Darkness was settling down. The sunset-gun had been fired just as they left McLean's. By this time the doctor should be entertaining his guest at dinner, and Miller wondered how even "Chesterfield" would rally to the occasion and preserve his suavity and courtliness after the shock of the last hour. But Miller had no idea that it was the last of three shocks that had a.s.sailed him in quick succession and with increasing severity that very day, and never dreamed of the gulf of distress in which poor Bayard was plunged. He had gone at once to his library and thrown himself in the easy-chair in an att.i.tude of profound dejection, barely paying attention when Chloe entered to say that Miss Nellie begged to be excused from coming down to dinner, as she felt too ill.

Then Robert entered to ask should he serve dinner or wait until Mr.

Holmes came in. "Wait!" said Bayard, bluntly. But five minutes pa.s.sed; the dinner would be overdone; so Robert slipped out in search of the truant, and Miller saw him going over to Bedlam. But the upper gallery was empty; Mr. Holmes and Miss Forrest had disappeared; the adjutant came striding up from the guard-house, and together the two officers turned away.

"Orderly," said the major, to the attendant soldier following at his heels, "find Sergeant Freeman, who is in charge of the cavalry detachment, and tell him I want him at once. Then go and get your supper."

Meantime, realizing that the dinner-hour was at hand, and knowing the punctilious ideas of his host, Mr. Holmes had somewhat abruptly bidden adieu to the young lady with whom he had been in such interesting conversation. "I must see you again about Hatton if possible, and just as soon as I have found out what this means. If all the four were together at McLean's room the mischief is probably done, but I'll see him at once unless it be forbidden." He was turning away without more words, when something in her deep, dark eyes seemed to detain him. He held forth his hand.

"Miss Forrest, I cannot tell you how I appreciate the honor you have done me in this confidence. It may be the means of my making more than one man happy. One word, where is Celestine now?"

"She should be in the dining-room, setting the table for tea. Good-by, then, till tattoo. See him if you can."

"Indeed I will," he answered, and bowing over the slender, richly-jewelled hand she so frankly placed in his, he slowly released it, and turned away.

"In the dining-room, is she?" muttered Holmes to himself, as he ran lightly through the hall and down the stairs. "If that was not Miss Celestine I saw this moment scurrying in from the direction of the wood-piles out yonder, I'm vastly mistaken, and she was talking with a soldier there. I saw the glint of the sunset on the bra.s.ses of his forage-cap. I thought they all had to be at retreat roll-call, but this fellow missed it."

Turning at the foot of the stairs, he strode to the rear door, and looked out through the side-light upon the unpicturesqueness of the yards, the coal- and wood-sheds, the rough, unpainted board fences; the dismantled gate, propped in most inebriate style against its bark-covered post, and clinging thereto with but a single hinge. At this half-closed aperture suddenly appeared the mulatto girl, stopped, turned, gave a quick glance at the various back windows of Bedlam, waved her hand to a dim, soldierly form just discernible in the twilight striding toward the northern end of the garrison, then she came scurrying to the door, and burst in, panting.

"Ah, Celestine! That you?" asked Holmes, pleasantly. "I thought to find you in the dining-room, and stopped to ask for a gla.s.s of water."

At sight of him the girl had almost recoiled, but his cheery voice rea.s.sured her.

"Laws, Mr. Holmes! I done thought 'twas a ghost," she laughed, but turned quickly from him as she spoke and hurried into the dining-room, filling a goblet with a trembling hand. He drank the water leisurely; thanked her, and strolled with his accustomed deliberation through the hall and out across the piazza, never appearing to notice her breathlessness or agitation. Once outside the steps, however, his deliberation was cast aside, and with rapid, nervous strides he hastened up the walk,--out past the old ordnance storehouse and the lighted windows of the trader's establishment, turned sharply to the west, and, sure enough, coming toward him was a brisk, dapper, slim-built little soldier in his snugly-fitting undress uniform. Holmes stopped short, whipped out his cigar-case and wind-matches, thrust a Partaga between his teeth, struck a light as the soldier pa.s.sed him and the broad glare from the north window fell full upon the dapper shape and well-carried head. There was the natty forage-cap with the gleaming cross-sabres; there was the dark face, there the heavy brows, the glittering black eyes, the moustache and imperial, the close-curling hair, of the very man he had seen peeping into the parlor windows back of Mrs. Griffin's little post-office the night of his talk with Corporal Zook.

Ten minutes later and he was tapping at McLean's door. It was opened by the hospital attendant,--slowly and only a few inches.

"Can I see the lieutenant?" he asked.

