Chapter 7

There was trouble at the Presidio.

All but ten of the escaped prisoners had been recaptured or self-surrendered, but the ten still at large were among the worst of the array, and among the ten was the burly, hulking recruit enlisted under the name of Murray, but declared by Captain Kress, on the strength of the report of a detective from town, to be earlier and better known as Sackett and as a former member of the Seventh Cavalry, from which regiment he had parted company without the formality of either transfer or discharge.

Murray was a man worth his keep, as military records of misdemeanors went, and a sore-hearted fellow was the sergeant of the guard, held responsible for the wholesale escape. And yet it was not so much the sergeant's fault. The evening had come on dark, damp, and dripping. Gas-lamps and barrack-lanterns were lighted before the sunset gun. The sergeant himself and several of the guard had been called inside to the prison room by the commanding officer and his staff. There was a maze of brick and wooden buildings in front of the guard-house, and a perfect tangle of dense shrubbery only fifty yards away to the west. It was into this that most of the fugitives dived and were instantly lost to sight, while others had doubled behind the guard-house and rushed into an alley-way that passed in rear of the club and a row of officers' quarters.

Some of them apparently had taken refuge in the cellars or wood- and coal-sheds until thick darkness came down, and others had actually dared to enter the quarters of Lieutenant Ray, for the back door was found wide open, the sideboard, wherein had been kept some choice old Kentucky whiskey produced only on special occasions, had been forced, and the half-emptied demijohn and some glasses stood on the table in a pool of sloppy water.

But what was worse, the lieutenant's desk in the front room, securely locked when he went to town, had been burst open with a chisel, and Mr. Ray had declined to say how much he had lost. Indeed, he did not fully know.

"Too busy to come in," was the message he had sent his mother the morning after the discovery, and yet all that morning he remained about his quarters after one brief interview with the perturbed and exasperated post commander, ransacking desks, drawers, and trunks in the vain hope that he might find in them some of the missing property, for little by little the realization was forced upon him that his loss would sum up several hundreds--all through his own neglect and through disregard of his father's earnest counsel.

Only three days before the lieutenant commanding his troop had been sent to Oregon and Washington on duty connected with the mustering of volunteers,--their captain was a field officer of one of the regiments of his native State,--and, in hurriedly leaving, Lieutenant Creswell had turned over to his young subordinate not only the troop fund, amounting to over four hundred dollars, but the money belonging to the post athletic association, and marked envelopes containing the pay of certain soldiers on temporary detached service--in all between nine hundred and one thousand dollars.

"Whenever you have care of public money--even temporarily--put it at once into the nearest United States depository," said his father. "Even office safes in garrison are not safe," he had further said. "Clerks, somehow, learn the combination and are tempted sometimes beyond their strength. Lose no time, therefore, in getting your funds into the bank."

And that was what he meant to do in this case, only, as the absent troopers were expected to return in two days, what was the use of breaking up those sealed envelopes and depositing the whole thing only to have to draw it out in driblets again as the men came to him for it. Surely he could safely leave that much at least in the quartermaster's safe. Creswell never thought of depositing the cash at all. He carried it around with him, a wad of greenbacks and a little sack of gold, and never lost a cent.

Ray took the entire sum to the quartermaster's office Tuesday evening and asked to store it in the safe. The clerk looked up from his desk and said he was sorry, but the quartermaster was the only man who knew the combination, and he had gone over to Camp Merritt.

So Ray kept it that night and intended taking it to town Wednesday morning, but drills interposed. He carried a little fortune with him when he went in to meet his mother and sister Wednesday evening, half intending to ask the genial "major,"--mine host of the Occidental,--to take care of it for him in the private safe, but the major was out and the money was still bulging in Ray's pockets when he returned to the post late that night, and it had been very much in his way. Thursday he fully expected the troopers back, and yet when stables were over Thursday evening and he was ready to start for town to join his dear ones, and was arraying himself in his most immaculate uniform and secretly rejoicing in the order prohibiting officers from wearing for the time being civilian dress, he found himself still burdened by the money packages and in a hurry to catch a certain car or else keep them waiting for dinner.

The quartermaster's office was several hundred yards away, and there stood his own desk, a beautiful and costly thing--his mother's gift--with its strong locks and intricate system of pigeon-holes and secret drawers. He would "chance it" one night, he said, and give his trusted servant orders to stand guard over the premises, and so the little bag of gold went into one closed compartment, the envelopes and wads of treasury notes into the hidden drawer, and the key into his watch-pocket.

His servant was a young man whose father had been with Colonel Ray for quarter of a century, a faithful Irishman by the name of Hogan. He was honest to the core and had but one serious failing--he _would_ drink. He would go for months without a lapse, and then something would happen to give him a start, and nothing short of a spree would satisfy his craving. It was said that in days gone by "old man Hogan" was similarly afflicted, but those were times when an occasional frolic was the rule rather than the exception with most troopers on the far frontier, and Hogan senior had followed the fortunes of the --th Cavalry and Captain Ray until an Indian bullet had smashed his bridle-arm and compelled his discharge.

Whereupon Mrs. Ray had promptly told the gallant fellow that their army home was to be his, and that if he would consent to serve as butler or as the captain's own man to look after his boots, spurs, and sabres he would never lack for money comforts, or home.

