Part 16

How soon Jerry guessed what it was that looked at him from under her long lashes, which was absent when she bestowed her fearless glances upon the other officers, is not made quite plain to his conscience yet. But he was promptly aware of Major Pryor’s determination to prevent him from keeping engagements which brought him into the society of Rosita. No position of authority lends itself so readily to petty tyranny as that of a post-commander, when the incumbent is thus disposed; and that Pryor was thus disposed toward Lieutenant Breton, not only the victim, but Rosita particularly, and the garrison generally, quickly perceived. The adjutant, indeed, though a submissive person, ventured an occasional remonstrance concerning orders manifestly over-exacting, but won nothing by his presumption.

Was picnic or dinner arranged, at the last moment an orderly appeared, presenting the major’s compliments and a special detail which required Lieutenant Breton’s attention. When a much-talked-of fishing expedition, involving several nights' camping, was about to set forth, Jerry was appointed to the escort of some wagons just starting en route to the nearest river-town for supplies; while reproofs, irritably delivered and flagrantly undeserved, were a daily occurrence. Rosita’s wrath, the jocular condolences of his chums, and the no less evident though wordless sympathy of his superiors added fuel to the smouldering fire of Jerry’s resentment. Upon a certain radiant June afternoon this fire blazed.

A full-dress parade had been commanded, for the sole purpose, it was growled, of giving scope to the major’s restless energies. Some trifling fault in the demeanor of Jerry’s troop brought on him a scathing rebuke in the presence of his men, of his comrades, and of the ladies who had gathered to watch such small display of military pomp as their position permitted. Temper conquered discipline. Instead of the silent salute which was his duty, Lieutenant Breton began an angry expostulation, and was sternly ordered to his quarters, under arrest for disrespect to the commanding officer.

Lawrence reveled in its sensation across that evening’s supper-tables. Pryor was right, of course: Jerry had been guilty of grave misbehavior before the whole garrison. Yet love of justice is strong, even in the strictest enforcer of discipline--when the enforcer is Anglo-Saxon. If Jerry should refuse to apologize, or if Pryor should refuse to be thus appeased, the two captains resolved that private statements of the case should go to Washington before further complications should arise for the victim of a personal prejudice.

Jerry, however, in the solitary confinement of his own sitting-room, knew nothing of these plans, and faced a gloomy future through an infuriating present. Dear as his career was to him, he determined to sacrifice it rather than apologize to a man who, whatever his rank, was egregiously wrong. But even if his resignation were accepted under the circumstances of his breach of discipline, and he escaped court-martial, how could he justify to his home people the enmity of his commanding officer? Only by a story regarding its cause which he should feel himself a cad in the telling. And would his proud sweetheart accept the allegiance of the hero of such a story as unstained and unshaken?

When his wrath had cooled and his solitude remained undisturbed, Jerry began to feel forsaken as well as ill used. Tired of the perpetual turning which pacing his tiny quarters involved, he dropped disconsolately into a chair, and covered his face with his hands.

There was a rustle of petticoats, and, with dismayed assurance, he lifted his head. Yes, it was she, the pretty cause of his troubles, gazing at him with eyes that glowed through tears.

'Rosita!' he muttered, in a tone instinctively lowered, even in his surprise, for the sentry posted outside his door was probably within hearing. 'How did you get here?'

'By that window,' she answered, her white teeth gleaming as she nodded toward an open window that looked upon a rear veranda--a veranda which extended the length of 'officers' row,' where the post-trader had rented an unused set of quarters.

Suddenly she sank to her knees beside his chair, clasping both hands over one of his.

'He is a wicked man!' she cried passionately. 'I hate him!'

Jerry rose hurriedly, lifting her as he did so.

'Speak lower. You should not have come,' he said.

'Why shouldn’t I come?' Rosita faltered, tears on her long lashes, her lips quivering like a child’s. 'You are alone and in trouble.'

'Beastly trouble! It is awfully kind of you. By Jove!' he exclaimed, his outraged sense of propriety yielding place to a yet more wounded sense of his friends' desertion in this time of need; 'you are the only one of the lot who cares what happens to any fellow after he is down.'

'It isn’t "any fellow." I care for you, Jerry,' she murmured wistfully. 'But he cannot hurt you, really? Just for to-night?'

