Chapter 2

"It's Bobby Lanier, meejor, only you mustn't sp--refer--to it." Mrs. Snaffle, when self-controlled, discreetly shunned such vowels as betrayed her origin, a totally useless precaution, since all men knew it and liked her none the less.

"Lanier? Oh, yes, I thought it was Bob I saw a while ago streaking it across the parade. It's bright as day in the moonlight with the snow. What's Bob got to do with frightening folk?" And now he was shaking hands with all three.

"Something very unfortunate has happened, major," said Mrs. Button. "Mr. Lanier was officer-of-the-guard and asked to attend the dance, Mr. Trotter offering to take charge of the guard. Colonel Button felt compelled to decline, and--he came any way. You know, of course, _that_ couldn't be overlooked."

"H'm," said Scott gravely and reflectively. "And who is so frightened?"

"Miriam Arnold; a very charming girl who is visiting the Sumters. Indeed, it looks as though she cared for him. It's no secret that he's in love with _her_."

"Ah, yes. Well, then, it was she I saw getting into the Fosters' sleigh at the side door."

"Oh, I think not! I _hope_ not!" cried Mrs. Button, a flush mounting to her face. "I wanted to say a reassuring word after a little----"

But at the moment Mrs. Sumter was seen coming forth from the dressing-room. Half a dozen women were upon her at once with sympathetic inquiries. To these she spoke briefly, yet courteously, and, escaping on the arm of the regimental quartermaster, came straightway to Mrs. Button.

"You will forgive my girls for not saying good-night," she cordially spoke. "Miriam has been quite upset by a letter from home; and this little--episode--this evening, which she cannot understand as we do, has so unstrung her that Mrs. Foster offered to send them over home in her sleigh. The side door had been barred, but Mr. Horton pried it open for them, so they had no need to come this way, and face everybody--and explain."

"You know how sorry I am," said Mrs. Button. "Of course they are excusable for leaving as they did. Why, where are the others going?"

The music had suddenly stopped. There was a scurry on the part of the men at the anteroom. Several had run to the entrance. Others were following. Some one among the women, with startled eyes and paling face, sprang up saying, "It's fire"--always a dread at wind-swept Cushing. Almost at the same instant the colonel and Scott reached the veranda without. A dozen officers were there, intent and listening. "I tell you I heard it plainly," said one of their number, "and the Foster sleigh isn't back."

"Heard what, sir?" demanded the colonel. "What's the trouble?"

"A cry for help--or something, over yonder. Barker and Blake are gone. There was a stir at the guard-house, too."

And as though to confirm this much, at least, there presently appeared round the corner of the building the sergeant of the guard, in his fur cap and overcoat, and with him a burly soldier, bleeding at the nose and bristling with wrath. One hand covered a damaged eye; with the other he saluted Captain Snaffle, who had edged to the front of the group.

"Sir, I have to report Trooper Rawdon assaulting a non-commissioned officer."

For an instant there was silence. Then Major Scott gave tongue.

"Trooper Rawdon!" cried he, "why he's been with me nearly a month, and now has a month's furlough from General Crook. He's the best man of the escort."

"Refused to obey my orders to go to his quarters, sir, and assaulted me when I tried to enforce 'em. Sergeant Blunt says he won't confine him unless Captain Snaffle orders it."

"One moment, sergeant," interposed Colonel Button. "Has any disturbance--any cry for help--been heard at the guard-house,--or was this the explanation?" And he looked with disfavor on the battered complainant.

"Number Five, sir, hasn't called off half past 'leven. I've sent the corporal to see what's the matter."

"Number Five!" cried two or three men at the instant, and without a word Captain Sumter hurried away, on a bee line across the snow-covered parade, following the tracks of the adjutant.

"Number Five!" repeated the colonel. "That's just back of Sumter's quarters;" and he stepped out into the moonlight for clearer view.

