Under Fire

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Well, there was. It took a week of persistent "cinching" to get Devers
and his troop to understand that they were no longer an independent
body, but must serve under the orders of a colonel or major. He had at
first been put in Bell's battalion, and every time the colonel pointed
out a fault Devers "thought" that was as Major Bell wanted it, and when
Bell called his attention to some irregularity, Devers had understood
Colonel Winthrop to say that that was the way it should be done. Bell
finally said that he'd be damned if he wouldn't rather have no command
at all than one with Devers in it. The first day Devers's horses were
herded to graze far out on the slopes,--five hundred yards beyond those
of any other troop,--and Tintop said he wished Captain Devers hereafter
not to allow his herd to be driven beyond those of the rest of the
regiment. Next day they were kicking up a dust not fifty yards from
Tintop's tent,--as far inside the cordon as they had been outside
before,--and Devers plausibly explained that he wanted to be sure he
wasn't too far away. The third day, after a long march with Indians on
every hand, Tintop ordered "double guards and side lines when the herds
went out to graze." The horses of the other troops were ridden out by
the men to good grazing-ground some five hundred yards from the bivouac
fires, and there the riders slipped off and the side lines were slipped
on; but Devers's horses were side-lined as soon as unsaddled, and then
the poor brutes, thus hobbled fore and aft, were driven, painfully
lurching, out to graze. Tintop boiled over at the sight of so
unhorsemanlike a proceeding and rode wrathfully at Devers to rebuke him.
"Why, colonel," said Devers, "I wouldn't have done it for the world, but
Mr. Gray was so positive in saying it must be done when they went out, I
couldn't do otherwise. Of course if he'd said when they _got_ out I----"
And though Tintop swore savagely through his teeth that Devers knew
well just what was meant, as did every other troop commander, he
couldn't prove it. Next day, before the side lines were put on, in some
mysterious way Devers's herd was stampeded and ran six miles before they
could be rounded up, and he explained it was all because they weren't
side-lined in the first place, as they were always accustomed to being,
and as the regulations required they should be in the Indian country.
This was another thing to make Tintop blaspheme. Every day for a week
something was amiss, and, having gone to the length of his own tether,
Devers took to saying that it was all Mr. Davies's fault or Sergeant
Somebody's,--"Mr. Davies had just joined and was utterly inexperienced."
Then Tintop gave Devers positive orders not to content himself with
telling people to do thus and so, but to see that the orders were
obeyed, and Devers then took his pipe and his blankets and
ostentatiously spent hours of the afternoon out on the open prairie, a
monument to the severity and exactions of his colonel. And still the
horses, all of them, got far out on the foot-hills, and Tintop ordered
him a day or two later, when on Scalp Creek, not to let his herd get
more than half a mile away from the troop fires, as they had no tents,
and then Devers had his herd-guards build fires and boil coffee far out
on the prairie, and claimed that those were his troop fires, and
therefore his herd was within reasonable distance of them. Then Tintop
swore another oath and ordered Devers not to let his horses graze more
than half or less than quarter of a mile from his own head-quarters
fire, and as there followed a few days of hot weather, Devers sent his
herd to the foot-hills again, claiming that there was no longer a
head-quarters fire to regulate by, which proved to be a fact, as in such
warm weather there was no need of one. Then, one day, Tintop in so many
words ordered the captain hereafter not to do as he thought, but simply
as his colonel said, and this led to the final incident, still more
side-splitting,--one that the boys in the regiment never tired of
telling. Tintop with his battalion was sent on a seven days' scout,
during which he ordered all the troop commanders, until further
instruction, not to permit their herds to graze more than five hundred
yards from camp. Three days later, what was his wrath to find Devers's
herd almost a mile away down the stream, and close by the tents of Major
Roome's battalion of Foot that had been for a week placidly awaiting the
return of the cavalry! Tintop had halted and unsaddled some distance
up-stream. There wasn't a shred of canvas with the regiment while on
this brisk raid, nor was there need of it in such perfect weather, and
Tintop with Gray by his side stood fuming in the midst of surrounding
cook fires, when Devers came placidly up in obedience to the summons of
the orderly, and many an ear was brought to bear and bets were given and
taken that this time Devers would catch it and no rebate. "How is it,
sir," demanded Tintop, "that in defiance of my positive orders you allow
your herd to go so far away?"

"Why, colonel, you distinctly said they mustn't be herded over five
hundred yards from camp. Of course if I'd been allowed to think I
probably wouldn't have done it, but I sent mine down there accordingly.
That's the only _camp_ I see,--this is only a bivouac." And all Tintop
could ejaculate in response was, "Well, may I be damned!"

