Mr. Barnard, therefore, was more intent on humming the tenor part of "See the Pale Moon" than of affording Mrs. Truscott any information as to rumors of the orders sending additional troops to the field, but her anxiety was only slightly appeased by his airy dismissal of the subject.

"Indeed, Mrs. Truscott, I would not feel any concern in the matter; with the forces now concentrated up there in the Yellowstone country, the result is a foregone conclusion. The Indians will simply be surrounded and starved into surrender."

At last they went. Mr. Ferris with evident reluctance and not until he had plainly received intimation from Miss Sanford that it was more than time. Knowing Mrs. Truscott well, she could see what was imperceptible to their visitors, that the strain was becoming almost unbearable. The moment they were gone she turned to her friend.

"I must write a short letter before going to bed, Grace dear. Now go to him at once;" then impulsively she threw her arms around her. "I shall pray it is not true," she murmured, then turned and ran quickly to her room.

Mrs. Truscott closed and bolted the front door, turned out the parlor lights, and stepped quickly to the library; then she paused a moment before turning the knob: her heart was beating heavily, her hands trembling. She strove hard to control the weakness which had seized her, and, for support, rested her head upon the casement and took two or three long breaths; then with a murmured prayer for strength she gently opened the door, and the soft swish of her trailing skirts announced her presence.

His back was towards her as she entered; he was seated in a low-backed library-chair, with both elbows upon the writing-table before him, and resting his head upon the left hand in an attitude that was habitual with him when seated there thinking. Before him, opened, lay a long letter,—the adjutant's letter from Hays. A pen was in his hand, but not a scratch had he made on the virgin surface of the paper. Truscott never so much as wrote the date until he had fully made up his mind what the entire letter should be, and he had far from made up his mind what to say in this.

Without a word Mrs. Truscott stole quietly up behind him. He had been expecting her any moment; he knew well she would come the instant her visitors left her free; he was listening, waiting for her step, and had heard Miss Sanford trip lightly up-stairs. Then came the soft, quick pitapat of her tiny feet along the hall and the frou-frou of the skirts,—never yet could he hear it without a little thrill of passionate delight. He half turned in readiness to welcome her, his love, his wife; then came her pause at the door,—a new, an unknown hesitancy, for from the first he had taught her that she alone could never be unwelcome, undesired, no matter what his occupation in the sanctum, and Jack's heart stood still while hers was throbbing heavily. Could she have heard? Could she have suspected? Must he tell her to-night? He turned again to the desk as she entered, and waited for—something he loved more than he could ever tell,—her own greeting.

Often when he was reading or writing during the day, and she, on household cares intent, was tripping lightly about the house, singing sweetly, softly as she passed the library, and bursting into carolling melody when at undisturbing distance away, it was odd to note the many little items that required her frequent incursions on the sanctum itself,—books to be straightened and dusted, scraps of writing-paper to be tidied up, maps to be rolled and tied. Mollie, the housemaid, could sweep or tend the fires in that domestic centre, the captain's den, but none but the young housewife herself presumed to touch a pen or dust a tome. Jack's mornings were mainly taken up at the barracks, riding-hall, or in mounted drill far out on the cavalry plain, whence his ringing baritone voice could reach her admiring ears and—for it was only honeymoon with her still—set her to wondering if it really were possible that that splendid fellow were her own, her very own; and time and again Mrs. Grace would find herself stopping short in her avocation and going to the front windows and gazing with all her lovely brown eyes over to the whirling dust-cloud on the eastern plain and revelling in the power and ring of Jack's commanding voice, and going off into day-dreams. Was it possible that there had been a great, a fearful war, in which the whole country was threatened with ruin, and hundreds of men had made wonderful names for themselves, and Jack not one of them,—Jack, her hero, her soldier beyond compare? Could it be that the war was fought and won without him? But then, who could be braver in action, wiser in council, than he? Did not the —th worship him to a man? Was not Indian fighting the most trying, hazardous, terrible of all warfares, and was not Jack pre-eminent as an Indian-fighter? Was there not a deep scar on his breast that would have been deeper and redder but for her little filmy handkerchief that stopped the cruel arrow just in time? Was any one so gallant, so noble, so gentle, so tender, true, faithful,—um-m-m,—sweet? was the way Mrs. Grace's intensified thoughts would have found expression, had she dared, even to herself, to give them utterance? And he loved her! he loved her! and—heavens and earth! but this isn't practising, or housework either; and pretty, happy, blushing Mrs. Truscott would shake herself together, so to speak, and try to get back to the programme of daily duty she had so conscientiously mapped out for herself. Perhaps it was because she accomplished so little in the mornings that, when Jack betook himself to his study for his two hours of reading or writing in the afternoon, his witching wife would find such frequent need of entering. At first she had been accustomed to trip in on tiptoe after a timid little knock and the query, "Do I disturb you, Jack dear?"—a query which he answered with quite superfluous assurance to the contrary. Later, even after their wise conclusion that they must be rational, she had been accustomed to put the question, not at all as a purely perfunctory marital civility, but, as she shyly admitted to herself, because it was so sweet to hear Jack's negation and see the love-light in the eyes that soon brought her, fascinated and fluttering, to be folded in his arms a moment. Later still, so confident had she become in her dominion, both knock and query were abandoned, and, unless only five minutes or so had elapsed since the previous visit, she had a pretty little way of greeting him that, though very gradually acquired despite surging impulse, was at last quite a settled fact, and he loved it,—well, he would have been an unappreciative, undeserving brute had he not. She would steal behind him, lean over the back of the chair (Jack refused to exchange it for the high-backed one suggested by Mrs. Pelham on the occasion of a brief visit paid them in March), and, twining her arms around his neck, would draw back his head till it rested on her bosom, then sink her soft, sweet lips upon his forehead. It was this he waited for to-night, and not in vain.

Another minute and he had drawn her around and seated her on his knee, folding her closely in his arms. But soon she gently released herself, slipped to the little ottoman that stood always ready by his chair, and, clasping her hands upon his knee, looked bravely up in his face. No need to speak one word,—no need to break it to her; he saw she well divined that news, and hard news, had come from the frontier,—news which meant more to her than to any woman at West Point.

"Shall I read it, Gracie?" he presently asked, gently stroking the shining, shimmering wealth of her hair,—her glory and his. She bowed lower her head and clasped tightly her hands.

"One word first, Jack. Does the —th go?"

"Yes, darling."

She shivered as though a sudden chill had seized her, but spoke no word. Truscott bent and strove to draw her again to his breast, but she roused herself with gallant effort,—threw back her head and again looked bravely up in his eyes.

"No; I'll bear it best here, Jack. I won't——Read it, dear."

"My brave girlie!" was all he said, as his eyes moistened suspiciously and his hand lingered in its caress upon her soft cheek.

"It's from Billings, you know."

"Yes, Jack; go on."

And then he read to her:

"FORT HAYS, KANSAS, June 6, '76.

"DEAR TRUSCOTT,—Stannard showed me your letter and bade me answer it. There was no time for him to do it, and I myself am writing 'on the jump.' You sized up the situation about as comprehensively as Crook himself could have done it, and your predictions have come true. Eight troops of the regiment left night before last by rail for Cheyenne via Denver, and by this time headquarters and most of the —th are tenting somewhere near Fort Russell, where we are all to take station and wait further developments. The band follows as fast as we can pack up plunder and be off. It means, of course, a permanent transfer of the regiment to the Department of the Platte, and from the mere fact that the colonel and eight companies were hurried ahead, there can be no question but that we are destined to take part in the campaign against Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, etc., and for myself, I'm glad of it.

"But I'm glad you weren't here, Jack. There was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth among the women-folks, and some two or three Benedicts looked bluer than brimstone. You know they had counted on a peaceful summer and a good time, and it's particularly rough on those who had fitted up their quarters so handsomely and had young ladies to visit them, like the Raymonds and others. Most of them have to break up and go East, but as six troops are to take permanent station at Russell, yours among them, those who are ordered there will simply move from Hays to Russell with us, as the officers can choose quarters on the way up; for up we are going, and I'll bet a farm we water our horses in the Yellowstone before we see Russell a second time. As soon as packed I shall move all baggage to Russell, public and personal, escort the ladies thither and see them comfortably settled in their new quarters. Mrs. Stannard, Mrs. Turner, and Mrs. Wilkins (of course) go to Russell with us. Old Whaling of the Infantry is to remain in command there until the campaign is over, as it will be the main supply depot. His wife is an enlivening Christian, a sort of Mrs. Gummidge and Mrs. Malaprop rolled into one, but, barring a sensational tendency and a love for theatricals in every-day life, there is nothing dangerous about her. I'm glad my own wife will be able to remain with the home people, for Mrs. Whaling would scare the life out of her with her tales of fearful adventure in the Indian country, and I don't quite like the idea of our ladies being subjected to her ministrations during the separation. However, Mrs. Stannard will be there, and she's a balance-wheel. Bless that woman! What would we do without her?

