Ray's Daughter Part 18

To nine out of ten among the a.s.sembly the young officer was a total stranger. To more than nine out of ten the identification of the dead as Walter Foster, Maidie Ray's luckless lover, was already complete, and many men who have made up their minds are incensed at those who dare to differ from them.

True, Mr. Stuyvesant had said that the sentry, Number 6, did not remind him except in stature, form, and possibly in features, of the recruit he knew as Foster on the train. He did not speak like him. But, when closely questioned by the legal adviser of the provost-marshal's department--the officer who conducted most of the examination with much of the manner of a prosecuting attorney, Mr. Stuyvesant admitted that he had only seen Foster once to speak to, and that was at night in the dim light of the Sacramento station on what might be called the off-side of the train, where the shadows were heavy, and while the face of the young soldier was partially covered with a bandage. Yet Vinton attached importance to his aide-de-camp's opinion, and when Ray came out flat-footed, as it were, in support of Stuyvesant's views, the general was visibly gratified.

But, except for these very few, Ray had spoken to unbelieving ears.

Sternly the military lawyer took him in hand and began to probe. No need to enter into details. In ten minutes the indignant young gentleman, who never in his life had told a lie, found himself the target of ten score of hostile eyes, some wrathful, some scornful, some contemptuous, some insolent, some only derisive, but all, save those of a few silently observant officers, threatening or at least inimical.

Claiming first that he knew Walter Foster well (and, indeed, it seemed to him he did, for his mother's letters to the Big Horn ranch had much to say of Maidie's civilian admirer, though Maidie herself could rarely be induced to speak of him), Ray was forced to admit that he had met him only twice or thrice during a brief and hurried visit to Fort Averill to see his loved ones before they moved to Fort Leavenworth, and then he owned he paid but little attention to the sighing swain. Questioned as to his opportunities of studying and observing Foster, Sandy had been constrained to say that he hadn't observed him closely at all. He "didn't want to--exactly." They first met, it seems, in saddle. The winter weather was glorious at Averill. They had a fine pack of hounds; coursing for jack-rabbit was their favorite sport, and, despite the fact that Foster had a beautiful and speedy horse, "his seat was so poor and his hand so jerky he never managed to get up to the front," said Sandy.

It was not brought out in evidence, but the fact was that Sandy could never be got to look on Foster with the faintest favor as a suitor for his sister's hand. A fellow who could neither ride, shoot, nor spar--whose accomplishments were solely of the carpet and perhaps the tennis-court--the boy had no use for. He and Maidie rode as though born to the saddle. He had seen Foster in an English riding-suit and English saddle and an attempt at the English seat, but decidedly without the deft English hand on his fretting hunter's mouth the one day that they appeared in field together, and the sight was too much for Sandy. That night at dinner, and the later dance, Foster's perfection of dress and manner only partially redeemed him in Sandy's eyes, and--well--really, that was about all he ever had seen of Foster.

Questioned as to his recollection of Foster's features, stature, etc., Sandy did his best, and only succeeded in portraying the deceased almost to the life. Except, he said, Foster had long, thick, curving eyelashes, and "this man hasn't"--but it was remembered that brows and lashes both were singed off in the fire. So that point failed. Questioned as to whether he realized that his description tallied closely with the appearance of the deceased, Sandy said that that all might be, but still "this isn't Foster." Questioned as to whether, if the deceased were again to have the color and action,--the life that Foster had a year ago,--might not the resemblance to Foster be complete?--Sandy simply "couldn't tell."

Nearly an hour was consumed in trying to convince him he must, or at least might, be mistaken, but to no purpose. He mentioned a card photograph of Foster in ranch costume that would convince the gentlemen, he thought, that there was no such very strong resemblance, and a note was written to Miss Porter asking her to find and send the picture in question. It came, a cabinet photo of a tall, slender, well-built young fellow with dark eyes and brows and thick, curving lashes and oval, attractive face, despite its boyishness, and nine men out of ten who saw and compared it with the face of the dead declared it looked as though it had been taken for the latter perhaps a year or so agone. Ray had hurt his own case, and, when excused to return to his sister's side, went forth into the gathering twilight stricken with the consciousness that he was believed to have lied in hopes of averting scandal from that sister's name.

