CHAPTER XIX.
A pleasant welcome awaited Mr. Walter Loring, of the Engineers, when he opened his office and got settled down to work at his new station. Here was a commanding general who knew something of his past, whose nephew was with him at the Point, and one at least of whose aides had found reason to respect him highly, even though they had differed as to the site for the new post, and the Engineer had seemed to take far more kindly to the companionship of an unheard-of sub in the cavalry than he did to the society of two men so distinguished in the department as Major Burleigh, depot quartermaster at Gate City, and Brevet-Captain "Omaha" Stone, the aide in question. Burleigh had surprised the aide by a display of great interest in and an impatience to meet the newcomer, who had hurried out from Omaha with not a day's delay, and who overtook them at Fort Frayne, after riding by night through the mountainous region of the Medicine Bow, with only a single trooper as attendant and escort. Burleigh had been oddly inquisitive, thought Stone, and had plied the taciturn Engineer with question after question about officers whom he knew and matters he seemed to know along the Pacific slope. Mr. Loring was evidently a bit surprised, yet replied courteously, though very briefly. Burleigh did all the talking the first day's drive in the big ambulance over the rolling open prairies north of the Platte, giving Stone no chance at all. He enlivened the occasion and relieved the tedium of the journey with anecdotes of the General whose command Loring had recently left, and Strain, his chief-of-staff, and Petty—"that damned fool Petty," he called him, and Burleigh had nothing good to tell of any of them, and much that was derisive, if not detrimental, of all. Loring listened with neither assent nor dissent, as a rule, though when appealed to he said he had no opportunity to study the characteristics as described by Burleigh, as he had spent most of his short service there surveying in Arizona and saw little and knew less of the officials in San Francisco. One man of whom Burleigh spoke with regard and regret was stanch old Turnbull, whose sad death by drowning in the surf off Pinos, the quartermaster referred to several times. He seemed familiar, too, with the story of Loring's conduct the night of the collision at sea and the sinking of the Idaho, and referred to that more than once in terms of commendation. They stopped for luncheon and to bait the mules and to give the cavalry escort a brief respite, and it was after this that Burleigh, as though suddenly reminded of something, began—
"I don't know what made me think of it unless it was Stone's speaking of New Orleans a moment ago, but did you meet a long-legged fellow named Blake in Arizona? I knew the girl that drove him out there. One winter she was in New Orleans while her father was commanding the monitors moored at Algiers—Miss Torrence. Saw her afterwards in New York. She married old Granger, you know." Granger was about Burleigh's age, but Burleigh was a widower and desirous of being considered young. And Stone wondered why Loring should look disquieted if not embarrassed.
"I met Blake, yes," was, however, his prompt reply.
"How's he standing it? He was a good deal cut up at first. They were to have been married last summer. He was regularly engaged to her, and never knew she'd thrown him over until he met Granger in St. Louis."
Then Loring did a thing they both noted was unlike him. Ordinarily he listened courteously until the question was finished. This time he broke in:
"Blake is in his element doing cavalry duty. We had a lively chase together after an officer who was deserting to Mexico."
"So you did," said Burleigh, with interest. "I remember hearing of it. You were on his court, weren't you? Why! what was the fellow's name? I remember having met him in New Orleans, too, when I read the order to the court. Let's see, you were judge advocate, weren't you?"
"Yes. And his name was Nevins."
"Ah, yes. Dismissed, I believe. What ever became of him? There was a rumor that he had died."