These and a host of similar stories had come to Warren's ears in the
course of the campaign, and he had laughed at them as had everybody
else, for after all no man could say that actual harm had occurred as a
result of Devers's experiments. So curiously are we constituted that
when it is only the commander who is braved or his adjutant who is
ruffled, the bulk of the line can bear it with equanimity. Therefore,
while Tintop, Black Bill, Riggs, and his seniors generally could never
refer to Devers except with sympathetic swear words, there were not a
few of the officers junior in rank to his who found no little fun in all
these incidents. Like most stories in or out of the army, they were
perhaps exaggerative, but, like smoke, they could not exist without
smouldering fire. If there were any speculation about Devers in the
regiment, it was as to how he would behave if he ever did get into a
fight, or what would happen in the event of his some day squirming out
of an order on which vital issues depended. "You'll go too far yet,
Devers," said a soldier who strove conscientiously to be his friend and
counsellor, "and when you do, where will be the commander under whom you
have ever served to say a good word for you?"

And now on this fatal September morning that ominous warning was ringing
in his ears again and again. Down in the bottom of his brooding heart he
knew, and well knew, that had he obeyed, as he should have obeyed,
Warren's orders, this catastrophe could not have occurred, and that he
more than any other man on earth was responsible for the death of these
gallant fellows, who, whether they looked up to him or not, were by the
stern discipline of the service dependent on him for the expected
support. If he could realize this, how much the quicker would others be
to attach the blame to him! how much the more necessary must it be to
lose no time in diverting suspicion elsewhere! The fatal propensity to
distort or disobey, which perhaps he could have downed had Tintop or
Riggs been there, he could not resist with Warren,--an envied
contemporary, presumably new to his idiosyncrasies. Nor would he, of
course, even with him, have disobeyed could he have foreseen the fatal
consequences. That would have been risking too much. But now that he had
disobeyed, and in all probability would be held accountable for the
catastrophe, his one road to safety and to acquittal lay in saddling all
possible responsibility on some one else,--preferably Davies. This, if
Davies were silent in death, would not be difficult. Whatsoever others
might think or say, they could prove nothing. If, however, Davies turned
up alive and alert, then matters might be grave indeed. No wonder he
climbed again and again the westward bank and levelled his glasses at
the dull-hued ridge against the brilliant westward sky, frequently
giving vent to loud denunciation of the leaders in the mismanaged
campaign. It was nearly ten o'clock before his dead were laid
away,--before anything occurred that looked like discovery of the
missing pair. Then came new excitement.

Far down toward the point where the distant spur seemed to sink to the
general level of the prairie one or two of Warren's scouts could be seen
rapidly spurring, as though in answer to signals. Presently they, too,
began waving their hats to those searching higher up the ridge. Then all
disappeared over on the westward side. Something evidently had been
found, and Devers's men, their work completed, were grouped eagerly up
the bank. Over half an hour in mingled hope and suspense they waited,
and then there rode in a mounted messenger.

"The major's compliments to Captain Devers," he said, "and he'll wait
for the captain and his troop over yonder. I'm to show the way."

"Have they found anything?" asked Devers.

"Yes, sir,--Mr. Davies; but he's more dead than alive. There is no sign
of McGrath."

"Do you mean Mr. Davies is wounded?"

"No, sir. He seems just dazed-like."

"That's what I said all along," spoke the captain, loudly, so that it
was heard by all the soldiers near at hand. "He never tried to rejoin
his detachment. He never had any nerve. He probably saw what was going
on and hid himself, never daring even to let us know. Damn these
psalm-singing, Sunday-go-to-meeting soldiers anyhow! Here, Howard," he
continued, turning to a young trooper who stood silently at his horse's
head, "you come with me. Lead on, corporal. Sergeant Haney, mount the
troop and follow." And with that the captain rode away.

For a moment, as the men were bringing up their horses and leading them
into line, there was silence. Looking after the three horsemen now well
out on the prairie to the west, the party saw that the messenger was
riding some distance in advance, and that Howard, a recruit who joined
with the detachment early in the campaign, was now side by side and
evidently in conversation with the captain. It had been a summer of
campaigning in which not only the nicer distinctions as between officer
and man--not only all symbols of rank and uniform--had gradually
disappeared, but with them, little by little, some of the first
principles of good order and military discipline. Officers had been
heard openly condemning or covertly sneering at the seniors in command.
It was not strange that the rank and file should fall into similar ways.

