Part 20 (1/2)

When Sanders, with solemn face, turned to meet the general and report his discovery, the difference between the young and the old campaigner was told in their own words.

”I'm afraid we're too late to save 'em, sir. Everything's wiped out but the stockade.”

”If the stockade's left, they've saved themselves,” was the answer, and the Gray Fox was right. Long before the column reached the lowlands of the valley hors.e.m.e.n could be seen spurring eagerly forward to meet it, and the first-comer was Trooper O'Brien, who saluted the general with all soldierly grace and the rest of the array with a sociable grin.

”We're all right, general,--leastwise most of us is. Two of the boys is killed, and Loot'n't Boynton's wounded,--and four others,--but the women's all safe, and the agent--bad scran to him! Is there a doctor along?” A doctor was along,--Burroughs,--riding with the senior captain commanding the battalion, and Burroughs was hurried forward with Sanders and a squad of men, while O'Brien, proud of his prominence, rode by the general's side and told the story of the sharp and sudden fight.

”They came down on us like a crowd of gra.s.shoppers so soon as it was light enough to see anything, but they couldn't get near us without our bowling over bucks and ponies. The prairie's dotted with the corpses of the poor beggars, sir,--the ponies, that is; they never left an Indian.

We stood 'em off first rate. Loot'nant Boynton and Loot'nant Davies was everywhere at once, and after trying two dashes the Indians gave it up and kept at long range. They was a thousand strong at least, and Elk came in with a white flag for a parley, and Mr. Boynton ordered him back, but McPhail let him in. He said we must give up Red Dog or they'd burn the agency over our heads and ma.s.sacre every man, and McPhail was for letting him go then, but Mr. Boynton and he had words over it, and they kept him. That night was cloudy and the moon was hid, and sure enough at ten o'clock they crawled in on the storehouse side and heaped up timber under them flimsy pine boards, and no one could see them on that side until everything was in a broad blaze. It was when trying to bucket out the fire the lieut'nant was shot, and it was a roaring conflagration in five minutes, and from that it spread to the agency and the other shebangs, and it was all we could do to get the women and children out of the cellars and into the corral, and them bucks firing from every sage brush for a mile around. The whole thing was down by midnight, but it didn't do them no good: we was really better off with less to take care of and more men to do it with, and we had wather in the well and rations for all hands, and the agent and his non-combatants under cover in one corner of the stockade, and Red Dog tied up in another. All Sunday they kept up a long-range fire, and five or six times made as though they was going to charge, but Loot'nant Davies was on all four sides of that square from dawn till dark, sir, and they never got within four hundred yards that we didn't drop them. Sure it was just pie, general. The only trouble was, could they set fire to the stockade at night? The loot'nant had buckets of water all around inside, and every little while a patrol ran round on the outside, and half the fellows kept watch at the loop-holes while the others slept, and Mr.

Davies had the office side of the stockade battened up with old wagons and boxes and things to fill the gap. Faith, sir, he never seemed to close an eye night or day until this blessed morning, when the valley was clear of Indians and we knew it meant that the general was coming.”

And as...o...b..ien told his tale to attentive ears, others of the little garrison, lately beleaguered, joined the battalion, still steadily in march, and found eager auditors everywhere along the jogging column.

Every one sorrowed at hearing of Boynton's serious wound, for he was a soldierly, faithful fellow, albeit a trifle blunt and unsociable, but as man after man spoke in lavish praise of Davies, of his plucky grapple with the most redoubtable chief in the rebellious tribes, of his calm, cool vigilance and skill in the conduct of the defence after the command devolved upon him, Cranston's eyes sparkled, and Hay and Truman joined in the chorus of congratulation.

When at last the battalion unsaddled at the stream and the officers pressed into the stockade to shake hands with the defenders, they found Boynton and the wounded feebly rejoicing in Burroughs's hands and Davies tucked away in a corner under an old wagon, rolled in agency blankets, sleeping the dreamless sleep of a tired child.

”Don't disturb him for anything,” said the general, with moistened eyes.

”They tell me he hasn't had an hour's rest since Friday. He's behaved like a trump.”

That night our old friend Tintop came trotting in at the head of eight strong troops of horse, some of his own, others of the --th Cavalry.

Behind them, with the wagons, came the infantry, supplementing the little detachment of the Fortieth already on the ground,--the st.u.r.dy trampers from Fort Scott. Next day the agent and his household, with the other women and children, were bustled off to Braska until new quarters should be built for them, and his red wards be rounded up, run down, and returned to the arms of Uncle Sam by their natural oppressors, the cavalry. Sending Red Dog in irons and Boynton and the wounded back to Scott by easy stages, leaving four companies of the Fortieth to build cantonments for themselves and their comrades, the Gray Fox took the field with the residue of his force and set forth upon a winter campaign in search of the now scattered and despondent Indians. The oratory of Red Dog had borne its fruit. Four truculent bands had joined in the outbreak at the agency and lost their leader, half a score of mad-brained young warriors, scores of their best war ponies, but, what was of most consequence, had burned up the whole store of agency provisions and, with their squaws and children, were now lurking among the trackless Bad Lands to the north, outcasts upon the face of the frozen earth.