'To-night!' he repeated, while discretion fled the field, routed by the rush of a vision of the probable consequences of his wrongs which swept over his soul. 'He intends to destroy my whole career. And he will do it, too, for I shall never apologize to him!'

Sympathy is none the less sweet when it shines in brilliant eyes, and he was not much more than a boy--a boy aghast in the presence of his first trouble. He grew eloquent while he described the gloomy future which Pryor’s tyranny stretched before him.

'The long and short of it is that I am ruined through his confounded jealousy'--

He broke off his peroration abruptly, coloring hotly.

'You shall not be ruined! It is for my sake he hates you! But I will save you!' she panted.

'Nonsense!' he exclaimed, half touched, half anxious. 'You cannot get rid of Pryor; and as I cannot remain under his command without apology, I must resign--which will mean ruin for me,' he ended, with almost a groan of despondency.

She caught his hand, and pressed it to her breast, to her lips.

'Wait! Trust me!' she cried, running to the open window. 'He shall do you no more harm!'

Jerry, his pulses thrilling to those trembling kisses, followed her.

'Rosita! Sweetest--truest'--he gasped, 'you must not interfere! This matter concerns only Pryor and me. I forbid you!'

She turned when she had crossed the low ledge, and flashed a smile back to him--a smile which both bewildered and repelled him.

'You shall forbid me anything--except to serve you,' she said, and vanished among the shadows of the veranda.

For an instant he meditated pursuit, but gave it up as he remembered the complications which would ensue should he be seen in apparent attempt to evade his arrest.

Rosita was a dear little ignoramus, embarrassingly fond of him, he told himself, grasping at his usual common sense, which was perplexed by vague alarm. Yet surely she could intend nothing more than to make a pretty scene as special pleader for his cause with Pryor--a pleader who, unless that officer had utterly lost dignity, would produce no other effect than to embitter the jealousy which was the foundation of this persecution.

* * * * *

Fort Lawrence goes to bed early. By eleven o’clock sleep apparently possessed the garrison, with the exception of the widely scattered sentinels who cried the hour. But the clear calls had scarcely died upon the vast surrounding stillness of the prairie night when they were succeeded by the sharp, unmistakable report of a pistol-shot.

Jerry Breton, lounging, half-awake, beside the veranda window of his sitting-room, was roused to full consciousness and a pang of foreboding.

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

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

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

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

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

'Is he dead?'

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

Jerry shuddered visibly.

'I saw nobody!'

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

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

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

'You saw'--he faltered.

'Speak, lad!' Blount entreated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was life in him--life that lingered after they had carried him to his bed and his wound had been dressed; a mere spark of life, which might flicker out at any moment, although, the major being a healthy man, in the prime of years, it might yet blaze up again into strength. Such was the surgeon’s unchanging report during the next two days to the post, where horror of the tragedy in its midst had silenced gossip, and where even conjecture held its breath.

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

Proof either of guilt or of innocence depended vitally on Pryor’s recovery, as no inquiry had elicited any of the facts which preceded the catastrophe of that night. Shortly after ten o’clock the commanding officer had passed the sentry for a solitary stroll along the rampart, which was a daily habit with him; nobody else had been seen, and nothing unusual had been heard until the pistol-shot.

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

Closely confined to his quarters, Jerry Breton knew nothing of her illness, and each hour of her silence, after he believed that she must be aware of his position, buried deeper his hope that she would confess when she discovered that he had assumed the suspicion of her mad crime. With bitterness he reflected that the devotion of so fantastic a creature was no more to be trusted than her moral principles; and bound though he felt himself to shelter her, he yearned for the happiness and honor she alone could restore to him.

Whether Pryor lived or died, his own career must end in a darkness whose varying degrees seemed to Jerry scarcely worth remark. This story of treacherous vengeance would be told to his own people, and to the woman he loved. Oh, God! How his soul adored her purity, her pride, the girlish exaltation for which he had used to profess a tender ridicule! Had he been cruelly unjust to her, and to those others who were dear to him? Yet would he not have been unutterably base had he crawled to safety across the condemnation of Rosita, whose crime had resulted from misguided love for him?

Like most of his compeers, Jerry had a character which was one of action rather than of thought. In the sleepless thought of those forty-eight hours his boyishness slipped from him forever, and he attained the full stature of his manhood--God help us!--as most of humanity does so attain in the forcing-house of suffering!

