Part 34 (1/2)

The report came from a path which skirted the rampart immediately beneath the veranda, at a point where the bluff beyond descended so abruptly into the Yellowstone River, hundreds of feet below, that the sentry rarely patrolled it, ingress or egress being impossible to any one in a sane mood. Jerry sprang down the veranda steps, a.s.suring himself that there might be a dozen comparatively harmless reasons for the shot, and that his terror was merely nightmare. Yet when he beheld the body of a man prostrate, face forward, across the path, he knew him, with a knowledge that antic.i.p.ated sight. Shrinkingly he bent over him, uttered a half-strangled cry, which was dismayed, not surprised, and picked up a pistol, a tiny silver-mounted toy, horribly incongruous beside that ghastly, motionless figure--a dainty, deadly thing that Jerry had given months before to the 'best markswoman in the Northwest.'

There was a swift rush of footsteps from various directions: the sentry to whose beat this stretch of rampart belonged, another sentry from his station before the door of Jerry's quarters, and three or four partly clad officers roused out of their slumbers.

Jerry stood upright--a slight, erect figure, whose silhouette was distinct against the blue moonlit sky. He swung his arm above his head, and flung the pistol far over the edge of the bluff.

The next instant he was surrounded by a crowd; a tumult of exclamation and question arose, as Pryor's inanimate body was recognized, and carefully examined for some sign of life. In the midst of the tumult he leaned against the rampart, neither speaking nor apparently hearing, until Blount, the captain of his troop, laid an admonitory hand on his shoulder.

'You were here first--Don't stare like an idiot! Tell us what you saw.'

'Is he dead?'

'We cannot be sure until the surgeon comes. Did you see any one?'

Jerry shuddered visibly.

'I saw n.o.body!'

'The major has been queer lately, poor chap. Perhaps he shot himself,'

Blount suggested eagerly.

'Was not that a pistol you threw away?' another officer asked sharply.

Jerry lifted his eyes. Those familiar faces were pale and stern.

'You saw'--he faltered.

'Speak, lad!' Blount entreated.

'I cannot talk. I must have time to think.'

'The truth doesn't need thinking. It requires plain telling.'

There ensued a silence, through which creaked the hurried approach of the surgeon's boots.

Jerry's fair head drooped; he caught uncertainly at Blount's arm.

'I have nothing to say,' he muttered faintly.

Blount, who, as senior captain, succeeded to Pryor's command in case of that officer's death or incapacity, turned from his young subordinate.

'Sergeant Jackson,' he said, in a voice that was not quite steady, 'take Lieutenant Breton to his quarters. You will be responsible for him until further instructions.' Then he knelt beside Pryor, over whom the surgeon was bending. 'Is there life in him?' he asked.

There was life in him--life that lingered after they had carried him to his bed and his wound had been dressed; a mere spark of life, which might flicker out at any moment, although, the major being a healthy man, in the prime of years, it might yet blaze up again into strength.

Such was the surgeon's unchanging report during the next two days to the post, where horror of the tragedy in its midst had silenced gossip, and where even conjecture held its breath.

There is thus much resemblance between a small garrison and a family, that the befalling of a calamity to one of their number softens all judgments; quarrels, criticisms, envyings, are the corrupted fruit of a too brilliant suns.h.i.+ne. Pryor had been unpopular, but only kindness was spoken of him now that it seemed probable that he lay dying. If there was a manifest desire, especially among the ladies, to foster a suspicion that his evident wretchedness had led him to attempt suicide, the desire merely expressed their hope that Jerry Breton's innocence might be proved, in spite of the young fellow's stunned pa.s.siveness and his strange flinging away of the pistol.

Proof either of guilt or of innocence depended vitally on Pryor's recovery, as no inquiry had elicited any of the facts which preceded the catastrophe of that night. Shortly after ten o'clock the commanding officer had pa.s.sed the sentry for a solitary stroll along the rampart, which was a daily habit with him; n.o.body else had been seen, and nothing unusual had been heard until the pistol-shot.

Depression, black as the shadow of death which over-hung them, possessed the little post which was wont to be so cheery. No one was surprised to hear that Rosita had been added to the number of the surgeon's patients, nor did any one doubt the cause of the nervous collapse from which he declared her to be suffering, and which forced him to veto Mrs. Blount's offer of a visit to her. Lawless, he said, had miraculously developed into the most perfect of nurses, and Rosita, with the tendency to delirium that belongs to volatile and undisciplined temperaments, was better off under his undisturbed attendance.