Sanford "held the fort," as has been said, and Marion, high-spirited, sensitive, refined, and loving, was entering on her twentieth year--without a home.

Was she pretty? Yes. More than pretty, said those who knew her best. She was simply lovely. But alas for those to whom disappointment is sure to come, she was a decided blonde.

A fairer, lovelier, whiter skin than Marion Sanford's was rarely seen; her complexion was wellnigh faultless, her eyes were large, clear, full of thought and truth and expression, and in tint a deep, deep blue, shaded, like Grace Truscott's, with curling lashes, not so long, but thick and sweeping; her hair was too dark, perhaps, for the purity of her blond complexion. It was a shining, wavy brown, very soft, thick, and luxuriant. She would be far more striking, said her commentators, had she real blond hair, but those who grew to know her well soon lost sight of the defect. Her mouth was a trifle large, but her teeth were perfect, and the lips so soft, so sweetly curved, that one readily forgave the deviation from the strict rule of facial unity when watching her frequent smiles. In stature she was perhaps below, as Grace was above, the medium height of womanhood, but her figure was exquisite. Her neck and arms were a soft and creamy white, and the perfection of roundness and grace. "She must lace fearfully," was the invariable comment of the sisterhood on first acquaintance. In truth, she did not lace at all. It was a fault beyond her control, but her waist was perhaps too small. Her hands and feet were not like Grace's, long and slender. They were tiny, but her hand was plump and white and might be compressible. It was undeniably pretty, and her foot was always so stylishly shod that its shape was outlined most attractively.

But what would have made Marion Sanford attractive had she been simply plain instead of pretty, was her manner. Cold and unsympathetic had been the original school-girl verdict p.r.o.nounced because of her distaste for imparting confidences. This was amended in her second year, abandoned in her third, and would have been attacked, if a.s.serted, in her fourth.

Over no girl's departure was there such frantic lamentation among the younger scholars as over Marion's. They had learned to love her. To all who were her elders there was gentle deference, to her equals and a.s.sociates a frank and cordial bearing without degeneration into "confidences." To younger girls and to children Marion Sanford was an angel, the sweetest, the gentlest, the kindest, the most winning girl that lived. No matter who was with her, no matter what her occupation, for them she had ever smiles and sunshiny greeting. It was to her the younger girls soon learned to go in homesickness or troubles, sure of welcome to her arms and comfort in her sympathy; it was to her that the wee toddlers were never afraid to run for "sweeties," or refuge from pursuing nurse-maids; it was to her that girls of younger sets, accustomed to being snubbed and put down by those two years older, would yield the outspoken homage of loyal subjects. She was Queen Marion to the youngsters of the school, brave, wise, and, oh! so generous; while to the chosen few in the cla.s.s, who knew something of her love for the heroic, she was Maid Marion, but only "Maidie" to one, her loyal and faithful ally, Grace.

She was still abroad in the fall of '75 when that quiet wedding took place which she was vainly implored to attend as first bridesmaid. Three years had elapsed since her mother's death, but her heart was still in mourning. But early in the spring of the Centennial year, after a stormy pa.s.sage, she was safely restored to her own land, and the evening after the arrival of their party Captain and Mrs. Truscott were dining with them at the Clarendon. There had been a brief, a very brief call from her father and step-mother, and then she accepted Grace's invitation to come to them at the Point. A slight illness of Mr. Sanford's made it necessary to abandon the visit at the time, as she was telegraphed for before she had been forty-eight hours at the Point. The month that followed settled the question as to future relations with Mrs. Sanford.

She would meet her father whenever or wherever he wanted except under that roof; on that point she was adamant, and he neither could nor did blame her. And so it resulted that she was once more with Grace and the "Admirable Crichton," as she had been accustomed to allude to him in her letters for the past year; and up to the moment of his return from the city he was the only hero who had appeared to her eyes in that manufacturing centre where the article is supposed to be turned out at the rate of fifty a year. It never had occurred to her that men so particular about the cut of their uniform trousers, the set of a "blouse," or the nice adjustment of the hair could by any possibility develop heroic qualities, and yet Captain Truscott always looked as though he had stepped out of a band-box.

It was late when she went to her room this lovely night in June. It was true that she had one or two letters to write, but they were very brief.

She longed to have Grace come to her and tell her the result of her interview with Jack, and she longed to know what that letter would say.

