"What was your name before that?"

"Jim."

Whereat there was a t.i.tter in the ranks of prisoners. Some of the guard even allowed their mouths to expand, and the groups of volunteers, chuckling in keen enjoyment, came edging in closer.

Instantly the voice of the officer of the guard was heard ordering silence, and faces straightened out in the twinkling of an eye.

The elder officer, the captain, grew a trifle redder, but he was master of himself and the situation. It is with school-boys as with soldiers, their master is the man whom pranks or impudence cannot annoy. The officer of the day let no tone of temper into his next question. Looking straight into the shifting eyes, he waited for perfect silence, and then spoke:

"Jim what? I wish the name under which you served in your previous enlistment."

"Never said I'd served before."

"No. You declared you had not. But I know better. You're a deserter from the Seventh Cavalry."

The face under the shrouding campaign hat went gray white with sudden twitch of the muscles, then set again, rigid and defiant. The eyes snapped angrily. The answer was sharp, yet seemed, as soldiers say, to "hang fire" a second.

"Never seen the Seventh Cavalry in my life."

The officer of the day turned and beckoned to a figure hitherto kept well in the background, screened by the groups of surrounding volunteers. A man of middle age, smooth shaven and stout, dressed in business sack-suit, came st.u.r.dily forward and took position by the captain's side.

At sight of the new-comer Murray's face, that had regained a bit of its ruddy hue, again turned dirty white, and the boy lieutenant, eying him closely, saw the twitch of his thin, half-hidden lips.

"Point out your man," said the captain to the new arrival.

The civilian stepped forward, and without a word twice tapped with his forefinger the broad breast of Prisoner Murray and, never looking at him, turned again to the officer of the day.

"What was his name in the Seventh?" asked the latter.

"Sackett."

The captain turned to the officer of the guard. "Mr. Ray," said he, "separate Murray from the garrison prisoners and have him put in a cell.

That man must be carefully guarded. You may dismiss the guard, sir."

And, followed by the stranger, Captain Kress was leaving the ground when Murray seemed to recover himself, and in loud and defiant voice gave tongue,--

"That man's a d.a.m.ned liar, and this is an outrage."

"Shut up, Murray!" shouted the sergeant of the guard, scandalized at such violation of military proprieties. "It's gagged you'll be, you idiot," he added between his set teeth, as with scowling face he bore down on the equally scowling prisoner. "Come out of that and step along here ahead of me. I'll put you where shoutin' won't help." And slowly, sullenly, Murray obeyed.

Slowly and in silence the groups of spectators broke up and sauntered away as the last of the prisoners dragged back into the guard-house, and the guard itself broke ranks and went within doors, leaving only the sentry pacing mechanically the narrow, hard-beaten path, the sergeant, and at the turn of the road, the young lieutenant whom Captain Kress had addressed as Mr. Ray. This officer, having silently received his superior's orders and seen to it that Murray was actually "behind the bars," had again come forth into the gathering twilight, the gloaming of a cheerless day, and having hastened to the bend from which point the forms of the officer of the day and his a.s.sociate were still faintly visible, stood gazing after them, a puzzled look in his brave young face.

Not yet a month in possession of his commission, here was a lad to whom every iota of the routine of a lieutenant's life was as familiar as though he had drawn the pay for a decade.

Born and bred in the army, taught from early boyhood to ride and shoot, to spar and swim, spending his vacation in saddle and his schooldays in unwilling study, an adept in every healthful and exhilarating sport, keen with rifle and revolver, with shotgun and rod, with bat and racquet, with the gloves and Indian clubs, the nimblest quarter-back and dodger, the swiftest runner of his school, it must be owned that Mr.

Sanford Ray was a most indifferent scholar. Of geography, history, and languages he had rather more than a smattering because of occasional tours abroad when still at an impressionable age. Yet Sandy "took more stock," as he expressed it, and "stawk," as he called it, in Sioux and the sign language than he did in French or German, knew far more of the Rockies and Sierras than he did of the Alps, studied the European cavalry with the eye of an accomplished critic, and stoutly maintained that while they were bigger swells and prettier to look at, they could neither ride nor shoot to compare with the st.u.r.dy troopers of his father's squadron.

"As to uniforms," said Sandy, "anybody could look swagger in the lancer and huzzar rig. It takes a man to look like a soldier in what our fellows have to wear."

It wasn't the field garb Sandy despised, but the full dress, the blue and yellow enormity in which our troopers are compelled to appear.

It had been the faint hope of his fond parents that Master Sandy would grow up to be something, by which was meant a lawyer, an artist, architect, engineer,--something in civil life that promised home and fortune. But the lad from babyhood would think of nothing but the army and with much misgiving, in Sandy's fifteenth year, his father shipped him to Kentucky, where they were less at home than in Kansas, and gave him a year's hard schooling in hopes of bracing up his mathematics.

Sandy was wild to go to West Point, and at the bottom of his heart Major Ray would have rejoiced had he thought it possible for Sandy to pull through; but ruefully he minded him how hard a task was his own, and how close he came to failure at the semi-annual exams. "Sandy hates Math.

even more than I did," said he to Marion, his devoted wife. "It was all I could do to squirm through when the course was nowhere near as hard as it is to-day, so don't set your heart on it, little woman."

The appointment was not so hard to get, for Major Billy had a host of friends in his native State, and an old chum at the Point a.s.sured him he could coach young Sandy through the preliminary, and indeed he did.

Sandy sc.r.a.ped in after six months' vigorous work, managed to hold his own through the first year's tussle with algebra and geometry, which he had studied hard and faithfully before, was a pet in his cla.s.s, and the pride and joy of his mother's and sister's heart in yearling camp, where he blossomed out in corporal's chevrons and made as natty and active a first sergeant as could be found while the "furlough cla.s.s" was away.

