Home > Authors Index > Charles King > Warrior Gap: A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68 > This page
Warrior Gap: A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68, a fiction by Charles King |
||
Chapter 11 |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XI That evening, when John Folsom, half an hour earlier than the stipulated time, drove the girls and their friend, Lieutenant Loomis, out to the fort, Major Burleigh was left to his own devices, and his face plainly showed that he was far from pleased with the way things were going. The news that Marshall Dean had been placed in arrest by order of the commanding officer of Fort Emory, following as it did close on the heels of the tidings of that young officer's prompt and soldierly handling of the crisis at the ranch, made Folsom boil over with wrath. His first word was one of caution, however. "Hush!" he said, "Speak low. Yonder stands his sister. The girls must not know yet." Then, leading the way into the library and closing the door behind them, he demanded all particulars Lannion could give him, which were few enough. "The lieutenant halted the troop outside the post," said the indignant ranchman, "had it dismount there while he rode on in to report to the commanding officer for instructions. The colonel was taking his nap after lunch, and the adjutant was at the office, and what does he do but get up from his desk solemn-like, and when the lieutenant says 'I report the arrival of Troop "C" at the post, sir,' the adjutant didn't answer a word, but reached out and got his sabre and began buckling it around him, and then he put on his cap and gloves, and says he, 'Lieutenant Dean, I'm sorry, but my instructions are to place you in close arrest, by order of Colonel Stevens.' Why, you could have knocked me down with the kick of a gopher I was so dumfounded! The lieutenant he didn't say anything for a minute, but turned white and looked like he could have knocked the top of the adjutant's head off. 'An officer will be sent to take charge of the troop,' said the adjutant, 'an' I suppose you'd better confine yourself to your tent, as the colonel means to have them camp there a day or two, until he hears from Captain Brooks as to quarters.' 'Well, will you have the goodness to say what charges have been laid against me?' said Mr. Dean, and the adjutant hemmed, and hawed, and 'lowed that the colonel hadn't formerly drawn 'em up yet, but that a copy would be served on him as soon as they were ready." "Then I said I'd go right in and find you, and that's all I know." And then it was that Folsom turned on Burleigh, with gloom in his eye, and said: "By the Eternal, Major Burleigh, I hope you've had nothing to do with this!" "Nothing in the world, I assure you, Mr. Folsom, I--I deeply regret it. Though, as I have told you, I can hardly be surprised, after what has been said, and--d what I have seen." But the major could not squarely meet the gaze in the keen eyes of the old trader, nor could the latter conceal his suspicions. "I know you wish to hear all the particulars of the affair at the ranch from this gentleman," said the major uneasily, "so I will leave you with him for the present," and backing out into the hall he turned to the foot of the winding staircase where Elinor had met her friend. The girls were still there, their faces clouded with surprise and anxiety. It was an opportunity not to be lost. "Pray do not be troubled, Miss Folsom," said Burleigh, advancing upon them with outstretched hand, "er, Mr. Folsom merely wants to hear further details from Lannion. I wish to extend my congratulations to you and, ah, this young lady, first upon the fortunate escape of _your_ brother," and he bowed over his distended stomach to Elinor, "and second upon the part played by _yours_," and he repeated the bow to Jess, who, however, shrank away from the extended hand. "It will go far to counteract the stories that I--ah, er--believe you know about--that were in circulation, and most unjustly, doubtless, at--er--his expense." "Who put them in circulation, Major Burleigh?" asked Pappoose, her brown eyes studying his face as unflinchingly as had her father's gaze a moment before. "That, my dear young lady I--er--cannot surmise. They are mostly imaginative, I dare say." But Miss Folsom looked unmollified, Miss Dean agitated, and Burleigh himself had many a reason for feeling ill at ease. Just at the time of all others when he most desired to stand on good terms with the well-to-do old trader and his charming daughter he found himself the object of distrust. He was thinking hard and far from hopefully as a moment later he hastened down the street. "Tell them to send up my buggy, quick," were his orders as he stepped within his office doorway. Then lowering his voice, "Has Captain Newhall returned?" he asked the chief clerk. "The captain was here, sir. Left word he needed to take the first train--freight or construction, it made no difference--to Cheyenne and expected to find a letter or package from you, and there's two telegrams in from Department Headquarters on your desk, sir." The major turned thither with solemn face, and read them both, his back to his subordinate, his face to the light, and growing grayer every moment. One was a curt notification that ten thousand dollars would be needed at once at Warrior Gap to pay contractors and workmen, and directing him to send the amount from the funds in his keeping. The other read as follows: "Have all transportation put in readiness for immediate field service. Every wheel may be needed." This he tossed carelessly aside. Over the first he pondered deeply, his yellow-white face growing dark and haggard. Ten thousand dollars to be sent at once to Warrior Gap! Workmen's pay! Who could have predicted that? Who could have given such an order? Who would have imagined payment would have to be made before July, when some reasonable amount of work had been done? What could laborers do with their money up there, even if they had it? It was preposterous! It was risky to attempt to send it. But what was infinitely worse--for him--it was impossible. The money was practically already gone, but--not to Warrior Gap. Those were days when inspectors' visits were like those of other angels, few and far between. The railway was only just finished across the great divide of the Black Hills of Wyoming. Only as far as Cheyenne was there a time schedule for trains, and that--far more honored in the breach than the observance. Passengers bound west of that sinfully thriving town were luckier, as a rule, if they went by stage. Those were days, too, in which a depot quartermaster with a drove of government mules and a corral full of public vehicles at his command was a monarch in the eyes of the early settlers; and when, added to these high-priced luxuries, he had on deposit in various banks from Chicago to Cheyenne, and even here at Gate City, thousands of dollars in government greenbacks expendible on his check for all manner of purposes, from officers' mileage accounts to the day laborer's wages, from bills for the roofing of barracks and quarters to the setting of a single horseshoe, from the purchase of forage and fuel for the dozen military posts within range of his supply trains down to a can of axle grease. Every one knew Burleigh's horses and habits were far more costly than his pay would permit. Everybody supposed he had big returns from mines and stocks and other investments. Nobody knew just what his investments were, and only he knew how few they were and how unprofitable they had become. Those were days when, as now, disbursing officers were forbidden to gamble, but when, not as now, the law was a dead letter. Burleigh had gambled for years; had, with little remorse, ruined more than one man, and yet stood now awe-stricken and dismayed and wronged by Fate, since luck had turned at last against him. Large sums had been lost to players inexorable as he himself had been. Large sums had been diverted from the government channels in his charge, some to pay his so-called debts of honor, some to cover abstractions from other funds, "robbing Peter to pay Paul," some to silence people who knew too much; some, ay, most of it, in fact, to cover margins, and once money gets started on that grade it slips through one's fingers like quicksilver. At the very moment when Anson Burleigh's envious cronies were telling each other he stood far ahead of the world, the figures were telling him he stood some twenty thousand dollars behind it, and that, too, when he was confronted by two imperative calls for spot cash, one for ten thousand to go to Warrior Gap, another for a sum almost as big to "stake" a man who never yet had turned an honest penny, yet held the quartermaster where he dare not say so--where indeed he dare not say no. "If you haven't it you know where you can get it--where you have often got it before, and where you'd better get it before it's too late;" these were words said to him that very morning, in tones so low that none but he could bear; yet they were ringing in his head now like the boom of some tolling bell. Time was when he had taken government money and turned it into handsome profit through the brokers of San Francisco and Chicago. But, as Mr. John Oakhurst remarked, "There's only one thing certain about luck, and that is it's bound to change," and change it had, and left him face to face with calamity and dishonor. Where was he to raise the ten thousand dollars that must be sent to the post quartermaster at Warrior Gap? The end of the fiscal year was close at hand. He dare not further divert funds from one appropriation to cover shortages in another. He could borrow from the banks, with a good endorser, but what endorser was there good enough but John Folsom?