It can readily be conceived that Priscilla could not soon forget the incidents of that day's drive, the last she ever took with Inez Dwight. What with the apparition of Blenke and the blanketed Indians at the ravine, the runaway of the ponies on the prairie, and the astounding revelation that followed, the honest-hearted girl was utterly at a loss as to her duty in the premises. Six weeks back she would not have hesitated. She would have known infallibly just what to say and do, and unflinchingly would she have said and done it. But, all was different now. Her faith was strong as ever, firm and unshaken, but her self-confidence was gone. She had made some of the worst mistakes of her thirty years within the last three months. She had justly offended her fondest, truest friends; had brought dire distress, untold suffering, on a most loving and devoted father, and cruel punishment to an innocent and trusting child. Her head had been bowed to the dust in self-condemnation, in humility unspeakable. She could have dragged herself upon her knees every inch of the road from their door to Dwight's, and with streaming eyes and clasping hands, a well-nigh broken and all contrite heart, could have bathed his feet with her tears and implored his forgiveness. It was characteristic of Oswald Dwight,—the old Oswald Dwight coming once again through this hell of suffering and from the very threshold of the other world into the kingdom of self-search and self-dominion,—that he should send for her,—beg that she should be brought to him,—that he might lift from her mind a moiety at least of its weight of self-accusation. It was characteristic of him thereafter that, after the first few hours with his blessed boy—and God alone knows what intensity of prayer, petition, love, and resolve surged through the heart and soul of the almost re-created man—he should try to show Priscilla Sanford that he blamed himself alone, not her; that he honored her, respected her, believed in her, and that he rejoiced to see the friendship that was daily growing between her and his beloved little son. The readings that seemed so long to the censorious were not all reading, after all, for presently and little by little the book would be dropped, the page would be discussed, and, once away from her hobby of original, sin and universal damnation—the Calvinistic creed of that stern, pure-hearted if Puritanical woman—there was much that appealed to the stern, true-hearted soldier nature of the even maturer man. A famous Covenanter—a Roundhead after Cromwell's own heart—might Oswald Dwight have been had he dwelt in Merry England, where sunstrokes were unknown and dark-eyed sirens seldom heard of. As for Priscilla, she needed but the garb to fit her for the austere duties of the sect whence sprung her mother and her name. But it was a chastened, softened, subdued Priscilla that now wrestled in spirit with the problem set before her. She knew no woman in all Minneconjou except Aunt Marion with whom to take counsel, and how could she wound, terrify, Aunt Marion with her growing suspicion! She knew but one man in all Minneconjou on whom she felt a longing to lean the burden of her deep trouble, and how could she bring herself to mention it to him!
For within the week that followed the day of that drive and disaster the level-headed soldier in command of the department had been to Fort Wister; had held an official inspection and a personal investigation at Minneconjou; had interrogated and, it was whispered, instructed Captain Foster, with the result that, though deeply injured and properly incensed, that officer, while urging continued effort to bring to justice his unknown assailants, decided it was unwise to press further, for the present at least, his charges against Lieutenant Ray. Much to Ray's disgust, therefore, he was released from arrest without the full and entire clearance he had hoped for, and now, with the Canteen closed and no longer demanding his supervision, with little to do at the Exchange, still unfit for drill or soldier duty, with his soul raging and dissatisfied, his heart stirred anew with strange and turbulent emotion, and his brain in a whirl,—nervous, restless, sometimes sleepless the livelong night,—Sandy Ray had again taken to riding long hours to get away from himself,—from everybody, as he told his anxious, watchful, but silent mother. (How little did Priscilla dream how much that mother knew! How little did that mother know how much Priscilla dreamed!) And in Ray's avoidance of everything, everybody, he rode never to town, but ever to the west and often to the clump of cottonwoods opposite the mouth of that crooked ravine where Inez Dwight, with the look, the touch, the temptation of the unforgotten days at Manila and Nagasaki, had come again into his life, and whither Inez Dwight, decorously accompanied by her sheepdog of a maid, found means to drive, no matter which way she started, and there or about there, to meet him,—to see him four days out of the seven,—until the climax came.
CHAPTER XIX
AGAIN THE SALOON
For a man of philosophic temperament, one who seldom worried other people or himself, Colonel Stone had been having a nerve-racking time of it. He was troubled in the first place about the condition of affairs military in his big command, which the general himself had referred to as "a sad falling off," and which Stone saw no way under the law to correct. The number of men absent without leave, absent unaccounted for, probably in desertion, or absent "in the hands of the civil authorities," had increased alarmingly since the closing of the Canteen. "Skid" and his abominable community across the fords had been doing a thriving business, and were vastly enjoying the situation. Men by dozens who had been content, after their sharp drills or when the day's work was done, with mild and palatable beer, now sat sullenly about their barrack steps in the summer evenings, or, out of sheer disgust, wandered off by twos and threes (and a new footbridge erected by Skidmore), to spend their leisure hours and scanty cash over the reeking counters of the saloon, deeming themselves robbed of a right accorded every other wageworker throughout Christendom, and saying things of their Congress it wasn't safe for their officers even to think. They did not so much blame the women who had started the movement that spoiled their soldier homelife—how could women of the Fold be expected to know anything about the conditions on the frontier?—but, said our sergeants and corporals and sturdy men-at-arms, the soldier had a right to expect that Congress would look before it voted. Possibly had the soldiers, too, been voters their side of the case might have met some consideration; but, being politically on the same plane with "Indians not taxed," it was safe, at least, to similarly fix their social status and restrictions. Forbidden by the people he was sworn to serve, to take his temperate drink at home, but permitted by the same people to drink his fill of fiery stuff abroad, abroad the thirsty soldier went, and with him went many a man who had been content with mighty little, but resented it that he should be discriminated against, denied the right of the humblest citizen, and declared the only white man in America fit only to be ruled as is the red.
The morning list of prisoners at Minneconjou was something over which Stone was nearly breaking his heart. Every night now, in numbers, the men were sneaking off across the stream, lured by the dance music, the sound of clinking glass and soldier chorus and siren laughter. However well the colonel might know his own profession, he was powerless under the law to deal with this question. Here "Skid" had him and the garrison by the throat. With the knowledge that his men were drinking, dicing, and going generally to the devil within those ramshackle walls across the stream, he could neither remove the victims nor dislodge their tempters. Patrols he could send to search the roads, the open prairie, the river bottom, but Skidmore had declared that no armed party could legally cross his threshold, and the courts had backed him. Soldiers roistering in the roadway in front of the dive would dart within doors at sight of the patrol, and the officer, sergeant, or private that entered there left hope behind of fair treatment in the civil courts. Stone tried sending a big sergeant and six stalwart men unarmed, and they came back eventually without coats, collars, or character, none of them without bruises, some of them not without aid. Stone marveled that so many of his men turned up in town drunk, helpless, and in the hands of the local police, with fines imposed by the local magistrates, but that, too, was presently explained. Skid kept a big, twelve-seated "bus" that on busy nights, as the soldiers got well fuddled and completely strapped, he would load up with the drugged and drowsy victims and, instead of driving them over to the fort, would trundle them to town, dump them in front of some saloon, there to be run in by a ready police, and locked up until sober and abject. Then would come their arraignment and the invariable "Five dollars or thirty days." Then their officers would be notified. The fines at first were paid, until it dawned upon Stone that Skid and Silver Hill, both, were in the swindling combination, that after Skidmore had got the last cent of the men there was still a way of squeezing more from the officers. As soon as the fort realized the fact the town ceased to realize the funds, and Skidmore was told to send no more castaways to Silver Hill, so he simply turned them out to take their medicine where once they took their comfort—at the post.
But Skid's was a menace in yet another way, and, so long as his "ranch" was far over to the southeast, the fort had not felt it. The noble redman likes liquor, and the low-caste and half-breed crave it. There were always a shabby lot of hang-dog, prowling, ill-favored off-scourings of the Sioux lurking about Skid's premises day and night, bartering when they had anything to barter, but generally begging or stealing. A drunken soldier, sleeping off his whisky in the willow patches, was ever fair game, and sometimes now soldiers were found throttled, and robbed of their very boots and shirts. Serious clashes had occurred, and were of almost daily happening, to the end that officers, out fishing or shooting, had been insulted and threatened by Indians who had sworn vengeance against the soldier, and knew no discrimination. "We'll have trouble from that yet," Stone had told his general, and the grave, lined face of the latter showed how seriously he regarded the possibility. Sandy Ray, riding far out to the southwest one summer day, had met a brace of young braves who insolently ordered him to turn back or fight, and this when he had not so much as a pocket pistol or an inkling that trouble was brewing. Knowing a little of their "lingo," and something of the sign language, he demanded an explanation, and got for answer that two of their brothers had been worsted in conflict with him and his party. Sandy protested he had had no trouble with any of their people, and got a prompt answer, "Fork tongue!" "Liar!" and other expletives not printable, and he turned back before their revolvers, wrathful, helpless, and wondering. He told his tale to the colonel, and Stone looked solemn:
"Sandy," said he, "you—take chances riding out that way. I—I've been getting anxious about you—have been on the point of speaking—before." Whereat Ray suddenly went crimson, through his coat of sun tan, and bit his lip to control its quiver. "There's mischief brewing with those people, I fear. Their agent has written me twice. One drunken brawl at Skid's has led to clashes where whisky wasn't the inciting cause. He says two of his young men were set upon by some of our troopers here, and it isn't safe to meet them alone. Indeed, Sandy, I wish you'd ride in—some other direction."
It was what his mother had very gently said to him but yester morning, before he had heard of any sign of Indian trouble. How was he to hear, since he seemed to avoid the society of his kind and to prefer to live alone? Ray left the colonel's presence with his nerves a-tingle. Had it come to this then, that his father's old friend should say to his father's son that—he was riding the wrong way?