And on the morrow with that _post-mortem_, so insisted on by Brick, no longer delayed, the dead again lay mutely awaiting the final action of the civil-military authorities, and to the surprise of the officers and guards, before going to the daily routine that kept him from early morn till late at night in his beleaguered office, Drayton came and bowed his gray head and gazed with sombre eyes into the sleeping features now before him.

A pinched and tired look was coming over the waxen face that had been so calm and placid, as though in utter weariness over this senseless delay.

Drayton had been told of young Ray's almost astounding declaration, and officers of the law half expected him to make some adverse comment thereon, but he did not. Alert correspondents, amazed to see the corps commander at such a place and so far from the Ayuntamiento, surrounded him as he would have retaken his seat in his carriage, and clamored for something as coming from him in the way of an expression of opinion, which, with grave courtesy, the general declined to give, but could not prevent appearing a week later in a thousand papers and in a dozen different forms--ferried over to Hong Kong by the Shogun or some other ship, and cabled thence to waiting Christendom.

Drayton had his own reasons for wishing to see the remains, then Vinton, and later Ray, and as his movements were closely followed, the wits of the correspondents were sorely taxed. But the examination was to be resumed at nine. A rumor was running wild that Miss Ray herself was to be summoned to appear, and Drayton had to be dropped in favor of a more promising sensation.

It began with dreary surgical technicalities. The heavy bullet had traversed the ascending aorta "near its bifurcation," said Brick, who, though only an autopsical adjunct, was permitted to speak for his a.s.sociates. Death, said he, had resulted from shock and was probably instantaneous. No other cause could be attributed. No other wound was discovered. No marks of scuffle except "some unimportant scratches" on the shoulder. The bullet was found to weigh exactly the same as those of the unexploded cartridges in poor Maidie's prized revolver, and though Brick would gladly have kept the floor and told very much more, the provost-marshal as gladly got rid of him, for, despite the unwillingness of the medical officers at the Cuartel de Meysic, Connelly had been trundled down to Ermita in a springy ambulance and was presently awaiting his turn.

The moment his coming was announced, Connelly was ushered in and Brick shut off short.

A nurse and doctor were with the st.u.r.dy little Irishman, and he needed but brief instruction as to what was wanted. Taken to the trestle and bidden to look upon the face of the deceased and say, if he could, who it was, Connelly looked long and earnestly, and then turned feebly but calmly to the attentive array.

"If it wasn't that this looks much thinner," said he, "I'd say it was a man who 'listed with our detachment at Denver last June, about the first week. The name was Foster. He disappeared somewhere between Sacramento and Oakland, and I never saw him again."

Questioned as to whether there was any mark by which the recruit could be known, Connelly said that he was present when Foster was physically examined, and he never saw a man with a whiter skin; there wasn't a mark on him anywhere then that he could remember. Bidden to tell what he knew of Foster, the young artilleryman was given a seat, and somewhat feebly proceeded. Foster was bound to enlist, he said, was of legal age and looked it; gave his full name, his home and business; said he owned a ranch down in New Mexico near Fort Averill; didn't know enough to go in for a commission and was determined to enlist and serve as a private soldier in the cavalry. He had good clothes and things that he put in a trunk and expressed back to Averill, keeping only a valise full of underwear, etc., but that was burned up on the car afterwards. Two days later, before they started for the West, a man who said his name was Murray came to the rendezvous and asked for Foster, who was then being drilled. A detachment was to start the next day, and anybody could see that Foster wasn't glad to welcome Murray by any means, but on that very evening Murray said that he too wished to enlist and go with his "friend." He squeezed through the physical examination somehow, and they took him along, though n.o.body liked his looks.