Twilight had come the second time when Captain Blount knocked at the door of Jerry’s quarters.

'I think the lieutenant is asleep--and it’s the first rest he has had, sir'--Jackson hesitated.

'I’ve news for him that he will like better than sleeping! His arrest is over!' Blount cried, entering.

Jerry lay back, unawakened, in the only armchair the unluxurious room possessed. Blount stared down at the haggard young face, with a blending of affection and resentment which made a very complete perplexity. Not until he touched the sleeper’s shoulder did the heavy lids lift slowly.

'I’ve nothing to say,' Jerry murmured half consciously.

'I am sure of it, you donkey! Pryor, however, has said something, and the whole crowd of us must beg your pardon, though you have yourself to blame that we suspected you.'

'Pryor has spoken? What does he say?'

'The surgeon will not let him talk; but he insisted on hearing who was accused, and he acquitted you at once. Now I want you to tell me what confounded quixotism kept you silent, at such cost, if, as seems probable from his despondency, he attempted his own life.'

Jerry frowned, and looked away into the gathering shadows.

'Despondent is he, poor chap?' he asked presently.

'Even less thankful to be alive than you seem to be free again.'

Jerry sat upright, his pale face flushing, his eyes shining.

'I? Not thankful?' he cried in a voice shaken to the verge of an utter breakdown. 'I have been in hell these two days, and you have brought me out--but--but--go away, Blount, or I shall make a fool of myself!'

Lieutenant Breton was breakfasting late the next morning, when Pryor’s orderly appeared with an immediate summons to the commanding officer’s presence. War, armed _cap-à-pie_, sprang into existence in Jerry’s heart at this summons. He had proved Pryor capable of tyranny without reason, and could not hope, when the spirit of such a man had been as cruelly wounded as his body, that he would incline to mercy. But in the blessedness of his own safety he forgave Rosita her silence, and, while aware of the perplexities that would beset him, he vowed that no admission of her guilt should be extorted from him.

There was, however, neither wrath nor challenge in the hollow eyes which confronted him when he stood beside Pryor’s bed, and a gaunt hand feebly moved across the counterpane toward him.

'You are a fine fellow, Breton,' the major murmured. 'I beg your pardon!'

Jerry dumbly clasped the quivering fingers.

'They have told me that you flung a pistol over the bluffs,' Pryor continued slowly. 'Of course I know whose pistol it was. But I wish you to understand that the shooting was my fault, like the whole affair. I provoked her with words I had no right to speak; I denied her the mere justice she demanded. Except for your courage I should have brought disgrace upon her, as I have brought death.'

'Death? Rosita?'

'She died last night.'

Jerry dropped into a chair. Death! Rosita!--a creature so instinct with the life of this world that it was impossible to conceive her in the life of which death is the portal.

'Did she--' He shuddered.

'No! She never rallied from the shock of that night. Her father has been here to ask me to forgive the dead. My God! I shall not forgive myself!' Pryor cried, with an anguish none the less intense for the faintness of the voice which uttered it.

Jerry had covered his face, and the other stared enviously at the tears that slipped through his fingers.

'Time is up!' the surgeon exclaimed from outside the closed door.

The eyes of the two men met wistfully.

'I have deserved no favor from you,' Pryor muttered; 'neither is it for my sake that I entreat you to continue silent. There will be no further inquiry into the matter, as the surgeon tells me that I shall recover. So the garrison must be satisfied only with conjecture as to my temporary madness and your magnanimity.'

'It is you who are magnanimous!'

'I loved her; I persecuted her! The death she desired for me was mercy compared to the life which is all the atonement I can make to her memory.'

With which exceeding bitter whisper Pryor turned himself to the wall.

Out on the parade, the radiant freshness of the prairie morning thrilled Jerry’s young veins with an ecstasy of living, and a sharp pang of compassion stabbed his heart.

Misguided, bewitching,--ah, yes, and loving,--Rosita lay dead in the midst of the summer gladness that seemed akin to her. He pulled his cap over his eyes, and, ignoring some cordial greetings, walked hurriedly to the post-trader’s quarters. Presently Lawless came to him in the little drawing-room, which was unfamiliarly dark and still.

