To the Front: A Sequel to Cadet Days. Charles King

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CHAPTER IIToC

       Table of Contents

      THE FIRST CALL

      Fort Reynolds, as has been told in the earlier story of George Graham's cadet days, lay among the eastward foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains, with a bustling little frontier city only six miles away down the winding valley of what was, in the early eighties, a clear, cold, and beautiful mountain stream that shone in the sun like molten silver.

      Silver Run it was called when Uncle Sam built the picturesque frontier fort of hewn logs and unseasoned pine soon after the Civil War. Silver Run, cold, pure, and glistening, it remained when Fort Reynolds became an important military post. Then the—th Cavalry took station at Reynolds, and there Geordie Graham found them when, with his father and mother and "Bud," he had come from cold Montana to the finest station they yet had known, and to the firmest friends, many of whom they had met before, when Geordie, as a little boy, was "Corporal Pops" to every man at old Camp Sandy.

      But Silver Run, though it ran more silver than it ever knew before, was beautiful no longer. Mines of remarkable value, mines of gold and silver, had been discovered twenty and thirty miles back in the mountains. Mining towns had sprung up along the steep and rocky banks. Mining methods had turned a limpid stream into a turbid torrent. Two railways had run their lines, hewing, blasting, boring, and tunnelling up the narrow valley, first to reach the mines and finally to merge in a "cut-off" to the great Transcontinental, so that now huge trains of Pullmans went straining slowly up-grade past the site of old Fort Reynolds, or came coasting down with smoking tires and fire-spitting brake-shoes, and between the loss of the water for his horses, and the hemming in of his rifle-ranges by rail right of way, Uncle Sam declared Fort Reynolds no longer tenable for cavalry. The regiment had been sent elsewhere, and only a quartermaster-sergeant and a squad of men remained.

      Yet Reynolds stood in the midst of thriving industries and swarming men. The First National Bank in town had now a marble front and a thousand depositors. The town was now a city and a railway centre, and the backbone of its business was no longer cattle, but mines and mining, full of fabulous wealth for those "on the inside," but of dark and devious measures for those "on the outside" or away, and of these were half a dozen army officers who had been dazzled by the easily acquired dollars of the earliest arrivals, and of these officers was one of the last men his friends thought possible to mislead—shrewd, calculating, cautious, canny old "Sawny" Graham, post surgeon at Fort Reynolds in the late eighties.

      Yet prospectors and explorers ten years earlier had declared gold would be found up the banks of Silver Run. In the glorious park country back of Squaw Cañon, where Geordie and Bud had camped and fished and hunted as boys, the signs of the restless scouts of the great army of miners were to be seen at every hand. And then finally, in the very September that followed the return of Graham and Connell to take up the last half of their course at the Academy, there came sudden and thrilling announcement of "big finds" along Lance Creek, the upper tributary of Silver Run; then even finer indications on the Run itself, and the West went wild. All of a sudden the mountain-sides bristled with armed men and their burros. Camps sprang up in a night and shafts were sunk in a day. Yampah County, from primeval wilderness, leaped to renown, with a population of ten thousand. Gold and silver came "packed" down the trails to the First National. Then, faster than the precious metal came down, costly machinery, and prices, went up. Fortunes were declared in a week. Officers and men at Reynolds caught the craze.

      Many an old sergeant took his discharge and his savings and went to the mines; and young troopers without discharges took their lead and followed suit, and the colonel wired the War Department that if the regiment wasn't ordered away there wouldn't be anything left to order in the spring. Luckily, heavy snow-storms came and blocked the trails, and there was a lull at the mines, but unluckily, not before the few officers at Reynolds who had saved a dollar had invested every cent of their savings in the shares of the Golconda, the White Eagle, the Consolidated Denver, and especially the Silver Shield, and the man who, through frugality and good management, had the most to invest, and who had invested all, was Major Graham. When he left there for West Point the August following he had refused four times what he paid for his shares, and saw fortune smiling on his pathway to the Hudson. Now, less than ten months thereafter, on the borders of the Hudson, he saw ruin staring him in the face.

      For there had been assessments, and he had borrowed to meet them. There had come rumors of "leaks" and he had kept them to himself. McCrea, his boy's best friend in the regiment, had consulted him only ten days back as to whether it were not wise to realize on a portion at least of their holdings, and Graham, dreading a "bear" movement on the market, had said, "Hold fast."

      And now McCrea had turned back. He must go at once, he said, to the telegraph office. So Graham, his sorrowing wife, and his silent boys went on. She led him into their cheery quarters, and seated him in his old arm-chair and came and nestled beside him.

      "What is there to grieve about, dear?" she pleaded. "What does it really matter to us? We have health, home, our boys, each other—quite enough to live on—Why should it so distress you? Indeed, I almost cried aloud, 'Is that all?' when you showed me the message. I feared so much worse. Why, think, Graeme, in all the gay crowd that comes here every day, is there a woman half as happy as I am? Is there one of them really as rich as we are—we who have so many blessings?"

      "It's for 'Bud' I'm thinking most now," was the mournful answer. "There can be no Columbia for him. I've borrowed money to meet the assessments, and the money's got to be paid. This isn't like having one's house burned, or his ranch blown away, his herds scattered, by the act of God. This is being robbed of the savings of years by organized, legalized swindlers, men who claimed to be our friends. It's that—and my helplessness—that hurts."

      The boys had remained without, talking in low, grave tones, Bud's boisterous spirits suddenly quenched. Presently the sound of their murmuring died away. There was no answer when Mrs. Graham called. Going to the door she looked anxiously about her. From up the roadway to the north came the sound of merry voices and the shuffle of many feet—the battalion hurrying down the broad stone steps of Grant Hall and forming for the march back to camp. The young "first captain" called them to attention and gave the commands that swung them into column of platoons and striding away under the leafy arch to the open plain. Oh, with what pride had she not listened, night after night, from September to mid-June, to Geordie's ringing, masterful tones, her Geordie, foremost officer of the Corps! And now all that was ended with the graduation to which he had so long looked forward, and now, when but half an hour ago he had so rejoiced in his assignment СКАЧАТЬ