Then again the door was darkened as Sandy Ray came limping in. One glance was enough. The strap was wrenched from the father's hand and hurled to the open, empty, black-mouthed furnace. Then both hands were needed, for Dwight, just as on Monday evening at parade, had begun to sway and was groping for support. There was no one to interpose, no one to interfere, when Marion Ray, having at last stilled poor Jimmy's heavy sobbing and bathed his face and hands and helped him to dress, led him unresisting away to her little home, for Madame "in her condition"--as Felicie explained individually to the dozen men and women who thronged the major's quarters that unhappy morning--was prostrated, desolated, distracted by the tragedy that had come to arrive. It was as well, perhaps, that at last it manifested itself what monster was this who held this angel in bondage--the monster himself, meantime, having been led to his room by Dr. Wallen. There, half-dazed, half-raving, he resisted and declaimed until at last their measures took effect, both doctors being with him now, and he was partially disrobed and compelled to lie down upon the bed. There one or both of them sat and watched the rest of the livelong day. There, finally, after nightfall a trained nurse took station with attendants in readiness in the hallway, for delirium had set in and Dwight's condition was declared critical.

Bad as it was, this was by no means the sole topic of talk for Minneconjou's seething population. Among the women, Mrs. Ray stood foremost as heroine of the occasion, and half the feminine element of the garrison had been to call and congratulate and praise her before the day was done. But Marion was in no mood for either. It had come to her as a vital question what to do with Priscilla. Sandy had charged his cousin in so many words with having deliberately incited Major Dwight to his furious and unreasoning a.s.sault, so Sandy regarded it, upon his only son, and Sandy had for a week or more been looking upon Dwight as a wronged and injured man. Priscilla, as we know, had virtually and virtuously admitted much of her error to Aunt Marion, but persisted that though they both, Mrs. Thornton and she, considered that it was high time Jimmy was punished instead of petted, they never dreamed to what length the father would go. "Punished for what?" indignantly demanded Aunt Marion. "For his having so cruelly hurt Georgie Thornton, and then denying all knowledge of it," was the reply. Words are inadequate to describe the indignation with which Mrs. Ray heard and answered. Jimmy never knew it at the time or heard, until late that night, of what had happened. Hogan, and others for that matter, saw the entire affair.

Jimmy was whirling his English-made jacket about his head as he raced in pursuit of the leader, never realizing that Georgie Thornton, swift almost as himself, was close at his right hand. The b.u.t.ton had cut its keen-edged way without so much as a shock or pause. Jimmy never even suspected it. In that, as in everything else, said she, he had told his father the entire truth, though Mrs. Ray herself hardly dreamed how much he had to tell. So by noontime Priscilla had again shut herself in her room to ponder over the miscarriage of her excellent intentions, and to pray, as well she might, for future guidance.

But while at the Rays', and possibly at the Dwights', there was little thought or talk of any other topic all the morning, all over the garrison was buzzing a second story that started soon after the newsboy from town, cantering out on his cow pony just before guard-mounting, sold his three dozen _Stars_ inside of an hour and sent him back for more. The colonel and surgeon were first to receive and read. Dwight received, but never read, and other majors, captains and subalterns--not to mention non-commissioned officers and privates--chased the newsboy in eagerness to buy. It was a paragraph on an inside page, modest and moderate enough in itself--for the frontier press has learned to know the army and not to defame it--but it stirred a sensation at Minneconjou its editor refused to start in town. In brief, it was as follows:

a.s.sAULT ALLEGED

Just as we go to press a dispatch is received from a representative of the STAR, who left last night on the westbound Flyer. The train was flagged at Fort Siding and boarded, with the a.s.sistance of a ranchman, by Captain Stanley Foster, of the Cavalry, lately visiting friends at Minneconjou. The officer was bruised, bleeding, and well-nigh exhausted, but managed to tell that he had been held up while driving, had been forcibly carried out on the open prairie, and brutally beaten by ruffians whom he declares to be soldiers, all strangers to him with one exception. The captain names as ringleader a prominent and well-known young officer of the post.

