Part 4 (1/2)

”Yes, taking on water; but Captain Tibbetts gave orders that no man should leave his car. Who was the man who came in here, corporal?” asked he of Brannan.

”I--I couldn't give his name, sir,” was the answer, in evident embarra.s.sment. ”He came in just the minute the lieutenant got off at the station. He was only in here a few seconds, sir.”

”What did he want?” asked Davies.

”He--wanted something of the captain, sir, but I told him the captain was asleep.”

Davies hastened through the pa.s.sage and across the jolting platform to the next car ahead.

”Sergeant,” said he, ”what man went through here into the sleeper when we stopped last station?”

”No man, sir,” said the non-commissioned officer, stoutly.

”But there must have been--or no, perhaps he could have run along the left side of the train from a forward car and jumped on the platform. I didn't think of that. Did you see or hear no one?”

”I heard some one on the platform of the sleeper, sir, but I thought it was the lieutenant.”

Going forward Davies met with no better success. The guard at each door was positive no man had gone out. Then, unless there were collusion on the part of the sentries, he must have slipped through some window, said Davies to himself. Miss Loomis was still up and rearranging Mrs.

Cranston's pillows when he returned.

”Did you ascertain anything?” she asked.

”Nothing. They all deny any knowledge of such a thing.”

”Do you know, I thought there was something strange about it. The man seemed hurried and excited, talked low and fast, and when Brannan refused or seemed to refuse what was asked, I heard him say, 'Well, you'll be a sorry man if you don't.'”

But of this threat Brannan denied all knowledge whatsoever. Davies, feeling sure that the young soldier was concealing something, decided to ask no more questions inviting more lies, but to wait and report the affair to the captain after breakfast. This time the sergeants did not overlook the lance corporal in the distribution of coffee and rations.

Davies found that Miss Loomis had just finished dressing and bandaging the wound when he returned to the sleeper shortly after they resumed the journey. The soldier looked gratefully into her face as he turned away, and murmured something the young officer could not hear. ”Yes, I understand,” said Miss Loomis in reply.

A moment later she accosted him. ”I'm going to ask you something that may sound very strange,” she said, and her color heightened and the lids swept quickly over her eyes, ”yet--I believe you won't misunderstand. I want you to do something--or rather _not_ to do something--for me. You were going to tell Captain Tibbetts about that affair of last night,--that other soldier's coming in here, were you not?”

”I certainly was.”

”Well--please don't.”

CHAPTER V.

A week later, with additional detachments of horse, foot, and recruits, Mr. Davies found himself in camp on the sandy, sage-covered flats to the west of old Fort Fetterman. Here, too, were gathered wagons and mules laden with ammunition and supplies for the big column already in the field far to the northward. Officers hurrying to the front from leave of absence which they had promptly relinquished, newspaper correspondents, packers, teamsters, scouts and would-be scouts, soldiers old and soldiers new,--it was a strange and motley array, all awaiting the coming of the cavalry command, which was to be their escort through the Indian-infested region that lay between them and the main supply camp beyond Cloud Peak. Between them and the barren slopes to the northward rolled the swollen Platte, its shallowest fords breast-deep. At rare intervals, with his life in his hands and his despatches done up in oil-skin, some solitary courier came galloping down to the opposite bank and was hauled over by the rope ferry, the only means of dry communication between the sh.o.r.es. One day, strongly guarded, there arrived a little procession of ambulances and _travois_, bearing such of the wounded as could stand such rude transportation,--but this was while Davies with his recruits was still on his foot tramp through the pa.s.ses of the Medicine Bow,--and among these wounded was Captain Cranston, now comfortably housed in the quarters of a brother officer who was with his troop at the front, and there Davies found the two ladies, his companions of the railway ride, duly installed as nurses. Almost the first question asked by Miss Loomis was about her patient, the lance corporal.

”He is here with us,” said Davies, ”his hand still in a sling. That was a deep cut and a bad one, but he's a plucky young fellow and declined to be left behind at Sanders. He tells me, however, that the hospital steward with us cannot compare in skill with the nurse he had on the cars.”

Miss Loomis smiled. ”You know I owe that to father,” she said. Then, with quick change of subject, ”But I haven't congratulated you on your a.s.signment.”

”Is it here?--has it come?” he asked, eagerly. ”I did not know. What regiment?”

”To the Eleventh Cavalry,--Captain Cranston's own regiment.”

”The Eleventh Cavalry!” he exclaimed, surprise and pleasure in his face.

”I had not hoped for that; and yet----” a shadow falling and constraint creeping into his tone. ”I fear I ought to have gone into the infantry.