"I will do all that most gladly, Mrs. Cranston, but the matter on which I desire to see him at once is urgent, and perhaps Mr. Sanders will walk over to the stables with me. Then, may I not call and see you later?"

"By all means! and will you not dine with us? A real campaign dinner, you know, but we shall be so pleased to have you."

Langston's face fairly glowed. "I'll be here in half an hour, if I may, but I must see the captain at once, and will go. I trust--Miss Loomis--is well."

"Very well, and quite able to answer for herself," said Mrs. Cranston, mischievously, while Langston's eyes eagerly searched the door-way and dim interior; but Miss Loomis was nowhere in sight, and chose to appear to be not within hearing.

"Why didn't you come or speak?" said Meg, reproachfully, the moment he was gone.

"I was busy. These are school days," was the calm reply, one that would have been no comfort to Langston, who walked rather ruefully on with the subaltern. The business with Cranston proved interesting.

"You have a young trooper, Brannan, whom I need to see confidentially, and at once. May I do so, captain?"

"Certainly. Send Corporal Brannan here," said the troop commander, wondering what new complication had involved this wayward son; and presently, erect and soldierly, with a fine tan on his cheek and brand-new chevrons on his sleeves, "lanced for bravery in the field," as the troopers expressed it in those days, the young soldier stood attention before them.

"You probably do not remember me, Corporal Brannan," said Langston, in courteous tone, "but I remember you favorably and well for the day at Bluff Siding last June." And the light in the young soldier's eyes indicated that he recalled the civilian. "Your captain knows something of the matter on which I wish to see you, and I have asked him to remain here with us." And now an anxious, troubled look crept over Brannan's face, some swift overshadowing from the coming cloud. "You have never yet told any one whose knife it was that cut you that day."

Brannan's lips moved and he turned even paler, but he said no word.

"Well, corporal, the time seems to have come when instead of keeping silence to protect another man you may have to speak for your own sake."

Brannan glanced quickly, anxiously, from one face to another, from the lawyer to his troop commander, as though appealing to the latter to say how could that be. Presently he faltered, "I don't understand." "Well, I will tell you, in part at least. Your captain and I know something of your past history, and I do not think you will have cause to regret that fact. We know that you were at Dr. Powlett's at the time Mr. Davies was a.s.saulted and robbed near his Urbana home. You had there been on terms of intimacy with young Powlett, who disappeared after much disreputable doing. You soon enlisted, and were for a time very intimate with a recruit, Howard, who corresponded with the description I have of Powlett. You both had frequent letters,--you from your mother and he from several sources. Then came a disagreement and you held yourself apart from him and his new chum, a young fellow called Paine, and, while you continued loyal to an old friendship and kept silent as to Howard's past, he was less considerate of you. There was serious trouble between yourself and Sergeant Haney and Howard the night you reached Fort Scott after the campaign, and you were ordered confined. I have heard there at Scott a story I do not believe. Will you not tell your captain and me the real cause?"

"Well, sir, it was about my writing-case," said the corporal, in low and hesitant voice. "I kept mother's letters and some pictures and things I valued in it. It went with me up to the Big Horn camp all right, but when we started on the campaign and cut loose from the wagons I had to turn it over to Sergeant Haney. I saw him lock it in the big company chest, and the night we got into Scott with the wagons and that chest was unloaded, over three months afterwards, I asked for it at once, and I had been kept back with the wagons, and I'd been drinking a little, for it was a bitter cold march, and Haney and Howard gave me more liquor and told me I'd better not take it until I'd quit drinking. We had trouble that night later, and I was confined for abusing the sergeant and being drunk, though I could prove I hadn't abused him, and that it was just the other way, and that I was only slightly affected by the liquor. The next day I sent word from the guard-house for my case, and the reply came that the sergeant gave it to me the previous night. I knew he hadn't and said so. They answered that I was drunk and must have lost it, and that was all the satisfaction I got."

"Why didn't you tell me about this at the time, Brannan?" asked Cranston, kindly.

"I meant to, sir, the moment I got out, but they fixed things so as to send me direct from the guard-house with Lieutenant Boynton's detachment to the agency, and when I wrote from there to Howard and Haney both, they answered that they had a clue, and if I'd only keep quiet they'd get it sure, and the man who stole it from me. I never told mother about it,--it shamed me so. I was afraid the liquor was drugged, and--it might be true, though I thought I knew everything that happened." Then he stopped abruptly.

"Go on," said Langston, with deep interest in his keen, shrewd face.

"There is even more to this than I thought. What followed?"

"I got tired waiting, and there was a chance to go to Scott with the mail rider and I took it, and a bitter cold ride it proved to be. We couldn't get coffee on the way, the rider and I, but we could get whiskey, worse luck, for he had it with him, and so I had been drinking when we reached the post, and made my demand of Haney. He put me off with more liquor and soft words. Then I threatened to appeal to Captain Cranston or Lieutenant Davies, and the next thing they had me in hospital with Paine to watch me. I had been drinking enough to make me mad with suffering for more by that time."

"Well, did you never appeal to Captain Devers?"

"No, sir; there was no use in doing that," said Brannan, coloring uneasily as he spoke. "I beg Captain Cranston's pardon for saying so of an officer, but no one could hope for justice in 'A' Troop unless he was solid with Sergeant Haney."

"And you have never seen your writing-case to this day?" continued Langston.

"Never, sir."

"Well, one thing more. Now that you know Howard's character,--know him to have deserted and to have striven to injure you in many a way, will you still persist in saying he did not wield the knife that slashed you?"

"I have said, sir, that I knew no one in all the recruits who would have used a knife on me."

"True! You put it well, Brannan," said Langston, with a smile of deep meaning, "and among simple-minded military folk the answer would be enough, perhaps, but not to a lawyer. Would you declare that Howard did not wield the knife that slashed you--but was meant for Lieutenant Davies?"

And Brannan colored still deeper. "I cannot say anything about him, sir; at least not now."

"Very well. Then it is useless to ask just now what you know of his past?"

"Yes, sir."

"All right, Brannan. It is my belief that in the near future that writing-case of yours will turn up, and I mean to stay to see it, for when it does you'll need us both."

But Langston's hope for a speedy and brilliant coup was dashed by the news that came that very night. Forty-eight hours thereafter a little caravan of army wagons, Concords and ambulances, with an infantry escort, was slowly wending its way southward toward the welcoming roofs of old Fort Scott, with the wives and children of several families, with Mira and her newest friend, Mrs. Plodder, with the tall, martial-looking civilian riding in close attendance on the Cranston's equipage, basking in the life-giving sunshine and in the thrill and hope and sweet unrest of an ever-growing love, devoted and insistent in spite of vague and jealous dread, for there was not the feeblest flicker of encouragement in Miss Loomis's calm and oft-averted eyes. Langston asked himself in the still hours of the starlit night, camping on the banks of Dismal River, was it possible that her heart was following some soldier in the dusty column, riding hard, riding fast long miles away to the northwest now, eager to overtake the comrade soldiery already on the flank of the foe, and bear a trooper's part in the battle summer so suddenly to open.

Even Percy Davies, laughing at the feeble protest of Dr. Burroughs, and heartily congratulated by old White himself, had donned his field dress and climbed stiffly into saddle, to ride once more with the fighting column, to the savage disappointment of his one red foe at the cantonments, and the utter confusion of other foes at Scott.

CHAPTER XXIX.

A hundred miles away,--a hundred as the crow flies, and not by the tortuous route the cavalry had to follow, through a region that, all in an hour's march, shifted its scene from the dull monotone of barren waves of prairie to bold, beautiful heights and deep sheltered ravines and canons, the winding thread of the Mina Ska went foaming and leaping over its stony bed, taking occasional cat-naps in wide, shadowy shallows, only to wake up again to wilder riot under the frowning, fir-crested cliffs of the Black Rock Range. For many a long, sunshiny mile it had come floating placidly eastward, issuing from the great water-shed of the continent, drifting leisurely between low-lying, gra.s.sy banks all criss-crossed with ancient buffalo-trails, or the recent footprints of long-horned cattle, past the broad plateau, crowded by the wooden walls of Fort Ransom, past the roofs and spires of bustling b.u.t.te, a prairie metropolis, a railway and cattle town that rivalled Braska, past long miles of gleaming tangents of the transcontinental railway until it met the bold bluffs east of Alkali Station and was shouldered from its course and sent on long, tortuous _detour_ to the northeast, until, beyond the great reservation of the red men in the loveliest hill country of the wild frontier, it once more turned sharply eastward at the point described in the sonorous language of the plains as "the Big Bend of the Mina Ska." Midway between its sweeping curve near Alkali and the sharp deflection at the big bend there came flowing into it from the westward, through the very heart of the Dakota lands, the clear, translucent waters of the Wakpa Wakon,--the Spirit River of the Sioux, all along whose storied sh.o.r.es for mouths had cl.u.s.tered the thronging villages of the tribe, living through the long, fierce winter in sheltered comfort, fed, warmed, inspired by the spoils and stories of the great campaign the year gone by. But now as though by magic had the tepees vanished. Only around the protecting agency, miles to the west, miles deeper in among the tumbling hills, were the lodges now cl.u.s.tered, hundreds of them, with their swarming occupants,--old men, old crones, Indian mothers, wives, sweethearts, maids, young boys, children, and pappooses,--all confidingly clinging to the protecting hand of the Great Father and claiming his bounty; while the husbands and fathers, the stalwart young warriors of the Sioux themselves, were skulking through the Bad Lands across the Ska, eagerly, warily watching the coming of the little cavalry column from the distant Chasing Water, while even in greater numbers their wild red cohorts patrolled the deep valley, the overhanging heights of the Ska itself, watching every move of the coming force from Ransom, bent on luring both, if possible, far within their borders, far in among those tangling, treacherous ravines and canons, and, there surrounding, to ma.s.sacre the last man.

Southwestward, at Painted Lodge b.u.t.te, after a long, long march through the heat and glare of the long June day, Colonel Winthrop had ordered his men to bivouac for the night. Riding steadily eastward by the "foot-hill" trail from Ransom, they had reached Willow Springs on Friday noon, purposing to camp there until the following dawn, but so alarming were the reports of the few fleeing settlers whom they met that the old colonel decided after an hour's rest to push on again. Without being trammelled by precise orders, the general tenor of his instructions was to march on down the Ska, and strike and punish any Indian war-parties he could find, and clear the valley as soon as possible. Major Chrome, with four troops, two of the Eleventh, his own, and two of the --th, Atherton's regiment, was ordered to march across country from the Chasing Water, and join Winthrop in the valley of the Ska. One hundred miles, as has been said, had Chrome to march to reach the valley at the nearest point, nearly opposite the mouth of the Spirit River. Nearly two hundred if he followed the stream would Tintop have to cover in going from Fort Ransom to that point, but he had started on a Wednesday morning, twenty-four hours ahead of Chrome. Each well knew he would probably have to fight his way. Each meant, according to his own lights, to do his best, and each resorted to measures radically different.

Winthrop, active, eager, nervous in temperament, pushed forward boldly, rapidly, bent on "getting there," as he expressed it, and hitting hard before the reds could slip back to their holes. Chrome, slow, phlegmatic, cautious, advanced by carefully-studied marches, with scouts far ahead and flankers far dispersed. Arguing that Winthrop, with one hundred and fifty miles or more to go, and a bigger crowd to handle, and with Indians on his flank every inch of the way, would not be able to reach the Spirit River crossing inside of seven days,--Chrome parcelled out his own march accordingly. Starting with all speed from the cantonment, according to his instructions from Major White, he soon slowed down to a pace more in accordance with his own views. "If we get there Monday or Tuesday even," said he, "we'll be 'way ahead of Tintop."

And this was at the close of the second day's march, when he could point to less than a total of forty-four miles covered. The country was still open, the trails distinct, the Indians reported in the distance were in small parties, probably from the Ogallalla reservation. To Cranston and Truman, as well as to the captains of the --th, there seemed every reason to push ahead. It was urged among them that, at last, Truman should speak, and Truman did, as the captains of the --th positively declined. "We have known Colonel Winthrop well, sir," said Truman, "and we believe he will make long marches, perhaps forced marches, to throw himself between the raiders and the reservation. Just as soon as a big force gets there, they will scatter for the far north and northwest. The only chance of punishing them is to get there at once while there is still something left for them to kill or burn,--something to tempt them.

I fear, major, that unless we make better time we'll be too late for the ball."

Chrome listened placidly and without impatience of any kind. Yes, he admitted, that was what White himself said. White was fuming with wrath because he wasn't given command of a field column instead of being sent west to cover the p.a.w.nee Station road. "Small blame to him!" muttered Cranston. "Why on earth couldn't this tortoise have been left to that work and old Whitey given to us?" No! Major Chrome meant to advance with caution and deliberation. If the Indians saw them coming precipitately, they might be equally precipitate in their flight, and thereby defeat the general's plans of having Tintop get in their rear, at which characteristic opinion Captain Canker, of the --th, a man of many moods, but a fighter, turned gloomily away, and was heard soon afterwards swearing viciously. It was the old story of the army of lions with a sheep at their head.

