"Then I suppose--you're very busy--have many things to do?"

"Only one, sir."

"Well, I won't detain you. I--I wish you well, Mr. Loring, and--and--_bon voyage_!" and the General strove to smile.

"Thank you, General. Anything else, sir?"

The General stood and could think of nothing. "I believe not," he replied, "unless--however, never mind, I won't detain you."

"Good-day, sir," said Loring, and marched quickly away to the room of the aide-de-camp. Petty was not there. An embarra.s.sed lieutenant arose and smiled vaguely.

"Petty isn't about anywhere this morning. He was out late last night--I expect him every moment."

"You needn't. He won't come. Tell him I waited until 11:30." Then Loring shut the door and left. He had many an hour later in which to think over his final interview with the aide. A most unwelcome duty was that second call to Petty. He would rather be kicked than go to Loring and say he was released from arrest and free to go; perhaps he thought the kick forthcoming if he went. But Loring treated him with the same contemptuous coolness as he had earlier in the night. Nor did Loring seem either elated or surprised.

"d.a.m.n the man!" said Petty. "I'd give a month's pay to tell him something that would stir him!" Petty could easily have done that had he seen fit to mention that the General had received a visit from the Lady Superior with a young girl from the convent of the good Gray Sisters.

But that was a mysterious affair that even the General had seen fit to say nothing further about, even to Loring, who was most concerned. It was a matter that gentle and gracious woman herself never referred to when the Engineer at ten the next morning presented his card and was ushered into her presence. She was most courteous. There was peace and loving kindness ineffable in her placid face. There was infinite sympathy in her manner when she presently met and led in to him a pallid little maid, who put a long slim hand in Loring's as he smiled upon her downcast, red-rimmed eyes. Struggle as she might for composure and strength, Pancha had evidently been sorely disturbed over something through the long watches of the night. Loring's heart reproached him as he realized how selfishly he had been engrossed for weeks, how little he had thought for her, of her who must be so lonely and homesick in her new sphere. He was almost shocked now at the pallor of her face, the droop and languor of the slender figure that was so buoyant and elastic those bright days aboard ship just preceding the catastrophe. What friends and chums they had become! How famously he was getting on with his Spanish! What a charming teacher she was, with her lovely shining eyes, her laughing lips, her glistening white teeth! She seemed happy as a queen then, and now--what had come over the child?

"They are going to let me write to you, Pancha," he had told her, "and I shall write every month, but you will write to me long letters, won't you?"

"_Si_," and the dusky little head bowed lower, and Pancha was withdrawing her hand.

"You know I have no little sister," he went on.

She did. She had learned all this and much more aboard ship, and remembered every word he had told her, very much more than he remembered. She knew far more about him than did he about her, but he looked far more interested now. The good gray sister was more than good; she was very busy at something away across the room, and Loring had drawn his little friend to the window.

"How I wish I had known you there at--at the Gila, Pancha," he managed to say in slow, stumbling Spanish. "Do you know we made a great mistake, Mr. Blake and I?"

She did not wish to know. Two little hands went up imploringly, the dark head drooped lower still, the slender, girlish form was surely trembling. What ailed the child? It was time to go, yet he lingered. He felt a longing to take her hands again--clasped in each other now, and hanging listless as she leaned against the window casing. He meant to bend and kiss her good-by, just as he would have kissed a younger sister, he said to himself, not as he had kissed Geraldine Allyn. But somehow he faltered, and that was something unusual to Walter Loring.

Even at risk of being abrupt, he felt it time to go, but after the manner of weaker men, took out his watch.

"Yes, I must go, Pancha. We won't say good-by, will we? It is until to-morrow--_hasta la manana_. You know we always come again to California. You'll be quite a woman, then, though." He who was so brief and reticent with men, found himself prattling with this child, unable to break off. At last, with sudden effort, he seized both her hands in his, where they lay limp and pa.s.sive.

"_Adios_, little one! Dear little friend!" he said, bent swiftly, and his curling brown mustache was crushed one instant against the top of her dusky head. Then he hurried to the lady superior and took his leave, Pancha standing silent at the window until the door had closed behind him.

