Under Fire Part 5

"Ah?" And now in a very pretty, playful way did Miss Loomis take her companion's flushed face between two long, white, slender hands,--very cool and dainty members were they,--and archly queried, "Are you beginning to tire of your bargain, Lady Cranston? Are you planning already to unload me, as the captain says, on somebody else?"

The answer came with sudden vehemence and a hug. "You are much too good for any man I know,--except Will, and you can't have him. And I'll never let you go till the right one comes."

After which outburst, and for over a week, did this young matron say little more to Miss Loomis on the subject, but she must have enlivened some hours of the captain's convalescence with her views on recent graduates in general, and this one in particular, for when at last letters came from the front announcing the arrival of the reinforcements and the final cutting loose of the reorganized column from its base, the prostrate warrior glanced up at his busy wife with an odd mixture of merriment and concern in his haggard face.

"To whose troop do you suppose your friend Davies has been a.s.signed?"

"Not to yours, surely. You have no vacancy."

"No. I fear I wish I had,--every time I see my bulky senior sub in saddle. But, of all men you know----"

"Will Cranston! You don't mean Captain Devers?"

"Yes,--Captain Differs, for a fact."

"Well, then your _protege_ and Mr. Davies have gone into the same troop.

What a strange coincidence! Isn't it time Mrs. Barnard answered Agatha's letter?"

"Time she answered it? Yes," replied Cranston, "yet not time for her answer to get here. Poor lady! She was so distressed at the thought of his going into the army. I hope that letter will comfort her. It ought to. I doubt if he ever did an honest day's work before."

CHAPTER VI.

The battalion had halted at the foot of the slope, each troop closing up on its predecessor and huddling in shivering silence. No trumpet sounded; no word of command was heard. Every troop leader threw up his hand when he thought he had gone far enough and rolled stiffly out of saddle, his horse only too willingly standing stock-still the instant he found himself no longer urged. "Dismount" either by signal or command would have been an affront to a cavalry force two-thirds of whose array seemed to be dismounted already, some towing along by taut bridle-rein the famished relic of a once spirited charger, others comforting themselves with the reflection that at least they had now only their own carca.s.s to care for, others still wishing they had not even that responsibility, wondering how much longer their aggrieved stomachs might have to struggle with the only pabulum upon which they had been allowed to expend their gastric juices for over forty-eight hours, and suffering the pangs of remorse, both physical and mental, in the poignant consciousness that the cause of this distress was the undigested portion of some late faithful four-footed friend and companion, for the command for rations had been reduced to horse meat on the hoof. Three hundred miles from the nearest post when their supplies gave out, in the heart of the Bad Lands and the height of the worst season of the year, except midwinter, it had turned its back to the forts and its face to the foe, true to its orders, still following the trail of the hostile tribe,--the only hot thing it had struck for a week. "Live on the country, there isn't anything else," were their orders, as they cut loose from the main command, and their major--a reserved and conservative fellow at other times--came away from the grim presence of his commander with blasphemy on his bearded lips. The only human habitation within scores of miles of his line of march were Indian lodges, and both gra.s.s for the horses and game for the men had been fired off the face of the earth by those active foemen before the drenching wintry rain set in and chilled to the marrow the shelterless forms of starving trooper and staggering steed.

"Live on the country, indeed! Two antelope and ten prairie dogs was the sum total of the game secured by the hunters in three days' pursuit. And what are they," said Captain Truman, "among so many? Barley loaves and Galilee perch might be made to go round in a bigger crowd in the days of miracles, but this isn't Jordan's strand," he added, as he glanced around at the dripping, desolate slopes, and then, fortified in his opinion by the gloomy survey, concluded, with cavalry elegance, "not by a d.a.m.n sight."

"What's the matter ahead, anyhow?" hailed a brother captain, up to his shins in sticky mud, who had been making mental calculation as to how many more hours of such wearing work and wretched weather it would take to unhorse his entire company.

"Don't know," was the short answer. Men fight, but they seldom talk on empty stomachs.

"Why, I thought I saw you talking with Hastings when he rode back."

Hastings being the battalion adjutant. "Didn't he say what they were pow-wowing about?"

"No, and I didn't ask. There was nothing to eat in sight, and that's the only matter that interests my people just now. Just look at those poor brutes!" And Truman heaved a sigh as he gazed about among his gaunt, dejected horses, many of them so weak as barely to be able to stand.

