CHAPTER XVI
With the opening of the Territory of Kansas the first Regiment of United States Cavalry, commanded by Colonel E.V. Sumner, had been transferred to Fort Leavenworth.
The life of the barracks was young Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart.
Colonel Lee had been transferred from West Point to the command of the
Second United States Cavalry on the Mexican Border at the same time that
Stuart's regiment was moved to Kansas.
The rollicking song-loving, banjo-playing Virginian had early distinguished himself as an Indian fighter. He had been dangerously wounded, but recovered with remarkable rapidity. His perfect health and his clean habits stood him in good stead on the day an Indian's bullet crashed through his breast.
He was a favorite with officers and men. As a cadet he had given promise of the coming soldier. At the Academy he was noted for his strict attendance to every military duty, and his erect, soldierly bearing. He was particularly noted for an almost thankful acceptance of a challenge to fight any cadet who might feel himself aggrieved. The boys called him a "Bible Class Man." He was never known to swear or drink. They also called him "Beauty Stuart," in good natured boyish teasing.
He was the best-looking cadet of his class, as he was the best-looking young officer of his regiment. His hair was a reddish brown. His eyes a deep steel blue, his voice clear and ringing.
In his voice the soul of the man spoke to his fellows. He was always singing—always eager for a frolic of innocent fun. Above all, he was always eager for a frolic with a pretty girl. He played both the banjo and the guitar and little he cared for the gathering political feud which old John Brown and his sons had begun to foment on the frontier.
As a Southerner the struggle did not interest him. It was a foregone conclusion that the country would be settled by Northern immigrants. They were pouring into the Territory in endless streams. A colony from New Haven, Connecticut, one hundred strong, had just settled sixty miles above Lawrence on the Kansas River. They knew how to plow and plant their fields and they had modern machinery with which to do it. The few Southerners who came to Kansas were poorly equipped. Lawrence was crowded with immigrants from every section of the North. The fields were white with their tents. A company from Ohio, one from Connecticut, and one from New Hampshire were camping just outside the town. Daily their exploring committees went forth to look at localities. Daily new companies poured in.
Stuart let them pour and asked no questions about their politics. He was keen on one thing only—the pretty girls that might be among them.
When exploring parties came to Fort Leavenworth, the young Lieutenant inspected them with an eye single to a possible dance for the regiment. The number of pretty girls was not sufficient to cause excitement among the officers as yet. The daughters of the East were not anxious to explore Kansas at this moment. The Indians were still troublesome at times.
A rumor spread through the barracks that the prettiest girl in Kansas had just arrived at Fort Riley, sixty-eight miles beyond Topeka. Colonel Phillip St. George Cooke of Virginia commanded the Fort and his daughter Flora had ventured all the way from Harper's Ferry to the plains to see her beloved daddy.
The news thrilled Stuart. He found an excuse to carry a message from
Colonel Sumner to Colonel Cooke.
He expected nothing serious, of course. Every daughter of Virginia knew how to flirt. She would know that he understood this from the start. It would be nip and tuck between the Virginia boy and the Virginia girl.
He had always had such easy sailing in his flirtations he hoped Miss
Flora would prove a worthy antagonist.
As a matter of course, Colonel Cooke asked the gallant young Virginian to stay as his guest.
"What'll Colonel Sumner say, sir?" Stuart laughed.
"Leave Sumner to me."
"You'll guarantee immunity?"
"Guaranteed."
"Thank you, Colonel Cooke, I'll stay."
Stuart could hardly wait until the hour of lunch to meet the daughter. He was impatient to ask where she was. The Colonel guessed his anxiety and hastened to relieve it, or increase it.
"You haven't met my daughter, Lieutenant?" he asked casually.
"I haven't that honor, Colonel, but this gives me the happy opportunity."
He said it with such boyish fun in his ringing voice that Cooke laughed in spite of his desire to maintain the strictest dignity. He half suspected that the young officer might meet his match in more ways than one.
"She'll be in at noon," the Commander remarked. "Off riding with one of the boys."
"Of course," Stuart sighed.
He began to scent a battle and his spirits rose. He went to his room, took his banjo out of its old leather strapped case and tuned it carefully. He made up his mind to give the young buck out riding with her the fight of his life while there.
He heard the ring of the girl's laughter as she bade her escort goodbye at the door. He started to go down at once and begin the struggle. Something in the ring of her young voice stopped him. There was a joyous strength in it that was disconcerting. A girl who laughed like that had poise. She was an individual. He liked, too, the tones of her voice before he had seen her.
This struck him as odd. Never in his life before had he liked a girl before meeting her just for a tone quality in her voice. This one haunted him the whole time he was changing his uniform.
He decided to shave again. He had shaved the night before very late. He didn't like the suggestion of red stubble on his face. It might put him at a disadvantage.
He resented the name of Beauty Stuart and yet down in his man soul he knew that he was vain.
He began to wonder if she were blonde or brunette, short or tall, petite or full, blue eyes or brown? She must be pretty. Her father was a man of delicate and finely marked features—the type of Scotch-Irish gentlemen who had made the mountains of Virginia famous for pretty women and brainy men.
He heard her softly playing a piano and wondered how on earth they had ever moved a piano to this far outpost of civilization. The cost was enormous. But the motive of her father in making such a sacrifice to please her was more important. His love for her must be unusual. It piqued his interest and roused again his impulse for a battle royal with another elusive daughter of his native state.
He made up his mind not to wait for the call to lunch. He would walk boldly into the reception room and introduce himself. She knew he was there, of course.
At the first sound of his footstep, her hand paused on the keys and she turned to greet him, rising quickly, and easily.
