A Trooper Galahad

by Charles King

CHAPTER XVII.

Another week opened. In honor of Captain Barclay's restoration to health, the Fraziers had issued invitations for a picnic to the White Gate. Many of the officers and ladies had accepted. Most of them had been bidden. Captain Mullane had been on sick report four days,—contusions resulting from tumbling from a broken-legged chair, was the explanation; but every Pat in the command had his tongue in his cheek when he spoke of it, and of matters growing out of the "contusions" mentioned. Frazier had heard rumors of the former fracas, and had notified Messrs. Mullane, Bralligan, et al. that he would have no duelling in his bailiwick; and deep was the mystery surrounding certain consultations held by night in Mullane's quarters.

"The blood of that young braggart be on his own head," said Mullane to his henchmen. "And you, Hodge, can console the disconsolate widow."

He had no more doubt of the issue of the contemplated combat, no more compunction in the matter, than had Thackeray's valiant and inimitable little Gascon, né Cabasse, in his duel with Lord Kew. He had long been the leader of the Hibernian set, and, despite every effort on the part of the witnesses to the affray at the sutler's to keep the matter a secret, rumors got out, and the Faugh-a-Ballaghs knew their chief had been braved by that hated coxcomb Winn. Every one of them knew further that Mullane must have sent his demand for satisfaction, despite the fact that his "pistol oi," the right, had been damaged by the collision and was not yet in condition for effective service. Everybody who was in the secret knew that Mr. Winn had instantly accepted, naming Brayton as his second, pistols as the weapons, and suggesting his father's old duelling set, that had seen long years and some service in the old army, as proper to the occasion; the time and place, however, would necessarily depend on the victim of the knock-down blow. All Winn asked and urged was utter secrecy meantime.

To Mullane there was nothing in the episode over which to brood or worry. As dragoon sergeant in the old days, he had "winged his man" according to the methods described in "Charles O'Malley" and practised occasionally by his superiors in rank. He had known many a bar-room broil, and was at home with pistol, fists, or sabre,—no mean antagonist when not unsteadied by liquor. He had now a chance of meeting on the field one of the set he secretly hated, "the snobocracy of the arrumy," and he meant to shoot the life out of Harry Winn if straight shooting would do it. That Winn had taken advantage of him and knocked him down when he was drunk was excuse sufficient for the crime he planned; that he had brought the blow upon himself by an insult ten times more brutal was a matter that concerned him not at all. He had no wife or child to worry about: Mrs. Mullane and the various progeny were old enough to look out for themselves, as indeed most of them had long been accustomed to do. Mullane thirsted for the coming meeting, and for the prominence its outcome would give him among all good soldiers all over Texas.

And as for Winn,—he who had come riding home from his successful scout barely a fortnight before, buoyant, hopeful, almost happy,—the change that had come over him was something all men saw and none could fully account for. Cashing the draft from the bank at San Antonio, he had now enough to take Trott's receipt in full for the value of the stolen stores, even to some recovered plunder, slightly damaged by rough handling and by rain. He would then still have some four hundred dollars, and he asked his wife for certain bills that had been frequently coming to her accompanied by urgent demands. Laura said she had not kept them. Which ought to be paid first? he asked. Which had been longest outstanding? Laura's reply was that she did not know, but if he had got that money from San Antonio at last she ought to have some to send to Madame Chalmette. She positively had not a dinner-dress fit to be seen. Winn did not even glance at the open doors of a big closet, hung thick with costly gowns his wife had hardly worn at all, but that now, she said, were out of style. There were other matters to be thought of than dinner-gowns, he told her, gravely, and her face clouded at once. She had almost forgotten the troubles of the week gone by.

He went down to his den and sat there thinking. What ought he to do? what should he do with this money? Every cent of it would be swallowed up if he squared those commissary accounts and turned the balance into checks and sent it off to pay these bills, and then if Mullane's bullet sped true to its mark, what would there be to take Laura and the baby North? "Home" he dared not say. She had no home: Collabone's diagnosis of that situation was correct. Then, too, if Mullane's pistol did not fail him, there would be no way in which that mysterious friend and beneficiary of his father's could ever be repaid. What right had he to use one cent of this money for any purpose whatever, when another day might be his last? Winn wished he still had the San Antonio check instead of these bulky packages of greenbacks. They were now locked up in Trott's safe, unbroken, pending action at Department Head-Quarters on the new schedule sent thither, based on the recovery of some of the damaged stores. He thought of it all as, long before gun-fire that morning, the black care of his life came and roused him from his fitful sleep and bade him face his daily, hourly torment. He had risen, and as he softly moved about the room, thoughtful for her, she slept on placidly as a happy child, soundly as slept the nurse and the little one in the adjoining room.