"Never had any nerve, is it?" muttered Private Dooley, after a moment.
"Boy and man I've soldiered in this regiment longer than you, Captain
Differs, and I know an officer and a gentleman when I see wan, and it's
the public opinion av more than wan private that there's more av both in
that young feller's starvin' stummick than in your whole damn overfed,
bow-legged carcass. How's that, Brannan?" said he, turning to his next
neighbor, a wan, sad-faced recruit.

"Shut up there, Dooley!" ordered Sergeant Haney, briefly. "No more of
that! Count fours."

CHAPTER X.

So far as the Eleventh and one or two other regiments were concerned,
that summer's campaign, so fraught with incident and tribulation, was
now at an end. It would take weeks and months of care to restore their
horses to serviceable condition. Others were ordered up to replace the
worn-out command, and while an indomitable general pushed fresh columns
into the field to track the savages to their winter lairs, the ragged
troopers--for all the world like so many beggars a horseback, so many
mounted scarecrows--were ordered in to the big garrisons near the supply
depots to refit, recuperate, and restore to discipline. Some, officers
and men both, had been sent ahead, too weak or ill to remain in the
field, and among these, consigned to the tender care of the post surgeon
of Fort Cameron, was Lieutenant Davies, over whose condition the doctors
shook their heads. Brain fever was the malady, but his system was so
reduced by starvation and exposure that even a moderate fever would have
been most serious. Not until he had been gone nearly a month did the
regiment follow, and then, scattered in detachments to various posts,
became busily occupied in the work of rehabilitation. Cameron was a big
new frontier fort with few accommodations, over-crowded, too; yet, being
the nearest to the field of action, thither had Captain Wilbur Cranston
gone just as soon as he was convalescent and able to move. Thither with
him went his devoted wife and her devoted cousin and companion, Miss
Loomis, for whose reception the subalterns of the infantry guard
promptly gave up their frame quarters and moved into tents, and Cranston
was there on light duty in charge of the big corral of remount horses
when Davies was bundled in and established under Cranston's roof. There,
carefully treated by Dr. Glover and regularly visited, often tenderly
nursed, by Mrs. Cranston and her friend, the naturally strong
constitution of the young officer triumphed and he began slowly to
mend. Meantime, as is or was the way, it fell to the lot of the gentle
and sympathetic army wives or maidens at the post to keep the distant
mother informed of her boy's slow progress toward recovery, and
presently to answer the importunate letters of another. Mrs. Cranston, a
shrewd observer, could not fail to note that as soon as her patient was
allowed to read at all it was his mother's letters, not the great packet
in Miss Quimby's unformed hand, that he eagerly opened. Then when at
last he did begin these latter the steady progress of his convalescence
was impaired. He became again feverish, restless, and depressed. Too ill
and weak as yet to write for himself, he read with grateful eyes his
mother's allusions to the kind and sympathetic missives sent her by Mrs.
Cranston, and occasionally, as happened, by Miss Loomis. Gladly, too,
did he avail himself of their services in reply. But when it became
necessary presently to answer those of his _fiancee_, there might have
been embarrassment but for Mrs. Cranston's tact. She had begun to feel a
strong interest in and respect for her patient. So, too, had her
husband, who came daily to sit by his bedside, but who avoided, as much
as possible, all reference to the closing days of the campaign.

As yet the young officer had not been told of McGrath's disappearance,
and had not been encouraged to tell of his own experience. Indeed, there
was very little he could tell, but his story was frankly imparted to his
friend and comrade, Captain Cranston. Much seemed to be a total blank.
He spoke with a shudder of his last look at poor Mullen and Phillips,
and at the pale, drawn faces of Captain Devers and the troop,--of
another backward glance from near the top of the ridge, then of their
losing sight of Devers and his men, and pushing on to the deeper gloom
of the east valley. It was then too dark to see, and for half an hour he
and McGrath, weary and heart-sick, had scouted northeastward in search
of his party. They had seen some flashes as they began the descent and
rode in their direction, believing them to be signals, but soon all was
darkness, all silence, but for the sigh of the night wind. Conscious of
growing faintness, he suggested firing a shot or two as signals, and
McGrath obeyed. Then off to the southeast, far from the point where they
had seen the first flashes, the shots were answered and distant yells
were heard. McGrath considered this ominous, and asked him to wait in a
little ravine while he reconnoitred. In ten minutes two or three shots
rang out in the direction taken by the sergeant, and presently back he
came fast as a staggering horse could bear him, crying, "Indians!
Indians everywhere!" It was all up with Davies's party, and their only
hope was to hasten back to find the command; but the Indians came in
chase, and though they plied spur, their poor horses seemed too weak for
speed. How far they got he never knew, but remembered a sudden plunge,
his horse's going down, rolling all over him, and nothing more.

"When you parted from Devers," asked Cranston one day, "how far was he
from the top of the ridge?--how far to the west?"

And Davies answered, "At least two and a half or three miles."

Over this did Cranston ponder long. It ill accorded with what they wrote
him from the front as Devers's story.

"You write to Mr. Davies's mother, Agatha," Mrs. Cranston had said. "I
haven't time for both, but I'll take care of Miss Quimby." Just what
might be the tone and tenor of that young lady's letters to her
prostrate lover Mrs. Cranston could not positively say, as no one saw
them but himself, but she was ready to hazard a something more than mere
conjecture when Miss Quimby took to writing to her as well. As was her
wont when moved, Mrs. Margaret unbosomed herself to her lord. "I've no
patience with the girl," she said. "She'll worry him to death. If she
writes such silly, romantic trash to me, what mustn't she be saying to
him? What on earth can he ever have seen in her?"

Now, that's just one thing no woman can find out,--what a man can see to
admire in one in whom she sees nothing. It didn't help matters that
Cranston, in his conservative, whimsical way, should counsel silence and
patience. What woman can be silent under strong provocation? What woman
can patiently abide the personal application of a general rule?

"I don't suppose there ever was a match yet of which some woman didn't
say she couldn't see what he saw," said Cranston, deprecatingly; and
then, with one of his whimsical grins, began to add, "Let's see, wasn't
it Kitty Benton who said, when she heard of our engagement, that
she----" But he got no further in face of his wife's impetuous outbreak:

"That's simply hateful in you, Wilbur, and you know it as well as I do.
She knew me only slightly, for we were not in the same set at school at
all----"

"Well,--still, didn't she know you rather better than you do Miss
Quimby, whom you never saw at all?"

"I don't care. I know what she's like," answered Mrs. Meg, with flushing
cheeks. And that was really before poor Almira's first letter came, and
if Mrs. Cranston thought she was right before, she knew it when she read
now.

The closing paragraph of a long, almost incoherent missive must suffice.
Even Cranston's lips twitched under the heavy thatch of his moustache as
he listened. Even we, who like Mrs. Cranston, must admit it wasn't quite
kind in her, no matter how natural, to read it afterward to Agatha
Loomis, who, although declining to read, did not quite decline to hear
at least a line or two.

"If you knew how I suffered--what tortures of anxiety, what
nights of sleeplessness and woe, tossing on fevered pillow,
tortured with visions of my beloved nobly fallen on the field
of battle and pining for the touch of this hand--you would
indeed pity me; but my father is inflexible. He refuses his
daughter the poor boon of flying to the stricken lover's
side,--her husband that is to be. In vain have I pointed out
that I ask no sweeter bliss than to share my Percy's lot, for
weal or woe, to live in the humblest cot, a tent, a hovel even,
with only a crust,--it meets only his scornful refusal. When my
arms are eagerly outstretched to enfold my soldier hero, I have
to be content with nursing day and night his afflicted mother,
whom for his sake I love as I would my own, had she not been
taken from me years ago when I was but an unsophisticated
child. When I think of you privileged to sit by his delirious
bedside, cooling his fevered brow, I envy you as I never
thought to envy any woman on earth since, long years ago, my
Percy blessed me with his love; and now if after all he should
be taken, or if some proud lady should win him from his simple
little village maid, there would be no refuge for me but the
grave."

"Now," said Mrs. Cranston, "something besides the bedside is delirious
in that case. No wonder the poor fellow is picking up so slowly."

"Well, wait a little," responded her conservative lord and master.
"Seems to me a man ought to rejoice in knowing that the arms of lovely
woman are outstretched in eagerness to enfold him. Now, if I were
he----"

"Yes, if you were he I've no doubt you'd be off to Urbana by first
train; but this young man has some sense in his head" (here Cranston
began to finger his own skull tentatively), "and in losing his freedom
hasn't entirely parted with his wits."

"Was that--my predicament?" asked Cranston, looking plaintively up.

"Well, at least I have to do your thinking for you, and what you have to
do is help him here. Have you had any talk with him about--about what
Captain Truman and Mr. Gray wrote?"

"Certainly not, Meg," answered Cranston, becoming grave at once, "and I
do not mean to until he is well enough to hear it."

"Well, the more I know of him the more I know it's utterly untrue.
Hasn't anything been heard yet of Sergeant McGrath?"