"Now, Jack, a word from Stannard himself. He said to write you fully, that nothing might be concealed. Stryker's letter is straight to the point. It is going to be the biggest Indian war the country has ever seen, and one in which there must be hard fighting. Armed, equipped, and supplied and mounted as those Sioux and Cheyennes are, it will take our best to thrash them. Stannard says that you must be influenced in your action by no misrepresentation one way or other. No man in the regiment can say in his presence or mine that you have not done your full share of Indian work, and no gentleman in the regiment will blame you should you see fit to stick to the Point and let the rest of us tackle Mr. Lo. You are the only newly-married man in the crowd. On the other hand, your troop is commanded in your absence by Gleason, whom—well, you know him better than I; and in his absence by young Wells, who is to take his first lesson in campaigning this summer. Just as luck would have it, Gleason and Ray were ordered to Leavenworth on a horse board, and were not here to go with the command. Ray heard of the move and telegraphed, begging Stannard to get him relieved and sent at once to the regiment, but the board was ordered at division headquarters and 'twas no use. Ray will have to stay until the horses are all bought; and I'm bound to say he did his best to get back. For some reason, which I could better explain if I didn't have to write, Ray and I don't seem to 'gee.' He has been offish to me ever since our first meeting here, and was one of the men whose failure to congratulate me on the adjutancy I felt. Then I heard of some unjustifiable though, perhaps, natural things he said. However, let that slide. I wish you were adjutant again, that's all. Very probably the others do too. The colonel telegraphed to all officers on leave, and every blessed one responded inside of twenty-four hours, 'Coming first train, you bet,' or words to that effect. It makes one proud of the old —th. Gleason hasn't chirped, but then he is somewhere in central Iowa buying. They say Ray's brother-in-law is one of the largest horse-dealers, and Stannard clamps his mug and looks ugly when it is spoken of. He knows something about him, and was a good deal stampeded when he heard Ray was being wined and dined by him at Kansas City. But, be it understood, I don't think Ray has any suspicion of Stannard's objection to the man. And now, Jack, I'll wind up this rigmarole. It is long after taps, and the men are still at work packing. I've been interrupted time and again, and this is all incoherency. If you decide to join, let it not be said for an instant that the faintest urging came from us. Address your next to Russell. The colonel forbade my telegraphing you lest it might sound like a hint. My compliments to Mrs. Truscott, and tell her I saw her old friend Ranger off for the wars two nights ago; likewise that young imp of the devil,—the Kid. Tanner's old troop isn't what it was in his day.

"Yours always faithfully, "BILLINGS."

Long before he had finished reading she had bowed her head upon her hands, but there came no sound. At last he laid the letter down, and then bent over her.

"Grace,—darling!"

Slowly she lifted her eyes and looked up in his face. All the light, all the joy and gladness had fled. Her lips moved as though to question, but a hard, dry lump seemed to have formed in her throat; she could not speak. His strong hands trembled as they gently raised her from the lowly attitude in which she had been crouching at his knee. He would have drawn her to his breast again, but she put her little hands upon his shoulder and held herself back. Twice she essayed to speak before the words came,—

"Jack, God knows I have tried to be ready for this. But is there no way? I never thought to stand between you and your duty—your honor. I would not—I would not now if I were—all. Oh, Jack,—my husband, there—there is another reason."



CHAPTER V.

MARION SANFORD.

As a school-girl Marion Sanford started by being unpopular. On first acquaintance there were very few girls in Madame Reichard's excellent establishment who did not decide that she was cold and unsympathetic. Courteous, well-bred, self-possessed, she was to a fault, but—unpardonable sin in school-girl eyes—she shrank from those dear and delicious intimacies, those mushroom friendships of our tender years, that are as explosive as fire-crackers and as evanescent as the smoke thereof. The volumes of satire that have been written on the subject have exhausted the field and rendered new ideas out of the question, but they have in no wise diminished the impetuosity with which such friendships are daily, hourly entered into, and they never will. Ours is a tale which has little that is new and less that is didactic. Army life and army loves differ, after all, but little from those which one sees in every community. Human nature is the same the world over, despite our different tenets and traditions. Boys are as full of mischief and sure to get into scrapes as in the days of Elijah and the bears. Girls have had their sweet secrets and desperate intimacies with one another since long before Elijah was heard of. Nothing one can say is apt to put a stop to what the Almighty set in motion. Let us not rail at what we cannot correct, but make the best of it. Let us accept the truth. School-girls meet, take desperate and sudden fancies, swear eternal friendships, have eternal tiffs and squabbles, kiss and make up, fall out again, and as they grow in grace and wisdom they keep up the system, simply taking a new object every few months. It is one of their weaknesses by divine right, over which common sense has no more control than it has over most of ours.

But Marion Sanford had no such weakness. Being destitute of the longing for intimate and confidential intercourse with some equally romantic sister, she was spared the concomitant heartburnings, recriminations, and enmities. She passed her first year at the school without an intimate friend. She left it without an enemy. Hers was not the most brilliant mind in the class. She was not the valedictorian of the school on that eventful day when,

"Sweet girl-graduates with their shining hair,"

they listened in tears and white muslin to Madame's parting injunctions; but her last two years at the old pension had been very precious to her. Grace Pelham was her room-mate, and Grace Pelham's loving arms had opened to her when, motherless and heart-broken, Marion Sanford had returned from the second year's summer vacation. Between the two girls there had gradually grown a deep and faithful friendship, born of mutual respect and esteem. It would be saying too much to assert that at first there had been no differences. Four years at one school give opportunities which are illimitable, but the present writer knew neither of them in the bread-and-butter period, and was properly reproved by the one and snubbed by the other when, in the supposed superiority of his years and co-extensive views on the frangibility of feminine friendship, he had sought to raise the veil of the past and peer into the archives of those school-days. Partly from school-mates and partly from observation the author formed his opinion of what Marion Sanford had been as an undergraduate. What she became the candid reader must judge for ——self.

For a woman she was reticent to a marked degree in discussing the faults and foibles of others. She was slow to anger, loath to believe ill of a man or woman, truth-loving, sincere, and simple-hearted. She had not been the most studious girl at school. Deep down in her heart of hearts she had a vein of romance that made the heroes of fiction the idols of a vivid imagination. Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, Sir Galahad, Launcelot, William Wallace, Bayard, Philip Sidney, were men whom she fondly believed to have existed in other shapes and names time and again, and yet she was staggered in her faith because the annals of our matter-of-fact days told no such tales as those she loved of knighthood and chivalry. Once—once she had found a modern hero. Heaven only knows to what a wild worship would not that brief dream have expanded had she not seen him. He was the elder brother of one of her friends at school,—a navy officer,—a man who when his ship was cut down by a blundering Briton, and sent to the bottom with over a hundred gallant hearts high-beating because "homeward bound," he, the young ensign, gave his whole strength, his last conscious minute to getting the helpless into the lowered boats, and was the last man in the "sick-bay" before the stricken ship took her final plunge, carrying him into the vortex with a fevered boy in his strong young arms. Both were unconscious when hauled into safety, and that ensign, said Marion, was the man she would marry. She was less than sixteen and had never seen him. The nearest approach to a desperate intimacy she ever had was with that fellow's sister: a girl of hitherto faint attractions. At last the ensign came to the school,—such a day of excitement!—and as a great, a very great concession, Madame had permitted that he should be allowed in her presence to speak with his sister's most intimate friends. She was threatened with popularity for the time being, and Marion was presented. The hero of her four months' dream was a stoutly-built youth of twenty-five, with florid complexion and hair, and a manner so painfully shy and embarrassed that additional color was lent to his sun-blistered features. He had faced death without a tremor and, in the most matter-of-fact way in the world, had saved three lives at the imminent risk of his own, but he could not face these wide-eyed, worshipping school-girls, and was manifestly ill at ease in a very unbecoming civilian suit. Still, he wriggled through the interview and made his escape, leaving only a modified sensation behind. The fatal coup occurred next day when, as prearranged, he came to say farewell. This time Jack Tar had braced for the occasion, and was unexpectedly hilarious and demonstrative. In bidding good-by to his sister he had effusively embraced her, then turned suddenly upon Marion, and before she could dream of what was coming, had caught her in his arms and imprinted upon her fresh young lips a bacchanalian salute that left thereon a mingled essence of Angostura bitters, cloves, and tobacco, and drove her in dismay and confusion from the room to seek her own in a passion of angry tears and disenchantment. Never before in her life had she known such an affront. Never for long afterwards did she worship modern heroes.

