Ranson's Folly Part 5

There was the polite laugh which is granted to any remark made by the one who is paying for the champagne.

"Oh, that's where you were, was it?" said the post-adjutant, genially.

"The colonel sent Clancey after you and Crosby. Clancey reported that he couldn't find you. So we sent Curtis. They went to act as escort for Colonel Patten and the pay. He's coming up to-night in the stage."

Ranson was gazing down into his gla.s.s. Before he raised his head he picked several pieces of ice out of it and then drained it.

"The paymaster, hey?" he said. "He's in the stage to-night, is he?"

"Yes," said the adjutant; and then as the bugle and stamp of hoofs sounded from the parade outside, "and that's him now, I guess," he added.

Ranson refilled his gla.s.s with infinite care, and then, in spite of a smile that twitched at the corners of his mouth, emptied it slowly.

There was the jingle of spurs and a measured tramp on the veranda of the club-house, and for the first time in its history four enlisted men, carrying their Krags, invaded its portals. They were led by Lieutenant Crosby; his face was white under the tan, and full of suffering. The officers in the room received the intrusion in amazed silence. Crosby strode among them, looking neither to the left nor right, and touched Lieutenant Ranson upon the shoulder.

"The colonel's orders, Lieutenant Ranson," he said. "You are under arrest."

Ranson leaned back against the music-rack and placed his gla.s.s upon the keyboard. One leg was crossed over the other, and he did not remove it.

"Then you can't take a joke," he said in a low tone. "You had to run and tell." He laughed and raised his voice so that all in the club might hear, "What am I arrested for, Crosby?" he asked.

The lines in Crosby's face deepened, and only those who sat near could hear him. "You are under arrest for attempting to kill a superior officer, for the robbery of the government pay-train--and for murder."

Ranson jumped to his feet. "My G.o.d, Crosby!" he cried.

"Silence! Don't talk!" ordered Crosby. "Come along with me."

The four troopers fell in in rear of Lieutenant Crosby and their prisoner. He drew a quick, frightened breath, and then, throwing back his shoulders, fell into step, and the six men tramped from the club and out into the night.

III

That night at the post there was little sleep for any one. The feet of hurrying orderlies beat upon the parade-ground, the windows of the Officers' Club blazed defiantly, and from the darkened quarters of the enlisted men came the sound of voices snarling in violent vituperation.

At midnight, half of Ranson's troop, having attacked the rest of the regiment with cavalry-boots, were marched under arrest to the guard-house. As they pa.s.sed Ranson's hut, where he still paced the veranda, a burning cigarette attesting his wakefulness, they cheered him riotously. At two o'clock it was announced from the hospital that both patients were out of danger; for it had developed that, in his hurried diagnosis, Sergeant Clancey had located Henderson's heart six inches from where it should have been.

When one of the men who guarded Ranson reported this good news the prisoner said, "Still, I hope they'll hang whoever did it. They shouldn't hang a man for being a good shot and let him off because he's a bad one."

At the time of the hold-up Mary Cahill had been a half-mile distant from the post at the camp of the Kiowas, where she had gone in answer to the cry of Lightfoot's squaw. When she returned she found Indian Pete in charge of the exchange. Her father, he told her, had ridden to the Indian village in search of her. As he spoke the post-trader appeared.

"I'm sorry I missed you," his daughter called to him.

At the sound Cahill pulled his horse sharply toward the corral. "I had a horse-deal on--with the chief," he answered over his shoulder. "When I got to Lightfoot's tent you had gone."

After he had dismounted, and was coming toward her, she noted that his right hand was bound in a handkerchief, and exclaimed with apprehension.

"It is nothing," Cahill protested. "I was foolin' with one of the new regulation revolvers, with my hand over the muzzle. Ball went through the palm."

Miss Cahill gave a tremulous cry and caught the injured hand to her lips.

Her father s.n.a.t.c.hed it from her roughly.

"Let go!" he growled. "It serves me right."