Dr. Fowler, of Sagamore Heights, was called by wire, met the train at the Pa.s.s, and went on with the injured man. The story, of course, sounds incredible, and cannot as yet be substantiated.

It was just after lunch time when a messenger came to the Rays. The surgeon asked if the lieutenant could come to Major Dwight a moment, and the doctor himself met Sandy at the door. The veteran's face was very grave. He had known the young officer but a few months. He had known his father long. "Are you feeling fit for a hard interview?" he asked.

"If need be. What's the matter?"

"Dwight is in a fearful frame of mind, and the Lord only knows how it is to end. Dwight realizes now that Jimmy was entirely innocent of any knowledge of that thing the Thorntons charged him with. Your mother sent Hogan and a trumpeter up here. Both had seen the whole affair, and Dwight _would_ see them. He never could have rested till he got the facts. We have persuaded him that he must not question his wife, and that French cat says she cannot leave her mistress an instant. He's raging now to see you, and I reckon it's no use trying more sedatives until you are off his mind. Will you come in?"

Ray pondered a moment, then, "Go ahead," said he.

They found Dwight pacing the floor like a caged and raging lion. He whirled on the two the moment they entered, Wallen vainly preaching self-control and moderation. The misery in the man's face killed the last vestige of Ray's antipathy. It was something indescribable.

"Sandy, I'm in h.e.l.l, but--it's the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth I must have. Did you--before you joined us at the Grand in Naples--did you meet--did you see Mrs. Dwight?"

"Yes," said Ray.

Dwight halted, resting his shaking hand on the back of a chair, and the shake went down through the back and legs to the very floor.

"Where? How?"

"In front of Cook's Bank. Mrs. Dwight was in an open carriage; why shouldn't I speak to her?" And the head went up and back, so like his father.

"No reason whatever, but why should she lie? Tell me that! Why should she swear that my boy, Margaret's boy, lied? Oh, my G.o.d, tell me that!"

"Major, Major!" pleaded Wallen, with outstretched hand. "This will never do. This----"

"Let him alone," said the senior bluntly. "It's got to come."

"Because," said Ray, looking straight at his man, "I was fool enough to fall in love with her the same time you did at Manila. Perhaps she thought I'd be blackguard enough to follow her after she became your wife."

"You--you met her--called upon her--at the Grand, I remember."

"I did, and I'd do the same thing again. I wanted my letters, and I had a right to them. She said that she had burned them all, and that ended it. There's never been a line between us since. I have never seen her since--when I could decently avoid it. I hope to G.o.d I'll never have to see her--again."

"There, there, Dwight, that's more than enough," said Dr. Waring, watching narrowly the working features. "Thank you, Ray. Nothing more could be asked or expected." Then, _sotto voce_, "Get out quick!" and Ray, every nerve athrill, pa.s.sed forth into the hallway, pa.s.sed another door, which quickly opened, and out came Felicie, finger on lip, eyes dilated, one hand held forth in eager appeal.

"Oh, Monsieur--Mr. Ray, just one second, I implore--Madame implores. She beg to see you." And the hand just grazed his arm, as he burst impetuously, angrily by. "You go to ----" was on his furious lip, but he bit the words in twain and bolted down the stairs and out into the open air, mopping his heated brow.

The adjutant was coming swiftly up the row. He had hastened forth from a vine-covered piazza well toward the eastward end just as Ray, with heart still hammering, came limping again into the glare of the sunlight. As they neared each other--the staff officer with quick, springy step, the subaltern somewhat halting and lame--the latter caught sight of a sabre swinging at the senior's hip. What but one thing at that hour of the day could this portend? One moment brought the answer:

"Mr. Ray, I reg----" with reddened cheek and blinking eyes, began the adjutant, who liked him well. Then, with sudden effort, "I--you are hereby placed in close arrest and confined to your quarters--by order of Colonel Stone."