Donning his stable dress, he carried his boots into the hall and down the creaking stairs, and sat there, with solitary candle, at his desk, wearily jotting down inexorable figures. The dawn came stealing in the eastward window: from aloft a querulous little wail was uplifted on the stillness of the summer morning. There was no answering hush of loving, motherly voice. Laura could not stand wakeful nights. He tiptoed swiftly up again to rouse the nurse in case she too slept on, but he heard her hand beating drowsy time on the coverlet, and the soothing "Shoo, shoo, shoo," with which she communicated her own heaviness to her little charge. Laura had turned uneasily, he saw as he peeped in at the open doorway, but again slept soundly, her lovely face now full turned towards him, half pillowed on the white and rounded arm he used to kiss with such rapture in the touch of his lips. Her white brow was shaded by the curling wealth of her soft, shining hair. The white eyelids drooped their long curving lashes over the rounded cheeks, faintly tinged with the rosy hue of youth and health. The exquisite lips, warm, delicately moulded, parted just enough to reveal the white, even, pearly teeth. The snowy, rounded throat and neck and shoulders were enhanced in their beauty by the filmy fabric of her gown, beneath which her full bosom slowly rose and fell in healthful respiration. How beautiful she was, how fair a picture of almost girlish innocence and freedom from all worldly dross or care! Even now, in the light of all the gradual revelation of her shallow, selfish vanity, the heart of the man yearned over and softened to her. If he had only realized,—if he had only known more of the world and life and duty other than mere soldier obligation, how different all might have been! What right had he to ask her to be his wife? She should have wedded a man many years her senior,—one fitted to guide and direct her,—able to lavish luxury upon her. It wasn't all her fault that she had been so thoughtless, poor girl! What else had her mother been before her? What else could one expect of her? Would she miss him? he wondered. Not long,—not long, thank God! Beauty such as hers would soon win for her and baby home and comfort such as he could never give. That was all over. Something almost like a sob rose from his heart as he bent and softly touched with his lips the floating curl above her temple, then turned back to resume his work and reface his troubles. Thank God, Mullane's pistol would soon end them all and save him from the sin that was in his soul the day he took his own revolver with him. She was sleeping still when the morning gun shook the shutter of her window and he went forth to meet the sorrows of another day, as he had met those of the past,—alone.

The air was strangely still, yet the smoke from the kitchen chimneys back of the barracks settled downward about the adobe capping or drifted aimlessly along the roof-trees. Down in the stream-bed and over about the low bluffs of the farther shore, swallows and sand-martins were shooting and slanting about their nests in clamorous, complaining gyration. The flag, run up to the topmast at the crack of the gun, hung limp and lifeless, without so much as a flutter. Away to the northwest, over the pine crests of the range, a belt of billowy cloud gleamed snow-white at their summits, but frowned dark and ominous underneath. Huge masses of cumulus, balloon-like, thrust distended cheeks to the morning kiss of the sun; but these were well down to the west. The orient and the zenith skies were fleckless. Over at the stables two four-mule teams were hitching in, and army-wagons were being laden with tentage, luncheon-baskets, ice, boxes of bottled beer, band instruments, and the like, all going ahead to the White Gate, while Frazier's bandsmen were to follow in another as soon as they had finished breakfast. Their duty would be to set up the tents, the dancing-pavilion, and the lunch-tables on the level green in a lovely dell a mile within the gates, and have everything in readiness against the coming of the joyous party from the post. It was planned to carry the women-folk and such men as couldn't ride in the available ambulances and spring wagons, while the cavaliers would canter along on horseback. They would lunch at one, dance, fish, and flirt through the afternoon hours, have a supplementary bite and beer towards five o'clock, and drive homeward before dark. "Captain Barclay, as the guest of honor," said Mrs. Frazier, would go with her and 'Manda in her own vehicle, a venerable surrey. The colonel would drive, and Miss Frazier, now withdrawn by a maternal order from the supposed competition, in order that 'Manda's charms might concentrate, was bidden to ride. Winn had no thought of going. Mrs. Frazier had no thought that it would be possible for him or Laura to go,—the latter being reported ill in bed,—and therefore had found it easier to comply with the colonel's dictum that they must be invited, and she did it by dropping in and bidding "Miss Purdy" say to her mistress that she had called to inquire for her, and was so sorry, so very sorry, that her illness would prevent her coming to the picnic, whereupon Laura herself had appeared in becoming négligée at the head of the stairs and smilingly assured the nonplussed lady that she was so much better she thought it really might do her good to go. But of this she said no word to Harry until, returning from stables at seven o'clock, he was surprised to find her up and dressing.