Then Connelly told what he could of the fire and of Foster's subsequent disappearance, also of Murray and Murray's misconduct. They asked Connelly about Lieutenant Stuyvesant, and here Connelly waxed almost eloquent, certainly enthusiastic, in Stuyvesant's praise. Somebody went so far, however, as to ask whether he had ever seen any manifestation of ill-will between Stuyvesant and Recruit Foster, whereat Connelly looked astonished, seemed to forget his fever, and to show something akin to indignation.

"No, indeed!" said he. There was nothing but good-will of the heartiest kind everywhere throughout the detachment except for that one blackguard, Murray. They all felt most grateful to the lieutenant, and so far as he knew they'd all do most anything for him, all except Murray, but he was a tough, he was a biter, and here the sick man feebly uplifted his hand and pointed to the bluish-purple marks at the base of the thumb.

"Murray did that," said Connelly simply. "He was more like a beast than a man."

But the examiners did not seem interested in Murray. General Vinton, who had again entered and was a close listener, and was observed to be studying the witness closely, presently beckoned to one of the doctors and said a word in undertone to him. The medico shook his head. There was a lull in the proceedings a moment. Connelly was too sick a man to be kept there long, and his doctor plainly showed his anxiety to get him away. The crowd too wanted him to go. He had told nothing especially new except that Murray and Foster were acquainted, and Murray enlisted because Foster had.

"Everybody" said by this time this must be Foster's body. What "everybody" wanted was to get Connelly out of the way now, then perhaps--_another_ fever patient might be summoned, for they couldn't expect to keep those remains another day. There was widespread, if unspoken, hope among the score of correspondents that the provost-marshal would feel that he must summon Miss Ray.

But before the examiners could decide there came an unexpected scene.

Vinton went over, bent, and whispered to the provost-marshal, who looked up, nodded, and glanced towards the witness, sitting flushed and heavy-eyed, but patient, across the room. Vinton was plainly asking something, and to the manifest displeasure of many of the crowd the little Irishman was again accosted.

"You say Murray was a biter and bit you so that the marks last to this day. Did you take note of any peculiarity in his teeth?"

"Yes, sir. One of 'em was gone near the front, right-hand side, next to the big yellow eye-tooth."

"Would that make a peculiar mark on human flesh?"

"Yes, sir," answered Connelly, holding up his hand again and showing the scar, now nearly five months old.

"Steward," said the officer placidly, "uncover the shoulder there and let Connelly look at the mark Dr. Brick referred to."

Connelly did. He studied the purplish discolorations in the milky skin, and excitement, not altogether febrile, suddenly became manifest in his hot, flushed face. Then he held forth one hand, palm uppermost, eagerly compared the ugly scars at the base of the thumb with the faint marks on the broad, smooth shoulder, and turned back to the darkened room. With hand uplifted he cried:

"Major,"--and now he was trembling with mingled weakness and eagerness,--"I knew that man Murray was following this young feller to squeeze money out of him, and when he couldn't get it by threats, he tried by force. He's followed him clear to Manila, and that's his mark sure's this is!--sure's there's a G.o.d in heaven!"

CHAPTER XIX.

There came a time of something more than anxiety and worry for all who knew Gerard Stuyvesant,--for those who loved Marion Ray,--and Sandy was a sorrow-laden man. Vinton could not stand between his favorite aide-de-camp and the accusation laid at his door. Frank and his most gifted fellow-surgeons were powerless to prevent the relapse that came to Marion and bore her so close to the portals of the great beyond that there were days and nights when the blithe spirit seemed flitting away from its fragile tenement, and November was half gone before the crisis was so far past that recovery could be p.r.o.nounced only a question of time. Oh, the strain of those long, long, sleepless days of watching, waiting, hoping, praying, yet days wherein the watchers could nurse and help and _act_. Oh, the blackness, the misery of the nights of watching, waiting in helplessness, well-nigh in despair, for the coming of the next "cable!" the consciousness of utter impotence to help or to do! the realization that a priceless life is ebbing away, while they who gave it--they to whom it is so infinitely precious--are at the very opposite ends of the earth! Oh, the tremulous opening of those fateful messages, the breathless reading of the cipher, the awful suspense of the search through Cable Code pages that dance and swim before the straining eyes!