But while she sought no intimacies, as a school-girl her friendship and affection for Grace Pelham strengthened with every week of their association. Their last two years at school were spent as room-mates, and then Marion had gone almost immediately abroad. Some hint has been conveyed to the reader of a domestic unpleasantness in the Sanford homestead. Sanford paterfamilias was a successful business man of large means and small sensibilities. His first wife, Marion's mother, was a New York beauty, a sweet, sensitive, refined, and delicate girl; in fine, "a sacrifice at the altar of Mammon." She married Mr. Sanford when she was eighteen and he thirty-eight, and she married him because the family necessities were such that she could not help herself. Marion was their first child, the darling of a young mother's heart, and later, the pride of a fond father's. Yet, before that daughter was eighteen she was called upon to welcome in the place of her idolized mother—who had died after some years of patient suffering—the children's governess. It marred all joys of graduation, so far as Miss Sanford was concerned. She had gone home in obedience to her conviction of filial duty, and had striven to make her little sister and her brother believe that the new mamma was all that she should be. She had been conscientiously earnest in her effort to like in her new role the ex-governess, whom she had found it impossible to believe in before. The effort was a failure, due quite as much to the jealous and suspicious nature of the lady of the house as to Miss Sanford's unconquerable prejudice. Pretences for rupture were easily found; the rupture came; Mrs. Sanford did all the talking, Miss Sanford said nothing. When her father came home from the city he found his new wife in tears and his daughter fled. The Frenchman who wrote les absents ont toujours tort was undoubtedly thinking of the field as left in possession of a woman, and that Mrs. Sanford's recital of the trouble was a finished calumny at Marion's expense we are spared the necessity of asserting. In her few words written to her father that day, Miss Sanford simply said that she was going to pay a brief visit to the Zabriskies; but in less than a fortnight, with his full consent and a liberal allowance, she went with them abroad. That his experiences in his new marital relations were not blissful we may conjecture from the fact that he soon found reason to believe that he couldn't believe Mrs. Sanford. Unbelief grew to conviction and developed into profound distrust. Still, as she not infrequently had to remind him, she was his lawfully wedded wife, and held the fort. He aged rapidly, and his struggles for the mastery were futile. She was young, active, healthy, and wise as the serpent. He mourned for his absent daughter, and when, yielding to her own yearnings, she returned to America in the spring of the Centennial year, he sent for her to come to him. She went, and remained as long as she could, but in leaving, she told him, with eyes that filled and lips that quivered but never shrank, that it was her last visit so long as her step-mother remained beneath the roof, and he broke down and sobbed like a little child, but sought not to dissuade her.

"Her mother's fortune," said the Mrs. Grundys of Fort Hays, was now her own; but her mother had no fortune, and if she had, it would have been shared by the two other children. In the old days her father had laughingly bought and set aside for Marion's own account some government bonds and some railway stocks; the latter at time of purchase being practically drugs on the market. In fifteen years they were at a heavy premium. When it came to parting, he had placed these bonds with all their unclipped coupons to her credit at his banker's, and she was mistress of a little fortune it seemed to her, which, added to the liberal allowance he insisted on keeping up, gave her far more than she could ever spend on herself even were her tastes extravagant.

She dressed richly; she would have nothing that was not of the best, but she was never wasteful. It had been her habit to keep accurate account of her expenditure, and to send her father a quarterly balance-sheet that was a delight to his pragmatical eyes. He would have doubled her allowance her last two years at school, but she would not agree to it. She was in deep mourning and in sore distress, and money was the one thing she had no use for. All the same he paid it to her account, as he termed it, and in due time the money became her own. She had loved him dearly despite his rough exterior and what she thought his lack of appreciation of her gentle mother. But when he married the governess before that second winter's snow had mantled the hallowed grave, her soul rebelled in indignation and dismay. For a year her heart had held out against him, and softened only when she saw that he was breaking under the self-imposed burden,—a shrewish second wife. However, Mrs. Sanford "held the fort," as has been said, and Marion, high-spirited, sensitive, refined, and loving, was entering on her twentieth year—without a home.

Was she pretty? Yes. More than pretty, said those who knew her best. She was simply lovely. But alas for those to whom disappointment is sure to come, she was a decided blonde.

A fairer, lovelier, whiter skin than Marion Sanford's was rarely seen; her complexion was wellnigh faultless, her eyes were large, clear, full of thought and truth and expression, and in tint a deep, deep blue, shaded, like Grace Truscott's, with curling lashes, not so long, but thick and sweeping; her hair was too dark, perhaps, for the purity of her blond complexion. It was a shining, wavy brown, very soft, thick, and luxuriant. She would be far more striking, said her commentators, had she real blond hair, but those who grew to know her well soon lost sight of the defect. Her mouth was a trifle large, but her teeth were perfect, and the lips so soft, so sweetly curved, that one readily forgave the deviation from the strict rule of facial unity when watching her frequent smiles. In stature she was perhaps below, as Grace was above, the medium height of womanhood, but her figure was exquisite. Her neck and arms were a soft and creamy white, and the perfection of roundness and grace. "She must lace fearfully," was the invariable comment of the sisterhood on first acquaintance. In truth, she did not lace at all. It was a fault beyond her control, but her waist was perhaps too small. Her hands and feet were not like Grace's, long and slender. They were tiny, but her hand was plump and white and might be compressible. It was undeniably pretty, and her foot was always so stylishly shod that its shape was outlined most attractively.

But what would have made Marion Sanford attractive had she been simply plain instead of pretty, was her manner. Cold and unsympathetic had been the original school-girl verdict pronounced because of her distaste for imparting confidences. This was amended in her second year, abandoned in her third, and would have been attacked, if asserted, in her fourth. Over no girl's departure was there such frantic lamentation among the younger scholars as over Marion's. They had learned to love her. To all who were her elders there was gentle deference, to her equals and associates a frank and cordial bearing without degeneration into "confidences." To younger girls and to children Marion Sanford was an angel, the sweetest, the gentlest, the kindest, the most winning girl that lived. No matter who was with her, no matter what her occupation, for them she had ever smiles and sunshiny greeting. It was to her the younger girls soon learned to go in homesickness or troubles, sure of welcome to her arms and comfort in her sympathy; it was to her that the wee toddlers were never afraid to run for "sweeties," or refuge from pursuing nurse-maids; it was to her that girls of younger sets, accustomed to being snubbed and put down by those two years older, would yield the outspoken homage of loyal subjects. She was Queen Marion to the youngsters of the school, brave, wise, and, oh! so generous; while to the chosen few in the class, who knew something of her love for the heroic, she was Maid Marion, but only "Maidie" to one, her loyal and faithful ally, Grace.

She was still abroad in the fall of '75 when that quiet wedding took place which she was vainly implored to attend as first bridesmaid. Three years had elapsed since her mother's death, but her heart was still in mourning. But early in the spring of the Centennial year, after a stormy passage, she was safely restored to her own land, and the evening after the arrival of their party Captain and Mrs. Truscott were dining with them at the Clarendon. There had been a brief, a very brief call from her father and step-mother, and then she accepted Grace's invitation to come to them at the Point. A slight illness of Mr. Sanford's made it necessary to abandon the visit at the time, as she was telegraphed for before she had been forty-eight hours at the Point. The month that followed settled the question as to future relations with Mrs. Sanford. She would meet her father whenever or wherever he wanted except under that roof; on that point she was adamant, and he neither could nor did blame her. And so it resulted that she was once more with Grace and the "Admirable Crichton," as she had been accustomed to allude to him in her letters for the past year; and up to the moment of his return from the city he was the only hero who had appeared to her eyes in that manufacturing centre where the article is supposed to be turned out at the rate of fifty a year. It never had occurred to her that men so particular about the cut of their uniform trousers, the set of a "blouse," or the nice adjustment of the hair could by any possibility develop heroic qualities, and yet Captain Truscott always looked as though he had stepped out of a band-box.

It was late when she went to her room this lovely night in June. It was true that she had one or two letters to write, but they were very brief. She longed to have Grace come to her and tell her the result of her interview with Jack, and she longed to know what that letter would say. Never for an instant had it occurred to her that at a moment's notice a home could be abandoned, a young wife left to mourn, a delightful station left to anybody who wanted the place, and all as an every-day incident of army life. That such things could be expected and demanded in the midst of a mortal struggle for national honor was another matter entirely,—something to be encountered once in a lifetime, and something to be cherished in family tradition as grand, patriotic, heroic, and worthy of keeping in remembrance from generation to generation; but that to do all this merely as a piece of duty because one's particular regiment happened to be setting forth on probably hazardous service, but of a trivial nature as compared with the interests involved in the only war she heard much talked of, why, she never dreamed of such a possibility, and her ideas were no more vague than are those of the general public on precisely the same subject.

Twelve o'clock struck from the great bell over at the tower, and still Grace and her husband remained below. It was time—high time to go to bed, said Miss Sanford, though still perplexed, anxious, and distressed. Grace would surely come to her as soon as matters were decided. She stepped to her window to take a good-night look at the moonlit plain. Drawing aside the curtain, she peered through the blinds. Standing in silence at the front gate, leaning on the iron fence and gazing fixedly in the direction of the library window which opened toward the north, there appeared the figure of a man. A moment he stood there motionless, attentive. Then, without a sound, he swung back the gate, and quickly and almost on tiptoe, it seemed to her, stepped up the walk, passed through a broad, moonlit space, and was as quickly lost to sight and hearing around the corner of the house. She recognized the form and bearing at a glance. The man was Sergeant Wolf.