The only Indians whose condition was not made materially worse as a result of this ebullition were the Brule band of Two Lance, who had taken advantage of the general confusion to slip away to their old head chief Sintogaliska. He might not be able to feed or clothe them, and the agent at Sheridan might say he had no authority to help, but they would at least be getting as much comfort as was accorded them at Ogallalla, and less abuse.

And then, while the soldiers were stalking the renegades, the commissioner of Indian affairs sent out to stalk the soldiers.

Investigation as to the cause of this inexplicable outbreak was demanded. Those very chiefs had left the capital in unbounded good humor not two months before, and who was responsible for this sudden and baleful change of heart? It was a matter soon and easily settled. In the absence of military testimony to the contrary and the presence of so unanimous a party as the agent and his a.s.sistants, the fault was laid on the broad shoulders of the troopers. Devers rode over from Scott to Braska to hear the evidence, Boynton being still in surgical bandage and bondage, and without committing himself to anything absolutely derogatory to Messrs. Boynton and Davies, was certainly understood to raise no dissenting voice to the often expressed theory that but for the impetuosity and interference of those two officers the whole trouble could have been amicably settled by the authorities of the Indian bureau. And with this most satisfactory conclusion the commissioner returned to Was.h.i.+ngton. Red Dog was ordered released and restored to the bosom of his family, and when the general had finally succeeded in bringing in the scattered starvelings and the cavalry reappeared at the site of the agency, the first thing whispered to Davies was, ”Be on your guard every moment. Look out for Red Dog!”

The general never swore. He was in this respect the mate of Grant, his old-time friend and regimental comrade, but he could ”look swear words by the gallon,” said the adjutant of the Eleventh, whose own chief was in no wise tongue-tied. It fell to the lot of Mr. Gray, sent forward from the Bad Lands to announce the coming of the field column with all its humbled captives, to be the first on returning to announce to the Gray Fox that Red Dog had been released from durance at Fort Scott, equipped anew by McPhail at Braska, and had ridden to the cantonment to harangue such Indians as were already rea.s.sembling there, and to thunder furious threats at the officers of the Fortieth. Three bitter weeks had the Gray Fox and his faithful men been scoring the wild, wintry fastnesses along the Wakpa-Schicha, and, just as the Indians obtained through the bureau the vast supplies of ammunition with which to battle the soldiers through the summer past, so now, while the War Department was running down the renegades in the field, the Interior Department was running down the soldiery at home. The troops came in with the conviction that they had been seeing some hard and trying service, many of them with frosted fingers, toes, or ears, and thinking they deserved rather well of their country for having finally rounded up a thousand warriors with all their families, ponies, and unsavory impedimenta, and the general so informed them, and leaving a command of eight companies, equally divided among the horse and foot, to occupy the cantonments on the Chasing Water and thereafter keep the Indians in check, he hastened away to attend to important business in another lively section of his big department. The agency buildings were being rapidly restored, which was much more than could be said of its influence for good among the red men, and presently McPhail and his family reappeared on the scene, shook hands all around with the warriors who burned him out several weeks before, slapped Elk at Bay on the back and called him a bully boy, and promptly requested of the commanding officer of the new cantonment, which was a mile away up stream, a guard of a lieutenant and twenty-five men to be stationed at the agency itself. The major demurred, and the agent wired to Was.h.i.+ngton with the usual result. Whatsoever slur upon his actions McPhail had seen fit to cast at the expense of Mr. Davies during the investigation recently referred to, he had heard enough to convince him that the Indians spoke of that officer with awe and reverence and as ”heap brave,” so the man he urgently asked for to command his guard was the very one whom he had maligned. The adjutant-general of the department could only transmit the order that came from superior head-quarters within the week, and Lieutenant Davies, just as he was expecting brief leave of absence to visit his wife at Fort Scott, was detailed to the command of the permanent agency guard.

The Ides of March had come.

And how had it fared with Mira and her sympathetic friends at Scott during all these weeks of toil and march and scout? Two at a time the officers had been allowed to run in thither for a few days as soon as their men and horses were made fairly comfortable at the cantonments.

Cranston and Hay went first, then Truman and Jervis, then came the turn to which Sanders and the patient Parson had been looking forward, and Sanders went alone. Already some of those fearless frontierswomen, the amazons of the Fortieth, had come ahead with bag, baggage and babies and moved into the log huts of their lords as contentedly as they would have taken quarters at the Grand Central in Omaha, but Mesdames Flight and Darling were not of the number. Indeed, there was no reason why they should be, as it was settled that their companies were those designated presently to return to Scott; so was Hay's troop, so presumably would be the detached members of Devers's Troop, ”A,” as soon as he wrote and called attention to the fact that nearly one-half his men were detained eighty miles away where there was now an abundance of other soldiery, and the truly remarkable thing was that he, always. .h.i.therto so quick to find fault with or criticise the actions of his superiors, was keeping utter silence, and so long as he made no protest no one else could.

Colonel Stone, still weak and dazed, was just beginning to hobble about the post, and for six wonderful weeks had Devers succeeded in retaining the command.

