by Charles King
CHAPTER X.
So far as the Eleventh and one or two other regiments were concerned,that summer's campaign, so fraught with incident and tribulation, wasnow at an end. It would take weeks and months of care to restore theirhorses to serviceable condition. Others were ordered up to replace theworn-out command, and while an indomitable general pushed fresh columnsinto the field to track the savages to their winter lairs, the raggedtroopers--for all the world like so many beggars a horseback, so manymounted scarecrows--were ordered in to the big garrisons near the supplydepots to refit, recuperate, and restore to discipline. Some, officersand men both, had been sent ahead, too weak or ill to remain in thefield, and among these, consigned to the tender care of the post surgeonof Fort Cameron, was Lieutenant Davies, over whose condition the doctorsshook their heads. Brain fever was the malady, but his system was soreduced by starvation and exposure that even a moderate fever would havebeen most serious. Not until he had been gone nearly a month did theregiment follow, and then, scattered in detachments to various posts,became busily occupied in the work of rehabilitation. Cameron was a bignew frontier fort with few accommodations, over-crowded, too; yet, beingthe nearest to the field of action, thither had Captain Wilbur Cranstongone just as soon as he was convalescent and able to move. Thither withhim went his devoted wife and her devoted cousin and companion, MissLoomis, for whose reception the subalterns of the infantry guardpromptly gave up their frame quarters and moved into tents, and Cranstonwas there on light duty in charge of the big corral of remount horseswhen Davies was bundled in and established under Cranston's roof. There,carefully treated by Dr. Glover and regularly visited, often tenderlynursed, by Mrs. Cranston and her friend, the naturally strongconstitution of the young officer triumphed and he began slowly tomend. Meantime, as is or was the way, it fell to the lot of the gentleand sympathetic army wives or maidens at the post to keep the distantmother informed of her boy's slow progress toward recovery, andpresently to answer the importunate letters of another. Mrs. Cranston, ashrewd observer, could not fail to note that as soon as her patient wasallowed to read at all it was his mother's letters, not the great packetin Miss Quimby's unformed hand, that he eagerly opened. Then when atlast he did begin these latter the steady progress of his convalescencewas impaired. He became again feverish, restless, and depressed. Too illand weak as yet to write for himself, he read with grateful eyes hismother's allusions to the kind and sympathetic missives sent her by Mrs.Cranston, and occasionally, as happened, by Miss Loomis. Gladly, too,did he avail himself of their services in reply. But when it becamenecessary presently to answer those of his _fiancee_, there might havebeen embarrassment but for Mrs. Cranston's tact. She had begun to feel astrong interest in and respect for her patient. So, too, had herhusband, who came daily to sit by his bedside, but who avoided, as muchas possible, all reference to the closing days of the campaign.
As yet the young officer had not been told of McGrath's disappearance,and had not been encouraged to tell of his own experience. Indeed, therewas very little he could tell, but his story was frankly imparted to hisfriend and comrade, Captain Cranston. Much seemed to be a total blank.He spoke with a shudder of his last look at poor Mullen and Phillips,and at the pale, drawn faces of Captain Devers and the troop,--ofanother backward glance from near the top of the ridge, then of theirlosing sight of Devers and his men, and pushing on to the deeper gloomof the east valley. It was then too dark to see, and for half an hour heand McGrath, weary and heart-sick, had scouted northeastward in searchof his party. They had seen some flashes as they began the descent androde in their direction, believing them to be signals, but soon all wasdarkness, all silence, but for the sigh of the night wind. Conscious ofgrowing faintness, he suggested firing a shot or two as signals, andMcGrath obeyed. Then off to the southeast, far from the point where theyhad seen the first flashes, the shots were answered and distant yellswere heard. McGrath considered this ominous, and asked him to wait in alittle ravine while he reconnoitred. In ten minutes two or three shotsrang out in the direction taken by the sergeant, and presently back hecame fast as a staggering horse could bear him, crying, "Indians!Indians everywhere!" It was all up with Davies's party, and their onlyhope was to hasten back to find the command; but the Indians came inchase, and though they plied spur, their poor horses seemed too weak forspeed. How far they got he never knew, but remembered a sudden plunge,his horse's going down, rolling all over him, and nothing more.
"When you parted from Devers," asked Cranston one day, "how far was hefrom the top of the ridge?--how far to the west?"
And Davies answered, "At least two and a half or three miles."
Over this did Cranston ponder long. It ill accorded with what they wrotehim from the front as Devers's story.