Oh, the meek acceptance of still further suspense! the almost piteous thankfulness that all is not yet lost, that hope is not yet abandoned!

Strong men break down and add years to those they have lived. Gentle women sway and totter at last until relief comes to them through G.o.d-given tears.

In a fever-stricken camp in Southern swamplands a father waked night after night, walking the hospitals where his brave lads lay moaning, seeing in their burning misery, hearing in their last sigh, the sufferings of a beloved child. By the bedside of her youngest, her baby boy as she would ever call the lad, who lay there in delirium, knelt a mother who, as she nursed and soothed this one, prayed without ceasing for that other, that beloved daughter for whom the Death Angel crouched and waited under the tropic skies of the far Philippines. Ah, there were suffering and distress attendant on that strange, eventful epoch in the nation's history that even the press said nothing about, and that those who knew it speak of only in deep solemnity and awe to-day. It was mid-November before they dared to hope. It was December when once again Maid Marion was lifted to her lounging-chair overlooking the Bagumbayan, and little by little began picking up once more the threads that were so nearly severed for all time, and as health and strength slowly returned, hearing the tidings of the busy, bustling world about her.

Others too had known anxiety as sore as that which had so lined the face of Colonel Ray and trebled the silver in the soft hair of Marion, his wife. Well-nigh distracted, a mother sped across the continent to the Pacific, there to await the coming of her son's remains.

From the night of Walter Foster's disappearance at Carquinez no word of his existence came to give her hope, no trace of his movements until, late in August, there was brought to her the cabled message:

"Alive, well, but in trouble. Have written."

And this was headed Yokohama. Not until October did that longed-for, prayed-for letter come,--a selfish letter, since it gave no really adequate excuse for the long weeks of silence, and only told that the boy had been in hiding, almost in terror of his life. While still dazed by the shock of the fire and smarting from his burns, wrote Walter, he had wandered from the cars at Port Costa. He had encountered "most uncongenial persons," he said, among the recruits, and never realizing that it was desertion, war-time desertion at that, had determined to get back to Sacramento and join some other command. Yes. There was another reason, but--one "mother couldn't appreciate." Unknown to all but one of his comrades on the train, he had abundant money, realized from the sale of horses and cattle at the ranch. It was in a buckskin belt about his waist, and this money bought him "friends" who took him by water to Sacramento, found him secret lodgings, procured suitable clothing, and later spirited him off to San Francisco.

But these money-bought friends showed the cloven hoof, threatened to give him over to the military authorities to be tried for his life unless he would pay a heavy sum. They had him virtually a prisoner. He could only stir abroad at night, and then in company with his jailers.

There was a man, he wrote, who had a grudge against him, a man discharged from the ranch, who followed him to Denver and enlisted in the same party, a man he was most anxious to get rid of, and the first thing he knew that fellow, who, he supposed, had gone on to Manila, turned up in disguise and joined forces with his tormentors. That drove him to desperation, nerved him to one sublime effort, and one night he broke away and ran. He was fleet of foot, they were heavy with drink, and he dodged them among the wharves and piers, took refuge on a coast steamer, and found himself two days later at Portland.

Here he bethought him of an old friend, and succeeded in finding a man he well knew he could trust, despite his mother's old dislike for him, a man who knew his whole past, of his desertion, of his danger,--a man who was himself about enlisting for service in the Philippines, and who persuaded him that his surest way to win exemption from punishment was to hasten after the detachment, beat it, if possible, to Manila, and join it there at his own expense.