"My men are as bad off as the horses, pretty near," said Captain Devers, the other. "There isn't one of them that hasn't turned his saddle-bags inside out to-day for the last crumb of hard-tack. They're worn to skin and bone. Three of them broke down entirely back there at the creek crossing, and if there weren't Indians all round us, nothing would have fetched them along. There goes Davies, coddling 'em again, d.a.m.n it! That man would spoil any troop----Mr. _Davies!_" he called, and a gaunt, wiry fellow, with a stiff beard sprouting on his thin, haggard face, turned away from a bedraggled trooper who had thrown himself in utter abandonment among the dripping sage brush at the side of the trail, and came to his troop commander.

"I wish you wouldn't make such a fuss over those men," said Devers, petulantly. "Just leave 'em alone. They'll come out all right. This coddling and petting isn't going to do any good. Soldiers are not like sick children."

"A good many of ours seem to feel that way just now, sir," said the young officer. "I only thought to cheer him up a bit."

"Well, when my men need nursing, Mr. Davies, I'll have you detailed in that capacity, but be so good as to refrain from it otherwise. I don't like it. That's all."

Without a word Davies turned on his heel and went back to his horse.

Truman, looking after him with a not unkindly interest in his tired eyes, saw that he swayed a little as he ploughed his way through the thick and sticky mud. "That boy's as weak as a sick child himself, Devers," said he. "You'll have to have a nurse for him before we get in."

"Well, it's his own fault, then. He had just as much in his haversack as I had when we cut loose from the main column. I 'spose he's given it away."

"I know he has," was the curt rejoinder. "Neither of those two men could stomach tough mule meat. I suppose that was the only way to get 'em along."

Devers turned gloomily about. Down in the bottom of his heart he felt that in his annoyance at what he considered disregard of his instructions he had spoken harshly and unjustly to a young officer of whom he had heard many a word of praise during the hard and trying campaign now drawing to a close. True, the words had fallen mainly from the lips of those of the rank and file or from seniors whom he didn't like. In some, cases, especially among the enlisted men, they would appear to have been spoken for the captain's especial benefit. Devers, while a painstaking officer and not unmindful of the care of his men, was one who "lacked magnetism," to say the least, and never won from them the enthusiastic homage they often lavished on others among their superiors. The fact that Lieutenant Davies, finding Moore and Rupp actually so weak from lack of food that they could hardly drag one leg after another, had been sharing with them his own slender store of provision was not the first thing the men had noted in his favor, but that was no reason, thought Devers, why they should raise their voices and glance covertly in his direction when referring to it. Devers was one of the kind sometimes called unsympathetic, that is, he seemed so, but it was more in manner than in fact, for few troop commanders in his regiment were really more careful in providing for their men than he.

But these were days that tried men's tempers as well as their souls, and the officer who could look back on that long campaign against the Sioux without regretting some speech wrung from him by the exasperation produced by incessant exposure, hardship, and finally by starvation, were few indeed. Devers was honest enough to admit to himself at the moment that he wished he hadn't said what he did say to Davies, but not so honest as to confess it to any one else. Yet stealing a glance at the young fellow whom he had humiliated, now wearily leaning against his saddle, Devers would have been glad to find some way of making amends, but, stealing another glance around another way after Truman, of whom he was both jealous and afraid, he hardened his heart. It is one thing to say "I was in the wrong" to the victim, and quite another to admit it to one's fellows. It is fear of what the world will say that keeps many a man from righting many a wrong, and men, too, who wouldn't flinch in front of a mile of batteries.

Standing listlessly by their horses, the men of Devers's troop had, some of them at least, been silent witnesses of the scene. One or two officers also had marked and conjectured, though they had not heard, what had taken place. Truman alone was cognizant of all, and, whatever may have been his views, this was neither the time nor place to express them. But he took occasion to stop as he was returning to the head of his own troop and speak to the young officer in the case.

"Davies," said he, kindly, "come over with me a moment. I've got a little chunk of antelope in my saddle-bags, and you need it, man. We'll all have something to eat to-night--_sure_. We'll make the Belle Fourche by nine."

Davies looked up gratefully. "I'm ever so much obliged, captain," he began, "but I can't eat with all those poor fellows looking at me.

They're about done up."

"Oh, it's rough, I know, but all they've got to do is tag along with the column till night and then eat their fill. You haven't had enough to live on, and may have work ahead. Here comes Hastings now."

And as he spoke the battalion adjutant came spurring down from a low ridge at the front fast as a miserably jaded horse could bear him.