"You write to Mr. Davies's mother, Agatha," Mrs. Cranston had said. "Ihaven't time for both, but I'll take care of Miss Quimby." Just whatmight be the tone and tenor of that young lady's letters to herprostrate lover Mrs. Cranston could not positively say, as no one sawthem but himself, but she was ready to hazard a something more than mereconjecture when Miss Quimby took to writing to her as well. As was herwont when moved, Mrs. Margaret unbosomed herself to her lord. "I've nopatience with the girl," she said. "She'll worry him to death. If shewrites such silly, romantic trash to me, what mustn't she be saying tohim? What on earth can he ever have seen in her?"
Now, that's just one thing no woman can find out,--what a man can see toadmire in one in whom she sees nothing. It didn't help matters thatCranston, in his conservative, whimsical way, should counsel silence andpatience. What woman can be silent under strong provocation? What womancan patiently abide the personal application of a general rule?
"I don't suppose there ever was a match yet of which some woman didn'tsay she couldn't see what he saw," said Cranston, deprecatingly; andthen, with one of his whimsical grins, began to add, "Let's see, wasn'tit Kitty Benton who said, when she heard of our engagement, thatshe----" But he got no further in face of his wife's impetuous outbreak:
"That's simply hateful in you, Wilbur, and you know it as well as I do.She knew me only slightly, for we were not in the same set at school atall----"
"Well,--still, didn't she know you rather better than you do MissQuimby, whom you never saw at all?"
"I don't care. I know what she's like," answered Mrs. Meg, with flushingcheeks. And that was really before poor Almira's first letter came, andif Mrs. Cranston thought she was right before, she knew it when she readnow.
The closing paragraph of a long, almost incoherent missive must suffice.Even Cranston's lips twitched under the heavy thatch of his moustache ashe listened. Even we, who like Mrs. Cranston, must admit it wasn't quitekind in her, no matter how natural, to read it afterward to AgathaLoomis, who, although declining to read, did not quite decline to hearat least a line or two.
"If you knew how I suffered--what tortures of anxiety, what nights of sleeplessness and woe, tossing on fevered pillow, tortured with visions of my beloved nobly fallen on the field of battle and pining for the touch of this hand--you would indeed pity me; but my father is inflexible. He refuses his daughter the poor boon of flying to the stricken lover's side,--her husband that is to be. In vain have I pointed out that I ask no sweeter bliss than to share my Percy's lot, for weal or woe, to live in the humblest cot, a tent, a hovel even, with only a crust,--it meets only his scornful refusal. When my arms are eagerly outstretched to enfold my soldier hero, I have to be content with nursing day and night his afflicted mother, whom for his sake I love as I would my own, had she not been taken from me years ago when I was but an unsophisticated child. When I think of you privileged to sit by his delirious bedside, cooling his fevered brow, I envy you as I never thought to envy any woman on earth since, long years ago, my Percy blessed me with his love; and now if after all he should be taken, or if some proud lady should win him from his simple little village maid, there would be no refuge fo
r me but the grave."
"Now," said Mrs. Cranston, "something besides the bedside is deliriousin that case. No wonder the poor fellow is picking up so slowly."
"Well, wait a little," responded her conservative lord and master."Seems to me a man ought to rejoice in knowing that the arms of lovelywoman are outstretched in eagerness to enfold him. Now, if I werehe----"
"Yes, if you were he I've no doubt you'd be off to Urbana by firsttrain; but this young man has some sense in his head" (here Cranstonbegan to finger his own skull tentatively), "and in losing his freedomhasn't entirely parted with his wits."
"Was that--my predicament?" asked Cranston, looking plaintively up.
"Well, at least I have to do your thinking for you, and what you have todo is help him here. Have you had any talk with him about--about whatCaptain Truman and Mr. Gray wrote?"
"Certainly not, Meg," answered Cranston, becoming grave at once, "and Ido not mean to until he is well enough to hear it."
"Well, the more I know of him the more I know it's utterly untrue.Hasn't anything been heard yet of Sergeant McGrath?"
"Not a word. Even friendly Indians say they haven't an idea what couldhave become of him." And Cranston's face was both anxious and troubled.
The matter was indeed one to give him deep concern. The massacre of thelittle detachment from Warren's battalion late in September--all of themmembers of Devers's troop--had brought down sharp and deservedcriticism, and there was every prospect that the matter would beofficially investigated just as soon as the department commander couldturn his attention from the rounding up of the hostile band still atlarge. Meantime, between Warren and his senior troop commander, CaptainDevers, strained relations existed,--the former holding to the theorythat the responsibility for the disaster lay with Devers and no oneelse, the latter volubly, plausibly, incessantly protesting against theimputation as utterly unjust, indeed, as utterly outrageous, and movingheaven and earth to unload the entire blame on the shoulders of theabsent and defenceless.