But the misery began with "a.n.a.lytical" and the crisis came with calculus, and to the boy's bitter sorrow, after having been turned back one year on the former and failing utterly on the latter, the verdict of the Academic Board went dead against him, and stout old soldiers thereon cast their votes with grieving hearts, for "Billy Ray's Boy" was a lad they hated to let go, but West Point rules are inexorable.

So too were there saddened hearts far out on the frontier where the major was commanding a cavalry post in a busy summer, but neither he nor Marion had one word of blame or reproach for the boy. Loving arms, and eyes that smiled through their sorrow, welcomed him when the little chap returned to them. "Don't anybody come to meet me," he wrote. "Just let mother be home." And so it was settled.

He sprang from the wagon that met him at the station, went hand in hand with his father into the hall, and then, with one sob, bounded into Marion's outstretched arms as she stood awaiting him in the little army parlor.

The major softly closed the door and with blinking eyes stole away to stables. There had been another meeting a little later when Marion the second was admitted, and the girl stole silently to her brother's side and her arms twined about his neck. Her love for him had been something like adoration through all the years of girlhood, and now, though he was twenty and she eighteen, its fervor seemed to know no diminution. They had done their best, all of them, to encourage while the struggle lasted, but to teach him that should failure come, it would come without reproach or shame.

The path to success in other fields was still before him. The road to the blessed refuge of home and love and sympathy would never close.

It was hard to reconcile the lad at first. The major set him up as a young ranchman in a lovely valley in the Big Horn Range, and there he went st.u.r.dily to work, but before the winter was fairly on the country was rousing to the appeals of Cuba, and before it was gone the Maine had sunk, a riddled hulk, and the spring came in with a call to arms.

Together with some two hundred young fellows all over the land, Sanford Ray went up for examination for the vacant second lieutenancies in the army, and he who had failed in a.n.a.lytical and calculus pa.s.sed without grave trouble the more practical ordeal demanded by the War Department, was speedily commissioned in the artillery, and, to his glory and delight, promptly transferred to the cavalry.

Then came the first general break up the family had really known, for the major hurried away to Kentucky to a.s.sume command of the regiment of volunteers of which he had been made colonel. Billy, junior, a lad of barely seventeen, enlisted at Lexington as a bugler in his father's regiment, and swore he'd shoot himself if they didn't let him serve. The Kentuckians were ordered to Chickamauga, the young regular to the Presidio at San Francisco, and Mrs. Ray, after seeing her husband and youngest son started for the South, returned to Leavenworth, where they had just settled down a week before the war began, packed and stored the household furniture, then, taking "Maidie" with her, hurried westward to see the last of her boy, whose squadron was destined for service at Manila.

The lieutenant, as they delighted in calling him, joined them at Denver, looking perfectly at home in his field uniform and perfectly happy. They left Maidie to spend a week with old army friends at Fort Douglas, and as soon as Sandy was settled in his new duties and the loving mother had satisfied herself the cavalry would not be spirited away before July, she accepted the eager invitation of other old friends to visit them at Sacramento, and there they were, mother and daughter, again united this very raw and foggy evening, when Mr. Ray, as officer of the guard, stood at the bend of the roadway east of the Presidio guard-house, gazing after the vanishing forms of Captain Kress and the burly stranger in civilian clothes, and wondering where on earth it was he had seen the latter before.

So engrossed was he in this that it was only when a second time addressed that he whirled about and found himself confronting a tall and slender young officer, with frank, handsome blue eyes and fine, clear-cut face, a man perhaps five years his senior in age and one grade in rank, for his overcoat sleeve bore the single loop and braid of a first lieutenant.

He was in riding boots and spurs, as Ray noted at first glance, and there behind him stood an orderly holding the horses of both.

"Pardon me. I am Lieutenant Stuyvesant of General Vinton's staff. This is the officer of the guard, I believe, and I am sent to make some inquiry of a prisoner--a man named Murray."

"We have such a man," said Ray, eying the newcomer with soldierly appreciation of his general appearance and not without envy of his inches. "But he's just been locked in a cell, and it will take an order from the officer of the day to fetch him out--unless you could see him in there with other prisoners within earshot."

"Not very well," answered Stuyvesant, looking curiously into the dark eyes of the youngster. "Perhaps I'd better see the officer of the day at once."

"You'll find him at the club. He's just gone in," said Ray, mindful of the fact that this was the captain's time for a c.o.c.ktail, and with a courteous salute the aide-de-camp hastened away.

In five minutes he was back with a pencilled scrawl from Kress to the effect that Lieutenant Stuyvesant was to be permitted to interview the prisoner Murray outside the guard-house, but sentries must be placed to prevent escape.

Quickly young Ray called out the corporal and two men, warned them of the duty demanded, stationed them up and down the road and opposite the guard-house, but just out of ear-shot, ordered the prisoner brought forth, and then, leaving Stuyvesant standing at the post of Number One, stepped a dozen yards away into the mist.

A minute later out came the sergeant, marshalling Murray after him, a sentry at his heels. Then in the gathering darkness the tall officer and the short, thick-set soldier met face to face, and the latter recoiled and began glancing quickly, furtively about him.

Just how it all happened Ray could never quite tell. The light was now feeble, the lamps were only just beginning to burn. There was a moment of low-toned talk between the two, a question twice repeated in firmer tone, then a sudden, desperate spring and dash for liberty.

Like a centre rush--a charging bull--the prisoner came head on straight to where young Ray was standing, heedless of a yell to halt, and in less time than it takes to tell it, the lithe little athlete of West Point's crack football team had sprung and tackled and downed him in his tracks.