Never for an instant had it occurred to her that at a moment's notice a home could be abandoned, a young wife left to mourn, a delightful station left to anybody who wanted the place, and all as an every-day incident of army life. That such things could be expected and demanded in the midst of a mortal struggle for national honor was another matter entirely,--something to be encountered once in a lifetime, and something to be cherished in family tradition as grand, patriotic, heroic, and worthy of keeping in remembrance from generation to generation; but that to do all this merely as a piece of duty because one's particular regiment happened to be setting forth on probably hazardous service, but of a trivial nature as compared with the interests involved in the only war she heard much talked of, why, she never dreamed of such a possibility, and her ideas were no more vague than are those of the general public on precisely the same subject.

Twelve o'clock struck from the great bell over at the tower, and still Grace and her husband remained below. It was time--high time to go to bed, said Miss Sanford, though still perplexed, anxious, and distressed.

Grace would surely come to her as soon as matters were decided. She stepped to her window to take a good-night look at the moonlit plain.

Drawing aside the curtain, she peered through the blinds. Standing in silence at the front gate, leaning on the iron fence and gazing fixedly in the direction of the library window which opened toward the north, there appeared the figure of a man. A moment he stood there motionless, attentive. Then, without a sound, he swung back the gate, and quickly and almost on tiptoe, it seemed to her, stepped up the walk, pa.s.sed through a broad, moonlit s.p.a.ce, and was as quickly lost to sight and hearing around the corner of the house. She recognized the form and bearing at a glance. The man was Sergeant Wolf.

CHAPTER VI.

AT THE FRONT.

Rare indeed is a day in June! Warmth and fragrance, sunshine and roses, strawberries, straw hats, summer costumes, music and moonlight, soft zephyrs, softer speeches, softest of swains have we left at the Point.

Farewells--sweet, sad, sentimental some of them--have been said. The corps of cadets has gone to the Centennial with thousands of sight-seers from all over the nation. They hardly had dared hope for such an unaccustomed delight. They had not expected to go, but went. The nation flocks to Philadelphia, but out in the Northwest some hundreds of its defenders are flocking in another direction. Come with us and take another look at our old friends of the --th. They had expected to go, but didn't.

It is a rare, rare day in June, but where are the soft breezes, the sweet fragrance, the blossoms and the bliss of that month of months at the dear old Point? Rare indeed is the breeze, cloudless the sky, brilliant, beaming, magnificent, the sunshine, but not a leaf stirs in answering rustle to the wind. Far and near no patch of shade delights or tempts the eye. Look where you will,--look for miles and miles over boundless expanse of rolling upland, of ridge and ravine, of dip and "divide," of b.u.t.te and swale, no speck of foliage, no vision is there of even isolated tree. The solid earth beneath our feet is carpeted with dense little bunches of buffalo-gra.s.s, juicy, life-giving, yet bleaching already of the faint hues of green that came peeping through the last snows left in May. Tiny wild flowers purple the surface near us, but blend into the colorless effect of the general distance. We stand on a wave of petrified ocean, tumbling in wild upheaval close at hand; stretching away to the east in a league-long level flat as the barn floor of tradition, and bare as the description.

Far to the east the prairie rolls up to the horizon wave after wave till none is seen beyond. Far to the north, bare and treeless, too, the same effect is maintained. Far to the south, across an intervening low-land one would call a valley elsewhere, the ground rises against the sky, until its monotonous gray-green meets the gray-blue of the southern heaven; but west of south, what have we here? The farthest wave of prairie surges, not against the naked sky, but against a cold gray range, whose peaks and turrets are seamed and sprinkled with glistening snow. Aye, there they stand, the monarchs of the Rockies; there through the short summer sunshine their lofty crests defy the melting rays and bear their plumage through the very dog-days, to greet and welcome the first, faint, timid snow-flakes of the early fall. There they gleam and glisten, no longer as we saw them from the Kansas plains, dim in the western distance, unapproachable, but close at hand, neighborly, sheltering, for we nestle under their very shoulders. Here, to the west, just behind us, no great day's walk away and seemingly far nearer, in jagged outline against the blue of heaven, are the guardians of the old transcontinental pa.s.s. Here, to the west, where you see the rugged spurs jutting out from the range, runs the old trail which the engineers have followed, and carried the Union Pacific to its greatest alt.i.tude between the oceans. Far out there among the b.u.t.tes runs that climbing ridge, yet it seems so close, so neighborly with the foreshortening of that strange scenery, that one cannot realize that in its climb it carries the iron rails still two thousand feet farther aloft. For years we have read of the Rockies, and is this possible? Do you mean that here, with this expanse of level prairie before us, we are up among the clouds, so to speak,--far up on the very backbone of the continent, and that is why, instead of towering thousands of feet aloft in air, the great peaks--Long's and Hahn's and Pike's--seem so near us to the south'ard and no higher at all? Aye, call it prairie level if you will, for straight to the east it looks as flat as Illinois, but we are standing six thousand feet higher in air than the highest steeple in Chicago, and our prairie flat is but the long, long slope of mountain-side that begins in the Black Hills of Wyoming--back at Cheyenne Pa.s.s--and ends at the forks of the Platte down near Julesburg.