'God bless you!' he said, laying a hand on Jerry’s shoulder. 'Those words do not mean much to me. I’ve wished they did since last night. But you will understand from them that I am grateful. Hush! I have nothing to forgive you. Nor had she. Will you come to see her? She never knew that you were shielding her, or she would have confessed; and she wished you to see her--if she looked pretty.'

Pretty, indeed! Poor flower of a people Christianized just enough to suffer for the savage instincts they do not learn to control! She lay with a crucifix between the hands which seemed so childish, and were so guilty.

'Remember her like this,' Lawless continued. Remember, too, that she loved you; not as the women of our race love, when nature is subdued by civilization and ruled by religion, but with the limitless love of a squaw for her chief, knowing neither right nor wrong in her devotion to him. For under her daintiness and her sweetness Rosita was a squaw.'

Across her grave three men kept silence. There is another regiment at Lawrence now, and when the ----th Cavalry remember what they beheld of this story, they glance at their quiet major with wonder for his fleeting madness. Only the surgeon and one or two ladies murmur to their own thoughts, 'Rosita?'

PERJURED

BY EDITH RONALD MIRRIELEES

A lie well stuck to--

IT began with no more than a word, such as a man might speak and forget he had spoken. At the time of speaking, Robbins Nelson was standing with a group of other youths--lads in their late 'teens and early twenties--on the Sutro Station platform. All their eyes were on the approaching train, and all their tongues were busy with a single topic.

Robbins was the youngest member of the group--barely turned sixteen. Usually he hung somewhat unregarded on its edge, but to-day, bold in the possession of first-hand knowledge, he thrust himself into the heart of the talk.

'I looked right down on him, close as I am to you. I was walking along over that cut where the train comes through. Gee, his head looked three-cornered! I yelled, but the engineer didn’t know what I meant. Anyhow, they wouldn’t have stopped--nothing but a hobo.'

'No good if they had,' an older speaker took up the words. 'He was done for. Didn’t speak but once after they got him off. "Don’t hit me," he says. I s’pose when they run into the tunnel and whatever it was jammed into him--'

'He didn’t get hurt in any tunnel,' Robbins asserted. The color flared into his face with the intensity of his conviction. The horrid memory of the man set him to blinking. 'He couldn’t get hurt if he was lying down, could he? And if he was standing up, it’d knock him off, wouldn’t it? It wasn’t any tunnel--'

He broke off, aware suddenly of the smiling ridicule in the faces round him. Grotend, brother-in-law to the coroner who had held the inquest, laughed good-temperedly.

'Go it, William J. Burns, Junior! I s’pose some fancy murderer crawled up on top between stations. Or he got jolted down out of an air-ship. It’d take something like that--'

Grotend was popular with the group. Their ready laughter rewarded the attack. And the younger boy’s crimson misery was an invitation to further teasing.

'You hadn’t ought to be stingy with bright ideas like that, Nelse. He sent you an anonymous letter, didn’t he? Or maybe you saw a man in a black mask beating him up--'

'No, I didn’t!' said Robbins loudly. He cast about desperately in his mind for a means of escape. 'I didn’t see anybody beating him up, but I saw Jim Whiting coming down off the end of the car.'

A hush followed his statement--a tribute to the weight of it. Grotend, his lips parted for a fresh jibe, drew in his breath sharply as though in the shock of a cold douche. Then,--

'You saw Jim Whiting?' he reiterated.

Jim Whiting was brakeman on the local freight, a figure familiar enough to all of them.

'Getting deaf, aren’t you?' Robbins retorted.

He turned his back upon his tormentors and walked away across the platform.

He was not much impressed with the importance of his lie. Chiefly, he was elated that there had come to him a lie suitable to turn the tables. Half-way home his elation lasted, to be crowded out only by the recurring memory of the injured tramp. The boy had never before seen violent death. The picture of the man as he sped past, bloody and misshapen, on the swaying car-top; the later picture of him borne up the street on the improvised stretcher, came back upon him hideously. That for such destruction, for such wanton suffering, there should be no punishable agent, seemed intolerable. And the idea once presented, who so likely as Whiting--

He heard the beat of footsteps behind him, and Grotend, breathing quickly, swung into pace at his side.

'I been trying to catch up with you,' he explained unnecessarily. 'Say, when Jim come out on the platform, I spoke to him. I says, "One of the fellows says he saw you up on top that day the tramp got hurt." And you’d ought to seen him. I guess he knew--'

'What’d he say?' Robbins interrupted.