Earlier in the campaign every man would have felt the thrill of coming excitement,--a chase, a brush of some kind, perhaps,--but now all were weak and weary. Even the Patlanders in Truman's troop, men of whom it had often been said that they'd rather fight than eat, were no more full of fight to-day than they were of food.

"What's he want?" growled Devers, sauntering over to where the officer stood. "We've left the Indians miles behind. Surely there can't be any between us and the river."

Many eyes were fixed on the coming horseman or on the little group of scouts and soldiers surrounding the major, who, kneeling, was levelling his field-gla.s.ses over the ridge at some objects far away, apparently towards the southeast.

"They're everywhere,--d.a.m.n them!" was the curt answer, "except where we want them. But he's looking off square to the left, not ahead."

This was true. Whatever it might have been far to the front of the weary column that caused the little squad of scouts to signal halt after their first cautious peep over that ridge, the object at which so many were now excitedly peering and pointing was at right angles to the direction of the march. Yet did the advance keep well concealed against observant eyes ahead, though why they should do so when every Indian in Dakota by this time knew all about them, their movements, and those of the main column farther over towards the Little Missouri, Truman couldn't understand.

"Have you ten horses that can stand a side scout?" asked the adjutant, urging his mud-spattered mount to the head of Devers's troop. He spoke abruptly, and without salute, to his superior officer,--his own captain at that.

"What are we on but a side scout now?" demanded that officer, in the surly tone the best of men may fall into under such circ.u.mstances.

"That isn't the question," replied Mr. Hastings, "and we've no time for points. Davies, it's your detail. There's something--we can't make out what--over towards the river. Report to the major and I'll find your party."

"I doubt if my horse can stand any side scout," said Davies, slowly, "but I am ready."

"Oh, your horse's as good as any in the outfit," interposed the adjutant, impatiently. "The major wants ten men from your troop at once, captain,--the ten who have the strongest horses. It won't take 'em more than a dozen miles out of the way, I reckon. The whole crowd would go, only men and horses can barely make the day's march as it is."

"See any Indians?" asked Truman, lounging up.

"I haven't. Crounse and the scouts say they have, and it's likely enough. Of course you've seen the pony tracks, and what's queer is that many of them head over towards the very point where this smoke is drifting from. Looks as if they'd jumped some wagons and burned them."

Meantime, Mr. Davies had slowly mounted and was urging his reluctant horse into some semblance of a canter. As the slope in front of him steepened, however, both horse and rider abandoned the effort, and, full fifty yards below the point where the battalion commander and his scouts were in consultation, the lieutenant dismounted, and leaving his steed unguarded to nibble at a patch of scant and sodden herbage that had survived the Indian fires, he slowly climbed the ascent. "I am ordered to report to you, sir," was all he had to say.

The major lowered his field-gla.s.s and looked back over a broad, burly shoulder garbed in canvas shooting-jacket. Not a st.i.tch of uniform graced his ma.s.sive person from head to heel, yet soldier was manifest in every gesture or att.i.tude. A keen observer might have said that a shade of disappointment crossed his fine, full-bearded face as he heard the subaltern's voice, but no sign of it appeared in his tone when he spoke.

"Mr. Davies, just take this gla.s.s and see what you make of that smoke off yonder. The sun is getting low and it baffles me somewhat." Silently the lieutenant obeyed, and creeping up towards the crest he knelt and took a preliminary peep.

Issuing from the Bad Lands the jaded column had been plodding all day long, though with frequent enforced rests, through a rolling sea of barren, turfless earth. What gra.s.s had carpeted its surface in the spring had been burned off by sagacious Indians, bent on impeding by every known device the march of troops through their lands,--and what device the Indian does not know is little worth knowing. Under a dripping leaden sky the earth lay desolate and repulsive. Miles away to the north the dim, castellated b.u.t.tes and pinnacles of the range were still faintly visible, and the tortuous trail of the column of twos winding its way over wave after wave of barren prairie like the wake of some terrestrial bark in a sea of mud. Far to the westward a jagged line of hills, sharply defined, seemed to rear their crests from the general level of the land, and somewhere along the eastern slope of that ridge, and not far from where two twin-pointed b.u.t.tes seemed peeping over at these uncouth invaders, the main command of the expedition should have pa.s.sed earlier in the day, making for the crossing of the swift-running stream that circled the northern border of some black, forbidding heights lying like a dark patch upon the landscape at its southwestern edge. Black as it looked, that was their one refuge. There alone dare they hope to find food. Thither had been sent an advanced detail with orders to buy at owners' prices flour, bacon, bread, coffee, anything the outlying settlements might have for sale that would sustain life.