Afar over across the glistening level a few lights glimmered faintly in the row of officers' quarters, bounding the northward side of the garrison, but neither along their front nor that of the westward row was there sign of moving humanity. The moon at its full, in that rare, clear atmosphere, illuminated the post, the frozen slopes beyond, and the dazzling range of the Rockies, with a radiance that rendered objects visible almost as at midday. Only the hurrying form of Captain Sumter could be seen half way across the parade. The Fosters' sleigh, that by this time should have been back at the assembly room, was nowhere in sight. Sumter's quarters were about the middle of the row. Lanier's were at the eastward end. For the moment the complaint of the aggrieved sergeant was ignored. All men stood waiting, watching. Then, on a sudden, two or three black forms darted from the shadow of the middle quarters. One came running out across the parade, hardly slackened speed at the hail of Captain Sumter, pointed back with one hand, shouted something that doubled Sumter's pace, but hurried onward toward the group.

It was Conroy, corporal-of-the-guard. "The adjutant orders me to report Number Five sick, sir," he panted to the colonel. "I found him all doubled up in the coal-shed back of the major's. 'T wasn't him hollered. 'T was somebody at Captain Sumter's. They got the steward over from the hospital, but they want the sergeant and some of the guard to search the back buildings."

"_Who_ wants them?" demanded the colonel.

"The adjutant, sir. Lieutenant Blake's with him. There has been some prowlers--and the young ladies were frightened."

"They are safely home?" asked the colonel. "Then where's the sleigh?"

"They're home all right, sir, and the sleigh went on out of the east gate--to the store, I suppose. Number Six didn't stop it----"

"One moment," interposed the colonel. "Sergeant-of-the-guard, take four of your men and report to Captain Sumter; or to the adjutant. Now, corporal, when was this cry heard?"

"Just after the young ladies got home, sir--leastwise that's what I was told. We didn't hear it at the guard-house."

"Was the officer-of-the-guard over there?"

"Not the--new one, sir, but----" And then the corporal suddenly stopped, contrite and troubled.

"But what?" demanded the colonel, instant suspicion in his eyes and tone. "Do you mean that Lieutenant Lanier was there--out of his quarters?"

"Out of his head, if he was," growled the paymaster, who loved him well and was deeply concerned over his trouble.

"I--I didn't see him, sir," answered the young soldier, but in manner so confused that it simply added to the commander's suspicion.

"Come with me, Horton," said the colonel to his quartermaster, and turning back for his cap and overcoat. Then once again the voice of the aggrieved and importunate sergeant was heard, this time with convincing appeal.

"I beg the colonel's pardon, but if he wants to get the truth as to this night's business, it would be well to arrest Trooper Rawdon, or he'll be off for good and all."

"Find him, then, sergeant-of-the-guard, and have it done," said Button. "Report it to the officer-of-the-day as my order."

III

That ended the dance, but not the excitement. Women and girls were seeking their wraps even before the corporal came, and now went twittering homeward, each on the arm of her escort, except in the case of those allied forces, the wives of certain seniors, who long had lived, moved, and ruled in the regiment, and now in eager yet guarded tones were discussing the events of the hour gone by. With these went Mrs. Foster, her husband having joined the searching party, and her sleigh, instead of returning, being still missing and unaccounted for.

Not yet midnight, and in the space of less than one hour all Fort Cushing had been stirred by the news. A most popular and prominent young officer had been placed in close arrest. A prominent, if not most popular, sergeant, had been pummelled. An alarming scene of some kind had occurred at the quarters of Captain Sumter. No one outside of the immediate family knew just what had happened, and those inside cared not to tell. Mrs. Sumter had hurried away the minute she learned that her husband had gone. The colonel, sternly silent, led his wife to their door, and there left her, saying he had summoned certain officers to join him at once, and she, who ruled him in all matters domestic almost as she managed the children, knew well that when roused he would brook no interference in matters professional, and Bob Lanier, a prime favorite of hers, had in some way managed to fall under the ban of his extreme displeasure.