You say it must be up-hill to that ridge that meets the horizon at the east. Is it? Look over here to our left front, a little to the northeast. See that tiny lake surrounded by low, wooden buildings, and approached by the hard, beaten road from the distant town. A pleasure resort of some kind, judging from the streamers and bright flags about the place. It stands on a hill, does it not? and the hill has risen gradually from the west, but slopes abruptly again to the east and south to the general level. Did you ever see a lake on a hill before? How does the water get there? Springs? No. Mark that slender rivulet that runs from far up the ravine at the southwest; it crosses the prairie in the near distance, and then goes twisting and turning up that apparent slope until it reaches the little lake on the hill. The outlet, you say? Yes.

From here it certainly looks so, but step forward a few hundred feet and look at the rivulet, and by all that's marvellous! the water is running up-hill.

So it certainly seems, but the explanation is simple. The prairie is not horizontal by any means. It is a gradual but decided slope to the east, and the top of the little hill two miles away is forty feet lower than the point on which you stand.

Then how deceptive is the distance! Across the level to the southeast lies the bustling frontier city. You wonder to see glistening dome and spire far out there under the very shadow of the Rockies. At least you would have wondered a decade ago in the Centennial year. You note the transparency of the atmosphere. Science has told you that at such an alt.i.tude the air is rarefied. There is no light haze to soften outlines and to lend enchantment to a distant view. Roof, spire, chimney, all stand out clear and hard, and the coal-smoke from the railway blots the landscape where it rises, yet is quickly scattered by the mountain breeze. Between you and the little town lies the prairie over which the stage road runs straight and hard as a pike until, nearing us, it begins to twist and turn among the foot-hills for a climb across the ridge into the valley of Lodge Pole Creek beyond. Lodge Pole indeed! The creek valley has not a stick of timber far as one can see it. Follow it to its source, two days' trot or tramp up towards Cheyenne Pa.s.s, and there you find them, as the Sioux did twenty years ago, before we bade them seek their lodge-poles farther north. How far is it to the prairie metropolis,--a mile and a half, you venture? My friend, were you an artillerist, and were you to sight a two-hundred-pounder to throw a sh.e.l.l into Cheyenne from where we stand, "setting your sights for three thousand yards,"--more than your mile and a half,--the sh.e.l.l would rip up the prairie turf somewhere down there where you see the road crossing that _acequia_. Cheyenne lies a good four miles away, and is a good deal bigger than you take it to be. But here to the south lies a strange diamond-shaped enclosure,--a queer arrangement of ugly brown wooden barns and sheds far out all by itself on the bare bosom of the prairie.

That is _called_ a frontier fort. It is not a fort. It never has been.

Even tradition cannot be summoned to warrant the name. It was built after our great civil war, and named for one of the gallant generals who fell fighting in the Shenandoah Valley. It has neither stockade nor simplest defensive work. It is all it can do to stand up against a "Cheyenne zephyr," and a shot fired at one end of it would go clean through to the other without meeting anything sufficiently solid to deflect it from its course. It is a fort by courtesy, as some of our non-combatants are generals by brevet, and would be as valuable in time of defensive need. All around it, east, west, and north, sweeps the level prairie. South of its unenclosed limits there flows a rapid-running stream, down in whose barren valley are placed the long unsightly wooden stables, the big square corrals for quartermaster's stock, the huge stacks of hay and straw, and vast piles of cord-wood.

Farther east along this tortuous stream, and on its left bank, too, midway between fort and city, is another big brown enclosure, in which are dozens of sheds and storehouses. It is a great supply depot for quartermaster's stores and ordnance, and over it, as over the fort, flutters the little patch of color which stamps the property as Uncle Sam's. For reasons that can soon be explained only small-sized flags are ever hoisted near Cheyenne. By noon of three hundred days a year, straight from the wild pa.s.s to the west, there comes sweeping down a gale that would snap the stoutest flag-staff into flinders, and that whips even a storm-flag threadbare in a few brief weeks.