CHAPTER XIV

REACTION

That colonel was a very unhappy man. "All the devils in the calendar,"

said he, "have broken loose here at Minneconjou. My cavalry commander has gone stark, staring mad, and it takes four men to hold him. His wife cannot stay under the same roof and live, says the maid. Madame must repose herself, or die. Mrs. Stone says she might take the mistress under our roof, but she'll be d.a.m.ned if she'll take the maid--at least she meant that. I said it. The maid says the mistress will die if they are separated an instant, which suggests a happy end to one of our troubles, and the cause of all the rest; and to cap the climax, Billy Ray's boy has done the maddest thing ever dreamed of in Dakota. Why, doctor, I tell you it _can't_ be doubted! Foster wires the identification was complete. He dropped the handkerchief that hid his face. Department Headquarters wired at once to slap him in arrest and investigate, and the further we look the worse it looks for Ray--and then, by gad, he denies the whole thing and demands a court-martial! Was ever a man so mixed as I am!"

It was even as Stone said. Dwight was for the time being, at least, as mad as a maniac. "Brain fever," said the wiseacres about the post, "superinduced by sunstroke abroad and scandal at home." Since Tuesday night he had recognized no one, had raved or muttered almost incessantly, and at times had struggled fiercely with his attendants in the effort to leave his bed. Mrs. Dwight's room adjoined that in which he lay, and Felicie had incurred the wrath of the doctor by urging that Madame's condition demanded that Monsieur be removed to hospital or to some remote apartment about the neighborhood. To take him to hospital meant that a score of sick or semi-convalescents should be disturbed. If Madame could not sleep where she was, let Madame move. There was nothing on earth the matter with, Madame but nerves--and a nuisance in shape of a maid, said the doctor, whereat Felicie had proclaimed him, too, a monster, and fled to Madame. Mrs. Stone had indeed come and offered Mrs.

Dwight shelter under the colonel's roof, but she said at the same time the colonel drew the line at the maid, and told Wallen he would not tolerate that bunch of frippery and impudence. Mrs. Dwight was in dread and misery. What _could_ have happened to so prostrate her beloved husband? No, a thousand times no, she could not think of leaving him!

What she needed was restoratives--something to give her strength that she might hie to his bedside and tenderly nurse and care for him. She had had too much restorative, swore Wallen, when he heard this tale.

"We've shut off the champagne with which that hussy had been dosing her--not that she didn't demand it--and now it's Katzenjammer as much as anything else. If anybody is to move, let the maid move her to the spare room on the floor below--where Foster slept." But Inez could not think of moving so far from her husband's side.

Of Dwight's sudden insanity (so most of Minneconjou regarded it) and his furious treatment of little Jim the garrison spoke with bated breath and infinite compa.s.sion and distress. Nothing but mental derangement could account for it. Mrs. Thornton and Priscilla, it may be conjectured, did not confide to their neighbors any too much of their share in the matter, Mrs. Thornton a.s.suring all who questioned her that _she_ had done her _best_ to a.s.sure the major that Jimmy could not possibly have purposely or knowingly struck her boy, which was partially true; and Priscilla had declined all conversation on the subject, save with her aunt, and Mrs. Ray, it may be surmised, was not the woman to tell broadcast of her niece's responsibility in the premises, whatever she might later say to Oswald Dwight. Moreover, Marion Ray was not then in mood to talk confidentially with anyone outside of her own doors, for the misfortune--the wrong--that had come to Sandy had well-nigh overwhelmed her.

Like the man he was, Stone had called at the house the moment she intimated through his own messenger that she was in readiness to see him. The adjutant before returning to report his action to the post commander had so far departed from the strict letter of his duty as to confidentially inform the dazed young officer that the order had come by wire from St. Paul. It was not the colonel's doing.