CHAPTER VI.

AT THE FRONT.

Rare indeed is a day in June! Warmth and fragrance, sunshine and roses, strawberries, straw hats, summer costumes, music and moonlight, soft zephyrs, softer speeches, softest of swains have we left at the Point. Farewells—sweet, sad, sentimental some of them—have been said. The corps of cadets has gone to the Centennial with thousands of sight-seers from all over the nation. They hardly had dared hope for such an unaccustomed delight. They had not expected to go, but went. The nation flocks to Philadelphia, but out in the Northwest some hundreds of its defenders are flocking in another direction. Come with us and take another look at our old friends of the —th. They had expected to go, but didn't.

It is a rare, rare day in June, but where are the soft breezes, the sweet fragrance, the blossoms and the bliss of that month of months at the dear old Point? Rare indeed is the breeze, cloudless the sky, brilliant, beaming, magnificent, the sunshine, but not a leaf stirs in answering rustle to the wind. Far and near no patch of shade delights or tempts the eye. Look where you will,—look for miles and miles over boundless expanse of rolling upland, of ridge and ravine, of dip and "divide," of butte and swale, no speck of foliage, no vision is there of even isolated tree. The solid earth beneath our feet is carpeted with dense little bunches of buffalo-grass, juicy, life-giving, yet bleaching already of the faint hues of green that came peeping through the last snows left in May. Tiny wild flowers purple the surface near us, but blend into the colorless effect of the general distance. We stand on a wave of petrified ocean, tumbling in wild upheaval close at hand; stretching away to the east in a league-long level flat as the barn floor of tradition, and bare as the description.

Far to the east the prairie rolls up to the horizon wave after wave till none is seen beyond. Far to the north, bare and treeless, too, the same effect is maintained. Far to the south, across an intervening low-land one would call a valley elsewhere, the ground rises against the sky, until its monotonous gray-green meets the gray-blue of the southern heaven; but west of south, what have we here? The farthest wave of prairie surges, not against the naked sky, but against a cold gray range, whose peaks and turrets are seamed and sprinkled with glistening snow. Aye, there they stand, the monarchs of the Rockies; there through the short summer sunshine their lofty crests defy the melting rays and bear their plumage through the very dog-days, to greet and welcome the first, faint, timid snow-flakes of the early fall. There they gleam and glisten, no longer as we saw them from the Kansas plains, dim in the western distance, unapproachable, but close at hand, neighborly, sheltering, for we nestle under their very shoulders. Here, to the west, just behind us, no great day's walk away and seemingly far nearer, in jagged outline against the blue of heaven, are the guardians of the old transcontinental pass. Here, to the west, where you see the rugged spurs jutting out from the range, runs the old trail which the engineers have followed, and carried the Union Pacific to its greatest altitude between the oceans. Far out there among the buttes runs that climbing ridge, yet it seems so close, so neighborly with the foreshortening of that strange scenery, that one cannot realize that in its climb it carries the iron rails still two thousand feet farther aloft. For years we have read of the Rockies, and is this possible? Do you mean that here, with this expanse of level prairie before us, we are up among the clouds, so to speak,—far up on the very backbone of the continent, and that is why, instead of towering thousands of feet aloft in air, the great peaks—Long's and Hahn's and Pike's—seem so near us to the south'ard and no higher at all? Aye, call it prairie level if you will, for straight to the east it looks as flat as Illinois, but we are standing six thousand feet higher in air than the highest steeple in Chicago, and our prairie flat is but the long, long slope of mountain-side that begins in the Black Hills of Wyoming—back at Cheyenne Pass—and ends at the forks of the Platte down near Julesburg.

You say it must be up-hill to that ridge that meets the horizon at the east. Is it? Look over here to our left front, a little to the northeast. See that tiny lake surrounded by low, wooden buildings, and approached by the hard, beaten road from the distant town. A pleasure resort of some kind, judging from the streamers and bright flags about the place. It stands on a hill, does it not? and the hill has risen gradually from the west, but slopes abruptly again to the east and south to the general level. Did you ever see a lake on a hill before? How does the water get there? Springs? No. Mark that slender rivulet that runs from far up the ravine at the southwest; it crosses the prairie in the near distance, and then goes twisting and turning up that apparent slope until it reaches the little lake on the hill. The outlet, you say? Yes. From here it certainly looks so, but step forward a few hundred feet and look at the rivulet, and by all that's marvellous! the water is running up-hill.

So it certainly seems, but the explanation is simple. The prairie is not horizontal by any means. It is a gradual but decided slope to the east, and the top of the little hill two miles away is forty feet lower than the point on which you stand.

Then how deceptive is the distance! Across the level to the southeast lies the bustling frontier city. You wonder to see glistening dome and spire far out there under the very shadow of the Rockies. At least you would have wondered a decade ago in the Centennial year. You note the transparency of the atmosphere. Science has told you that at such an altitude the air is rarefied. There is no light haze to soften outlines and to lend enchantment to a distant view. Roof, spire, chimney, all stand out clear and hard, and the coal-smoke from the railway blots the landscape where it rises, yet is quickly scattered by the mountain breeze. Between you and the little town lies the prairie over which the stage road runs straight and hard as a pike until, nearing us, it begins to twist and turn among the foot-hills for a climb across the ridge into the valley of Lodge Pole Creek beyond. Lodge Pole indeed! The creek valley has not a stick of timber far as one can see it. Follow it to its source, two days' trot or tramp up towards Cheyenne Pass, and there you find them, as the Sioux did twenty years ago, before we bade them seek their lodge-poles farther north. How far is it to the prairie metropolis,—a mile and a half, you venture? My friend, were you an artillerist, and were you to sight a two-hundred-pounder to throw a shell into Cheyenne from where we stand, "setting your sights for three thousand yards,"—more than your mile and a half,—the shell would rip up the prairie turf somewhere down there where you see the road crossing that acequia. Cheyenne lies a good four miles away, and is a good deal bigger than you take it to be. But here to the south lies a strange diamond-shaped enclosure,—a queer arrangement of ugly brown wooden barns and sheds far out all by itself on the bare bosom of the prairie. That is called a frontier fort. It is not a fort. It never has been. Even tradition cannot be summoned to warrant the name. It was built after our great civil war, and named for one of the gallant generals who fell fighting in the Shenandoah Valley. It has neither stockade nor simplest defensive work. It is all it can do to stand up against a "Cheyenne zephyr," and a shot fired at one end of it would go clean through to the other without meeting anything sufficiently solid to deflect it from its course. It is a fort by courtesy, as some of our non-combatants are generals by brevet, and would be as valuable in time of defensive need. All around it, east, west, and north, sweeps the level prairie. South of its unenclosed limits there flows a rapid-running stream, down in whose barren valley are placed the long unsightly wooden stables, the big square corrals for quartermaster's stock, the huge stacks of hay and straw, and vast piles of cord-wood. Farther east along this tortuous stream, and on its left bank, too, midway between fort and city, is another big brown enclosure, in which are dozens of sheds and storehouses. It is a great supply depot for quartermaster's stores and ordnance, and over it, as over the fort, flutters the little patch of color which stamps the property as Uncle Sam's. For reasons that can soon be explained only small-sized flags are ever hoisted near Cheyenne. By noon of three hundred days a year, straight from the wild pass to the west, there comes sweeping down a gale that would snap the stoutest flag-staff into flinders, and that whips even a storm-flag threadbare in a few brief weeks.

But it is a rare June morning now, too early for the "zephyr," and nature beams and sparkles even over such bare landscape. The air is crisp, cool, invigorating. Far out on the slopes and side hills great herds of horses and mules are grazing, guarded by vigilant troopers, some alert in saddle, others prone upon the turf. Out along the road from town comes a train of white-covered wagons slowly crawling northward, with stores and supplies for the army up in the Indian country, and down here to our right front, covering the flat between fort and depot, blocked out in regular rows and groups, dotting the plain with gleaming canvas, is the camp of the —th regiment of cavalry. For the first time since the war of the rebellion two-thirds of its entire strength is massed under command of its senior officer.