Another day, and he was looking back along the sparkling wake of the crowded steamer, thinking how beautiful the ocean seemed to him only a few weeks earlier. Another week and he was at the Isthmus, homeward bound, yet clinging with strange interest to the scenes of so much trial. Another month and he was spinning along old, familiar sh.o.r.es, _en route_ for the distant field of new and stirring duty. Without a day's delay he was hurried on the trail of a party of officials, designated to select the site for the new post far up in the heart of the Sioux hunting grounds. For a.s.sociates he found a veteran quartermaster with a keen eye for business, and an aide-de-camp of his new general commanding, and recent experiences with such combined to render him more reticent than ever. Major Burleigh confided to Captain Stone that if that was a specimen of West Point brains and brilliancy, it only confirmed his previous notions. The site for the new post was decided upon after brief but pointed argument, and a vote of two to one, the Engineer being accorded the privilege of a minority report if he saw fit to make it. Commanding their escort was a young officer whom Loring had known when as cadets they had together worn the gray, and though there had been no intimacy there was respect, and the two subalterns, Engineer and dragoon, agreed that the board might better have stayed at home and left the selection to the Indians, but Lieutenant Dean had no vote and Loring no further responsibility. He could make his remonstrance when he got to Omaha, which would probably be too late. On that homeward way he saw enough of Burleigh to convince him he was a coward, for the major collapsed under the seat of the ambulance at the first sign of the Sioux. Then there came an episode that filled Loring with sudden interest in this new, yet undesirable acquaintance. Men get to know each other better in a week in the Indian country than in a decade in town.

They had reached the little cantonment and supply station on the dry fork of the Powder, stiff and weary with their long journey by ambulance, and glad of a chance to stretch their legs and rest. The camp commander was doing his best to be hospitable. Burleigh had been shown into the major's hut, where a lot of mail was awaiting him. A bronzed subaltern had taken charge of Mr. Aide-de-camp Stone, and another of Loring. The latter had just emerged from a tub, dripping and refreshed, and was rubbing himself dry, when across the canvas screen he heard the voice of the commander hailing his host.

"Mr. Post Quartermaster," said he, "I wish every other kind of quartermaster but you was in----. That old rip Burleigh is utterly upset by some letter he's got. He's limp as a wet rag, shaking like a man with a fit. Took four fingers of my best rye to bring him around. Says he must have your best team and ambulance at once. Got to push on for Frayne."

And indeed Burleigh's face when he came forth to start for the Platte was a gruesome sight. "He looked," said the unfeeling linesman, after he'd gone, "as though he'd seen more Indians."

An hour later a soldier servant handed the major an envelope. "Picked it up under the table, sir. There's still something in it."

The major glanced curiously at the superscription.

"That's the envelope, at least," said he, handing it to Loring, "of the letter that stampeded the old man."

And Loring looked at it first with but scant interest. Then took and held and studied the writing with eyes that kindled wonderfully.

"Why, do you think you know that hand?" asked the major curiously.

Loring handed it back, hesitated a moment, nodded, but said no word.

CHAPTER XIX.

A pleasant welcome awaited Mr. Walter Loring, of the Engineers, when he opened his office and got settled down to work at his new station. Here was a commanding general who knew something of his past, whose nephew was with him at the Point, and one at least of whose aides had found reason to respect him highly, even though they had differed as to the site for the new post, and the Engineer had seemed to take far more kindly to the companionship of an unheard-of sub in the cavalry than he did to the society of two men so distinguished in the department as Major Burleigh, depot quartermaster at Gate City, and Brevet-Captain "Omaha" Stone, the aide in question. Burleigh had surprised the aide by a display of great interest in and an impatience to meet the newcomer, who had hurried out from Omaha with not a day's delay, and who overtook them at Fort Frayne, after riding by night through the mountainous region of the Medicine Bow, with only a single trooper as attendant and escort. Burleigh had been oddly inquisitive, thought Stone, and had plied the taciturn Engineer with question after question about officers whom he knew and matters he seemed to know along the Pacific slope. Mr.

Loring was evidently a bit surprised, yet replied courteously, though very briefly. Burleigh did all the talking the first day's drive in the big ambulance over the rolling open prairies north of the Platte, giving Stone no chance at all. He enlivened the occasion and relieved the tedium of the journey with anecdotes of the General whose command Loring had recently left, and Strain, his chief-of-staff, and Petty--"that d.a.m.ned fool Petty," he called him, and Burleigh had nothing good to tell of any of them, and much that was derisive, if not detrimental, of all.