He still had some hundreds left. They went to San Francisco, where Walter took steamer at once for Honolulu to await there the coming of the recruit detachment. The infantry finally came, his friend with them, but no sign of more cavalry. To Walter's dismay he had seen among the pa.s.sengers landed from the Doric the disguised rough whom, as Sackett, he had so unfavorably known before, who as Murray had followed him into the army. It would never do to fall into his clutches again: the man would betray him instantly. Walter kept in hiding until he heard that Sackett was accused of stabbing a staff officer of General Vinton and had fled the island.

Later, when the next troop-ship came, bringing his friend with it, he again took counsel. As the lad fully admitted, his friend was the same old chum of Freiburg days--the friend to whom his parents had so much objected. The fortunes of war had thrown them together, Willard as impecunious as ever, and the Damon and Pythias, the Orestes and Pylades, the two Ajaxes of the old days were in close and intimate touch once more, Damon, as of old, the banker for the twain. The troop-ships were to proceed as soon as coaled. There were reasons now why Walter wished to stay in Honolulu, but Willard urged his moving at once on to Hong Kong and there awaiting the result of his negotiations at Manila. At Hong Kong it was his hope to receive the word "Come over. All is well,"

and, finally, as his funds would soon run out, he closed his letter with the request that his mother cable him five hundred dollars through the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank.

The money she cabled at once, then in dread she had wired Colonel Martindale, who was gadding about with old army chums when most she needed him at home, and that gentleman, with a sigh, again went sisterward, saying he knew the boy was sure to turn up to torment him, and wondering what on earth young Hopeful had done now. He looked grave enough when he read the letter, asked for time to communicate confidentially with a chum at Washington, and was awaiting reply when all on a sudden the papers came out with this startling despatch telling of the murder of Private Walter Foster while on his post as sentry at Manila, and then came weeks of woe.

Despite Drayton's cable from Manila that the identification of the remains was not conclusive to him, at least, Mrs. Foster was convinced that the murdered lad was her only boy, and all because of that heartless flirt, that designing--that demoniac army girl who had bewitched him and then brought his blood upon her own head.

"If it isn't Walter who lies there slain by a.s.sa.s.sin rival, the innocent victim of _that creature's_ hideous vanity, would I not have heard from him? Do you suppose my blessed boy would not _instantly_ have cabled to tell me he was alive if he wasn't dead?" And, indeed, that was a hard question to answer.

And so the remains of Private Willard Benton, that had been viewed by many a genuinely sorrowing comrade and stowed away with solemn military honors in a vault at Paco Cemetery, were sealed up as best they could do it at Manila, and, though unconvinced as to their ident.i.ty despite the convictions of others in authority, the commanding general yielded to cables from the War Department and ordered their shipment to San Francisco. They were out of sight of all signals from Corregidor when Martindale's cable came suggesting search for Private Benton Willard.

Zen.o.bia Perkins sniffed contemptuously and scoffed malignantly when told that the doubting Thomases were gaining ground and numbers, that though Mr. Stuyvesant might be brought to trial for killing a man, it would not be for killing Foster until more was ascertained regarding the actual victim. Private Connelly, recovered from his fever, was forever hunting up Farnham, the brakeman, and devising schemes for the capture of that blackguard Murray. Day and night, he maintained that Murray was the man who had accosted Clarke and Hunter at the battery, that it was probably he who, with his pals, had waylaid and robbed the lone recruit returning from his quest in East Paco, that it was he who must have struggled with him again before firing the fatal shot; but not a trace of Murray or his sailor mates could the secret service agents find, and matters were in this most unsatisfactory state when at the end of November came the Queen of the Fleet, despatched several weeks before to fetch along the troops "sidetracked" at Honolulu, just as the commanding general and his chief surgeon were in consultation as to what on earth to do with Zen.o.bia Perkins--the woman had become a public nuisance.