--the last man now whom he could bear to have suspect that he was in straits. Folsom was reported to be worth two hundred thousand dollars, and that lovely girl would inherit half his fortune. There lived within his circle no man, no woman in whose esteem Burleigh so longed to stand high, and he had blundered at the start. Damn that young cub who dared to lecture him on the evils of poker! Was a boy lieutenant to shame him before officers of the general's staff and expect to go unwhipped? Was that butt-headed subaltern to be the means of ruining his prospects right here and now when he stood so sorely in need of aid? Was the devil himself in league against him, that that boy's sister should turn out to be the closest friend old Folsom's daughter ever had--a girl to whom father and daughter both were devoted, and through her were doubtless interested in the very man he had been plotting to pull down? Burleigh savagely ground his teeth together. "Go and hurry that buggy," he ordered, as he crushed the sheet of paper on which he had been nervously figuring. Then, springing up, he began pacing his office with impatient stride. A clerk glanced quickly up from his desk, watched him one moment with attentive eye, and looked significantly at his neighbor. "Old man's getting worse rattled every day," was the comment, as the crash of wheels through loose gravel announced the coming of the buggy, and Burleigh hastened out, labored into his seat, and took the whip and reins. The blooded mare in the shafts darted forward at the instant, but he gathered and drew her in, the nervous creature almost settling on her haunches. "Say to Captain Newhall when he gets back-that I'll see him this evening," called Burleigh over his shoulder. "Now, damn you, _go_--if you want to!" and the lash fell on the glistening, quivering flank, and with her head pointed for the hard, open prairie, the pretty creature sped like mad over the smooth roadway and whirled the light buggy out past the scattered wooden tenements of the exterior limits of the frontier town--the tall white staff, tipped by its patch of color flapping in the mountain breeze, and the dingy wooden buildings on the distant bluff whirling into view as he spun around the corner where the village lost itself in the prairie; and there, long reaches ahead of him, just winding up the ascent to the post was a stylish team and trap. John Folsom and the girls had taken an early start and got ahead of him. Old Stevens was up and about as Folsom's carriage drove swiftly through the garrison and passed straight out by the northeast gate. "I'll be back to see you in a moment," shouted the old driver smilelessly, as he shot by the lonely colonel, going, papers in hand to his office, and Stevens well knew he was in for trouble. Already the story was blazing about the post that nothing but the timely arrival of Dean and his men had saved Folsom's ranch, and Folsom's people. Already the men, wondering and indignant at their young leader's arrest, were shouting over the sutler's bar their paeans in his praise, and their denunciation of his treatment. Over the meeting of sister and brother at the latter's little tent let us draw a veil. He stepped forth in a moment and bade his other visitors welcome, shook hands eagerly with Loomis and urged their coming in, but he never passed from under the awning or "fly," and Folsom well knew the reason. "Jump out, daughter," he said to Pappoose, and Loomis assisted her to alight and led her straight up to Dean, and for the first time in those two years the ex-cadet captain and the whilom little schoolgirl with the heavy braids of hair looked into each other's eyes, and in Dean's there was amaze and at least momentary delight. He still wore his field rig, and the rent in the dark-blue flannel shirt was still apparent. He was clasping Miss Folsom's hand and looking straight into the big dark eyes that were so unusually soft and humid, when Jessie's voice was heard as she came springing forth from the tent: "Look, Nell, look! Your picture!" she cried, as with the bullet-marked _carte de visite_ in her hand she flitted straight to her friend. "Why, where did this come from?" asked Miss Folsom in surprise, "and what's happened to it?--all creased and black there!" Then both the girls and Loomis looked to him for explanation, while Folsom drove away, and even through the bronze and tan the boy was blushing. "I--borrowed it for a minute--at the ranch just as Jake came in wounded, and there was no time to return it, you know. We had to gallop right out." "Then--you had it with you in the Indian fight?" cried Jess, in thrilling excitement. "Really? Oh, Nell! How I wish it were mine. But how'd it get so blackened there--and crushed? You haven't told us." "Tell you some other time, Jess. Don't crowd a fellow," he laughed. But when his eyes stole their one quick glance at Elinor, standing there in silence, he saw the color creeping up like sunset glow all over her beautiful face as she turned quickly away. Lannion had told them of the close shave the lieutenant had had and the havoc played by that bullet in the breast pocket of his hunting shirt. _ |
||