But it is a rare June morning now, too early for the "zephyr," and nature beams and sparkles even over such bare landscape. The air is crisp, cool, invigorating. Far out on the slopes and side hills great herds of horses and mules are grazing, guarded by vigilant troopers, some alert in saddle, others p.r.o.ne upon the turf. Out along the road from town comes a train of white-covered wagons slowly crawling northward, with stores and supplies for the army up in the Indian country, and down here to our right front, covering the flat between fort and depot, blocked out in regular rows and groups, dotting the plain with gleaming canvas, is the camp of the --th regiment of cavalry.

For the first time since the war of the rebellion two-thirds of its entire strength is ma.s.sed under command of its senior officer.

Morning mounted drill is just over, and the two battalions, having unsaddled and turned the horses out to graze, are now busily occupied about the camp. The soft notes of the trumpet sounding "Officer's Call"

has drawn to the colonel's tent a knot of tanned and athletic men in rough field uniform and bristling beards. Those who best know the --th will be quicker to recognize old friends in this guise than when in the glitter of parade uniform or the accurate and irreproachable evening dress of civilization. There is not a man in the group who is not quite at his ease in ball-room attire; most of them have held acquaintance time and again with the white tie and stiff "choker" of conventionality, but the average gallant of metropolitan circles would turn up his supercilious nostrils at the bare suggestion were he to see them now.

The --th is in its element, however, for the order has come, and with the coming dawn it will be on the march for the Black Hills of Dakota, and the colonel has summoned the officers to his tent for some final instructions. It must be conceded that they look like business in their dark-blue flannel shirts, their "reinforced" riding-breeches, the substantial boots, and the field blouses and broad-brimmed campaign hats that Arizona suns and storms have long since robbed of gloss or freshness. The faces are strong and virile in almost every case. It is ten days since the razor has profaned a single chin, and very stubbly and ugly do they look, but long experience has taught them that the sooner the beard is allowed to sprout when actual campaigning is to be done the greater the eventual comfort. Occasionally some fellow draws off the rough leather gauntlet, and then the contrast between his blistered, wind-and-sun tanned face and the white hand is startling.

Every man is girt with belt of stout make, and wears his revolver and hunting-knife,--the sabre is discarded by tacit consent,--its last appearance for many a long month. Some of the number, indeed, have taken the order to prepare for campaign work as a permit to doff the uniform entirely. Gruff old Stannard hates the blouse on general principles, and looks solid and "stocky" in his flannel shirt; not a vestige of "rank"

can be found about him. Turner and old Wilkins, Crane and Hunter, are of his way of thinking, but others who preserve the military proprieties to the last are still garbed in the undress uniform coat. Perhaps they are thinking of the good-byes to be said in the garrison to-night. Less than twenty officers are there who report in answer to the signal, and, having saluted the colonel, dispose themselves on the few camp-stools or on the gra.s.s and wait for his remarks.

Some are old friends, and some old friends are absent. It is odd to think of the --th being here in force without Truscott, or Ray, or old Bucketts, the men we knew so well in Arizona. Colonel Pelham is, of course, not looked for: he is far too old to be in saddle on so hard a campaign as this promises to be. Truscott's troop is not yet here, but is under orders to remain in Kansas for the present, and he, we know, is far away at the Point. Ray, with one of the captains whom we have yet to meet, and with Mr. Gleason, is still detained on that horse board,--very reluctantly, too, fretting himself into a fever over it say some accounts, and other accounts say worse. Bucketts, as quartermaster, is behind at Hays gathering up the fragments that remain and shipping property to the new station. Captain Canker is here: he was East with his wife and little ones, vastly enjoying the surf at Cape May, when the telegram reached him saying that the --th were off for the wars again, and within twelve hours he was in pursuit. Four of the group now waiting around the colonel's tent came in just that way.

"Gentlemen," says the colonel, stepping quickly from the tent, "I called you here for a word or two. First, there will be forty new horses here at three this afternoon. They will be distributed according to color among the eight companies, five to each. See to it that they are shod first thing. There will be twenty in the next lot; they are to be left here for Webb and Truscott. Overhaul your ammunition and equipments at once, and if anything is lacking, you can draw from Cheyenne depot this afternoon. I presume those of you who are to take station at Russell will want to go over to see about your quarters, but my advice is that only those who have families make any selection: there will be some changes by the time we get back. We march at six in the morning, so have everything cleared up to-day. There will be no further drill. Those who have business to attend to in town or at the fort can leave camp without further permission. I shall remain here until we start, and one officer from each troop must be in camp, at stables, and during night. That's all, unless somebody has questions to ask." And the colonel looks inquiringly around.

Apparently n.o.body has, and the group breaks up. Some few of the older officers remained to talk over the prospects at the colonel's tent.