Perhaps had Mrs. Ray foreseen that the dashing Irishman was destined to lay siege to the heart of her pretty maid, she might have suggested setting Hogan up in business farther away. Perhaps, too, she would not, for his almost pathetic devotion to her beloved husband was something she could never forget. Hogan, the crippled veteran, and Kitty, the winsome maid, were duly wed, and continued as part of the army household wherever they went. And in course of the quarter century it seemed to be but a case of domestic history repeating itself that young "Mart" should become Mr. Sandy's factotum and valet, even though Sandy could have secured the services of a much better one for less money. Young Mart had all his father's old-time dash and impetuosity, but less of his devotion, and on this particular Thursday evening, just when his master most needed him, Mart was not to be found. Ray stormed a bit as he finished his toilet. Then, as there was no time to be lost, he closed the door of his bedroom behind him and hastened away to the east gate. Just outside the reservation was a resort kept by a jovial compatriot of Hogan's,--assuming that an Irishman is always an Irishman whether born on the sod or in the States,--and there Ray felt pretty sure of finding his servant and sending him home to mount guard. And there, sure enough, he learned that Hogan had been up to within five minutes, and had left saying he must go to help the lieutenant. He was perfectly sober, said the publican, and it was more than half a mile back to quarters. Ray would be late for dinner as it was, the car was coming, and so, though dissatisfied and ill at ease, he jumped aboard, hurried to the Occidental, and within three hours was stunned and almost crushed by the tidings that the house had been entered and robbed, probably within an hour after he left it.

And now Saturday morning, while the guns of Alcatraz were booming in salute across the bay and all the garrison was out along the shore or on the seaward heights, waving farewell to the Vinton flotilla, and his mother and Maidie had gone out with the department commander to bid them god-speed, poor Sandy sat wretchedly in his quarters.

Hogan, overwhelmed by the magnitude of his master's misfortune, and realizing that it was due in no small degree to his own neglect, was now self-exiled from the lieutenant's roof, and seeking such consolation as he could find at the Harp of Erin outside the walls, a miserable and contrite man,--contrite, that is to say, as manifested in the manner of his country, for Hogan was pottle deep in his distress.

Although vouched for as perfectly sober from the Hibernian point of view, he well knew that he had taken so much that fatal Thursday evening as to be fearful of meeting his master, and so had kept out of the way until full time for him to be gone to dinner. Then, working his way homeward in the darkness of the night, he had marvelled much at finding the back door open, rejoiced at sight of the demijohn and disorder in the little dining-room, arguing therefrom that the lieutenant had had some jovial callers and therefore hadn't missed him.

Hogan drank, in his master's priceless old Blue Grass Bourbon, to the health of the party, and then, stumbling into the bedroom and lighting the lamp, came upon a sight that filled him with dismay--the beautiful desk burst open, drawers and letters and papers scattered about in utter confusion,--and in his excitement and terror he had gone on the run to the adjutant's quarters, told that official of his discovery, and then learned of the wholesale jail delivery that occurred at retreat.

He wrung his hands and wept as he listened to his young master's wrathful rebuke and the recital of his losses. He hung meekly about the house all night long, but, unable to bear the sight of poor Ray's mingled anger and distress, he had fled with the coming of the day and gone to tell his woes to his friend of the Harp.

Afternoon of Saturday came, and still Ray sat there nerveless.

He knew that any moment now would bring that loving mother and sister. He had cleared up the litter left by the robbers, put his desk in order, and Hogan had done his best with the sideboard in the other room.

Sympathetic souls among his brother officers had been in from time to time consoling him with theories that the thief could not escape,--would surely be recaptured and the money recovered. But on the other hand he was visited by the returned troopers in quest of their money, and was compelled to tell them of the robbery and to ask them to wait until Monday, when he would be able to pay them.

Luckier than others who have been overtaken in the army by somewhat similar misfortune, Ray knew that he had only to acquaint his parents with the extent of his loss, and, even though the sum was great, it would be instantly made good. Yet the thought of having to tell his mother was a sore thing. He had disregarded his father's caution. He had proved unworthy of trust before the gloss had begun to wear from his first shoulder-straps, and he well knew that his mother's fortune was no longer what it was at the time of her marriage.

In the years of their wanderings all over the West all her business affairs had been in the hands of a trusted agent at home, and it so often happens that in the prolonged absence of owners trusted agents follow the lead of the unjust steward of Holy Writ and make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness and ducks and drakes of their employers' assets.

The ranch bought for him the year gone by was a heavy drain. His father, in giving him a few hundred dollars for his outfit, had told him that now he must live entirely on his pay, and that he should be able to "put by" a little every month.

But, as was to be expected of his father's son and his Kentucky blood, Sandy could not bid farewell to his associates at the ranch or the citizens of the little cow and mining town on the Big Horn without a parting "blow out," in which his health was drunk a dozen times an hour. Oh, that he had that money now instead of certain unpaid bills in that ravished secret drawer! It was humiliation inexpressible to have to send those men away empty-handed, and in his dejection and misery, poor boy, he wandered to his sideboard instead of going to luncheon at the mess, and all he had had to eat or drink that day, by the time Mrs. Ray and Maidie came late in the afternoon, was some crackers and cheese and he didn't know how many nips of that priceless Blue Grass Bourbon.

The bright, brave young eyes were glassy and his dark cheek heavily flushed when at four o'clock he hastened out to assist his mother from her carriage, and the color fled from her beautiful face; her heart seemed to stand still and her hand trembled violently as she noted it all, but took his arm without a word, and, with Maidie silently following, went up the steps and into the little army home, where the door closed behind them, and the knot of lookers-on, officers awaiting the call for afternoon stables, glanced significantly at each other, then went on their way.