Morning mounted drill is just over, and the two battalions, having unsaddled and turned the horses out to graze, are now busily occupied about the camp. The soft notes of the trumpet sounding "Officer's Call" has drawn to the colonel's tent a knot of tanned and athletic men in rough field uniform and bristling beards. Those who best know the —th will be quicker to recognize old friends in this guise than when in the glitter of parade uniform or the accurate and irreproachable evening dress of civilization. There is not a man in the group who is not quite at his ease in ball-room attire; most of them have held acquaintance time and again with the white tie and stiff "choker" of conventionality, but the average gallant of metropolitan circles would turn up his supercilious nostrils at the bare suggestion were he to see them now. The —th is in its element, however, for the order has come, and with the coming dawn it will be on the march for the Black Hills of Dakota, and the colonel has summoned the officers to his tent for some final instructions. It must be conceded that they look like business in their dark-blue flannel shirts, their "reinforced" riding-breeches, the substantial boots, and the field blouses and broad-brimmed campaign hats that Arizona suns and storms have long since robbed of gloss or freshness. The faces are strong and virile in almost every case. It is ten days since the razor has profaned a single chin, and very stubbly and ugly do they look, but long experience has taught them that the sooner the beard is allowed to sprout when actual campaigning is to be done the greater the eventual comfort. Occasionally some fellow draws off the rough leather gauntlet, and then the contrast between his blistered, wind-and-sun tanned face and the white hand is startling. Every man is girt with belt of stout make, and wears his revolver and hunting-knife,—the sabre is discarded by tacit consent,—its last appearance for many a long month. Some of the number, indeed, have taken the order to prepare for campaign work as a permit to doff the uniform entirely. Gruff old Stannard hates the blouse on general principles, and looks solid and "stocky" in his flannel shirt; not a vestige of "rank" can be found about him. Turner and old Wilkins, Crane and Hunter, are of his way of thinking, but others who preserve the military proprieties to the last are still garbed in the undress uniform coat. Perhaps they are thinking of the good-byes to be said in the garrison to-night. Less than twenty officers are there who report in answer to the signal, and, having saluted the colonel, dispose themselves on the few camp-stools or on the grass and wait for his remarks.

Some are old friends, and some old friends are absent. It is odd to think of the —th being here in force without Truscott, or Ray, or old Bucketts, the men we knew so well in Arizona. Colonel Pelham is, of course, not looked for: he is far too old to be in saddle on so hard a campaign as this promises to be. Truscott's troop is not yet here, but is under orders to remain in Kansas for the present, and he, we know, is far away at the Point. Ray, with one of the captains whom we have yet to meet, and with Mr. Gleason, is still detained on that horse board,—very reluctantly, too, fretting himself into a fever over it say some accounts, and other accounts say worse. Bucketts, as quartermaster, is behind at Hays gathering up the fragments that remain and shipping property to the new station. Captain Canker is here: he was East with his wife and little ones, vastly enjoying the surf at Cape May, when the telegram reached him saying that the —th were off for the wars again, and within twelve hours he was in pursuit. Four of the group now waiting around the colonel's tent came in just that way.

"Gentlemen," says the colonel, stepping quickly from the tent, "I called you here for a word or two. First, there will be forty new horses here at three this afternoon. They will be distributed according to color among the eight companies, five to each. See to it that they are shod first thing. There will be twenty in the next lot; they are to be left here for Webb and Truscott. Overhaul your ammunition and equipments at once, and if anything is lacking, you can draw from Cheyenne depot this afternoon. I presume those of you who are to take station at Russell will want to go over to see about your quarters, but my advice is that only those who have families make any selection: there will be some changes by the time we get back. We march at six in the morning, so have everything cleared up to-day. There will be no further drill. Those who have business to attend to in town or at the fort can leave camp without further permission. I shall remain here until we start, and one officer from each troop must be in camp, at stables, and during night. That's all, unless somebody has questions to ask." And the colonel looks inquiringly around.

Apparently nobody has, and the group breaks up. Some few of the older officers remained to talk over the prospects at the colonel's tent. Others went to the garrison to rejoin anxious wives and children, and to spend the last day with them in helping get things settled in the new army homes to which they had been so suddenly moved. A third party, "the youngsters," or junior officers, sauntered across the intervening stretch of prairie towards the low wooden building standing just north of the entrance-gate of the fort. In old army days 'twas known as "the sutler's." In modern parlance it is simply called "the store." The middle room of which, fitted up with a couple of old-fashioned billiard-tables, a huge coal stove, some rough benches, chairs, two or three round tables, and the inevitable bar and cigar-stand, bore on the portals the legend "officers'," as distinguished from the general "club-room" beyond.

Seated around the room in various attitudes of ennui and dejection were three or four infantry officers stationed at the post, while at one of the tables a trio of young lieutenants were killing time after morning drill in the fascination of "limited draw." Target practice, as now conducted, was then unknown, or there would have been no time to kill. The announcement languidly conveyed from the occupant of the window-seat, "A squad of the —th coming," produced neither sensation nor visible effect.

A minute more, however, and the door burst open, and in they came, half a dozen glowing, breezy, vigorous young cavalrymen, ruddy with health, elastic with open-air life and exercise, brimful of good spirits and cordiality, and headed by the declamatory Blake, who made a bee-line for the bar, shouting,—

"'An if a man did need a poison now, Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.'

His name's Muldoon, and he's a fluid man. Step out, Muldoon. What'll ye have, fellers?" he asked, with the sudden transition from the sublime to the ridiculous, which was one of Blake's delights. "Name your respective pizens, gentlemen. Come, join us, ye gallants of mud-crushers. What, ho! Poker?" and with one stride he was at the table and peering over the hands: "No use, Sammy,—

'Two queens with but a single ace, Two sharps that beat as one.'

That's no hand to tackle a one-card draw with. Never you mind whether he's bluffing or not. There ain't enough in that pot to warrant the expense of testing the question. Take another deal. What did you say, Muldoon? Whiskey? No! Throw whiskey to the dogs; I'll none of it. Give me foaming lager. That's right, my doughboy ancient. Didn't I tell you to take another hand? What says the inimitable Pope?—

'Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare, And Sammy scoops us with a single pair.'"

"Good heavens! Blake. Give us a rest! Here, swallow your beer, or take something to choke you," laughed the victim at the table, while a chorus of groans saluted Blake's unconscionable parodies. "If you were to be here a week longer I vow I'd go mad. The best news I've heard in a year is that you're ordered to march in the morning. What quarters did you choose?"

"What difference does it make to you, Rags?" put in Mr. Dana. "You fellows will have the post to yourselves all summer, anyhow. We shan't get out so much as a chair until we come back from the campaign."

"Well, the married officers have chosen theirs, you know. Stannard's traps are all moved into No. 11, and they are pretty nearly settled already,—the carpets were all down yesterday. So they were at Turner's. Mrs. Whaling has been helping them unpack for the last three days, and telling everybody what they had and didn't have. I tell you what, fellows, we're going to have no end of a good time here this summer with your band and all the ladies while you're roughing it out on the Big Horn. Whaling says he'll bet a hat none of you get back before Thanksgiving."

"Is it so that Truscott comes here with his troop?" asked one of the captains of Lieutenant Crane.

"Well, the troop comes, but as to Truscott, that's another matter."

"I don't understand you, Crane," said Mr. Blake, with sudden change from his roystering manner. "I thought you heard Ray say that he knew Truscott would be after us as soon as it was settled that we would take the field."

"Ray knew no more about it than you do, Blake," was the impatient reply. "Ray has a fashion of being oracular where Truscott is concerned as though he were on intimate and confidential terms with him. Now I, for one, don't believe he had any authority whatever for saying what he did."

"Well, hold on here," said Blake, deliberately. "My recollection is that Ray only spoke of it as his conviction,—not that Truscott had told him anything; still, he was certain that Truscott would come, and that he would lose no time in getting relieved either. You know he is at the Point," he said, in explanation, to the silent infantryman.

"Well, I'm d——d if I can understand it in him," muttered Wilkins, as he buried his broad face in a beer-mug.

"No, Wilkins, I dare say you can't," was the drawling reply, and the sarcasm was not lost among the listeners, though it missed its effect on the stolid object. "Truscott, Ray, Heath, and Wayne, and Canker, are not the style of men to spend this summer, of all others, away from the regiment."

"Well, here we are, marching to-morrow, and where are your Ray and Truscott?" asked Wilkins, with as near an approach to a sneer as he dare venture.

Blake rose quickly from his chair, near where the trio still continued their game, though by this time far more interested in the tone of the talk than in "ten-cent ante." Dana and Hunter, too, were flushing and looking ill at ease.

"This is no time or place to be discussing regimental matters," said he; "but since the matter has come to it, I mean to give what I believe to be the general opinion as opposed to that of a limited few. Crane, Wilkins, you are the only men I have heard express any doubts as to Truscott's coming, or Ray's, for that matter. I've got just fifty dollars here to bet against your ten that if this regiment has any fighting to do this summer they'll both be in it."

"I'm not making bets on any such event, Blake, and I did not mean to intimate that they were not apt to come," said Crane, conscious that he had been incautious.

"Well, you then, Wilkins," said Blake, impulsively. "I want this thing clinched. It is the third or fourth time I've heard you half sneering about these two men. It's bad enough in the regiment, but you are talking now in a bar-room and among outsiders. By Jove! if there's no other way, I say stop it."

There was an embarrassed silence. This was a new trait in Blake, one of the most jovial, whole-souled, rattle-brained fellows imaginable ordinarily, but now he seemed transformed. For years the regiment had been serving by itself. Now for the first time it was thrown into contact with the comparative strangers of the infantry. These gentlemen, too, were ill at ease at the suppressed feeling in the conversation, but Wilkins was "mulish" at times, and he had a reserve.

"If you know Truscott's coming it ain't fair to bet," he muttered, sulkily; "but you'd better go slow on backing Ray; that's my advice, Blake, unless you've more money than you know what to do with."