Sandy was in his room, "cooling off," as he said, when, with all his own troubles and others' deeds upon his head and clouding his honest old face, the post commander himself came in, took the mother's hand and led her to a seat. "It can't upset you more than it has me, my friend," said he. "I s'pose the explanation of it all is that they met somehow--accidentally, perhaps--renewed the quarrel; Sandy was possibly getting the worst of it and the men, whoever they were, couldn't stand that, for they worshiped him, and pitched in. There are few of our fellows, especially in the cavalry, that don't just love Sandy. There are some here that hate Foster," and then Stone stopped, astounded, confused, for Marion Ray, with rising color, interrupted:

"Why, Colonel Stone, you speak as though you thought it possible that my son _could_ have been concerned in this affair!"

For an instant the colonel struggled for words, his red face mottling in the violence of his emotion.

"Why, how can I help it, Mrs. Ray, with all I have heard? But--but I'm more than glad you don't. What does he say?"

"That he never dreamed of such a thing," was the brief answer, and Stone hitched half a dozen different ways in his chair.

"Colonel Leale, Department Inspector, was on that train," said Stone slowly, "and reported Foster's story verbatim, I suppose, to department headquarters, where the arrest was ordered at once, and they demand that we apprehend the confederates. The general's away, and there isn't a man at headquarters that smelt powder in the Civil War--or they'd know confederates weren't so precious easy to apprehend. The men who might have been implicated all swear they were in town at the time and can prove an alibi; and unless Sandy will tell, who can?"

"You still speak as though he could have had something to do with the a.s.sault, Colonel. I'll call him to speak for himself." So Sandy came down. Colonel and subaltern were left together, and Marion, with sore, wounded and anxious heart, stepped into her own little snuggery to look at the picture of her far-away husband (ah, how she missed him and needed him!) and of Maidie, her sweet and winsome daughter, now Mrs.

Stuyvesant of Gotham, of Sandy in the cadet uniform of his yearling days and the khaki of Manila, of Billy, Junior, now far away studying for the entrance exams at the famous Academy. Of the four beings she most devotedly loved, only one was with her now, her deeply, doubly wronged Sandy, whose impetuous, indignant tones she could hear so distinctly as he told his own story to the colonel's sympathetic ear. So distinctly indeed could she hear her own boy that for a moment she failed to hear Margaret's little Jim, standing patiently, pathetically at the threshold; but at sight of his sorrowful face her arms went out to him instantly. Jim could think--speak--of nothing but his father, his father who, they all told him, was so ill that he would not know his own blessed boy, who could not have known him or himself or anybody that dreadful morning! Love and anxiety, utter trust and forgiveness, were uppermost in the loyal little heart, and Marion, speechless, held and rocked him in her arms as she listened to his broken words and to the sound of the brave young voice in the parlor. Oh, what would she _not_ have to tell in that next letter to her husband, now so many a weary league of land and sea beyond possibility of call!

A badgered man was Stone, as he tramped back homeward, taking a short cut across the parade, ostensibly to look at the patchwork along the _acequia_, the morning's task of the fatigue details, but only too obviously to avoid the eyes and greetings of the many women along the row. Sandy Ray's story was told in utter sincerity, so far as Stone could judge. Yet how was it to help him? Sandy admitted having set forth westward up the valley, having ridden lazily out beyond the b.u.t.ts of the rifle range, and then over the southward range to the prairie. He was gone fully two hours, he said. The moon was so low when he returned that, after leaving his horse with the man in the stables, he could only barely see the sentry on No. 3 some distance up the post, and the sentry apparently did not see--he certainly did not challenge--him at all. That was bad. It would have been so much better if No. 3 had seen, recognized and could vouch for him. Stone did not tell Sandy of the sentry's story.

