Part 9 (2/2)

And Loring looked at it first with but scant interest. Then took and held and studied the writing with eyes that kindled wonderfully.

”Why, do you think you know that hand?” asked the major curiously.

Loring handed it back, hesitated a moment, nodded, but said no word.

CHAPTER XIX.

A pleasant welcome awaited Mr. Walter Loring, of the Engineers, when he opened his office and got settled down to work at his new station. Here was a commanding general who knew something of his past, whose nephew was with him at the Point, and one at least of whose aides had found reason to respect him highly, even though they had differed as to the site for the new post, and the Engineer had seemed to take far more kindly to the companions.h.i.+p of an unheard-of sub in the cavalry than he did to the society of two men so distinguished in the department as Major Burleigh, depot quartermaster at Gate City, and Brevet-Captain ”Omaha” Stone, the aide in question. Burleigh had surprised the aide by a display of great interest in and an impatience to meet the newcomer, who had hurried out from Omaha with not a day's delay, and who overtook them at Fort Frayne, after riding by night through the mountainous region of the Medicine Bow, with only a single trooper as attendant and escort. Burleigh had been oddly inquisitive, thought Stone, and had plied the taciturn Engineer with question after question about officers whom he knew and matters he seemed to know along the Pacific slope. Mr.

Loring was evidently a bit surprised, yet replied courteously, though very briefly. Burleigh did all the talking the first day's drive in the big ambulance over the rolling open prairies north of the Platte, giving Stone no chance at all. He enlivened the occasion and relieved the tedium of the journey with anecdotes of the General whose command Loring had recently left, and Strain, his chief-of-staff, and Petty--”that d.a.m.ned fool Petty,” he called him, and Burleigh had nothing good to tell of any of them, and much that was derisive, if not detrimental, of all.

Loring listened with neither a.s.sent nor dissent, as a rule, though when appealed to he said he had no opportunity to study the characteristics as described by Burleigh, as he had spent most of his short service there surveying in Arizona and saw little and knew less of the officials in San Francisco. One man of whom Burleigh spoke with regard and regret was stanch old Turnbull, whose sad death by drowning in the surf off Pinos, the quartermaster referred to several times. He seemed familiar, too, with the story of Loring's conduct the night of the collision at sea and the sinking of the Idaho, and referred to that more than once in terms of commendation. They stopped for luncheon and to bait the mules and to give the cavalry escort a brief respite, and it was after this that Burleigh, as though suddenly reminded of something, began--

”I don't know what made me think of it unless it was Stone's speaking of New Orleans a moment ago, but did you meet a long-legged fellow named Blake in Arizona? I knew the girl that drove him out there. One winter she was in New Orleans while her father was commanding the monitors moored at Algiers--Miss Torrence. Saw her afterwards in New York. She married old Granger, you know.” Granger was about Burleigh's age, but Burleigh was a widower and desirous of being considered young. And Stone wondered why Loring should look disquieted if not embarra.s.sed.

”I met Blake, yes,” was, however, his prompt reply.

”How's he standing it? He was a good deal cut up at first. They were to have been married last summer. He was regularly engaged to her, and never knew she'd thrown him over until he met Granger in St. Louis.”

Then Loring did a thing they both noted was unlike him. Ordinarily he listened courteously until the question was finished. This time he broke in:

”Blake is in his element doing cavalry duty. We had a lively chase together after an officer who was deserting to Mexico.”

”So you did,” said Burleigh, with interest. ”I remember hearing of it.

You were on his court, weren't you? Why! what was the fellow's name? I remember having met him in New Orleans, too, when I read the order to the court. Let's see, you were judge advocate, weren't you?”

”Yes. And his name was Nevins.”

”Ah, yes. Dismissed, I believe. What ever became of him? There was a rumor that he had died.”

”So the consul at Guaymas reported,” was Loring's brief reply.

”Well, was it never settled? Wasn't it proved in some way? I heard a story that his wife had followed him out there. She was a d.a.m.ned sight better lot than he was. I met her more than once in New Orleans. She came of good family, but she was stranded down there by the war. They say she had a younger sister who bled her to death, a girl she was educating. I remember Nevins told me something about her. That fellow had some good points, do you know, Loring? He behaved first rate during the fever epidemic; nursed more'n one fellow through. He said that that sister was a beauty and selfish to the core, and he wished to G.o.d she'd marry some rich man and let them alone. Didn't you--didn't I hear that they were out there, and that he made some dramatic scene before the court, and sent his wife his valuables, or something of that kind?”

Loring was slowly reddening. He more than half believed that Burleigh had heard the story set afloat by the gossips in San Francisco, and was trying to draw him out. His tone, therefore, was cold and his answer brief.

”They were there, but I never saw them. Pardon me, major, your rifle is slipping,” and leaning forward the Engineer straightened up the endangered weapon and braced it with his foot. ”A dreary landscape this,” he added, glancing out at the barren stretches of rolling prairie extending to the horizon.

”Very. All like this till you get over towards the mountains, then it's fine. But, isn't it really believed out there that Nevins is dead? What became of his wife?”

”She went back to New Orleans, I was told. If Nevins isn't dead, he at least hadn't been heard of up to the time I left.”

And several times again that long afternoon did Burleigh return to the charge and speak of Nevins, and more than once during the busy days that followed, but by the time they started on their return he had probably concluded that Loring really knew no more about him, and once or twice when Blake and his love affairs were mentioned Loring seemed unwilling to hear. Stone pondered over it not a little before they got to Reno on the back track, and there it was that Burleigh had demanded to be sent right on to Frayne, despite fatigue, for something had come to him in this mail that filled him with dismay, as the major commanding told them a dozen times over. Moreover, Mr. Omaha Stone became gradually convinced that Loring was in partial possession of the secret of Burleigh's stampede. Unless Stone was utterly in error, Loring had seen somewhere before the handwriting of the superscription of the envelope Burleigh had dropped in his nerveless collapse. But Stone might as well have cross-questioned the sphinx. Loring would admit nothing.

Yet it was of this very matter the Engineer was thinking one soft still evening soon after his return to department headquarters. His boxes had just arrived. He had found a fairly comfortable room away from the turbulent section of the new and bustling town, and equally distant from the domicile of Stone and his particular set. Loring never gambled and took little interest in cards. He was still ”taking his rations” at the hotel, but much disliked it, and was seriously thinking of seeking board in some private family. The barracks were too far out, and the roads deep in mud, or he would have lived and ”messed” out there. The few boarding houses were crowded, and with an uncongenial lot as a rule.

Private families that took two or three table boarders were very few, but some one suggested his going to see the rector of the new parish, himself a recent arrival.

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