Now, as a rule this is an easy matter, almost as easy in the army as outof it, and had his accuser been any other captain in the entire fieldcolumn, poor Davies might indeed have been prejudged; but with Devers itwas different. His idiosyncrasies were notorious. His whole mental andmoral fabric was one of antagonism to his fellows in general and hisseniors in particular. It was said, and generally said, of him that themere fact that everybody liked or respected a man was enough to setDevers dead against him. The fact that Mr. Davies had thrown up hisgraduating leave and sought instant service in the field as a result ofthe tragedies of the early days of the campaign had won him instantlythe interest and good will of officers and men throughout the entirecommand. He started well, so to speak, and his quiet, reticent,observant, but unobtrusive ways favorably impressed his regimentalcomrades and led to many a commendatory remark from veteran officers.But there was universal comment, half humorous, half commiserating, uponhis assignment to Devers's troop, and Devers knew it. He treated theyoung man with cool civility at first, but became speedily captious andirritating, rebuking him openly in the presence and hearing of otherofficers and of enlisted men for matters for which he was not justlyblamable. Old Winthrop spoke to Devers about it one day, and spokeseriously. "You'll disgust that young gentleman with the service ifyou're not careful, Devers," said he, "and be the means of depriving usof a good officer."
"That's just where I'm compelled to differ with you, colonel," was theresponse, and it was this propensity for differing that had led to hissobriquet. "I've had constant and daily opportunity of observing him,and he's mistaken his vocation. That young man should be a missionary ora Sunday-school superintendent. He's too pious for Indian fighting,which is the only thing expected of us."
But for weeks after there was no Indian fighting. What had become of theswarms of red warriors that had swooped upon the front, flank, and rearearlier in the campaign no one could say. Their trails led all over thenorthwest, and the pursuing column pushed on night and day in dust andsun-glare, in mud and rain, in pelting hail-storm and darkness, andnever once until late in the autumn could they again come withinstriking distance. By that time the jaunty riders of the earlyspring-tide were worn to skeletons; the mettlesome horses--those thatwere left--barely able to stagger through weakness, exhaustion, andstarvation. Then like prairie wolves the warriors closed once more aboutthe jaded flanks, waiting, watching every chance of picking off thestragglers. Just one day did Differs's troop get under fire,--a long wayfrom under, said satirical subalterns of a command that sustained somelosses,--but so scientifically did the captain handle his men that not atrooper or horse was scratched. Mr. Davies on this occasion commanded aplatoon, dismounted on the skirmish line. It was his first affair, andhe kept his appropriate thirty paces in rear of his dispersed men towatch and direct their fire, expecting that the enemy would charge orattack or do something, he didn't know just what. He simply behaved ashe had been taught at skirmish drill at the Point,--was ready to do hisfull duty, but having no experience in Indian battle, thought it hisbusiness to wait orders, which was precisely what Differs had told himto do, until attacked. All the same, when others twitted Devers on thefact that his troop "didn't seem to get in," that officer did nothesitate to respond that they'd have to settle that with theiradmiration, Mr. Davies, who was commanding the fighting line, butprobably wasn't done saying his prayers. There was a lively, rattlingskirmish next morning between the rear-guard and the Indians, and at onetime things looked as though the thinned battalion of their comrades ofthe --th might be cut off, and some of Devers's regiment thought therearmost troops ought to be deployed in support of the fellows who werefighting off the warriors, who came charging after them over wave afterwave of prairie. But Devers couldn't see it in that light. He wasbringing up the rear of his own regiment. Indeed, not until the fatalday of their _debouchement_ from the Bad Lands and sighting the broadvalley of the Ska had Devers's men felt the sting of Indian lead, andthen he was not with them.
And now while the worn and ragged commands lay basking day after day inthe warm October sunshine at Camp Recovery, and men for the time hadnothing to do but eat and sleep and discuss the events of the latecampaign, the Eleventh was in turmoil over the tragedy of AntelopeSprings.
When Davies was finally found that morning by Warren's scouts, he waslying in a depression of the prairie at least a mile to the west of thepoint where that long--that fatally long--curtaining ridge sank into thegeneral level of the valley, and therefore full four and a half or fivemiles away from the point where his little detachment had died fighting,and very nearly two miles south, or west of south, of the point where heand McGrath had last been seen by their comrades,--just at dusk,--justat what looked to be the comb or crest of the ridge from the point whereDevers had halted his troop and made the dramatic display of his dead.But what looked to be the crest from the west was in point of fact notthe crest at all. Invisible to the halted command, there lay stillfarther over to the eastward, where the spur seemed to broadenconsiderably, a wave that overtopped the westward edge by a dozen feetor more. Supposing from Devers's account that the trail of his commandcould be found distinctly marked along the westward slope and closeunder the crest, Warren was searching there with his scouts whenattracted by the signals two miles to the south announcing probablyimportant discoveries. He had found some Indian pony tracks, also thoseof one shod horse, but dropped everything else to go at once in answerto the signals. Then they had borne the unconscious officersoutheastward toward the clump of trees at the Springs, placed him inthe ambulance, and then came a courier from the general himselfdirecting Major Warren to report to him in person at Birchwood, thirtymiles away, and the major went, the ambulance following. And so, to hisunspeakable relief, Captain Devers was left once more the senior officeron the ground to continue the search for McGrath, and in the conduct ofthis he took excellent care that only himself and one or two of hischosen should search any portion of the prairie that might involverunning over
the trail west of the ravine which he had made the previousday. The scouts and searching parties were kept in the valley and in thetimber along the river, not on the back track. _That_ search Deversconducted in person, and made a rough topographical sketch of theneighborhood as it appeared in his eyes and as he wished it to appear inthose of others. Just before dusk, sounding the rally far up the spur,he rode to the point where his two hunters had met their fate, andthere assembled his men, gathering some fifty troopers, and thence ledthem in column of twos southward close under the spur and well to theeast of the ravine which on the previous day had partially caused hiswide departure from the line of direction indicated to him by the major.It was therefore very late, and his men were very tired,--much too tiredto sit up and talk,--when they got to camp.