A few minutes later Mary Cahill, bearing liniment for her father's hand, knocked at his bedroom and found it empty. When she peered from the top of the stairs into the shop-window below she saw him busily engaged with his one hand buckling the stirrup-straps of his saddle.

When she called, he sprang upright with an oath. He had faced her so suddenly that it sounded as though he had sworn, not in surprise, but at her.

"You startled me," he murmured. His eyes glanced suspiciously from her to the saddle. "These stirrup-straps--they're too short," he announced.

"Pete or somebody's been using my saddle."

"I came to bring you this 'first-aid' bandage for your hand," said his daughter.

Cahill gave a shrug of impatience.

"My hand's all right," he said; "you go to bed. I've got to begin taking account of stock."

"To-night?"

"There's no time by day. Go to bed."

For nearly an hour Miss Cahill lay awake listening to her father moving about in the shop below. Never before had he spoken roughly to her, and she, knowing how much the thought that he had done so would distress him, was herself distressed.

In his lonely vigil on the veranda, Ranson looked from the post down the hill to where the light still shone from Mary Cahill's window. He wondered if she had heard the news, and if it were any thought of him that kept sleep from her.

"You a.s.s! you idiot!" he muttered. "You've worried and troubled her. She believes one of her precious army is a thief and a murderer." He cursed himself picturesquely, but the thought that she might possibly be concerned on his account, did not, he found, distress him as greatly as it should. On the contrary, as he watched the light his heart glowed warmly. And long after the light went out he still looked toward the home of the post-trader, his brain filled with thoughts of his return to his former life outside the army, the old life to which he vowed he would not return alone.

The next morning Miss Cahill learned the news when the junior officer came to mess and explained why Ranson was not with them. Her only comment was to at once start for his quarters with his breakfast in a basket. She could have sent it by Pete, but, she argued, when one of her officers was in trouble that was not the time to turn him over to the mercies of a servant. No, she a.s.sured herself, it was not because the officer happened to be Ranson. She would have done as much, or as little, for any one of them. When Curtis and Haines were ill of the grippe, had she not carried them many good things of her own making?

But it was not an easy sacrifice. As she crossed the parade-ground she recognized that over-night Ranson's hut, where he was a prisoner in his own quarters, had become to the post the storm-centre of interest, and to approach it was to invite the attention of the garrison. At head-quarters a group of officers turned and looked her way, there was a flutter among the frocks on Mrs. Bolland's porch, and the enlisted men, smoking their pipes on the rail of the barracks, whispered together.

When she reached Ranson's hut over four hundred pairs of eyes were upon her, and her cheeks were flus.h.i.+ng. Ranson came leaping to the gate, and lifted the basket from her arm as though he were removing an opera-cloak. He set it upon the gate-post, and nervously clasped the palings of the gate with both hands. He had not been to bed, but that fact alone could not explain the strangeness of his manner. Never before had she seen him disconcerted or abashed.

"You shouldn't have done it," he stammered. "Indeed, indeed, you are much too good. But you shouldn't have come."

His voice shook slightly.

"Why not?" asked Mary Cahill. "I couldn't let you go hungry."

"You know it isn't that," he said; "it's your coming here at all. Why, only three of the fellows have been near me this morning. And they only came from a sense of duty. I know they did--I could feel it. You shouldn't have come here. I'm not a proper person; I'm an outlaw. You might think this was a pest-house, you might think I was a leper.

Why, those Stickney girls have been watching me all morning through a field-gla.s.s." He clasped and unclasped his fingers around the palings.

"They believe I did it," he protested, with the bewildered accents of a child. "They all believe it."

Miss Cahill laughed. The laugh was quieting and comforting. It brought him nearer to earth, and her next remark brought him still further.

"Have you had any breakfast?" she asked.

"Breakfast!" stammered Ranson. "No. The guard brought some, but I couldn't eat it. This thing has taken the life out of me--to think sane, sensible people--my own people--could believe that I'd steal, that I'd kill a man for money."

"Yes, I know," said Miss Cahill soothingly; "but you've not had any sleep, and you need your coffee." She lifted the lid of the basket.

"It's getting cold," she said. "Don't you worry about what people think.