At the office were presently assembled the colonel, the adjutant, the quartermaster, the post surgeon, and to them came Paymaster Scott. At the "store," the only club-room they had in those days, were gathered half the commissioned officers of the post. At Sumter's there kept coming and going by twos and threes, from all along the officers' line, a succession of sympathetic callers, who left even more mystified than when they arrived. Mrs. Sumter was aloft with Kate and their guest, and, as the captain civilly but positively told all visitors, "had to be excused." One of the girls was "somewhat hysterical." Miriam had had a fright in the dark on their return home and screamed. Something foolish, probably, but none the less effective. No! Sumter thought Mrs. Sumter would need no help, yet he was _so_ much obliged to the several who suggested going up just to see if they couldn't "do something." Captain Sumter was a devoted husband and father, a capital officer, and a gentleman to the core, but the captain could be just a trifle distant at times, and this was one of them.

Another house was virtually closed to question. To the disappointment of many and the disapprobation of a few, Bob Lanier had closeted himself with his classmate and most intimate friend "Dad" Ennis; then, after a brief colloquy with Barker, the adjutant, had caused a big card to be tacked on his door whereon was crayoned in bold black letters "BUSY." But at quarter past twelve the assistant surgeon, Doctor Schuchardt, called, as was known, for the second time, and entered without ceremony. When the officer-of-the-day came tramping along the boardwalk at 12.30, and turned in at the gate, he struck the panel with the hilt of his sabre, by way of hint that his call was official and not to be denied. Ennis, therefore, came to the door, but came with gloomy brow.

"I am ordered by Colonel Button to ask certain questions of Lieutenant Lanier," said the official from the depths of his fur cap.

"How's that, Doc?" called Ennis, over his massive shoulder. "Can your patient see the officer-of-the-day?"

"Not yet, with my consent," came the stout answer.

"Shout your questions, captain," sang out the patient, with much too little humility of manner, yet Lanier knew Curbit well and knew his mission to be unwelcome.

Therefore, in Captain Curbit's most official tones, _ab imo pectore_, came question the first:

"Is Trooper Rawdon in hiding anywhere about your quarters?"

To which, truculently, came response in Lanier's unmistakable voice:

"He is not, if _I_ know it."

"Do you know or suspect where he is?"

"Neither. And there is no reason why I should."

"Have you seen him--to-night?"

An instant's pause; then, "I don't know whether I have or not."

"You don't _know_?" exclaimed Curbit, puzzled and beginning to bristle.

"I don't _know_," repeated Lanier, positive and beginning to rejoice.

"Suppose the colonel tells me to explain that," began Curbit, but Doctor Schuchardt set his foot down summarily.

"Here," said he, "this thing's got to stop;" and he came to the door in his shirt sleeves, leaning half way out, with one hand behind him. "Lanier's in a highly nervous and excited state. He has had a fall--and I'm trying to get him to bed and asleep. He doesn't know--whom--he has seen since he got home in arrest, and you can say so for me."

"All right Shoe," was the philosophical answer. "It's none o' my funeral, and personally I don't give a cuss if they _never_ find him, but there are just s-teen reasons why the Old Man wants to see that young man Rawdon forthwith, and as many for believing he's skipped."

"Then skip after him. You can track anything but a ghost in this new-fallen snow."

Curbit lowered his voice. "That's exactly the trouble, doctor. Go to the back of the quarters and see for yourself. His trail starts--and ends--_here_."

In all its history Fort Cushing had never known such a day of bewilderment as that which followed. Guard mounting was held as usual at eight A.M., and Colonel Button, awaiting in his office the coming of the old and the new officers-of-the-day, directed his adjutant to drop his own work at their entrance and give attention to what took place. Half a dozen other officers, with little or no business to transact at that hour, made it their business to be present, drawn thither from sheer sympathy, as some declared, and downright curiosity, as owned by others. The office building was large and roomy; the colonel's desk was close to the door; beyond it were tables spread with maps, magazines, and papers; a big stove stood in the middle, and a dozen chairs were scattered about, for it was here the officers met one evening each week in the one "book-schooling" to which they were then subjected--a recitation in regulations or "Tactics." Across the hall was a smaller office--the adjutant's--and beyond that the room where sat the sergeant-major and his clerks. The windows, snow-battered and frost-bitten, gave abundant light from the skies, but none on the surroundings--the view being limited to scratch-hole surveys. There was nothing to distract attention from what might be going on within, and all eyes were on the two burly captains who entered at 8.30, fur-capped, fur-gloved, in huge overcoats and arctics. The wind had begun, even earlier than usual, to whine and stir as it swept down from the bleak northwest, and the mercury had dropped some ten degrees since the previous evening.

