Part 9 (1/2)
”And then the real bird flapped its wings and Morgan thought it was going to fly, and he was lost. But it settled back again on the branch, and Morgan proceeded to caw on:
”'Hurt not the white man, or the curses of the G.o.ds will come upon Sun Boy and his people.'
”And he proceeded to give a list of what would happen if the Indians touched a hair of their heads. By this time the red devils were all down on their stomachs, moaning softly whenever Morgan stopped cawing. He said he quite got into the spirit of it and would have liked to go on some time, but he was beginning to get hoa.r.s.e, and besides he was in deadly terror for fear the crow would fly before he got to the point. So he had the spirit order them to give the white men their horses and turn them loose instanter; and just as he got all through, off went the thing with a big flap and a parting caw on its own account. I wish I could tell it as Morgan does--you'd think he was a bird and an Indian rolled together. He's a great actor spoiled, that lad.”
”You leave out a fine point, to my mind, Captain Booth,” the Colonel said quickly. ”About his going back.”
”Oh! certainly that ought to be told,” said the Captain, and the General's eyes turned to him again. ”Morgan forgot to see young Blue Arrow, his friend, before he got away, and nothing would do but that he should go back and speak to him. He said the boy would be disappointed.
The men were visibly uneasy at his going, but that didn't affect him. He ordered them to wait, and back he went, pell-mell, all alone into that horde of fiends. They hadn't got over their funk, luckily, and he saw Blue Arrow and made his party call and got out again all right. He didn't tell that himself, but Sergeant O'Hara made the camp ring with it. He adores Morgan, and claims that he doesn't know what fear is. I believe it's about so. I've seen him in a fight three times now. His cap always goes off--he loses a cap every blessed scrimmage--and with that yellow mop of hair, and a sort of rapt expression he gets, he looks like a child saying its prayers all the time he is slas.h.i.+ng and shooting like a berserker.” Captain Booth faced abruptly toward the Colonel. ”I beg your pardon for talking so long, sir,” he said. ”You know we're all rather keen about little Miles Morgan.”
The General lifted his head suddenly. ”Miles Morgan?” he demanded. ”Is his name Miles Morgan.”
The Colonel nodded. ”Yes. The grandson of the old Bishop--named for him.”
”Lord!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the General. ”Miles Morgan was my earliest friend, my friend until he died! This must be Jim's son--Miles's only child. And Jim is dead these ten years,” he went on rapidly. ”I've lost track of him since the Bishop died, but I knew Jim left children. Why, he married”--he searched rapidly in his memory--”he married a daughter of General Fitzbrian's. This boy's got the church and the army both in him.
I knew his mother,” he went on, talking to the Colonel, garrulous with interest. ”Irish and fascinating she was--believed in fairies and ghosts and all that, as her father did before her. A clever woman, but with the superst.i.tious, wild Irish blood strong in her. Good Lord! I wish I'd known that was Miles Morgan's grandson.”
The Colonel's voice sounded quiet and rather cold after the General's impulsive enthusiasm. ”You have summed him up by his antecedents, General,” he said. ”The church and the army--both strains are strong. He is deeply religious.”
The General looked thoughtful. ”Religious, eh? And popular? They don't always go together.”
Captain Booth spoke quickly. ”It's not that kind, General,” he said.
”There's no cant in the boy. He's more popular for it--that's often so with the genuine thing, isn't it? I sometimes think”--the young Captain hesitated and smiled a trifle deprecatingly--”that Morgan is much of the same stuff as Gordon--Chinese Gordon; the martyr stuff, you know. But it seems a bit rash to compare an every-day American youngster to an inspired hero.”
”There's nothing in Americanism to prevent either inspiration or heroism that I know of,” the General affirmed stoutly, his fine old head up, his eyes gleaming with pride of his profession.
Out through the open doorway, beyond the slapping tent-flap, the keen, gray eyes of the Colonel were fixed musingly on two black points which crawled along the edge of the dulled silver of the distant river--Miles Morgan and Sergeant O'Hara had started.
”Sergeant!” They were eight miles out now, and the camp had disappeared behind the elbow of Black Wind Mountain. ”There's something wrong with your horse. Listen! He's not loping evenly.” The soft cadence of eight hoofs on earth had somewhere a lighter and then a heavier note; the ear of a good horseman tells in a minute, as a musician's ear at a false note, when an animal saves one foot ever so slightly, to come down harder on another.
”Yessirr. The Lieutenant'll remimber 'tis the horrse that had a bit of a spavin, Sure I thot 'twas cured, and 'tis the kindest baste in the rigiment f'r a pleasure ride, sorr--that willin' 'tis. So I tuk it. I think 'tis only the stiffness at furrst aff. 'Twill wurruk aff later.
Plaze G.o.d, I'll wallop him.” And the Sergeant walloped with a will.
But the kindest beast in the regiment failed to respond except with a plunge and increased lameness. Soon there was no more question of his incapacity.
Lieutenant Morgan halted his mount, and, looking at the woe-begone O'Hara, laughed. ”A nice trick this is, Sergeant,” he said, ”to start out on a trip to dodge Indians with a spavined horse. Why didn't you get a broomstick? Now go back to camp as fast as you can go; and that horse ought to be blistered when you get there. See if you can't really cure him. He's too good to be shot.” He patted the gray's nervous head, and the beast rubbed it gently against his sleeve, quiet under his hand.
”Yessirr. The Lieutenant'll ride slow, sorr, f'r me to catch up on ye, sorr?”
Miles Morgan smiled and shook his head. ”Sorry, Sergeant, but there'll be no slow riding in this. I'll have to press right on without you; I must be at Ma.s.sacre Mountain to-night to catch Captain Thornton to-morrow.”
Sergeant O'Hara's chin dropped. ”Sure the Lieutenant'll niver be thinkin' to g'wan alone--widout _me_?” and with all the sergeant's respect of his superiors, it took the Lieutenant ten valuable minutes to get the man started back, shaking his head and muttering forebodings, to the camp.
It was quiet riding on alone. There were a few miles to go before there was any chance of Indians, and no particular lookout to be kept, so he put the horse ahead rapidly while he might, and suddenly he found himself singing softly as he galloped. How the words had come to him he did not know, for no conscious train of thought had brought them; but they surely fitted to the situation, and a pleasant sense of companions.h.i.+p, of safety, warmed him as the swing of an old hymn carried his voice along with it.
G.o.d shall charge His angel legions Watch and ward o'er thee to keep; Though thou walk through hostile regions, Though in desert wilds thou sleep.
Surely a man riding toward--perhaps through--skulking Indian hordes, as he must, could have no better message reach him than that. The bent of his mind was toward mysticism, and while he did not think the train of reasoning out, could not have said that he believed it so, yet the familiar lines flas.h.i.+ng suddenly, clearly, on the curtain of his mind, seemed to him, very simply, to be sent from a larger thought than his own. As a child might take a strong hand held out as it walked over rough country, so he accepted this quite readily and happily, as from that Power who was never far from him, and in whose service, beyond most people, he lived and moved. Low but clear and deep his voice went on, following one stanza with its mate: