"What brings them here? What do they hope to get or gain?" asked Flint.
"I don't know, sir," answered Crabb. "But this I do know, they are after something and expect to get it. If I might make so bold, sir, I think the major ought to keep an eye on them blasted halfbreeds at Hay's."
It set Flint to serious thinking. Pete and Crapaud, paid henchmen of the trader, had been taking advantage of their employer's absence and celebrating after the manner of their kind. One of his officers, new like himself to the neighborhood and to the Indians, had had encounter with the two that rubbed his commissioned fur the wrong way. A sentry, in discharge of his duty, had warned them one evening away from the rear gate of a bachelor den, along officers' row, and had been told to go to sheol, or words to that effect. They had more business there than he had, said they, and, under the potent sway of "inspiring bold John Barleycorn" had not even abated their position when the officer-of-the-day happened along. They virtually damned and defied him, too.
The officer-of-the-day reported to the commanding officer, and that officer called on Mrs. Hay to tell her he should order the culprits off the reservation if they were not better behaved. Mrs. Hay, so said the servant, was feeling far from well and had to ask to be excused, when who should appear but that ministering angel Mrs. Dade herself, and Mrs. Dade undertook to tell Mrs. Hay of the misconduct of the men, even when assuring Major Flint she feared it was a matter in which Mrs. Hay was powerless. They were afraid of Hay, but not of her. Hearing of Mrs. Hay's illness, Mrs. Dade and other women had come to visit and console her, but there were very few whom she would now consent to see. Even though confident no bodily harm would befall her husband or her niece, Mrs. Hay was evidently sore disturbed about something. Failing to see her, Major Flint sent for the bartender and clerk, and bade them say where these truculent, semi-savage bacchanals got their whiskey, and both men promptly and confidently declared it wasn't at the store. Neither of them would give or sell to either halfbreed a drop, and old Wilkins stood sponsor for the integrity of the affiants, both of whom he had known for years and both of whom intimated that the two specimens had no need to be begging, buying or stealing whiskey, when Bill Hay's private cellar held more than enough to fill the whole Sioux nation. "Moreover," said Pink Marble, "they've got the run of the stables now the old man's away, and there isn't a night some of those horses ain't out." When Flint said that was something Mrs. Hay ought to know, Pink Marble replied that was something Mrs. Hay did know, unless she refused to believe the evidence of her own senses as well as his, and Pink thought it high time our fellows in the field had recaptured Hay and fetched him home. If it wasn't done mighty soon he, Pink, wouldn't be answerable for what might happen at the post.
All the more anxious did this make Flint. He decided that the exigencies of the case warranted his putting a sentry over Hay's stable, with orders to permit no horse to be taken out except by an order from him, and Crabb took him and showed him, two days later, the tracks of two horses going and coming in the soft earth in front of a narrow side door that led to the corral. Flint had this door padlocked at once and Wilkins took the key, and that night was surprised by a note from Mrs. Hay.
"The stablemen complain that the sentries will not let them take the horses out even for water and exercise, which has never been the case before," and Mrs. Hay begged that the restriction might be removed. Indeed, if Major Flint would remove the sentry, she would assume all responsibility for loss or damage. The men had been with Mr. Hay, she said, for six years and never had been interfered with before, and they were sensitive and hurt and would quit work, they said, if further molested. Then there would be nobody to take their place and the stock would suffer.
In point of fact, Mrs. Hay was pleading for the very men against whom the other employés claimed to have warned her—these two halfbreeds who had defied his sentries,—and Flint's anxieties materially increased. It taxed all his stock of personal piety, and strengthened the belief he was beginning to harbor, that Mrs. Hay had some use for the horses at night—some sojourners in the neighborhood with whom she must communicate, and who could they be but Sioux?
Then Mistress McGann, sound sleeper that she used to be, declared to the temporary post commander, as he was, and temporary lodger as she considered him, that things "was goin' on about the post she'd never heard the likes of before, and that the meejor would never put up with a minute." When Mrs. McGann said "the meejor" she meant not Flint, but his predecessor. There was but one major in her world,—the one she treated like a minor. Being a soldier's wife, however, she knew the deference due to the commanding officer, even though she did not choose to show it, and when bidden to say her say and tell what things "was goin' on" Mistress McGann asseverated, with the asperity of a woman who has had to put her husband to bed two nights running, that the time had never been before that he was so drunk he didn't know his way home, and so got into the back of the bachelor quarters instead of his own. "And to think av his bein' propped up at his own gate by a lousy, frog-eatin' half Frinchman, half salvage!" Yet, when investigated, this proved to be the case, and the further question arose, where did McGann get his whiskey? A faithful, loyal devoted old servitor was McGann, yet Webb, as we have seen, had ever to watch his whiskey carefully lest the Irishman should see it, and seeing taste, and tasting fall. The store had orders from Mrs. McGann, countersigned by Webb, to the effect that her husband was never to have a drop. Flint was a teetotaller himself, and noted without a shadow of disapprobation that the decanters on the sideboard were both empty the very day he took possession, also that the cupboard was securely locked. Mrs. McGann was sure her liege got no liquor there nor at the store, and his confused statement that it was given him by "fellers at the stables," was treated with scorn. McGann then was still under marital surveillance and official displeasure the day after Mrs. McGann's revelations, with unexplained iniquities to answer for when his head cleared and his legs resumed their functions. But by that time other matters were brought to light that laid still further accusation at his door. With the consent of Dr. Waller, Lieutenant Field had been allowed to send an attendant for his desk. There were letters, he said, he greatly wished to see and answer, and Mrs. Ray had been so kind as to offer to act as his amanuensis. The attendant went with the key and came back with a scared face. Somebody, he said, had been there before him.
They did not tell Field this at the time. The doctor went at once with the messenger, and in five minutes had taken in the situation. Field's rooms had been entered and probably robbed. There was only one other occupant of the desolate set that so recently had rung to the music of so many glad young voices. Of the garrison proper at Frayne all the cavalry officers except Wilkins were away at the front; all the infantry officers, five in number, were also up along the Big Horn. The four who had come with Flint were strangers to the post, but Herron, who had been a classmate of Ross at the Point, moved into his room and took the responsibility of introducing the contract doctor, who came with them, into the quarters at the front of the house on the second floor. These rooms had been left open and unlocked. There was nothing, said the lawful occupant, worth stealing, which was probably true; but Field had bolted, inside, the door of his sleeping room; locked the hall door of his living room and taken the key with him when he rode with Ray. The doctor looked over the rooms a moment; then sent for Wilkins, the post quartermaster, who came in a huff at being disturbed at lunch. Field had been rather particular about his belongings. His uniforms always hung on certain pegs in the plain wooden wardrobe. The drawers of his bureau were generally arranged like the clothes press of cadet days, as though for inspection, but now coats, blouses, dressingsack and smoking jacket hung with pockets turned inside out or flung about the bed and floor. Trousers had been treated with like contempt. The bureau looked like what sailors used to call a "hurrah's nest," and a writing desk, brass-bound and of solid make, that stood on a table by a front window, had been forcibly wrenched open, and its contents were tossed about the floor. A larger desk,—a wooden field desk—stood upon a trestle across the room, and this, too, had been ransacked. Just what was missing only one man could tell. Just how they entered was patent to all—through a glazed window between the bed-room and the now unused dining room beyond. Just who were the housebreakers no man present could say; but Mistress McGann that afternoon communicated her suspicion to her sore-headed spouse, and did it boldly and with the aid of a broomstick. "It's all along," she said, "av your shtoopin' to dhrink wid them low lived salvages at Hay's. Now, what d'ye know about this?"
But McGann swore piously he knew nothing "barrin' that Pete and Crapaud had some good liquor one night—dear knows when it was—an' I helped 'em dhrink your health,—an' when 'twas gone, and more was wanted, sure Pete said he'd taken a demijohn to the lieutenant's, with Mr. Hay's compliments, the day before he left for the front, and sure he couldn't have drunk all av it, and if the back dure was open Pete would inquire anyhow."