Others went to the garrison to rejoin anxious wives and children, and to spend the last day with them in helping get things settled in the new army homes to which they had been so suddenly moved. A third party, "the youngsters," or junior officers, sauntered across the intervening stretch of prairie towards the low wooden building standing just north of the entrance-gate of the fort. In old army days 'twas known as "the sutler's." In modern parlance it is simply called "the store." The middle room of which, fitted up with a couple of old-fashioned billiard-tables, a huge coal stove, some rough benches, chairs, two or three round tables, and the inevitable bar and cigar-stand, bore on the portals the legend "officers'," as distinguished from the general "club-room" beyond.

Seated around the room in various att.i.tudes of _ennui_ and dejection were three or four infantry officers stationed at the post, while at one of the tables a trio of young lieutenants were killing time after morning drill in the fascination of "limited draw." Target practice, as now conducted, was then unknown, or there would have been no time to kill. The announcement languidly conveyed from the occupant of the window-seat, "A squad of the --th coming," produced neither sensation nor visible effect.

A minute more, however, and the door burst open, and in they came, half a dozen glowing, breezy, vigorous young cavalrymen, ruddy with health, elastic with open-air life and exercise, brimful of good spirits and cordiality, and headed by the declamatory Blake, who made a bee-line for the bar, shouting,--

"'An if a man did need a poison now, Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.'

His name's Muldoon, and he's a fluid man. Step out, Muldoon. What'll ye have, fellers?" he asked, with the sudden transition from the sublime to the ridiculous, which was one of Blake's delights. "Name your respective pizens, gentlemen. Come, join us, ye gallants of mud-crushers. What, ho!

Poker?" and with one stride he was at the table and peering over the hands: "No use, Sammy,--

'Two queens with but a single ace, Two sharps that beat as one.'

That's no hand to tackle a one-card draw with. Never you mind whether he's bluffing or not. There ain't enough in that pot to warrant the expense of testing the question. Take another deal. _What_ did you say, Muldoon? Whiskey? No! Throw whiskey to the dogs; I'll none of it. Give me foaming lager. That's right, my doughboy ancient. Didn't I tell you to take another hand? What says the inimitable Pope?--

'Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare, And Sammy scoops us with a single pair.'"

"Good heavens! Blake. Give us a rest! Here, swallow your beer, or take something to choke you," laughed the victim at the table, while a chorus of groans saluted Blake's unconscionable parodies. "If you were to be here a week longer I vow I'd go mad. The best news I've heard in a year is that you're ordered to march in the morning. What quarters did you choose?"

"What difference does it make to you, Rags?" put in Mr. Dana. "You fellows will have the post to yourselves all summer, anyhow. We shan't get out so much as a chair until we come back from the campaign."

"Well, the married officers have chosen theirs, you know. Stannard's traps are all moved into No. 11, and they are pretty nearly settled already,--the carpets were all down yesterday. So they were at Turner's.

Mrs. Whaling has been helping them unpack for the last three days, and telling everybody what they had and didn't have. I tell you what, fellows, we're going to have no end of a good time here this summer with your band and all the ladies while you're roughing it out on the Big Horn. Whaling says he'll bet a hat none of you get back before Thanksgiving."

"Is it so that Truscott comes here with his troop?" asked one of the captains of Lieutenant Crane.

"Well, the troop comes, but as to Truscott, that's another matter."

"I don't understand you, Crane," said Mr. Blake, with sudden change from his roystering manner. "I thought you heard Ray say that he knew Truscott would be after us as soon as it was settled that we would take the field."

"Ray knew no more about it than you do, Blake," was the impatient reply.

"Ray has a fashion of being oracular where Truscott is concerned as though he were on intimate and confidential terms with him. Now I, for one, don't believe he had any authority whatever for saying what he did."

"Well, hold on here," said Blake, deliberately. "My recollection is that Ray only spoke of it as his conviction,--not that Truscott had told him anything; still, he was certain that Truscott would come, and that he would lose no time in getting relieved either. You know he is at the Point," he said, in explanation, to the silent infantryman.

"Well, I'm d----d if I can understand it in him," muttered Wilkins, as he buried his broad face in a beer-mug.

"No, Wilkins, I dare say you can't," was the drawling reply, and the sarcasm was not lost among the listeners, though it missed its effect on the stolid object. "Truscott, Ray, Heath, and Wayne, and Canker, are not the style of men to spend this summer, of all others, away from the regiment."

"Well, here we are, marching to-morrow, and where are your Ray and Truscott?" asked Wilkins, with as near an approach to a sneer as he dare venture.