"I am very sorry," whispered the man, mindful of the visitor's prodigality in the past and hopeful of future favors. "I have strict orders to admit n.o.body to-night until the doctor sees him again. The lieutenant isn't so well, sir, and Dr. Bayard had to administer sedatives before he left. I think he is sleeping just now, though he may only be trying to."

Holmes paused, reluctant and a little irresolute.

"Is there nothing I can do or say, sir, if he wakes?" asked the attendant.

"Can you give him a letter and say nothing about it to anybody?"

"Certainly I can,--if it's one that won't harm him."

"It will do him good, unless I'm mistaken; and he ought to have it to-night: he'll sleep better for it. I'll give it to you at tattoo.--Ah, Robert! I might have known you'd be in search of me and that I was delaying dinner. Say I'll be there instantly."

Meantime, Sergeant Freeman had reported to Major Miller as directed, and was standing attention, cap in hand, at that officer's desk, while the adjutant was scratching away across the room, his pen racing over the paper as he copied the despatch his commander had slowly and thoughtfully dictated.

"You say that Parsons is the best man to send, sergeant?"

"I don't say that, sir, exactly; but he's the lightest man in the troop and has the fastest horse now in the post. He could make it quicker than anybody else, but----"

"But what? Doesn't he want to go? Is he afraid?" asked the major, impatiently.

The sergeant flushed a little, as he promptly answered,--

"It isn't that, sir. He wants to go. There's no man in the troop, sir, that would be safe in saying he didn't want to go."

"Then why do you hesitate?"

"Because we don't know Parsons well, sir; he hasn't been with us more'n a year. He was Lieutenant Blunt's striker till the lieutenant was wounded, but Captain Terry had him returned to the troop because we were so short of men and had so much scouting to do. Then Parsons got into the office as company clerk, and that's where he is now, sir. He writes a fine hand and seemed to know all about papers."

"Where had he served before joining you?" asked the major.

"Nowhere, sir. He says he learned what he knows in the adjutant's office at St. Louis barracks, where they had the cavalry depot. He's been a barber, I think, on a Mississippi steamboat, but he can ride well."

"Well, let Parsons be the man. If he wants to go I see no reason why he shouldn't. Tell him to report here mounted and ready at tattoo."

But it was nearly ten o'clock before Parsons was ready,--a singular fact when it is remembered that he wanted to go,--and Mr. Holmes, who had stopped a moment to speak with Miss Forrest as the bugle ceased playing tattoo, found sufficient interest in their chat to detain him until just as the signal "Lights out" was ringing on the still night-air. Then a horse came trotting briskly into the garrison and over to the adjutant's office. Holmes caught a glimpse of the rider as he shot under the gallery and through the gleam from the lower windows.

That face again!

Ten minutes afterward this inquisitive civilian was at the store, and, singling out one of half a dozen cowboys who were laughing and drinking at the bar, he beckoned him to come outside. The others followed, for the barkeeper, in obedience to post orders, was closing up his shop.

Holmes led his silent follower beyond earshot of the loungers at the door-way.

"Did you see the soldier who rode past here just now?"

"Yes, sir."

"Drake, I've picked you out for service that I can intrust to no one else. You've never failed me yet. Are you ready for a long ride to-night?"

"Anything you want, Mr. Holmes."

"That man's orders are to go with all speed to Fetterman and, after resting there twenty-four hours, to take it easily returning. He'll go there all right, I believe, but what he does there and after he leaves there I want to know, if you have to follow to Cheyenne. Here's fifty dollars. If he jumps the track and starts for the railway after quitting Fetterman, let him go; wire me from Chugwater, but don't lose track of him. I'll join you at Cheyenne or Laramie City, wherever he goes, and the moment you strike the settlements put the sheriff on his trail."

XVIII.

Three days slipped away without noticeable changes in the situation at Laramie. It was late on Tuesday evening when the courier rode away with his despatch, and on Wednesday afternoon the wire from Fetterman flashed the tidings of his safe arrival there and the prompt transmission of the packet in pursuit of the escort that had left for the north at morn. Miller breathed more freely, as did his good wife, as now the onus of this great source of distress would be shifted to other shoulders. "A family affair of much importance--no less than the more than probable connection of one of his household with a series of extensive thefts--demanded that Captain Forrest, if a possible thing, be sent hither at once," was the burden of the major's letter, and he knew that, if a possible thing, the general would find means of ordering the captain in on some duty which would give no inkling of the real nature of the ordeal awaiting him. Thursday afternoon, late, Parsons was to start on his return, would probably rest or camp at the deserted huts of the ranchmen at La Bonte, possibly at the "Lapperell,"