”Your husband will be home any day,” said Mrs. Darling to Mira, when they got the news of the triumphant return of the command to the cantonments. ”He belongs here with his troop, so he's sure to come, and then,” she added, archly, ”what will poor Willett do?”

That was a question occurring to many another mind and falling from many another tongue. The rapture of Cranston's home-coming one sharp evening in late February was dashed only by the sight of a blooming face at Willett's side behind that stylish Eastern team. In the windings of the road among the willow islands in the Platte he had come suddenly upon them, he riding at rapid gallop, they dawdling with loosened reins.

Willett was bending eagerly toward her, talking earnestly. She sat with downcast eyes that never saw the swift rider until he had almost pa.s.sed them by. Mrs. Darling, chatting with Mr. Burtis on the rear seat, was the first to announce his coming, and with rare presence of mind to turn and send sweetest smiles and beaming glances and the welcome of a waving hand after the grim, bearded face that had no smile for their civilian escorts and only grave courtesy for the ladies themselves. He would not mar the joy of his home-coming by the faintest reference to what he had seen, but Margaret read his honest eyes as she read her boys', and knew that he must have met them on the way. For weeks she had seen the rapid growth of the new intimacy and deplored it, and had no one to confer with about it except Agatha, but Agatha flatly refused to open her lips upon the subject. It was a mercy that Wilbur at last came home and unloosed her tongue. As she pathetically said, ”I simply could not contain myself any longer.”

But if Mrs. Cranston had held her tongue, there was no lack of others who had not, and foremost of these was Mrs. Flight, who spoke by the card. For a fortnight or so the devotion of these two ladies, Mrs.

Flight and Mira, to one another had been of that seething and tireless character that rendered them incapable of spending an hour apart, and then came the little tiffs and coolnesses that betokened that this, too, was inevitably going the way of all such feminine intimacies. Up to the day of Mira's coming Mrs. Flight and Mrs. Darling had been inseparable for as much as a week at a time. Both were young, pretty, and empty-headed; neither was burdened with children nor ideas. Both were healthy, one was wealthy, neither was wise. Mrs. Darling had the advantage over Mrs. Flight in that she was able to entertain lavishly, whereas Mrs. Flight could only entertain by personal charm and sprightly chat. They were the reigning belles at Scott, and not only the young officers at the post, but the young civilians in town, found great pleasure in their society. There was capital sleighing for several weeks, and Willett and Burtis came as often as every other day to take the ladies an airing. At first it had been Mesdames Flight and Darling, then the bride had to be invited because she was the bride, then because she was a beauty, and finally because Willett would have no one else.

Then as it was generally at Darlings' they lunched, dined, danced, supped, were wined and warmed and welcomed, it transpired that Mrs. Flight found herself very frequently dropped from the sleigh-rides,--only invited semi-occasionally, perhaps once in ten days, when Burtis pointed out to Willett that they really must, you know, to which the now infatuated Willett merely responded, ”All right. You ask her, then, and let her sit with you.” No one but Mrs. Davies shared the sleigh man's seat.

During the fortnight that followed the departure of Lieutenant Davies, Mrs. Flight had been devotion itself to her dear, bereaved friend, and, having wept with her, slept with her, sleighed with her, bared her innermost soul to her, and made herself, as she supposed, indispensable, it was to be expected that Mrs. Flight could not look with equanimity upon the discovery that she was not so indispensable after all. She had started Mira on the road to conquest, never dreaming that she herself would be the first overtaken and supplanted. She had thought hitherto no possible harm could come of their taking an occasional drive with their friends, especially as Mr. Flight expressed himself so grateful for the attention shown his wife, and as she and Mrs. Darling seemed chosen rather to the exclusion of the other women, but when Mira and not herself became the invariable occupant of the seat by the swell civilian's side, the indiscretion, not to say the impropriety of the affair, became glaringly apparent. It is rarely from the contemplation of our own, but rather from the errors of our neighbors, that our moral lessons are drawn, and now that in all its nakedness the scandalous nature of Mira's conduct was forced upon her attention, Mrs. Flight reasoned, most logically, that she could be no true friend if she failed to remonstrate and, if need be, admonish and reprove. She did so, and Almira pouted and was grievously vexed. She didn't think so at all, neither had Mrs. Flight until--until she began to be counted out. This led to war, and from pointing the moral Mrs. Flight now turned to adorning the tale with what ”everybody was saying.” Mira challenged her authorities. ”I know who you mean,--Mrs. Cranston and Miss Loomis. They hate me and would say anything mean of me.” Now, it was not Mrs.

Cranston and Miss Loomis at all. They had no more intimacy with Mrs.

Flight than they had with Mira, nor as much. They looked upon Mrs.

Flight as responsible in great measure for Almira's wrong start. They under no circ.u.mstances would confide to Mrs. Flight what they thought of Mrs. Davies, and Mrs. Flight knew it, still she was not unwilling to let Mira suppose that she was now enjoying their confidences even while she referred to other authorities by the dozen as condemning or deploring Mira's conduct, and a stormy scene followed, ending in tears and reproaches,--much heat, followed by chilling cold.