Pursuing its homeward march, the main column under the generalcommanding had gone on through the wild hill country, and not untilnearly a month had elapsed was the scene of the tragedy revisited. Theofficer who went thither with an escort, and Captain Devers and CorporalFinucane and Troopers Boyd and Howard, had had pointed out to him thescene of the massacre itself, then, far up the spur, the spot whereMullen and Phillips were shot, and from thence the trail of Davies'slittle squad as it marched away on its fatal errand toward the Springs,and the trails of the various parties. Off to the southwest went Trumanin chase of the murderers,--off after Truman went Calvert and theinvalid corps,--off straight to the south--to the river--along thewestward side of the ridge, far to the east of the ravine and closeunder the crest, went another; that, he was assured, was the trail madeby Captain Devers. Many of these trails, said the officer's report, werenow dim and nearly effaced, "but there can be no mistaking that ofCaptain Devers along the spur,--it is quite sharp and clear. It isn'tmore than five hundred yards from the point where Mr. Davies andSergeant McGrath had disappeared over the ridge to the nearest point onthe trail, where--while Captain Devers couldn't be sure--his troopersare positive Mr. Davies had left to return to his men, and where theyare also positive the captain had again enjoined upon him the necessityof vigilance, and reminded him that as it was growing dark he could nolonger see, and must therefore depend upon his lieutenant to keep himinformed of what was going on over on that side, as under his new ordershe, Captain Devers, must now go on and bury his dead. Mr. Davies and hissergeant must have seen the attack just as soon as they got back acrossthe ridge, but what they did and why they had not instantly warned theircaptain remains a mystery. At all events it would seem that CaptainDevers," so concluded the report, "had conscientiously carried out hisinstructions, though he might perhaps, if unburdened with his dead, havekept higher up towards the crest, and should perhaps have detached acouple of flankers to keep communication, and so relied less onLieutenant Davies, who was at least inexperienced in frontier warfare."The officer could not understand how it was that in broad daylight MajorWarren when searching had failed to see Devers's trail. It certainly wasthere. And so the old, old story was told again. The absent it was whohad to take care of himself, and Devers was inferentially "whitewashed"and Davies held to explain, when convalescent, and McGrath tosubstantiate his statement if McGrath ever again turned up on earth.Otherwise there could be no substantiation until the judgment day. Now,McGrath, lost in the thick of an Indian fight, was as apt to be foundalive, or found at all, as a pin in a mill-pond. Davies, broken by thecampaign and sore smitten with brain fever, had but one chance in ahundred of recovery. All things considered, therefore, it may beconceded that Captain Devers was a very gifted man.
But Devers wasn't the first man, or the last, to count on anotherfellow's death or disappearance to cloak his own crime. It gave him aqueer turn to hear that Cranston and his wife and niece had undertakenthe building up of the absent patient. He hated Cranston,--his junior asan officer, but infinitely his superior as a soldier. He feared him whenword came out to the homeward marching command that Cranston said Davieswas on the mend and would soon be on the war-path. But he drew anotherlong breath of relief when there reached them the news that GeneralSheridan himself had telegraphed directing Davies to hasten home, thathis mother was dying. When next that young officer appeared upon thescene and reported for duty, it was in midwinter at Fort Scott, a big,brilliant, sunshiny post, the head-quarters of an infantry regiment, thestation of a cavalry battalion, whose major, Warren, had gone on longleave abroad, whose senior captain, Devers, was its commander _protempore_, whose other captains, Cranston, Truman, and Hay, were presentfor duty; so were most of their subalterns, so were most of the infantryofficers, so were the wives and families of nine-tenths of the array,for it was a much-married garrison, and there was not a little talk andspeculation when it was announced that Lieutenant Davies would comeaccompanied by his bride.