The vision which greeted Stuart stunned him for a moment. A perfect blonde with laughing blue eyes, exactly the color of his own, slim and graceful, a smile that was sunlight, and a step that was grace incarnate.
And yet her beauty was not the thing that stunned him. He had discounted her good looks from a study of her father's delicate face. It was the glow of a charming personality that disarmed him at the first glance.
She extended a slender hand with a smile.
"I'm so glad to meet you, Lieutenant Stuart."
He took it awkwardly, and blushed. He mumbled when he spoke and was conscious that his voice was thick.
"And I'm so glad to see you, Miss Flora."
They had each uttered the most banal greeting. Yet the way in which the words were spoken was significant.
Never in his life had he heard a voice so gentle, so tender, so appealing in its sincerity. All desire to flirt, to match wit against a charming girl vanished. He felt a resistless impulse to protect her from any fool who would dare try to start a flirtation. She was too straightforward, too earnest, too sincere. She seemed a part of his own inmost thought and life.
It was easy to see that while she was the pet of her father, she was unspoiled. Stuart caught himself at last staring at her in a dazed, foolish way. He pulled himself together and wondered how long he had held her hand.
"Won't you play for me, Miss Flora?" he asked at last.
"If you'll sing," she laughed.
"How do you know I sing?"
"How do you know I play?"
"I heard you."
"I heard you, too."
"Upstairs?"
"Just before you came down."
"I had no idea I was so loud."
"Your voice rings. It has carrying power."
He started to say: "I hope you like it," and something inside whispered:
"Behave."
She took the seat at the piano and touched the keys with an easy, graceful movement. She looked up and smiled. Her eyes blinded him. They were so bright and friendly.
"What will you sing?"
"Annie Laurie," he answered promptly.
Stuart sang with deep tenderness and passion. He outdid himself. And he knew it. He never knew before that he could sing so well.
On the last stanza the girl softly joined a low, sweet voice with his.
As the final note died away in Stuart's voice, hers lingered a caress.
The man's heart leaped at its tenderness.
"Why didn't you join me at first?" he asked.
"Nobody axed me, sir!" she said.
"Well, I ask you now—come on—we'll do it together!"
"All right," was the jolly answer.
They sang it in duet to the soft accompaniment which she played.
Never had he heard such singing by a slip of a girl. Her voice was rich, full of feeling and caressing tenderness. He felt his soul dissolving in its liquid depths.
Throughout the lunch he caught himself staring at her in moments of long silence. He had for the first time in his life lost his capacity for silly gaiety.
He roused himself with an effort, and wondered what on earth had come over him. He was too deeply interested in studying the girl to attempt to analyze his own feelings. It never occurred to him to try. He was too busy watching the tender light in her eyes.
He wondered if she could be engaged to the fellow she went riding with? He resented the idea. Of course not. And when he remembered the care-free ring to her laughter when she said goodbye, he was reassured. No girl could laugh a goodbye like that to a man she loved. The tone was too poised and impersonal.
He asked her to ride with him that afternoon.
"On one condition," she smiled.
"What?"
"That you bring your banjo and play for me when I ask you."
"How'd you know I had a banjo?"
"Caught the final twang as you tuned it on my arrival."
"I'll bring it if you like."
"Please."
He hurried to his room, placed the banjo in its case and threw it over his shoulder. She had promised to be ready in ten minutes and have the horses at the door.
She was ready in eight minutes, and leaped into the saddle before he could reach her side. For the life of him he couldn't keep his eye off her exquisite figure.
She rode without effort. She had been born in the saddle.
She led him along the military road to the juncture of the Smoky Hill and Republican rivers. A lover at the Fort had built a seat against a huge rock that crowned the hill overlooking the fork of the rivers.
Stuart hitched the horses and found the seat. For two hours he played his banjo and they sang old songs together.
"I love a banjo—don't you?" she asked enthusiastically.
"It's my favorite music. There's no sorrow in a banjo. You can make it laugh. You can make it shout. You can make it growl and howl and snarl and fight. But you can't make a banjo cry. There are no tears in it. The joy of living is all a banjo knows. Why should we try to know anything else anyhow?"
"We shouldn't," she answered soberly. "The other things will come without invitation sometime."
For an hour they talked of the deep things of life. He told of his high ambitions of service for his country in the dark days that might come in the future. Of the kind of soldier the nation would need, and the ideal he had set for his soul of truth and honor, of high thinking and clean living in the temptations that come to a soldier's daily life.
And she applauded his ideals. She told him they were big and fine and she was proud of him as a true son of Old Virginia.
The sun was sinking behind the dim smoky hills toward the West when she rose.
"We must be going!"
"I had no idea it was so late," he apologized.
It was not until he reached his room at eleven o'clock after three hours more of her in the reception room that he faced the issue squarely.
He stood before the mirror and studied his flushed face. A look of deep seriousness had crept into his jolly blue eyes.
"You're a goner, this time, young man!" he whispered. "You're in love."
He paused and repeated it softly.
"In love—the big thing this time. Sweeping all life before it. Blotting out all that's passed and gripping all that lies beyond—Glory to God!"
For hours he lay awake. The world was made anew. The beauty of the new thought filled his soul with gratitude.
He dared not tell her yet. The stake was too big. He was playing for all that life held worth having. He couldn't rush a girl of that kind. A blunder would be fatal. He had a reputation as a flirt. She had heard it, no doubt. He must put his house in order. His word must ring true. She must believe him.
He made up his mind to return to Fort Leavenworth next day and manage somehow to get transferred to Fort Riley for two weeks.