as the frontiersmen termed the little stream the French trappers had years before named _La Prele_, and should reach the fort some time Friday evening, though there was no hurry and he had full authority, if he saw fit, to rest his horse another night at Bull Bend or anywhere he pleased. No one in authority was giving that matter a thought, but it was exactly that matter that kept Roswell Holmes on the watch at Laramie when he would rather have gone away. To his keen eyes it was evident that, despite all Bayard's efforts to appear jovial and courteous as ever, he was in sore perplexity. Nellie, too, was again keeping her room, and Jeannie Bruce, with white face and red-rimmed eyes, was the only companion she really welcomed. Thursday night had come, and the letter he was to have handed in for McLean's benefit and peace of mind was still withheld. Any hour might enable him to speak positively, whereas now he could only theorize. Meantime, Mrs. Miller a.s.sured him that the young officer who "had been temporarily set back by the bad news from Mr. Hatton" was doing very well under the influence of better tidings. On Thursday morning a despatch from the stockade brought the welcome information from Dr. Weeks that Hatton's rugged const.i.tution seemed proof against the enemy; he was gaining again.

Meantime, not a word did Miller, Bayard, or the adjutant breathe of that conference with McLean, and neither Mr. Holmes nor Miss Forrest could form the faintest idea of what had taken place. They had their theories and had frankly exchanged them, and what caused Mrs. Miller infinite amaze and the garrison a new excitement was this growing companionship between the Chicago millionaire and the "Queen of Bedlam." Thrice now had they been seen on the gallery _tete-a-tete_, and once, leaning on his arm, she had appeared on the walk. To the ladies there was no theory so popular as the one that she was setting her cap for him in good earnest now that Nellie Bayard was confined to her room; and when Mrs. Miller met him she longed to speak upon the subject. She could well-nigh thank any woman who could draw this formidable rival away and leave the ground to her wounded and deeply-smitten lieutenant; but could she see him becoming entangled in the toils of Miss Forrest, knowing what she did of that young woman's dreadful moral affliction? There was no way in which she could warn him. She had pledged her word to the major that not a whisper should escape, and though Mrs. Bruce had managed to derive from a conversation with her that Captain Forrest had been sent for, it was accomplished by that feminine device, now so successfully imitated by the so-called interviewers of the public press, of making a.s.sertions and hazarding suggestions which could not be truthfully denied. The lady longed to take Holmes into her confidence,--and could not; and Holmes longed to ask her what allegations had been made against McLean and how he had borne them,--yet dared not. Both to him and the Queen of Bedlam that was the explanation of the simultaneous gathering, at the quarters of the young officer, of the commandant, surgeon, and adjutant. Holmes boldly inquired of the doctor what had taken place, a.s.serting that he was interested in McLean and wanted to help him, if he was in trouble; and in great embarra.s.sment the doctor had begged to be excused from reply. He would not deny that McLean was in trouble,--in grave trouble,--but there was nothing tangible as yet.

Nothing was to be said or done until--well, until he was much better and able to be about.

Friday afternoon came, warm, sunshiny, and delightful. At four o'clock the doctor's carriage--an open, easy, old-fashioned-looking affair--rolled out of the garrison with Nellie Bayard and Jeannie Bruce smiling on the back seat, while Bayard himself handled the reins. There was a vacant place beside him, and, just as he possibly expected, Miss Forrest came out on the gallery and waved her hand and smiled cordial greeting to the two girls. Instantly he reined in his eager horses, almost bringing them upon their haunches, and called up to her:

"This is the best piece of luck that has befallen me since I came to Laramie. I've caught you when you could not be engaged. Do come and join us, Miss Forrest! I'm taking my little invalid out for a drive in the sunshine, and it will do you, too, a world of good. Do come!"

But Miss Forrest's clear voice was heard in prompt and positive regret.

It was impossible: she had an engagement that would occupy her a full hour, and while she thanked the doctor--thanked them all--for stopping for her, it could not be. "I am so glad to see you out again, Miss Nellie," she called. "Now, I shall hope to have you come and spend an hour with me over here."

The doctor could hardly conceal his chagrin. Again he begged. Again his offer was courteously but positively declined. Nellie gave but faint response to Miss Forrest's greetings. Jeannie Bruce looked fixedly away, and finally the horses received a sharp and most unnecessary touch of the lash, and went bounding away from "Bedlam" in a style that reflected small credit on the merits of the driver, and that nearly bruised the backs of his fair pa.s.sengers.

Reclining half dressed, in a big easy-chair, Randall McLean heard the crash of the horses' hoofs and the whirr-r-r of the wheels on the gravelly road in front, and demanded of the attendant an account of the party.