From Worth to the White Gate the prairie road wound hard and firm, and before the late excitement several picnic-, riding-, and driving-parties had paid their spring-time visits. It was quite the thing, too, for such maids and matrons as were good horsewomen to ride thither in the lengthening afternoons. Mrs. Frazier had consulted Collabone as to the earliest date on which Barclay could stand a long drive, as she wished to give a little fête in his honor, and had planned a picnic to Barrier Rock, a romantic spot just within the gorge. Collabone had referred her to his assistant, and that younger officer consulted his patient before committing himself to reply.
"I don't care to ride in an ambulance, doctor, but I do long to get in saddle. There's no strain on that leg below the knee. Can't you let me mount from my back porch here and amble around these fine mornings before people are up?" And "Funnybone" assented. He and Barclay rode out together, very cautiously, next morning at reveille, and, finding his patient benefited by the gentle exercise on such a perfect mount as either of those Kentucky bays, the doctor said, "Go again; only ride slowly, and mount and dismount only at the back porch, where you have only to lower yourself into saddle. Be sure to avoid any shock or jar, then you're all right."
Hannibal and Mrs. Winn's domestic were the only persons besides Barclay's orderly to see the start, but had the domestic herself been alone it would have been sufficient to insure transmission of the news. First she told her mistress. Later she learned from Hannibal that the captain was going out to stables next morning the same way, and had ordered coffee to be ready at reveille. This, too, was conveyed to Laura, and that evening she sent for the veteran stable sergeant of the troop to which her husband was temporarily attached, and asked him if Robin Hood, a pretty little chestnut she used to ride, was still in the stable. He was, and would Mrs. Winn be pleased to ride? The sergeant would be glad to see the lady in saddle again. Her handsome side-saddle was, with her bridle, always kept in perfect order, but for several months Mrs. Winn had taken no exercise that way.
"I'm going to ride at reveille, sergeant," she confided to the faithful soldier. "It's so long since I mounted, I wish to try once or twice when people can't see me." And Sergeant Burns had promised that as soon as the sentry would release him after gun-fire Robin Hood should be on hand. He'd be proud to come with him himself.
True to his word, Burns was up at four-fifteen; Robin was groomed and fed and watered and saddled in style, and ready to start the moment the sentry was relieved by the morning gun-fire from the imposition of the order to "allow no horse to be taken out between taps and reveille, except in the presence of a commissioned officer or the sergeant of the guard." The sight that met the sergeant's eyes as he cantered around back of the row of officers' quarters, leading Robin by the rein, was one he never forgot.
With pallid face, down which the blood was streaming from a cut at the temple, Captain Barclay was seated on the steps, striving to bind a handkerchief about his lower leg. Old Hannibal, forgetful of the dignity of the Old Dominion, was actually running down the back road, in haste, it seems, to summon the doctor. On the porch, amid some overturned chairs, two athletic, sinewy young men were grappling, one of them, Lieutenant Brayton, almost lifting and carrying the other, Lieutenant Winn, towards his own doorway, both ashen gray as to their faces, both fearfully excited, both struggling hard, both with panting breath striving to speak with exaggerated calm.
On this scene, wringing her hands, sobbing with fright and misery, flitting first to Barclay's side, then back towards her straining husband, saying wild and incoherent things to both, was Laura Winn. Burns had the frontiersman's contempt for a chimney-pot hat, and never seemed one so incongruous as this,—her riding head-gear which in the midst of her wailings Mrs. Winn clasped to her heaving breast. To make matters more complicated, the neighborhood was waking up, domestics and "strikers" were gazing from back porches farther down the row, and Blythe's big hounds had taken to barking furiously, until that bulky and bewildered soldier himself came forth, damned them into their kennel, then hastened in consternation to the aid of Barclay. By this time, too, Winn had succeeded in making his wife hear him, and was ordering her within-doors; but like some daft creature she hovered, moaning and wringing her hands and staring at Barclay, whose eyes were now beginning to close, and whose form was slowly swaying.
"In God's name, man, what's happened?" demanded Blythe, as he seized and steadied the toppling form. "Why, you're bleeding like an ox. Your boot is running over. Drop those horses, Burns, and run for the doctor, lively," he urged. Needing no further authority, the sergeant turned his charges loose and scurried after Hannibal.