"Blizzard coming," said Scott, as he glanced at the sullen skies, and Scott knew the Rockies as he did the Paymaster's Manual.

"I report as old officer-of-the-day, sir," said Curbit, with brief salute, tendering the guard report book.

The colonel went straight to business, as he glanced over the list of prisoners.

"No sign of Trooper Rawdon?"

"No, sir. The patrol sent to search in town got back at reveille."

"His horse and kit all right?"

"All right, sir. Nothing missing that he was supposed to have."

"Police notified to watch all trains--and stages?"

"Yes, sir, and Sergeant Stowell, who commanded the paymaster's escort, remains in town with a couple of men to help."

There was impressive silence in the office. The colonel sat with troubled brow, looking grimly over the roster of the guard, the written "remarks" of the officer-of-the-day, and the hours of his inspections of sentries, etc. Barker, the adjutant, had dropped into a chair, a few feet back of the fur-capped officers, and, though listening as bidden, was gloomily contemplating the frost-covered panes of the nearest north window.

Eight men had gone with Sergeant Stowell as escort to the paymaster when, nearly four weeks earlier, he had set forth on his trip. Then the little iron safe was full of money. Seven men had come back with him, when, as the safe was well nigh empty, the paymaster said he hardly needed an escort. Of the eight who started, four were "casuals" who belonged to companies stationed at Fort Frayne, well up in the Indian country, and there they remained when the duty was over. Of the seven who came with Stowell, three belonged at Fort Frayne, a corporal and two men of Captain Raymond's troop, and they came fortified with the orders of their post commander, a copy of which was now in Barker's hands.

"What I don't understand," said the colonel, whirling his chair to the right about and addressing the paymaster, "is how or why those men should be down here."

"It _seems_ simple," answered Scott, placidly, he being entirely independent of the post commander. "From Frayne I had to go to the cantonments up along the Big Horn, and we doubled the size of the escort accordingly. When we got back there these three were permitted to come all the way, whether to buy Christmas things for the Frayne folk, or for affairs of their own, I didn't inquire."

"To whom did you assign them for rations and quarters?" demanded the colonel, of Barker.

"Captain Snaffle, sir--'C' Troop."

"Are they there?--the others, at least?"

"Corporal Watts and Trooper Ames are there, sir. Trooper Rawdon, as you know, is not. He has not been seen about the quarters since some time last evening. Moreover, the few personal belongings he had are gone."

Again a pause. Then presently: "You arrested Kelly, I see, the man who was on Number Five."

"Yes, sir. Both Doctor Schuchardt and the steward said his sickness was due to drink. The sergeant and corporal-of-the-guard are willing to swear he was perfectly sober when they stationed him. The men say he hadn't touched a drop of liquor for a month. He must have drunk after he was posted as sentry, for he vomited whiskey at the hospital. I believe he was doped."

"That he could get whiskey anywhere along back of the officers' quarters," said the colonel, reflectively as well as reflecting, "is not improbable. That it should have been doped, judging from the way one or two have misbehaved, is not impossible. Captain Snaffle's cook, it seems, was indulging some of her friends with a surreptitious supper, at his expense. That, very possibly, is how Kelley came to grief. The others seem to have hidden their tracks thus far." Then, as though with sudden resolution, he turned abruptly again.

"The usual orders, for the present, captain," said he, to the new incumbent. "And you are relieved, Captain Curbit"--to the old. "But I shall need to see you later, so do not leave the post."

