social sky and surely earned Dwight's silent grat.i.tude, and this Stone did not do, even though spurred thereto by a clear-visioned wife, and that was--say a word of admonition to Captain Foster.

He deserved it. All Minneconjou was a unit on that head. He was as utterly out of place there as a cat in a creamery. They who had heard the story of his attentions to Mrs. Dwight during the _Hohenzollern's_ run from Gibraltar to Governor's Island were disturbed by his sudden and unheralded appearance at the post, and distressed that Dwight should be among the first to welcome him, and the one, and at first the only one, to invite him to a room under his roof. Men looked every which way but at each other and held their tongues when it was announced that Foster was the guest of the Dwights. Women looked into each other's eyes and gasped and said all manner of things as the news went round. Yet what, at first at least, was there to block the plan? The infantry officers felt that _they_ must not take the initiative; it was purely a cavalry affair. Dwight and Foster had served together several years. Dwight possibly did feel, as he too often took occasion to say, more than grateful to Foster for "his courtesy to Mrs. Dwight while I was cooped up in my stateroom." Two or three cavalry chums, taking secret counsel together, hit upon a blundering, clumsy, best-intentioned scheme, and Washburn, who couldn't bear Foster and had never foregathered with him, was deputed, as the only captain with spare rooms and no family, to take the bull by the horns and the unwanted visitor to his ingle nook, which Washburn did with simulated joviality and about as follows:

"Say, old man, _you_ don't want to be roosting in a dove-cote while the birds are billing and cooing. You can't have any fun at Dwight's. You'll get nothing but Apollinaris between meals. Come to my shack, where there's a room--and a demijohn--all ready for you," which bid proved, unhappily, none too alluring. Foster thanked him with a glint in his eye. "Dwight asked me long ago," said he, which was the petrified truth, though Dwight's words were perfunctory, and the invitation one of those things so often said to a man when the sayer hopes to Heaven he's seeing the last of him.

But now that Foster _was_ here, his guest, nothing could exceed the glow of Dwight's hospitality. It was painful to note the eagerness with which he sought to a.s.sure all Minneconjou of his long-standing friends.h.i.+p for Foster in face of the fact that some of the squadron well knew they had never met in Margaret's day, and were never really comrades thereafter.

Moreover, they were men of utterly divergent mold and temperament.

Dwight had been reared in the shadow of the flag, a soldier by birth, lineage and education. Foster had come in from civil life, after a not too creditable career at college. He had come, moreover, with the repute of being a Squire of Dames in "swagger" Eastern society. He danced well, dressed well, and talked well--when he felt like it. He "knew a lot,"

said men who knew little outside of the army.

He knew enough, at all events, to realize that army society would be far less tolerant of a "squire" of his kind than had been that of Gotham, and during his decade of service that, at least, had not been held as his princ.i.p.al fault. A semi-cynical manner, a propensity for stirring fellows on their sore points, a p.r.o.nounced selfishness and an a.s.sumed intimacy with men who disliked him were the things that most conspired to make him unpopular. He had ability; he could be agreeable, but indolence and indifference dwarfed his powers. It was not until he came under the spell of this dark girl's grace and beauty that Stanley Foster had succeeded in doing anything worthy of mention. Now he was being mentioned far more than he wished, and, though he heard it not, he knew.

But they went to a dance the night of the day he came, and Dwight gave a dinner the next night, and another the next. Then there had to be others given in return, and morn, noon, afternoon and evening, Foster found himself at the side of Mrs. Dwight. What could she do? He came to stay only three days, but the week went by, and so, possibly, did his orders.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday they were out at morning drill. Then the pretty phaeton and its lovely occupant and her vigilant convoy came no more. Inez said she "looked like a fright at that hour of the morning, anyway," in which statement most women agreed. Possibly it was that that stayed her.

However, a second Sunday had come since Foster's advent, and the squadron was having a rest and the chaplain holding service, and Major Dwight, as was his wont, came, book in one hand and little Jim clinging fondly to the other, to kneel among the wors.h.i.+pers, to reverently follow the beautiful service, his boy snuggling to his side and reading aloud from the same page. It was the service Margaret had loved, and taught her husband to honor, and had won his promise that Jimmy should ever be led to it, and loyally, devoted, had the father fulfilled the promise, even after the young wife came to wean him from much that Margaret had inspired. Inez this day came not with them. To begin with, Inez had been reared in the fold of the Mother Church, and, though years had served to loose the bonds and possibly sap what little she ever had of faith, she had sought, at least, no subst.i.tute. Obediently had she gone at first with her soldier-husband and looked, in the eyes of his kith and kin, the picture of meek piety and adoration as she followed the new, strange ritual. But, once away from family observation, Inez had found refuge in hebdomadal headaches that came with the Lord's Day and kept her from church. She was "feeling far from well this morning," said Dwight, in answer to queries, and had been persuaded to remain in bed. So he and Jimmy had come to church and Foster had gone to the Club to write some letters and wire to Was.h.i.+ngton, and all were "present or accounted for,"

as Captain Washburn grimly announced at the Club. It was a lovely warm Sunday, too, and the old chaplain was effective as a reader. The choir was capital, despite Priscilla's criticisms, and the attendance was large. Army folk, as a rule, flock but spa.r.s.ely to the sanctuary, but Minneconjou had not a few devout church people, even in the ranks, Blenke being so earnest in his piety that when detailed for Sunday guard he never failed to effect an exchange, even though it cost him two tours for one. Furthermore, it was communion service, and unusually long.

Marion Ray had entered early--Sandy, pale-faced and thin, at her side; and together they had knelt, mother and son, and then sat silently awaiting the "Processional." When Dwight and Jimmy walked up the aisle and took a pew on the other side and nearer the altar, Marion had smiled fond greeting to the little fellow, and he had answered. Twice as she gazed at them later, Dwight's arm about Jimmy's curly head, his sinewy hand resting on the further shoulder and drawing him to his side, heavy tears welled up into the blue eyes of the tender-hearted woman. Never yet had that strong, sinewy hand been uplifted to inflict the lightest chastis.e.m.e.nt on Margaret's beloved boy. Only the day before on his regular visit, nestling to her knee and telling her laughingly how Sergeant Shock, the schoolmaster, had walloped Scotty Burns, the band leader's eldest hope, Jimmy had looked up suddenly into her eyes. "Why, Aunt Marion," he said, "only think! I've never known what it was to be whipped. Can you fancy daddy's ever using a strap on me?"