Under Fire. Charles King

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ is among the wounded. Do you know him?—Captain Cranston?"

      "Only by reputation," answered Davies, raising his cap. "You are very good to our men. Go with this young lady, corporal. I'll come as soon as I can wash my hands."

      Hardly waiting, however, for his reply, the girl had passed her hand underneath the soldier's arm and led him rearwards as the train slowly rounded the long curve to the bridge embankment. Davies slipped out of his sack coat and plunged his hands in the basin. "Would you mind pumping for me?" he said to the nearest civilian, who with his companion stood gazing admiringly after the girl. "My hands are covered with that poor fellow's blood."

      "Certainly," was the prompt answer, as one of them grasped the nickel-plated lever. The other and younger man turned to the ice-water tank, rinsed the tumbler that had just been used to such good purpose, poured out another stiff load of spirits, and with confident kindliness held it out to the young officer.

      "Thank you," said Davies, shaking his head, "I never use it."

      "You don't?" was the surprised answer. "Why, I thought all army officers drank."

      "That seems to be the general idea," was the quiet answer. "Much more general than the practice, I hope. Thank you," he continued, as, drying his hands, he quickly donned his coat and went on through the car. They watched him a moment as he was presented to the elder of the two ladies, one whose face, though still young, bore traces of grief and tears and anxiety. They saw her look up and clasp his proffered hand, evidently glad to meet one of her husband's cloth.

      "Now, if I'd only known about her husband's being one of the wounded, I could have rung in there all right," said the younger of the two travellers. "I haven't seen a prettier girl in all my wanderings—but she stood me off even on a dodge I never knew to fail."

      "You were too transparent, so to speak, Willett," said the elder. "She couldn't help seeing you were trying to scrape acquaintance. All young girls don't take to frivolity any more than all officers to whiskey."

      Willett, nettled at this palpable hit, spoke resentfully. "Oh, I dare say they'd make a good team—one's a prude and the other a prig."

      "Perhaps not a very bad team, as you put it, my boy," was the answer, as the elder thoughtfully regarded the two now in earnest conversation. "But a girl who won't flirt isn't necessarily a prude, nor a man who won't drink a prig. If I were marrying again, I should be glad of a girl like that for a wife. If I were soldiering again, I'd like that boy for a sub."

      And just before leaving the train on its arrival at the Omaha station the speaker went to Davies and held out his hand. "Lieutenant," said he, "my name is Langston. I met and knew a number of West Pointers during the war, and I am glad to have met you. If ever I can be of service to you in my way—and my duties carry me out here on the frontier very often—let me know."

      Never dreaming how it might be needed, Davies accepted the proffer of services with all that the proffer implied.

CHAPTER IV.

       Table of Contents

      Guarded by a detachment of veteran infantry, the recruits so turbulent at noon were spiritless now in every sense of the word. Turning over his charge, as well as his account of their conduct and of his own, to the commander of the escort, Captain Muffet remained at department head-quarters long enough to impress the officials thereat on duty with his version of the riot at Bluff Siding—its inciting cause and its incisive cure. Then he went back to the cavalry depot and presumably improved on his initial effort. The story of Muffet's wild ride with the raw recruits and Muffet's method of quelling a mob was often told that summer at the rear long after Lieutenant Davies and the recruits in question had gone to the front and were lost to all communication. The officer who went in command from Omaha was an expert. He established a sergeant's guard in each recruit car, with orders to flatten out the first man who left his seat, rap every head that showed outside a window when the train stopped, and so turned over the one hundred and seventy-two that were turned over to him a sick and subdued lot by the time they reached Fort Sanders the following afternoon. "This is Mr. Davies—Lieutenant Davies—just graduated—who's to go on with 'em," said he to the commanding officer of that old army post, adding for his private ear, "He's a tenderfoot and doesn't know anything but moral suasion." To this conclusion Captain Tibbetts has been impelled by what he had heard as well as by the events of the night. Mr. Davies, of whom he knew nothing except what Muffet had to say, having been told that he needn't bother about the men any more, had nevertheless bothered about them, three or four at least, very much—Lance Corporal Brannan to begin with, who was slashed in the hand, and a couple of sorely battered penitents in the middle car among them. No surgeon being with the detachment, Davies had begged permission towards evening to fetch these poor fellows back to the sleeper, where their hurts could be cleaned and bandaged. Tibbetts said no, and two hours later yes. Meantime he had met the ladies, one of whom, the elder, exhausted by the sleeplessness and anxiety of forty-eight hours, was comforted by the despatch brought her at Omaha to the effect that her husband was being sent in by easy stages to Fort Fetterman, where she could meet and nurse him, and she was now finally and peacefully sleeping in her berth. The other, a slender, graceful girl, with very soft dark eyes and grave, sweet, mobile face, who sat and fanned Mrs. Cranston during the heat of the afternoon, had next surprised the captain by re-dressing the ugly wound in the young corporal's hand. Tibbetts knew Captain Cranston well by reputation. He was one of the finest troop commanders of the cavalry arm, but Tibbetts had never before met Mrs. Cranston and her companion now consigned to his care.

      "You are well taught in first aid to the wounded," he said. "Where did you learn?"

      "My father was Dr. Loomis, of the army," she answered, simply. "He taught me when I was quite a child. He died, as I think perhaps you know."

      "We all knew him, Miss Loomis," was the instant reply. "Even those who never met him, personally, knew him as I did—for his devotion to our poor fellows in the fever epidemic. And your mother?"

      "Mother has been dead for years. I am alone now, but for my cousin Margaret—Mrs. Cranston. I am her companion."

      And the captain, himself aging in the service, and with daughters who might be left as was this girl—penniless—understood, and bowed in silent sympathy. It was the sight of the gash in Brannan's fist that called him back to the business before him.

      "How did you get that?" he asked, with professional brevity, little liking it—soldier bred as he was—that one of the new flock should thus be parcelled out from his fellows and transported in a Pullman.

      "Climbing through the window of the saloon I—cut it, sir," was the answer.

      "Yes—there perhaps," said Tibbetts, indicating the smaller gash, "but this one—clean cut like a knife. Whose knife?"

      Whereat Brannan looked confused and troubled. "I don't know, sir," he finally said.

      "I believe you do know, and that you got it in that saloon row. A pretty thing for a man like you to be mixed in."

      Whereat Brannan reddened still more, and looked as though he wanted to speak yet feared to say. It was Miss Loomis who promptly took the word.

      "Indeed, captain, you don't understand. He was ordered in. He was handling the hose pipe—the very first—with Mr. Davies." And here she turned as though to seek the other pipeman, while Tibbetts effusively—impulsively—began to make amends.

      "Well—well—well," СКАЧАТЬ