He wished to think that over. Sandy said that the sentry at the stables was some distance down his post and the only man with whom he spoke was this unrecognized soldier, presumably on duty at the quartermaster's stables, where the lieutenant's mount was kept and cared for. No, Sandy didn't know his name, he didn't even notice him particularly. Two or three men, he thought, were smoking their pipes at the corral corner, away from stables, as required, and one of these had come forward as he neared the gate, and asked should he take the lieutenant's horse. Ray thanked him, dismounted and turned away. Now, what bothered the colonel was that both the sergeant in charge and each one of the four men previously questioned declared he did not know the hour at which Lieutenant Ray returned. They had gone to bed at or before 10:30, leaving the door on the bolt, so that Hogan or the lieutenant himself could easily enter. One man, in fact, went so far as to say that coming down from the Canteen about 10:30 he could have sworn almost it was Lieutenant Ray who was slowly climbing the slope to the post of No. 3, and the rear of the officers' quarters. This accorded in a degree with the statement of Schmitz. What good was Sandy's story to do him if Foster firmly adhered to the statement made to the Department Inspector?

There was to have been a dance at the a.s.sembly room Tuesday evening, but no one seemed to feel like dancing even among an indomitable few of the la.s.sies and younger officers with whom, lads and la.s.sies both, Sandy Ray had been vastly popular. The night wore on, dark, overcast, with the wind blowing fitfully from the Sagamore, slamming doors in resounding hallways and carrying the watch calls of the sentries weirdly over the eastward prairie. Earlier in the evening little groups appeared in some few of the verandas, but gradually broke up and went within doors long before the signal "Lights out." The officer of the day and the adjutant, under instruction from the post commander, had been questioning the three worthies who had been out the night before about the time of the alleged a.s.sault on Captain Foster. To a man they stoutly maintained that the signs and scars of battle, borne by one or two of their number, were due entirely to the free-for-all affair that occurred at that disreputable dive southwest of Silver Hill, some four miles away from the post. Virtuously were they indignant that anyone should suppose that they were in any way concerned in so abominable a transaction as the "doing-up" of an officer of the army who so recently had been the guest of their honored major. But two of them were troopers with shady records, men who had been but a short time at the station, and one of these had formerly served an enlistment in Dwight's old regiment, the --th. The adjutant was of opinion that he must have known Foster in those days and might well have been one of quite a number of men, none of whom liked and some of whom hated the imperious and abusive lieutenant. The --th had had few of Foster's stamp since the days of Canker and Gleason, and his case was therefore the more conspicuous. The two officers were talking of this as slowly they strolled homeward up the northwest side of the parade, when, faint and wind-buffeted, the call of the sentry at the main gate caught their ears. No. 2 wanted the corporal and No. 1 promptly echoed, although already the corporal was going on the jump. There was a ring and vim to the cry that told its own story. The sentry saw something that demanded instant attention. It was not half a minute before the corporal came racing back to the guard-house, nor a full minute before the bugler of the guard came chasing in pursuit of the officer of the day. "A fire, sir," he cried, "'way out beyond the Flats!"

Together the officers hastened eastward across the parade, and even before they reached the gate the cause of the alarm became visible. The low-hanging, swift-driven clouds blackening the valley were taking on a lurid glare, and, once at the gate the fire could be distinctly seen.

"Well, if that isn't a blessing!" cried the adjutant gleefully. "It's Skid's old hog ranch, as sure as you're born!"

It was useless, of course, to send aid even if aid had been desirable.

Ever since Silver Hill became the county seat and a mining town of much importance, Skidmore's dive had been the bane of the community. Driven from town by a vigilance committee made up of the best citizens, the divekeeper had resumed business beyond the corporate limits and at a point where he could draw custom from three different sources, the town, the fort and the agency, for only a few miles beyond the Cheyenne were the supply depot and buildings of the Minneconjou tribe, their brethren of Brule being far over to the southeast and the Ogalallas at Red Cloud.

Many a desperate deed had been charged to the gang ever hovering about these unsavory walls of Skidmore's, many a poor fellow had been beaten and drugged and robbed, more than one good soldier had met his death-blow in brutal affray beneath its grimy roof, and still it lived, detested but unhampered. There was no good reason why the fort should send a soul to the rescue of such a concern. There was many a reason why the town would not. Stone ordered a sergeant with a small party to ride over, "See if any of our men are there and find out what has taken place and the extent of the damage," which he hoped was total, "and report on your return."