"All the same, I stand by my bet. Do you take it?"

"Oh, dash your bet! Blake, I'm no betting man; but you'd better be certain what Ray's doing before you champion him so glibly. Perhaps I know more than you think."

Blake's face clouded a little.

"I don't like your hints, Wilkins. We all know, of course, that Ray has been wild and reckless many a time, but he is disbursing officer of that horse board; he is the man of all others on it to decide what they'll take and what they won't take. Buxton knows mighty little about horses and will vote as Ray does, so that leaves the responsibility with him. He never failed us yet, and, by gad! I don't believe he will now."

"All right! Blake, just you wait. All I've got to say is that if Ray wants to keep his skirts out of the mud he'd better quit the company of that fellow Rallston, and I hear he's with him day and night, and has done no little drinking and card-playing with him already. I don't say gambling, but there's those that do," continued Wilkins, hotly.

"More than that," he went on, after a pause. "When Wayne came through Kansas City, Gleason and Buxton were at the train to meet him, but they didn't know, they said, where Ray was. I heard he was at the hotel sick; been on a tear, I suppose."

"See here, Wilkins, unless you can prove it let up on this sort of talk. Ray told Stannard when he went on this detail that he would touch no card so long as he was disbursing officer, and that he'd let John Barleycorn alone. Now, do you know he has been on any spree?"

"No, I don't know it, Blake, and yet I'm certain of it just from past experience with him."

"By gad! you're as bad as old Backbite himself. Do you remember that time Chip of the artillery was walking down Nassau Street, and a steam-boiler or something burst under the sidewalk and broke his leg? The first thing old Backbite said when he heard of it was, 'H'm! been drinking, I suppose.' Now here's Billings with a despatch. What is it, bully rook?" he hailed, as the adjutant came bounding in.

"Truscott starts to-night, and the horse board will break up next week, so we'll have Jack and Ray with us inside of ten days."

"Precisely. Now, Wilkins, if you want a nice mud-bath for your head, there's an elegant spot back of the stables. Come on, Billings, I'm going to camp."

And with that he left, followed by all the cavalrymen but Wilkins and his associate Crane. The latter held the ground, and, as they were plainly the defeated parties in the argument so far, human nature demanded that Mr. Wilkins should set himself right in the eyes of the reluctant auditors, and so it happened that among the officers composing what might be termed the permanent garrison of the post the first impressions received of Mr. Ray were conveyed by a tongue as ill regulated as—other people's children.



CHAPTER VII.

WAR RUMORS.

The announcement that Captain Truscott had gone to Washington was received at the officers' mess with no little excitement. Questioned as to the meaning of it, the commandant of cadets unreservedly replied that Truscott would not risk failure, but, with the full permission of the superintendent, had gone to see the Secretary of War and get immediate orders to join his regiment. The —th was to take the field at once, said the colonel, and Truscott felt that it was his duty to go. Things looked very much as though there would be a stubborn and protracted Indian war, and undoubtedly the captain was right in his view of the matter. In this opinion there was general acquiescence among the staff and artillery officers present,—it is always safe to adhere to general principles which are not apt to be personal in their application, and the staff and artillery rarely were called upon to take part in such hostilities,—and Mr. Ferris being a cavalryman of spirit was quite disposed to think it the proper thing for him, too, to ask for orders, although the possibility of his regiment's being involved was indeed remote. One or two officers, however, maintained that the principle was bad as a precedent; that hereafter officers might feel it a reflection upon them if they did not immediately ask to be sent to their commands on the first rumor of hostilities, no matter how important might be the duties upon which they were detached. On this view of the case very little was said, but one or two gentlemen whose regiments were known to be marching on the Yellowstone country looked gratefully at the originator and nodded their heads appreciatively. It was mid June now, and except the fight with Crazy Horse's band on Patrick's Day and an unimportant brush with the Sioux on the head-waters of the Tongue River, nothing that could be called "hostilities" had really taken place. "The Indians will be surrounded and will surrender without a blow," said those who sought for reason to evade going; but no man who knew anything of Indian character or Indian methods believed that for an instant. Every experienced officer knew, and knew well, that a mortal struggle must come and come soon, and come it did.

But Jack Truscott needed no such spur to urge him on the path of duty. What it cost to cut loose from all that was so beautiful to him in his happy home no one ever knew. What it cost his brave young wife to let him go was never told. Barely half a year had they rejoiced together in their love-lit surroundings, the most envied couple at the Point,—and there is vast comfort in being envied,—and Grace Truscott had never for an instant dreamed that so rude an interruption could come; but come it had, with blinding, sudden force, that for a time stunned and wellnigh crushed her. Jack had lifted her in his strong arms and almost carried her to their room the night when he had to tell her of his determination, but, once satisfied that his duty was plain, she rallied, like the soldier's daughter she was, and spoke no word of repining. She looked up in his eyes and bade him go. True, she cherished faint hope that in Washington there would be attempt to dissuade him, for she had good reason to know that in the days whereof we write there were officials of the War Department who regarded Indian warfare on the frontier as a matter quite beneath their notice,—one which might of course concern the officers and men actually engaged, but that could be of small moment to the Army,—that is, the Army as known to society, as known to the press, and, 'tis to be feared, as understood by Congress,—the Army in its exclusive and somewhat supercilious existence at the National Capital. Colonel and Mrs. Pelham were there, and Jack would of course see them; and was it not possible that there would be officials of the highest authority who could convince him that his services were not needed at the front, but could not be dispensed with at the Point? Poor Grace! She little dreamed that for such a place as her husband held there were dozens of applicants, and that senators and representatives by the score had favorites and friends whom they were eager to urge for every Eastern detail; and then, even now she did not entirely know her Jack: so gentle, loving, caressing, as he was with her, she could hardly realize the inflexibility of his purpose. The interview with the Secretary of War was over in five minutes, and never had that functionary experienced such a surprise. He had received Captain Truscott's card and directed that he be admitted, vaguely remembering him as the tall cavalry officer whom he had seen at the Point on the first of the month, and whom, after the manner of his kind, he had begged "to let him know if there should ever be anything he could do for him in Washington," and now here he was, and had a favor to ask. The Secretary sighed and looked up drearily from his papers, but rose and shook hands with the young officer who entered, and blandly asked him to be seated. Captain Truscott, however, bowed his thanks, said that he had just left the adjutant-general, and had his full permission to present in person this note from the superintendent of the Academy, and his, the captain's, request to be immediately relieved from duty at West Point with orders to join his regiment, then en route to reinforce General Crook.

The Secretary mechanically took the note between his nerveless fingers, and simply stared at his visitor. At last he broke forth,—

"By the Eternal!" (and the administration was not Jacksonian either) "Captain Truscott. This beats anything in my experience. Since I've been in office every man who has called upon me has wanted orders for himself or somebody else to come East. Do you mean you want to go West and rejoin your regiment to do more of this Indian fighting?"

"Certainly, Mr. Secretary," was Truscott's half-amused reply.

"It shall be as you wish, of course," said the cabinet officer; "but I've no words to say how I appreciate it. You seem to be of a different kind of timber from those fellows who are always hanging around Washington,—not but what they are all very necessary, and that sort of thing," put in the Secretary, diplomatically; "but we have no end of men who want to come to Washington. You're the first man I've heard of who wanted to go. By Jove! Captain Truscott. Is there anything else you want? Is there anything I can do that will convey to you my appreciation of your course?"

"Well, sir, I have spoken to the adjutant-general about some six men of the cavalry detachment at the Point who are eager to go to the frontier for active service. If they could be transferred,—sent out with recruits; we are short-handed in the —th, and my own troop needs non-commissioned officers."

"Certainly it can be done. We'll see General T——about it at once."

That night Grace's last hope was broken by the telegram from Washington, which told her that Jack would be home next day and that the orders were issued.

Mrs. Pelham had stormed, of course, that is—to her husband. She stood in awe of Jack, and had counted on spending much of the summer at the Point. Living as they were at a Washington hotel, expenses were very heavy, and madame had planned to recuperate her exhausted frame and fortune in a long visit to dear Grace, who really ought to have a mother's—"well, at least, if the captain is to be away so much of the time, she will surely be lonely," madame had argued. It was really quite fortunate that he had to go to Kentucky to buy horses. In his absence she might recover much of the ground she felt she had lost in the last year. The plan was fairly developed in her strategical mind, when who should appear but the captain himself, and with the brief announcement that they would start for Wyoming in a week.

Madame could not believe her senses; but either from shock or unusually profound discretion, she refrained from an expression of her sentiments, and Truscott continued his calm explanation. Grace had borne up bravely at the idea of his throwing away the detail at the Point, but had made one stipulation. She should go with him to the frontier, rebuild their nest at the new station of his troop, and be near him as woman could be during the summer's campaign, and all ready to welcome him home at its close. He could not say her nay. Old Pelham's eyes brimmed with tears, but when he spoke it was only to repress the impetuous outbreak of his wife.

