Part 28 (1/2)

”I will do all that most gladly, Mrs. Cranston, but the matter on which I desire to see him at once is urgent, and perhaps Mr. Sanders will walk over to the stables with me. Then, may I not call and see you later?”

”By all means! and will you not dine with us? A real campaign dinner, you know, but we shall be so pleased to have you.”

Langston's face fairly glowed. ”I'll be here in half an hour, if I may, but I must see the captain at once, and will go. I trust--Miss Loomis--is well.”

”Very well, and quite able to answer for herself,” said Mrs. Cranston, mischievously, while Langston's eyes eagerly searched the door-way and dim interior; but Miss Loomis was nowhere in sight, and chose to appear to be not within hearing.

”Why didn't you come or speak?” said Meg, reproachfully, the moment he was gone.

”I was busy. These are school days,” was the calm reply, one that would have been no comfort to Langston, who walked rather ruefully on with the subaltern. The business with Cranston proved interesting.

”You have a young trooper, Brannan, whom I need to see confidentially, and at once. May I do so, captain?”

”Certainly. Send Corporal Brannan here,” said the troop commander, wondering what new complication had involved this wayward son; and presently, erect and soldierly, with a fine tan on his cheek and brand-new chevrons on his sleeves, ”lanced for bravery in the field,” as the troopers expressed it in those days, the young soldier stood attention before them.

”You probably do not remember me, Corporal Brannan,” said Langston, in courteous tone, ”but I remember you favorably and well for the day at Bluff Siding last June.” And the light in the young soldier's eyes indicated that he recalled the civilian. ”Your captain knows something of the matter on which I wish to see you, and I have asked him to remain here with us.” And now an anxious, troubled look crept over Brannan's face, some swift overshadowing from the coming cloud. ”You have never yet told any one whose knife it was that cut you that day.”

Brannan's lips moved and he turned even paler, but he said no word.

”Well, corporal, the time seems to have come when instead of keeping silence to protect another man you may have to speak for your own sake.”

Brannan glanced quickly, anxiously, from one face to another, from the lawyer to his troop commander, as though appealing to the latter to say how could that be. Presently he faltered, ”I don't understand.” ”Well, I will tell you, in part at least. Your captain and I know something of your past history, and I do not think you will have cause to regret that fact. We know that you were at Dr. Powlett's at the time Mr. Davies was a.s.saulted and robbed near his Urbana home. You had there been on terms of intimacy with young Powlett, who disappeared after much disreputable doing. You soon enlisted, and were for a time very intimate with a recruit, Howard, who corresponded with the description I have of Powlett. You both had frequent letters,--you from your mother and he from several sources. Then came a disagreement and you held yourself apart from him and his new chum, a young fellow called Paine, and, while you continued loyal to an old friends.h.i.+p and kept silent as to Howard's past, he was less considerate of you. There was serious trouble between yourself and Sergeant Haney and Howard the night you reached Fort Scott after the campaign, and you were ordered confined. I have heard there at Scott a story I do not believe. Will you not tell your captain and me the real cause?”

”Well, sir, it was about my writing-case,” said the corporal, in low and hesitant voice. ”I kept mother's letters and some pictures and things I valued in it. It went with me up to the Big Horn camp all right, but when we started on the campaign and cut loose from the wagons I had to turn it over to Sergeant Haney. I saw him lock it in the big company chest, and the night we got into Scott with the wagons and that chest was unloaded, over three months afterwards, I asked for it at once, and I had been kept back with the wagons, and I'd been drinking a little, for it was a bitter cold march, and Haney and Howard gave me more liquor and told me I'd better not take it until I'd quit drinking. We had trouble that night later, and I was confined for abusing the sergeant and being drunk, though I could prove I hadn't abused him, and that it was just the other way, and that I was only slightly affected by the liquor. The next day I sent word from the guard-house for my case, and the reply came that the sergeant gave it to me the previous night. I knew he hadn't and said so. They answered that I was drunk and must have lost it, and that was all the satisfaction I got.”

”Why didn't you tell me about this at the time, Brannan?” asked Cranston, kindly.

”I meant to, sir, the moment I got out, but they fixed things so as to send me direct from the guard-house with Lieutenant Boynton's detachment to the agency, and when I wrote from there to Howard and Haney both, they answered that they had a clue, and if I'd only keep quiet they'd get it sure, and the man who stole it from me. I never told mother about it,--it shamed me so. I was afraid the liquor was drugged, and--it might be true, though I thought I knew everything that happened.” Then he stopped abruptly.

”Go on,” said Langston, with deep interest in his keen, shrewd face.

”There is even more to this than I thought. What followed?”

”I got tired waiting, and there was a chance to go to Scott with the mail rider and I took it, and a bitter cold ride it proved to be. We couldn't get coffee on the way, the rider and I, but we could get whiskey, worse luck, for he had it with him, and so I had been drinking when we reached the post, and made my demand of Haney. He put me off with more liquor and soft words. Then I threatened to appeal to Captain Cranston or Lieutenant Davies, and the next thing they had me in hospital with Paine to watch me. I had been drinking enough to make me mad with suffering for more by that time.”

”Well, did you never appeal to Captain Devers?”

”No, sir; there was no use in doing that,” said Brannan, coloring uneasily as he spoke. ”I beg Captain Cranston's pardon for saying so of an officer, but no one could hope for justice in 'A' Troop unless he was solid with Sergeant Haney.”

”And you have never seen your writing-case to this day?” continued Langston.

”Never, sir.”

”Well, one thing more. Now that you know Howard's character,--know him to have deserted and to have striven to injure you in many a way, will you still persist in saying he did not wield the knife that slashed you?”

”I have said, sir, that I knew no one in all the recruits who would have used a knife on me.”

”True! You put it well, Brannan,” said Langston, with a smile of deep meaning, ”and among simple-minded military folk the answer would be enough, perhaps, but not to a lawyer. Would you declare that Howard did not wield the knife that slashed you--but was meant for Lieutenant Davies?”

And Brannan colored still deeper. ”I cannot say anything about him, sir; at least not now.”