Part 9 (1/2)

”Give my compliments to the colonel, will you, and tell him that, my quarters being all ablaze, I'd like an extension of arrest?”

Then Sumter and Stannard came in, tumultuous, and _ordered_ him down, and Blake and Curbit, and the rest of the card party, came tearing after them, and berated him for an absurdity, and implored him not to be an a.s.s. And then a bright tongue of flame licked in through the transom behind him, and the door panels burst from the heat, and all the room at his back suddenly blazed with fire, and then went up the cry from that agonized girl, at sound of which Lanier started and strove to climb to the little window-sill, with a lurid sheet lapping down about his head, and then a brace of young Irishmen, Ca.s.sidy foremost, came scrambling up a human pyramid, smoking and singeing below them. They reached the blazing eaves and burst through the fringe of flame, dragging Bob forth and on to the edge, and then tottered all together into that blessed mound of snow beneath, fast melting in the glare of that fiery furnace.

Then came the commander, and the swift running soldiers, and all the antiquated fire apparatus, and most of the families. Soon the hooks were locked in the blazing framework, and speedily the little bachelor den was torn into hissing and smoking fragments. Meantime Lanier and Ca.s.sidy, Blake, Horton, and nearly a dozen daring fellows who had risked their skins to save their lieutenant, had been led over to hospital to be cooled off and lotioned and bandaged and variously put to bed, and when at last not a spark could be found in the black, unsightly ruins, and even they had been buried under bushels of snow, the colonel and his men-at-arms went back to quarters, and many of the officers to the store, to talk it all over, especially what Bobby had said to b.u.t.ton.

And thus were we brought to the morning of Thursday, the sixth since the eventful night when Miriam Arnold's shriek had alarmed the garrison--Miriam, whose voice had now been heard a second time, upraised in frantic dread and appeal, but this time for the young soldier who, on the previous Friday night, forgetful of his arrest, had rushed forth at her cry, but this night had to be dragged--Miriam who now lay sick from maidenly shame that in one wild appeal to save her lover she had so betrayed herself.

With Thursday noon came resumption of telegraphic communication, and the long-stalled railway trains from east and west. With Thursday afternoon came ”wires” from Arnold, the father, begging to know had his daughter started, and back went the electric message that she neither had nor could, nor would for a week--”full details by post.” With Thursday evening came stacks of belated letters, ”with whole bales of newspapers,” said the stage driver, to follow, and with Thursday midnight, long after every one had gone to bed, there came a tapping at Major Stannard's storm door, and presently a fumbling at the bell k.n.o.b, a clanging of the bell.

”What now?” thought the sleepy major, as he scuttled down-stairs in slippers and dressing-gown. ”Who's there?” he growled, as he unbolted the door. That fire down the line had made people nervous. There was no saying how it started.

”It is Mayhew, sir,” said a solemn voice. ”I've come not hoping, only praying, I may find my daughter here.”

”Good G.o.d!” said Stannard. ”Come in,” and led forthwith his aged and trembling comrade within doors, seated him by the still glowing stove in the front room, and struck a light. In less than a minute Mrs.

Stannard, too, had joined them, her kind blue eyes filled with tender pity and sorrow. She, at least, was not entirely unprepared. Poor motherless Dora had no lack of friendly counsel and fond, womanly sympathy when once she could be brought to lay her burden there. If only she had earlier sought that wise and winsome monitor! But Mrs. Stannard had not been at Frayne in the early summer, not until the major was a.s.signed to station at Cus.h.i.+ng had the good wife joined him, and meanwhile there had been no hand to guide, only a fond and pa.s.sionate young heart. And now, with his gray hairs bowed in sorrow to the dust, poor Mayhew had come to tell his piteous tale. Ever since young Rawdon had gone with the paymaster she had been fitful and nervous. Ever since their coming to Cus.h.i.+ng, four weeks agone, she had been watching, waiting, listening, often weeping, and when letters came for her, with the postmark of Fetterman or Laramie, Red Cloud or the cantonment in the Hills, he could not but note her feverish eagerness and her instant escape to her own room to read her treasure alone. Oh, yes, he knew they must be from Rawdon. He had liked the lad, knew there was good stuff in him, and he could not bear that fellow Fitzroy, who was a military loan shark, a man who fattened on the needs or weaknesses of his comrades. He hated to think of his bonny girl's losing her heart to Fitzroy. He owned he rather welcomed Rawdon's advances and rejoiced that she, too, seemed to prefer him.

But--G.o.d! He had never looked for--this! Oh, where had she gone?--and why? He had found her at home and in tears after the fire. All morning long she had been in an agony of nervousness. Then that afternoon, some time, somehow, she got a message or letter, and then, kissing him and saying she would be better in bed, had gone to her room, but not to sleep. At eleven o'clock old Chloe's sobbing aroused him. He found it all deserted. Dora had disappeared, leaving not one word to comfort him.

They lost no time, those men of the field and the frontier. Stannard was dressed and out in twenty minutes; had summoned Ennis, Field, and others among the young officers; had routed out half a troop and could have had the entire garrison, for few were the soldiers who would not search all night or work all day for good old Mayhew and his pretty daughter.

