Part 6 (1/2)

DEAR MRS. SUMTER [it read]:

I've been living since Sat.u.r.day mainly on your kindness and that delicious fruit. It was more than good of you to take such care of your incarcerated sub, and I'm ashamed to have sent no earlier thanks, but we've been banked in until this morning, and that rascal striker of ours is missing. He hasn't been about the house since Friday night. Like Barker's cow, he may have blown away. I reckon they'll find him, her, and the paymaster's outfit snowed under somewhere down toward Nebraska, safe, but possibly starving.

Schuchardt has gone with the command, so has Ennis, and I'm all alone with nothing to read. If you have anything moral, instructive, and guaranteed to soften the unrepentant sinner's heart--something I could read with profit as well as pleasure--_don't_ send it, but tell me how you all stood the storm and how you are. It is so hard to get anything but admonition out of ”Shoe,” and ”Dad” is now more unreliable than ever.

I hope Miss Arnold is entirely recovered.

Yours most sincerely, R. R. LANIER.

”The last thing a man mentions in a note is the first thing he wants answered,” said Mrs. Sumter sagely. ”What shall I tell him for you, Miriam?”

”Tell _me_ what is to be done to _him_,” was the sole reply, as the girl settled back dejectedly upon the pillows.

”I've tried to, child,” answered her hostess kindly, patiently. ”There isn't a court in the army that would sentence him to more than a brief confinement to limits, and reprimand.” Yet Mrs. Sumter spoke with much less confidence than on Sat.u.r.day. Had not her husband _had_ to tell her his application for leave was withdrawn, and why? Had not Doctor Larrabee admitted to her that the colonel spoke of misdeeds far more serious for which Lanier must suffer? Was there not, indeed, a story in circulation, mainly in the Snaffle set, of a two-days escapade when the regiment camped near Frayne, and then a financial transaction in which Lanier had been involved--something growing out of an affair up on the Yellowstone--something including that young civilian friend of his, the collegian turned cowboy--Mr. Watson Lowndes?

Even as she strove to a.s.sure Miss Arnold, for the twentieth time, that a military arrest was far more portentious in sound than in effect, something in Kate's determined silence and Miriam's insistence added to the effect of these rumors. Could it be that the boy had confided to the daughter, hitherto his stanch friend and ally, that which he dare not confide to her, his captain's wife? Could this account for the fact that, though it was impossible to conceal his love for Miriam, he never yet had owned it to her--to her to whom it was now obvious that the avowal would mean so much--so very much?

Then another thing weighed heavily upon the brave heart of this loving friend and mother. Never had she known her child to be so silent, so strange, as now. Ever since Friday night she seemed to avoid all mention of the affair, to shrink from the subject--she who had ever been frankness itself--she who had never had a thought the mother did not share. She had become fitful and nervous. She seemed oppressed with some secret. In the long hours of their enforced confinement, with the lamps burning on the ground-floor by day as well as by night, Mrs. Sumter had pondered much over the result of her husband's investigations. Although Miriam's desk was open and its contents lay scattered on the table, nothing was missing, even to the packet of ten-and twenty-dollar ”greenbacks” in its secret drawer. If robbery had been the object of the intruder, he had neglected his opportunity, or else been frightened off in time. If robbery was not his object, then what could it have been?

The house was deserted at the moment of his entrance, that was now settled, for first the cook and then ”Maggie” had owned to having run over to Mrs. Snaffle's kitchen for a moment, and the probability was, they stayed the best part of the evening. The lights had been left turned low in the upper and lower halls, in the kitchen and the captain's den. Army doors were seldom locked or bolted. Any one could enter, front or rear. A marauder, if such he was in this instance, might have been there from tattoo at 9.30 until discovered some two hours later, and been there undisturbed.

But why should the situation so strangely affect her daughter? Could it be that she, too, cared for Bob Lanier? The thought for the moment made the mother's heart stand still.

She was writing her reply to his note, when Maggie again appeared. ”Two gentlemen to see the captain, mum,” and Mrs. Sumter hurriedly closed the note and went below-stairs to meet them. She knew well who they were and why they had come. A branch office of the Rocky Mountain Detective Agency had been maintained long months at the great and growing railway station. They had been summoned by her husband, and that was enough.

Yet she shrank from meeting them, shrank from the thought of the questioning that must ensue. They might ask to speak with Kate, even with Miriam, but they did not. They asked to be shown the room, with the storm-battered dormer, by this time emptied of its load of snow. They asked to see Miriam's desk. Yes, the lock had been forced and by a big knife. They begged that Mrs. Sumter would not mention that to any one but the captain yet awhile. They were confident he would soon return.

They smiled at the idea of the paymaster being held up and robbed in broad daylight by any gang in their neighborhood. They admitted that many questionable characters were in town--there always _were_ toward the holidays, and just now, of course, the town was overcrowded--three big trains still stranded there.

While they were yet at their work, there came sounds of stamping feet at the front door, and in came Sumter, stiff from cold, but brimful of energy.

”Found Scott and his clerk, at least,” he cried. ”'Most dead and half frozen! The driver's gone, I fear. He was blown or pitched off. The mules ran away before the gale. Those inside the ambulance were helpless. Two dropped off behind and are lost. The thing finally capsized and went to pieces, and they managed to reach a little cattle shack, two miles south of town. They've found Lanier's striker, too--what's left of him.”

By this time Kate had come down-stairs, and with pallid face was listening dumbly to her father's words. She seemed hardly to heed the presence of the strangers. Not until the captain had emerged from his furs and stood robust and ruddy, yet a little short of breath, did she lay her hand upon his arm and ask her question.

”Have they found Rawdon?”

”Rawdon? No, not a sign of him anywhere!”

”Is that the young fellow that those sergeants have been hunting for?”

asked one of the detectives. ”We managed to find out about him. He was in town early as three o'clock Friday, and he left on Number Six that night.”

”Do you mean to tell me,” said Sumter, gazing blankly at the speaker, ”that he wasn't out here when--this--happened?”

”Not unless he had wings! That train leaves at 11.40.” Whereupon Kate Sumter slowly withdrew her hand, then turned away.

VII

Another day went by. Major Scott and his clerk, under Larrabee's skilful touch, were gradually regaining strength and beginning to answer questions. At first their senses seemed dulled, as though they could not shake off the frost that benumbed them. At first they could tell little of the cause of the mishap. The ambulance was curtained in, even at the rear, through which the two scared troopers had managed to slip to their doom. Not until the snows melted in the spring, and the contents of the ravines should be revealed, was it likely they would be heard of again.

The railway was still blocked. The wires were still down. Fort Cus.h.i.+ng stood isolated from the outer world, and no less than five of its garrison were absent and unaccounted for: the two men detailed to drive in with the paymaster, two baccha.n.a.lians who, being in town when the storm broke, had dared each other to face the gale and tramp out, and finally a young trooper named Cary, who had arrived with the same recruit squad that brought them Rawdon, and had been on terms of friends.h.i.+p, if not indeed of intimacy, with him. They had been together that very Friday afternoon. In addition, whereabouts unknown, was Sergeant Fitzroy, of Snaffle's Troop. ”Absent with leave,” said the morning report. ”Acting under the verbal instructions of the commanding officer,” said his captain.