And then came a calm, cloudless, radiant June Sunday, a day as perfect and serene aloft as was that June Sunday of the year gone by on whose high noon there rose the mad clamor of the battle on the Little Horn, whose pitiless sun looked fiercely down upon the slaughtered ranks of Custer and his gallant Seventh, and just as the red went out of the western sky, and the sharp, jagged line of the Warrior b.u.t.tes melted into softer purple, there came galloping in from the distant outpost an excited trooper, who gave a paper to Major Chrome. The officers were seated about him at a tiny fire, and Cranston quickly lighted a candle lantern and the major read. It was from the officer of the picket.

"Thunder Hawk and Rides Double just in from over toward the Ska. They say they have seen 'plenty warriors' all day and are sure there has been a big fight far across the valley. We could plainly see Indian signal-smokes an hour ago, and Hawk says a heavy dust-cloud rose between him and the sunset." It was signed "Davies."

"Now, _there_, gentlemen!" said Chrome, "if we had pushed ahead any faster Davies couldn't have kept up with us, and this evening he's commanding the advance. If we had hurried, those Indians would have hurried too and got clear away before Tintop could have got behind them and struck them as he has. See how well it worked?" And Chrome glanced contentedly about him.

"That's all well enough, sir, so far as it goes," growled Captain Canker, "but where do we come in on this campaign? What will be said of our failure to get into the fight?"

"What a growler you are, Canker! Why, man, in matters of this kind individual ambition must give place to concerted plans. It's the _team_ work, the _combinations_ that tell." And here the silent circle became engrossed in pipes or in whittling, or in the contemplation of the very ground at their feet, though from under the broad brims of their scouting hats veteran campaigners exchanged meaning glances. Canker only growled the more sulkily.

"What I'm afraid of, Major Chrome, is that Colonel Winthrop may have wanted us this very day, and forty miles wouldn't have reached him."

"My heaven!" said Cranston, later that night, tossing upward his clinched fists and nervous straining arms, "I feel like a man in a nightmare. One long winter of incessant friction and undecided clashings with Devers, and now this mad eagerness to be doing something choked and smothered by this incubus at our head. If to-morrow brings no relief I want to quit for good and all."

But the long weeks of indecisive warfare, in camp as in the field, were destined to have their climax at last. Well for the little battalion, perhaps, was it, after all, that officers and men alike were boiling over with repressed, pent-up fury for action, for when the morrow came it called each soldier into line, and gave him giant work to do.

Somewhere towards one o'clock in the morning, under the glitter and sheen of the myriad stars overhead, while, all but the guard, the troopers slept peacefully upon the prairie turf and, all but a few early risers, their chargers, too, were drowsing undisturbed by the occasional querulous yelp of the coyote,--somewhere, far out over the dim, shadowy slopes to the westward, there rose upon the night the faint sound of a trumpet call, seemingly miles away. In his extreme caution Chrome had posted little parties full a mile out from the bivouac, north, east, and west, and it was while slowly riding to the westernmost of these that the officer of the guard first thought he heard the sound. A corporal of Cranston's troop was at his heels. "Yes, sir," he said, in answer to the low, eager question, as the two reined in their horses, "I could almost swear I heard it. I couldn't make out the signal though--could only hear a note or two." They found the picket alert, even excited. They, too, had heard something very like a faint trumpet call very far to the west, and Davies waited no longer. "You remain here, corporal. I'll call the captain." And in a few moments he was bending over Cranston. The latter was awake in a minute, and together they hastened out afoot, past snoring troopers or snorting steeds, and stood some hundred yards outside the inner sentry line.

"Hay left Scott with 'A' and 'I' troops Wednesday, as we know," said Cranston, "but it's impossible he could have caught us yet, though he took the cutoff. That night trumpeting's a trick of the --th. They tried it twice last summer."

"I know, sir, and may not that be some of them trying to find us?"

"Well, hardly. You know Atherton only had one troop left at Russell, the other five were sent up toward the Big Horn ten days ago. Listen! There it goes again!"

Yes, unmistakably, faint, far, but clear, the notes of a cavalry trumpet could be heard, and, while Davies hurried to rouse the major, Cranston stirred up his boy bugler. It took a minute or two to make Chrome comprehend the situation. "Why," said he, "who'd be a.s.s enough to be marching or drilling with trumpet calls this hour of the night and in the midst of a campaign?"