"The man that leaves the post this day," said Major Scott, with a squint through the upper and unincumbered panes of the nearest window, "may need a seven days' leave."

"And that, colonel," said a quiet voice at the commander's elbow, "is what I applied for earlier. Pardon me, sir, but I need to know your decision, for I should now be going to town."

It was Captain Sumter who spoke, and the colonel flushed promptly at sound of his voice.

"I had intended sending for you, Sumter," said he, "but these rather engrossing matters had to be taken up first. I--have your application," he continued, fumbling among the papers on his desk. "It is an awkward time--and these are awkward circumstances. It will leave your troop without an officer."

"Mr. Lanier will be here, colonel."

"Here--but in close arrest," frowned the colonel, "and you haven't had a first lieutenant since I have been in command."

"My misfortune, sir, but hardly my fault," answered Captain Sumter tersely yet respectfully. "General Sheridan selects his aides-de-camp where he will, and last month you thought it a compliment to the regiment and to my troop."

"You feel that--you _ought_ to go?" asked the colonel, dropping the subject like a hot brick, and resuming the previous question.

"Our guest, Miss Arnold, is in no condition to travel alone," said Captain Sumter gravely. "My wife decides to accompany her, at least to Chicago, and I desire to go with my wife."

The colonel bit his lip, and bowed. "I see," said he. "Miss Arnold was very much shaken by what happened--after she got home?"

"Rather by what happened _before_ she got home," was the calm yet suggestive reply, and it stung the commander to the quick.

"Captain Sumter," said he, flushing angrily, for no one of his officers held he in higher esteem, "your attitude is that of opposition, if not of rebuke, to the official acts of the post commander."

"Then let me disclaim at once the faintest disrespect, Colonel Button, but--as Mr. Lanier's troop commander and personal friend, I beg leave to say that so far as I know, his offense is one which his comrades have committed time and again, without rebuke."

"Which simply goes to show, sir," responded the colonel, with glittering eyes, "that you do not know the twentieth part of his offense."

For a moment the silence in the office was painful. Men looked at each other without speaking. Sumter stood before his commander, turning paler with the flitting seconds. At last he spoke:

"If that be true, Colonel Button, of course I cannot think of going. I withdraw my application;" and, turning slowly, left the office.

Between him and the adjutant flashed one quick glance. There was something to come yet. The officers-of-the-day had gone--Curbit to shed furs and sabre at his quarters and say "Thank God!" Snaffle, his junior in rank but senior in years, a veteran of the old dragoons, to plod wearily back towards the guard-house for a conference with Lieutenant Crane, commander-of-the-guard.

In the office of the sergeant-major the clerks were busily at work consolidating the morning reports of the ten companies--six of cavalry, four of infantry--stationed at the post. A note on that of Captain Snaffle had already caught the eye of the sergeant-major, who had bustled in to impart the tidings to his immediate superior, the adjutant, and was disappointed to find them known already.

Instead of carrying three enlisted men present as "casually at post," the "return" of Troop "C" had but two. Trooper Rawdon, whose horse, horse equipments, and field kit were safely stored in the troop-stables since noon the previous day, was himself accounted for nowhere. In view of the fact that he had not been seen, and could not be found, there was nothing remarkable about that. With the morning report book, however, there was handed in a copy of an order duly submitted by Corporal Watts to Snaffle's first sergeant, and by him to his captain, which read as follows:

FORT FRAYNE, Wyoming, December 11, 1876.

S. O. } } (Extract) No. 81. }

* * * * *

3. On arriving with his detachment at Fort Cushing, and in compliance with the telegraphic instructions from Department Headquarters, Trooper G. P. Rawdon, Troop "L," --th Cavalry, is granted thirty days' furlough, at the expiration of which he will report to the commanding officer of Fort Cushing for transportation to his proper station.

By order of Lieutenant-Colonel Kent, DOUGLAS JERROLD, Second Lieut. --th Inf., Post Adjutant.

IV