"Now, Dolly, no words. Truscott's right, so is Grace. It's bound to be a sharp campaign no matter what your society friends say. By gad! I'd—I'd give anything to go, but I'm too old, Jack; I'd only be in the way. You're right, my boy. You're right; you always are. Your place is with the regiment when there's work to be done, and Grace is a soldier's wife. She's right, too. Her place is near him."

In vain Mrs. Pelham argued that Grace could better remain East. Jack knew his wife's mind. She would be just as comfortable; she would be far happier in the cosey quarters of the big garrison at Russell. She would have Mrs. Stannard, whom they all loved, for friend and companion, and there were a dozen pleasant acquaintances among the ladies there to be quartered. It was simply useless for madame to interpose. Everything had been settled beforehand and without reference to her. The best they could do was to accept Jack's invitation to come to the Point, be his guests at the hotel, and see them off. He would dismantle his quarters forthwith.

And when he returned to Grace next day she was brave, smiling, really happy. She gloried in the idea of going with her soldier husband back to the dear old —th, and she had another plan,—a surprise. She and Marion had had a long talk, and as a result Marion wanted to go too. It was novel. It was almost startling, yet—why not? Several young ladies were already visiting at Hays,—two of them were going,—had gone to Russell with relatives who were married in the —th. Miss Sanford was to have spent the summer with them at the Point. Why should she not accompany Grace to Wyoming and see something of that odd army life of which she had heard so much. If Captain Truscott would have her she knew no reason to prevent. And they all knew that in the captain's enforced absence on the campaign no one could be so great a comfort, so dear a companion to Grace, as her schoolmate Marion. There was only one question, said Truscott, "Will Mr. Sanford consent?"

"I will write to-night," said the young lady, in reply, "and I feel confident of his answer."

Within a week, as we know, the telegram had reached the —th announcing Truscott's move, and that very afternoon Mrs. Stannard, seated on the piazza of her new quarters and gazing southward across the bare parade to the dun-colored barracks on the other side and the snow-capped peaks of Colorado seemingly just beyond, was startled by a sudden sensation in the group of officers in front of Colonel Whaling's. Another telegram. Presently her husband left the group and came quickly to her, hands in his pockets as usual, and with his customary expression of unastonishable nonchalance. Still, she saw he had disturbing news, and she rose anxiously to meet him, her sweet blue eyes clouded with the dread she strove to repress.

"What is it, Luce?" she asked.

The major unpursed his lips and abandoned the attempted whistle.

"Been a fight—way up on the Rosebud," he briefly said, as he dropped into a chair, still maintaining his apparent indifference of manner.

"Yes; but—what was it? Who is hurt this time?"

"H——, of the Third; shot through the face; can't live, they say. Reckon that isn't the worst of it, either. Crook found the Indians far too many for him and he had to fall back to his camps."

"Oh, Luce! Then it will be a hard campaign. What news for the —th?"

"Nothing as yet. We march, of course, at daybreak, and I suppose the rest of the regiment will be hurried up from Kansas. What must be looked after at once is the great mass of Indians at the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail reservations on White River. They will get this news within the next twenty-four hours, and it will so embolden them that the entire gang will probably take the war-path. There is where we will be sent, I fancy. Orders will reach us at Laramie. They say Sheridan himself is on his way to the reservations to look into matters. Mrs. Turner been here?" he suddenly asked, with a quick glance from under his shaggy eyebrows.

"Mrs. Turner? Not since morning. Why?"

"There was a sort of snarl down at the store this morning, Some mention of it was made while we were talking there at Whaling's, and I was anxious to get the particulars. Wilkins was saying something about Ray that worries me. Have you heard nothing?"

"Not a thing, Luce. Did you suppose Mrs. Turner was possessed of all the information and would come to me with it?"

The major looked uncomfortable. "She would be apt to go to somebody, and you were the nearest. Both those youngsters, Dana and Hunter, were present, and they are leaky vessels, I'm told. Turner never tells her anything, but the boys do."

"What a thing to say, Luce!"

"Can't help it," growled the major, thrusting out his spurred boot-heels towards the railing and tilting back in his chair. "You never heard, I suppose, that between her and Mrs. Raymond and Mrs. Wilkins there was a regular intelligence bureau at Sandy two years ago. So you heard nothing about this affair?"

"Not a word; and it occurs to me, Major Stannard, that you look vastly as though you wish Mrs. Turner had come with the details. That's just the way with you men. You rail at our sex for gossiping, and growl when we can't or won't tell you anything. Luce! Luce! How consistent!" And in her enjoyment of her burly lord's discomfiture, Mrs. Stannard forgot for the moment her many anxieties and laughed blithely.

The major had too much to worry him, however, and this was so evident to his devoted wife that her laugh was brief,—it was never loud or strident,—and she moved her chair nearer to his own.

"Is Mr. Ray in any trouble?" she asked, with genuine concern.

"I don't know. Of the officers present at the conversation in the store this morning all I have since seen were infantrymen, whom I couldn't ask. Wayne and Merrill heard something of it and came to me at once because of their regard for Ray, but Blake has gone to town. He is the man who snubbed Crane and Wilkins. It seems Wilkins claims to have a letter from somebody—that man Gleason probably—to the effect that Ray has been on a perpetual tear with the very man of all others I dreaded his meeting. You remember that contractor, Rallston."

"Mr. Ray's brother-in-law?"

"Yes; worse luck! I knew the fellow by reputation before we went to Arizona. He's a scoundrel, and a very polished one, too. Ray is smart enough ordinarily, but if Rallston has been trying to sell him horses there will be trouble sooner or later. I'm more worried about that than over the campaign news. Sorry about H——, of course, though I'd never met him: They say he is a capital officer; but I can't start to-morrow and have this thing haunting me all the way up to Laramie. I'll go down to camp and hunt up Wilkins, and ask him flat-footed for his whole story; then there will be time to write to Ray, or telegraph if need be."

That was a dreary night at Russell. All the afternoon the telegraph instrument at headquarters was clicking away with details of the brief and sudden fight upon the Rosebud, and the officers read in silence the description of the hordes upon hordes of savages that swooped down upon Crook's little column, and whirled his allied Absarakas and Shoshones off the wooded bluffs. "They must have been reinforced from every reservation between the Missouri and the mountains," was the comment, for the whole country swarmed with them. Scout after scout had been sent out to strive to push through to the Yellowstone and communicate with General Terry's forces, known to be concentrated at the mouth of the Tongue. Some had come back, chased in to the very guard by yelling "hostiles." Several had failed to return at all, but—significant fact—none had succeeded in getting through. The last of June would soon be at hand; the forces that were to co-operate—Crook's from the Big Horn foot-hills at the south, Terry's from the banks of the Yellowstone at the north—had reached their appointed stations and even gone beyond, but not a vestige of communication could they establish one with the other. Crook, striving to force his way through from his corrals and camps, had been overpowered and thrust back by the concentration upon him of five times his weight in foes. Terry, sending his cavalry scouting up the Rosebud, found an unimpeded passage for miles and miles; and even as our friends at Russell were reading with gloomy faces the tidings from the front, a little battalion of cavalry, pushing venturously up the wild and picturesque valley, came suddenly upon a sight that bade their leader pause.

Up from among the wild rose-bushes along the sparkling stream, and climbing the great "divide" to the west, there ran a broad, new-beaten, dusty trail, pounded by the hoofs of ten thousand ponies, strewn on every side with abandoned lodge-poles, worn-out blankets, or other impedimenta, malodorous, unsightly. "The Indians have crossed to the Little Horn within the last three days," said the experienced scouts in the advance. Back went the column down the valley to report the news, and three days afterwards two war-tried regiments of horse were en route. From the south, heading for the Black Hills of Dakota, with orders to find the trail leading from the reservations to the Indian country and put a stop to the forwarding of reinforcements or supplies, rode our old Arizona acquaintances of the —th. From the north, pushing up the Rosebud into the very heart of the hostile regions, with orders to find the lurking-place of the swarming savages and "hold them" from the east, there came a command and a commander famed in song and story. Between them and the Big Horn heights and canons, where lay the comrade force of Crook, there rolled a glorious tract of wooded crest, of sweeping, upland prairie, of deep and sheltered valley, of plashing stream and foaming torrent, and there in their guarded fastness, exulting in their strength, mad with rejoicing over their easy victory, lighting the valley for miles with their council-fires, rousing the echoes with triumphant shout and speech, thousand upon thousand gathered the Indian foemen, "covering the hills like a red cloud."



CHAPTER VIII.

AT RUSSELL.

"What do you think!" exclaimed Mrs. Turner, breathlessly, as she rushed in upon her friend Mrs. Stannard one bright morning a week later, "Mrs. Truscott and Miss Sanford will both be here to-morrow. Mr. Gleason escorts them. Why!" she added, in visible disappointment, "you knew all about it all the time. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I only knew yesterday, Mrs. Turner," was the smiling reply. "They will stay with me until their quarters are ready. Captain Truscott and Captain Webb will camp here with their troops until further orders, and you knew, of course, that they were on their way. The ladies were to have gone to the hotel in town, but Major Stannard sent word before he left that Mrs. Truscott must come to me, and I have plenty of room for Miss Sanford, too."

