A Trooper Galahad

by Charles King

On the homeward way he had met Mr. Bralligan, whom he passed without recognition, but not without mental note of the unusual circumstance, Bralligan being a late riser, as a general thing, and having no business at Barclay's quarters anyhow. Brayton awaited him on the piazza and drew his arm within his own.

"Mullane sends word that he'll be ready at sunrise to-morrow, Harry, and I have said we were ready any time."

But the young fellow's voice trembled a bit as he anxiously scanned his classmate's grave, solemn face. It couldn't be that Winn was weakening, losing his nerve. It couldn't be that. But had his trouble so weighed upon him that he really welcomed the possible coming of the end? Brayton's was a hard lot just now. Assiduously he was hiding from his own captain all indications of the forthcoming meeting. Somehow he felt that Barclay would not hesitate to disclose the project to the post commander, and then every cad in Texas would jeer and crow and say it was Winn and he who crawfished. Barclay had noted that Winn seemed avoiding him again, and spoke of it to Brayton, who answered that Winn was avoiding everybody: he was blue and depressed about his affairs.

"Yet I understood that he had received more than enough to settle those commissary accounts," said the captain.

"Oh, yes," answered Brayton, "but there are other matters." How could he tell Barclay that he thought Winn's love and faith in his wife were dead and gone? How could he tell him that Winn would touch no dollar of the money until he had first met and satisfied another claim? Barclay's suspicions would have been aroused at once.

But Winn was having another trouble now. Laura had set her heart on going to the picnic, and for no other reason, she declared, than that she must show the women there was nothing amiss. If he and she, either or both, should fail to attend the Fraziers' entertainment, every one would say he still believed her guilty of having a rendezvous with Barclay at that unearthly hour, and that she was unforgiving.

As he had done many a time before, Winn yielded. What mattered it? There might be only that day for him. He could accomplish nothing by absenting himself. He could aid in brushing away any cloud upon her name by going and being devoted to her. So go they did, and women who watched with wary and suspicious eyes long remembered how fond and lover-like were Winn's attentions to his beautiful wife; how often on the way he rode to the side of that ambulance to say some little word to her; how anxiously he seemed to scan that lowering westward sky, for by the time they reached the Blanca gorge the cloud-banks were climbing to the zenith and the westward heavens were black as the cinder-patches along the heights about them, where fir and spruce and stunted pine had strewn the slopes with dry, resinous carpet, too easily ignited by the sparks from hunter's pipe or campfire. At two o'clock, Blythe, Brooks, and Frazier, clambering a rocky ridge to the southeast of the lovely picnic cove, looked gravely at the blackening sky, then gravely into one another's faces. "I think we ought to start at once," said the colonel. "That's no place to be caught in a storm." And he pointed downward as he spoke.

At their feet was the deep, grassy valley, hemmed by precipitous bluffs. The greensward at the base of the barrier ridge was soft and velvety. A richer soil nourished the roots of the bunch-grass, and all men knew that more than once in bygone days the sudden swelling of the brawling waters that came foaming and swirling down the ravine from the depths of the crested heights within had turned that beautiful little sheltered nook into a deep lake that slowly emptied itself through the narrow, twisting, rocky gorge that ended at the White Gate. On the level turf the dancers were merrily footing it even now to the music of an inspiring quadrille, the pretty gowns of the women, the uniforms of the men, adding brightness to the picture. Below the camp the mules and horses were placidly grazing close by the inner opening of the gorge, the white covers of the wagons and the snowy canvas of the two or three tents adding to the picturesqueness of the scene. All at the feet of the watching group was life, laughter, and careless joy; all beyond that merry scene a black and ominous heaven, frowning down on gloomy pine and rocky hill-side. The ceaseless clamor of the seething waters, as they turned whirling into the tortuous gorge, rose steadily above the throb and thrill of the dance-music, and aloft those relentless clouds sailed sternly eastward over the sky.

Still the smoke from the camp-fires settled back and shrank about the earth, as though dreading the encounter with the sleeping forces of the air. Then, as the watchful eyes of the elders turned once more up the mountain side, there came a cry from Brooks. "By God! it's coming! There isn't a second to lose!"

Frazier, following the direction of that pointing finger, looked upward, saw the crestward firs and pines and cedars bending, quivering before a blast as yet unfelt below, saw sheets of ashen vapor come sailing over the hill-tops and sweeping down the rocky sides, saw the whole mountain face turn black as in a single minute, as though hiding from the storm that came roaring down the slope, then lighting up the next instant in dazzling, purplish glare, as a zigzag bolt of lightning ripped the storm-cloud in twain, and in the instant, with crash and roar as of a thousand cannon rolled into one, let loose the deluge sleeping in its depths. As though Niagara were suddenly turned upon the hill-side, a vast volume of water swept downward, hissing, foaming, rolling over the rocks, and the leaping spray dashed high in air, as the black wealth of waters came surging down into the ravine.