"Not a word. Even friendly Indians say they haven't an idea what could
have become of him." And Cranston's face was both anxious and troubled.

The matter was indeed one to give him deep concern. The massacre of the
little detachment from Warren's battalion late in September--all of them
members of Devers's troop--had brought down sharp and deserved
criticism, and there was every prospect that the matter would be
officially investigated just as soon as the department commander could
turn his attention from the rounding up of the hostile band still at
large. Meantime, between Warren and his senior troop commander, Captain
Devers, strained relations existed,--the former holding to the theory
that the responsibility for the disaster lay with Devers and no one
else, the latter volubly, plausibly, incessantly protesting against the
imputation as utterly unjust, indeed, as utterly outrageous, and moving
heaven and earth to unload the entire blame on the shoulders of the
absent and defenceless.

Now, as a rule this is an easy matter, almost as easy in the army as out
of it, and had his accuser been any other captain in the entire field
column, poor Davies might indeed have been prejudged; but with Devers it
was different. His idiosyncrasies were notorious. His whole mental and
moral fabric was one of antagonism to his fellows in general and his
seniors in particular. It was said, and generally said, of him that the
mere fact that everybody liked or respected a man was enough to set
Devers dead against him. The fact that Mr. Davies had thrown up his
graduating leave and sought instant service in the field as a result of
the tragedies of the early days of the campaign had won him instantly
the interest and good will of officers and men throughout the entire
command. He started well, so to speak, and his quiet, reticent,
observant, but unobtrusive ways favorably impressed his regimental
comrades and led to many a commendatory remark from veteran officers.
But there was universal comment, half humorous, half commiserating, upon
his assignment to Devers's troop, and Devers knew it. He treated the
young man with cool civility at first, but became speedily captious and
irritating, rebuking him openly in the presence and hearing of other
officers and of enlisted men for matters for which he was not justly
blamable. Old Winthrop spoke to Devers about it one day, and spoke
seriously. "You'll disgust that young gentleman with the service if
you're not careful, Devers," said he, "and be the means of depriving us
of a good officer."

"That's just where I'm compelled to differ with you, colonel," was the
response, and it was this propensity for differing that had led to his
sobriquet. "I've had constant and daily opportunity of observing him,
and he's mistaken his vocation. That young man should be a missionary or
a Sunday-school superintendent. He's too pious for Indian fighting,
which is the only thing expected of us."

But for weeks after there was no Indian fighting. What had become of the
swarms of red warriors that had swooped upon the front, flank, and rear
earlier in the campaign no one could say. Their trails led all over the
northwest, and the pursuing column pushed on night and day in dust and
sun-glare, in mud and rain, in pelting hail-storm and darkness, and
never once until late in the autumn could they again come within
striking distance. By that time the jaunty riders of the early
spring-tide were worn to skeletons; the mettlesome horses--those that
were left--barely able to stagger through weakness, exhaustion, and
starvation. Then like prairie wolves the warriors closed once more about
the jaded flanks, waiting, watching every chance of picking off the
stragglers. Just one day did Differs's troop get under fire,--a long way
from under, said satirical subalterns of a command that sustained some
losses,--but so scientifically did the captain handle his men that not a
trooper or horse was scratched. Mr. Davies on this occasion commanded a
platoon, dismounted on the skirmish line. It was his first affair, and
he kept his appropriate thirty paces in rear of his dispersed men to
watch and direct their fire, expecting that the enemy would charge or
attack or do something, he didn't know just what. He simply behaved as
he had been taught at skirmish drill at the Point,--was ready to do his
full duty, but having no experience in Indian battle, thought it his
business to wait orders, which was precisely what Differs had told him
to do, until attacked. All the same, when others twitted Devers on the
fact that his troop "didn't seem to get in," that officer did not
hesitate to respond that they'd have to settle that with their
admiration, Mr. Davies, who was commanding the fighting line, but
probably wasn't done saying his prayers. There was a lively, rattling
skirmish next morning between the rear-guard and the Indians, and at one
time things looked as though the thinned battalion of their comrades of
the --th might be cut off, and some of Devers's regiment thought the
rearmost troops ought to be deployed in support of the fellows who were
fighting off the warriors, who came charging after them over wave after
wave of prairie. But Devers couldn't see it in that light. He was
bringing up the rear of his own regiment. Indeed, not until the fatal
day of their _debouchement_ from the Bad Lands and sighting the broad
valley of the Ska had Devers's men felt the sting of Indian lead, and
then he was not with them.

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