"Won't it be delightful to have them? It will add ever so much to the life of the post," said Mrs. Turner, with visions of hops and parties innumerable flitting through her pretty head. It was a week since the —th had broken camp and marched away. Already they were far across the Platte and up out of reach of all telegraphic communication somewhere among the breaks of the South Cheyenne, and right in among the bands now known to be hurrying day and night, northwestward, to join the hordes of Sitting Bull. Captain Turner had been unusually grave in parting with his wife, but that blissfully constituted matron had shed few tears. She was philosophic and sensible beyond question. What good was there in borrowing trouble? Didn't the captain have to go time and again just the same way in Arizona, and didn't he always come back safely? Of course, poor Captain Tanner and Captain Squires, and Mr. Clay and Mr. Walters and others, had been killed, and lots of them were wounded at one time or another; but heavens! if one had to go into deep mourning every time a husband had to take the field, there would be no living in the cavalry at all! Mrs. Turner was unquestionably sensible, and far be it from our intention to upbraid her. Ladies there were in the —th who spent several days in prayers and tears after they had seen the last of the guidons as they fluttered away over the "divide" towards Lodge Pole, and with these afflicted ones Mrs. Whaling, the "commanding officer's lady," would fain have lavished hours of time in sympathizing converse. She loved the melodramatic, and was never so happy, said Blake, as when bathed in tears. Detractors of this estimable woman, indeed, were wont to complain that she was too easily content with these pearly but insufficient aids to lavatory process; and her propensity for adhering for weeks at a time to an ancient black silk, which had seen service all over the Western frontier, gave sombre color to the statement. The few ladies of the —th who had come to Russell for the summer were hardly settled in their new quarters when the regiment was hurried away, and from one house to another had Mrs. Whaling flitted, a substantial and seemingly well-fed matron in appearance, and one whose eccentricities of costume and toilet were attributable, no doubt, to a largeness of nature, which rendered all care for personal appearance subordinate to the claims of afflicted humanity. All the ladies had gracefully accepted her proffered sympathy, and some had warmly thanked her for the well-meant attentions; but Mrs. Turner was completely nonplussed by the good lady's offer to come and pray with her, and it must be allowed that Mrs. Whaling's visit of condolence had been productive of far more comfort to Mrs. Turner than was expected,—and in a far different way; for that volatile young matron rushed in upon Mrs. Stannard late in the afternoon, choking with laughter, to describe her sensations in striving to be proper and decorous until the venerable black silk had whisked itself off out of hearing. Three days after the —th had gone the band arrived from Hays. Mr. Billings had spent two days at the post in seeing his men comfortably established and in turning over property to the infantry officer designated to be post adjutant, and then he had taken stage to Laramie and gone in chase. That evening, after the band had played delightfully an hour or two on the parade, the officers suggested an informal dance; their own ladies went readily, and Mrs. Turner decided to go and see the hop-room, and once there it seemed so poky to come away without a waltz or two. "The floor was lovely, so much better than ours at Hays, and really, several of the garrison officers danced remarkably well." So we infer Mrs. Turner had satisfied herself by personal experiment on that score. Very properly, the informal hops became regular features of the garrison life, and several ladies of the —th, "grass-widowed" for the summer, were speedily induced to join in these modulated gayeties. What with the band, the influx of some half a dozen new ladies, and the constant arrival of officers en route to the front, the garrison not unnaturally remarked that Russell was jollier now that the —th had gone than it was before.

And now Mrs. Truscott and the very interesting Miss Sanford were coming. This was indeed news! They were to take quarters next to the Stannards, and be Mrs. Stannard's guests until the furniture arrived and all was made ready for them. Truscott's troop, with Webb's, was coming along by rail fast as they could travel in the heavy freight-trains to which they were assigned, and the ladies, Mrs. Webb included, were being escorted on the express direct to Cheyenne by Lieutenant Gleason, who had joined the party as they passed through Kansas City, and who had, doubtless, made himself especially agreeable to the young and lovely Mrs. Truscott, of whom he had heard so much, and to her friend, the heiress from New Jersey. These were details of which Mrs. Turner was in ignorance when she came in to surprise Mrs. Stannard with the news, and, after her first astonishment, Mrs. Turner's sensations were not those of unmixed delight. A whole day, it seemed, had the major's wife been in possession of the tidings and had not imparted them to her. This was indicative of one of two things: either Mrs. Stannard was so reticent that she did not care to tell anybody, or else she had told others and kept it from her,—from her who believed that she had made a most favorable impression on this charming and popular lady of whom all men and most women spoke so admiringly. Mrs. Turner's face betrayed her mental perturbation, and Mrs. Stannard was quick to divine the cause. In genuine kindness of heart she came promptly to the relief of her pretty friend. Without being in the least blind to her frivolities, Mrs. Stannard saw much that was attractive and pleasant in Mrs. Turner. She was vastly entertained by her, and enjoyed studying her as she would a graceful statue or a finished picture. Beneath the surface she had no desire to penetrate. Warm friends and loving friends she had in troops, and women of Mrs. Turner's mental calibre were sources of infinite, though quiet, entertainment. She enjoyed their presence, was cordial, kindly, even laughingly familiar, yet always guarded. Mrs. Stannard's most pronounced characteristic was consummate discretion. She knew whom to trust, and others might labor in vain to extract from her the faintest hint that, repeated carelessly or maliciously, would wound or injure a friend.

But here was a thing all the world might know. Truscott's telegram had reached her the evening before, saying that the three ladies, escorted by Lieutenant Gleason, would arrive at such a time, and that Mrs. Truscott and Miss Sanford would gladly accept her offer. The average woman could hardly restrain herself from going out and seeking some one to whom to tell the interesting news. Few pleasures in life are keener than the bliss of being able to convey unexpected tidings,—when they are welcome,—but Mrs. Stannard knew that the ladies of the regiment with whom she felt at all intimate were over at the hop-room. She had all a woman's eagerness to tell the news, but—she was loyal to the —th, and would not even in so little a thing let others be the bearers. That Mrs. Stannard was a woman capable of deeds of heroism we deduce from the simple fact that she went to bed that night without having breathed the story to a soul. She had a strong impulse to tell her cook and housemaid,—old and reliable followers of her fortunes,—but she well knew that those amiable domestics would be clattering up and down the back yards all the evening, and the news would surprise nobody when she came to tell it next day. She was too true a woman to want to part with such a pleasure. Then she had—ah! must it be confessed?—a little mischievous desire of her own to see how Mrs. Turner would take it, for those who knew Mrs. Turner best were given to the belief that she would far rather have the attention of the masculine element of the garrison concentrated upon herself than shared with such undoubted rivals as these would be; and so, with perfect truth, Mrs. Stannard's reassurance took the form of these words:

"You see I could not make up my mind to let any one know until I had told you, and I've been expecting you all the morning,"—and Mrs. Turner was charmed. "But," said Mrs. Stannard, "tell me how you heard it. I thought no one knew it but myself."

"Oh! Mr. Gleason telegraphed as a matter of course, to announce that he was escorting these ladies. It was quite a feather in his cap to be able to show the commanding officer here that Captain Truscott intrusts to him the duty of guarding anything so precious. When you get to know Mr. Gleason better you'll appreciate that," said Mrs. Turner, with a pout. "Captain Turner can't bear him, and dislikes to have me notice him at all; and what I wonder at is his escorting them. Why is he not with his company? And where is Mr. Ray? If the board has adjourned, I should suppose that Mr. Gleason would be on duty with his men,—he is Truscott's first lieutenant, you know,—and that Mr. Ray would be rushing through to catch his company. Why isn't he escorting them I wonder? Perhaps Captain Truscott had reasons of his own for not permitting that,—Ray was smitten with her, I don't care what Mrs. Raymond says. Have you heard where Mr. Ray is?"

"Not a word. I wish I knew," said Mrs. Stannard, wistfully.

"Have you—have you heard anything about his being in any trouble, in anything likely to keep him from going with the regiment?" asked Mrs. Turner, hesitatingly, yet watching closely Mrs. Stannard's face.

"Nothing in the least that is anything more than a very improbable story, and one that I have too little faith in to repeat. Tell me what news you have from the captain." And Mrs. Turner knew 'twas useless to ask questions. She hurried through her visit, and tripped eagerly away up the row to carry the news throughout the garrison, meeting Mrs. Whaling coming down, and the latter had the start.

And so, before the setting of a second sun, Grace Truscott was once more in garrison, and Miss Sanford, with quietly observant eyes, was forming her first impressions of army life in the far West, and welcoming with sweet and gracious manner the ladies, who could not resist their hospitable impulse to gather on Mrs. Stannard's piazza and greet the new-comers as soon as they had removed the dust and cinders of railway travel, and in the bewildering freshness of their New York costumes reappeared on the parlor floor.