Perhaps that was one reason why, until this night, so many maids and mothers among the sergeants' families envied and slandered her. Mayhew had been far from wise, and Dora, indeed, had none to guide. Kindly and cordially treated as he and she had been by the officers and their wives--being, in fact, superior socially to the Snaffle household, if not to certain others--there was yet this bar to hold them back: they dined and danced not with the ”commissioned” element of the post whereat Mayhew was stationed. They were of finer clay than the people of the rank and file, and so, with the families of the forage and wagon-master, the chief packer and old Ordnance Sergeant Sh.e.l.l, they made up a little middle cla.s.s of their own, when Dora's heart had gone out, ungrudgingly, to handsome, clever, educated George Rawdon, whom all men could see had been reared among gentlefolk, and who, as further fascination, was supplied from some unknown source with money which he spent with lavish hand.

The moon was in the fourth quarter now, yet still bright enough to aid them, and up and down the creek bank went the searchers, probing every pool, searching every shallow. It was odd--or was it odd?--that for half an hour no man, no matter what he thought, went down and banged at the door of ”C” Troop's stable--where in cozy quarters and solemn state, guarded by the sentries on either flank, slept that surly magnate among the non-commissioned officers--Fitzroy, the stable sergeant of Snaffle's troop. Whatever had befallen poor Dora Mayhew, it was not to join c.o.c.kney Fitzroy she had fled.

Had she fled to join anybody? was the question that racked so many a heart, for, with the possible exception of gentle Mrs. Stannard, the girl had made no confidant. It was stanch old Chloe who would have it that her pet and pride from childhood, her solemn charge since the poor mother's death eight years before, had never left her father's roof to do harm to herself and break their hearts. If morning came without her, she surely had been lured away, and, if ”Marss Rawdon” had really gone, who was there who, through love or fear or threat or artifice of any kind, _could_ lure her?

It was this, full fifteen minutes after Lieutenant Field and two of his men had trotted off to town, that started old Stannard and big Jim Ennis down the valley from the veterinarian's, through ”Suds-town,” where girls and women were huddling and whispering at the news; through the hay and wood-yards, where the sentry challenged sharply, so often had he halted searching parties in the last ten minutes; past the little shack where dwelt the farriers and blacksmiths, many of them alight, for the story had gone sweeping; and so at last they came to the long cavalry stables, standing gable ends to the north, like so many companies in close column, and at the sixth of these, farthest from the bluff whereon stood the barracks and quarters, they stopped and banged at the door. No answer--even when the sentry came to their aid and hammered with the b.u.t.t of his carbine. They went round and rattled at the window of the sergeant's room. Still no response, and at their beck the sentry yelled for the corporal-of-the-guard, who had followed down, expectant.

”I'll have him out,” said he, and ran round to the south end, and presently came back, panting but triumphant. He had roused the two stable orderlies. They would open up in a minute. They did, with much blinking of eyes and some demur, but stood abashed when the burly major strode in, big Jim Ennis at his heels. The latter hesitated not one second. His weight went in with the battering ram of that muscular leg and ma.s.sive foot, and the sergeant's door flew open before them. The room was empty. Fitzroy and Fitzroy's furs were gone. Nor was that all.

s.n.a.t.c.hing a stable lantern from the hand of one of the shaking grooms, Ennis swung it high aloft. Two empty stalls stood close at hand.

”I thought so,” said he, then grabbed the nearest orderly by the coat collar. ”Who took Lieutenant Foster's sleigh and team,” demanded he, ”and how long ago?”

”Sergeant Fitzroy, sir,” came the answer, with a doleful whine, ”just before the third relief, at half-past eleven.”

”No time to see the colonel now!” said Ennis. ”Major Stannard, I've got to gallop into town, but a dozen men, if need be, should trail that sleigh.”

”Go it, boy,” was the instant answer, ”and I'm behind you.”

X

On the principle that disaster ever demands its victim, the sentry of the second relief--the immediate predecessor of the soldier now on post at the north line of the stables--was stirred up at once and ordered to explain. Even as Stannard was hastening the movements of the men detailed to mount and trail the Foster team, even as Ennis was galloping town-ward on a mission of his own, Captain Langley, of the Infantry, officer-of-the-day, began his stern examination of the luckless guardian.

Orders are orders. Even a stable sergeant could not take or send an animal out at night (except the building stood in danger of destruction by flood, fire, or tornado) save on written order of a commissioned officer and in presence of the corporal-of-the-guard, and Stoner, the sentry of the second relief, admitted he knew these were the orders, but ”the fellers” had never supposed they applied to Sergeant Fitzroy, who did pretty much as he pleased. In fact, Fitzroy hitched up and drove away without so much as a word to him. He, the sentry, was too little surprised to think of ordering ”Halt.” Even as Langley drew from him the admission, the word came up that the squad had started hot foot on the trail. It led straight away to town.

And the stable orderlies had sworn that Fitzroy started alone.

Therefore, unless Dora Mayhew had circled the fort and joined him on the bleak eastward prairie, it was most unlikely she had gone with him, and, up to one o'clock, there was none to hint with whom, or how, except afoot, she could have gone. Then, however, came revelation. The sentry stationed at the northwest face of the post admitted having seen ”a rig from town” making wide circuit clear around behind the fort on the westward ”bench,” which was swept almost clean of snow. It had kept well out beyond hailing distance, stood a moment or two up at the edge of the bluff, then whirled about and went the way it came. What hour was this?

Just before they called off eleven o'clock. Why had he not mentioned or reported it? Well, he thought it might have been some of the officers.