Loring listened with neither a.s.sent nor dissent, as a rule, though when appealed to he said he had no opportunity to study the characteristics as described by Burleigh, as he had spent most of his short service there surveying in Arizona and saw little and knew less of the officials in San Francisco. One man of whom Burleigh spoke with regard and regret was stanch old Turnbull, whose sad death by drowning in the surf off Pinos, the quartermaster referred to several times. He seemed familiar, too, with the story of Loring's conduct the night of the collision at sea and the sinking of the Idaho, and referred to that more than once in terms of commendation. They stopped for luncheon and to bait the mules and to give the cavalry escort a brief respite, and it was after this that Burleigh, as though suddenly reminded of something, began--

"I don't know what made me think of it unless it was Stone's speaking of New Orleans a moment ago, but did you meet a long-legged fellow named Blake in Arizona? I knew the girl that drove him out there. One winter she was in New Orleans while her father was commanding the monitors moored at Algiers--Miss Torrence. Saw her afterwards in New York. She married old Granger, you know." Granger was about Burleigh's age, but Burleigh was a widower and desirous of being considered young. And Stone wondered why Loring should look disquieted if not embarra.s.sed.

"I met Blake, yes," was, however, his prompt reply.

"How's he standing it? He was a good deal cut up at first. They were to have been married last summer. He was regularly engaged to her, and never knew she'd thrown him over until he met Granger in St. Louis."

Then Loring did a thing they both noted was unlike him. Ordinarily he listened courteously until the question was finished. This time he broke in:

"Blake is in his element doing cavalry duty. We had a lively chase together after an officer who was deserting to Mexico."

"So you did," said Burleigh, with interest. "I remember hearing of it.

You were on his court, weren't you? Why! what was the fellow's name? I remember having met him in New Orleans, too, when I read the order to the court. Let's see, you were judge advocate, weren't you?"

"Yes. And his name was Nevins."

"Ah, yes. Dismissed, I believe. What ever became of him? There was a rumor that he had died."

"So the consul at Guaymas reported," was Loring's brief reply.

"Well, was it never settled? Wasn't it proved in some way? I heard a story that his wife had followed him out there. She was a d.a.m.ned sight better lot than he was. I met her more than once in New Orleans. She came of good family, but she was stranded down there by the war. They say she had a younger sister who bled her to death, a girl she was educating. I remember Nevins told me something about her. That fellow had some good points, do you know, Loring? He behaved first rate during the fever epidemic; nursed more'n one fellow through. He said that that sister was a beauty and selfish to the core, and he wished to G.o.d she'd marry some rich man and let them alone. Didn't you--didn't I hear that they were out there, and that he made some dramatic scene before the court, and sent his wife his valuables, or something of that kind?"

Loring was slowly reddening. He more than half believed that Burleigh had heard the story set afloat by the gossips in San Francisco, and was trying to draw him out. His tone, therefore, was cold and his answer brief.

"They were there, but I never saw them. Pardon me, major, your rifle is slipping," and leaning forward the Engineer straightened up the endangered weapon and braced it with his foot. "A dreary landscape this," he added, glancing out at the barren stretches of rolling prairie extending to the horizon.

"Very. All like this till you get over towards the mountains, then it's fine. But, isn't it really believed out there that Nevins is dead? What became of his wife?"

"She went back to New Orleans, I was told. If Nevins isn't dead, he at least hadn't been heard of up to the time I left."

And several times again that long afternoon did Burleigh return to the charge and speak of Nevins, and more than once during the busy days that followed, but by the time they started on their return he had probably concluded that Loring really knew no more about him, and once or twice when Blake and his love affairs were mentioned Loring seemed unwilling to hear. Stone pondered over it not a little before they got to Reno on the back track, and there it was that Burleigh had demanded to be sent right on to Frayne, despite fatigue, for something had come to him in this mail that filled him with dismay, as the major commanding told them a dozen times over. Moreover, Mr. Omaha Stone became gradually convinced that Loring was in partial possession of the secret of Burleigh's stampede. Unless Stone was utterly in error, Loring had seen somewhere before the handwriting of the superscription of the envelope Burleigh had dropped in his nerveless collapse. But Stone might as well have cross-questioned the sphinx. Loring would admit nothing.

Yet it was of this very matter the Engineer was thinking one soft still evening soon after his return to department headquarters. His boxes had just arrived. He had found a fairly comfortable room away from the turbulent section of the new and bustling town, and equally distant from the domicile of Stone and his particular set. Loring never gambled and took little interest in cards. He was still "taking his rations" at the hotel, but much disliked it, and was seriously thinking of seeking board in some private family. The barracks were too far out, and the roads deep in mud, or he would have lived and "messed" out there. The few boarding houses were crowded, and with an uncongenial lot as a rule.

Private families that took two or three table boarders were very few, but some one suggested his going to see the rector of the new parish, himself a recent arrival.