It was brief enough. It was written by a clerk in Burleigh's office to a fellow-clerk in that of the chief quartermaster at Omaha, and the latter had felt it his duty, he said, to inform his immediate superior, who in turn had laid it before the chief-of-staff. It read as follows:
"The old man's rattled as I never saw him before, and God only knows what's amiss. Two young lieutenants came in and thrashed him right before the whole of us, called him a liar, and all that. His friend Newhall, that pulled him through the yellow fever, he says, was there at the time drunk, and actually congratulated them, and though Burleigh raved and swore and wrote no end of dispatches to be sent to Omaha demanding court-martial for Lieutenant Dean, devil a one of them was ever really sent. Not only that, but Burleigh was threatened and abused by Newhall, and had to buy him off with a roll of greenbacks—and I saw it. Who's Newhall, anyhow, and what hold has he on Burleigh? Nursing him through yellow fever don't go. Newhall's gone, however, either over to Cheyenne or out on the Cache la Poudre. There's something rotten in Denmark, and I want to get out of this."
Loring read it carefully through twice, the General keenly studying his face the while.
"I have determined to go to Gate City myself, even though time can ill be spared, Loring," said he. "There is urgent need of my presence at Laramie. Possibly I may have to go to Frayne, and shall need you with me, but meantime this thing must be explained. Everything seems to point to Burleigh's being in some unusual trouble. Everything indicates that this Captain Newhall, who was one of his chums in New Orleans, has some heavy hold on him, a gambling debt, perhaps, or knowledge of cotton transactions during the war. I cannot but feel that you know something of the man. Tell me, did you meet that fellow when he was here?"
Loring stood looking gravely, straight into the face of his superior. Swiftly his thoughts sped back to that soft, warm evening when he and the rector slowly ascended the gentle grade toward Mrs. Burton's homestead, and there was unfolded before his eyes that picture he was destined never to forget, the lovely tints of the clear northern sky, the broad valley of the great river, with its bounding bluffs and hillocks, hued by the dying day, the dark forms, slender and graceful both, coming nearer and nearer, until in startled recognition of one at least, he halted in dumb amaze, and therefore caught but flitting glimpse of the other as it whisked jauntily away. He had his suspicions, strong and acute, yet with nothing tangible as yet on which to base them, and if he breathed them, what would be the result? The girl whose identity he had promised not to betray "until sister Naomi could be heard from," would beyond all question be called to account. To his very door had she come within forty-eight hours of that strange evening, which the rector's prattle had made public property, begged a minute's interview without giving any name, and stepping down into the plainly furnished little western parlor, there in the dim light of a single kerosene burner, Walter Loring had come face to face with his old love—Geraldine.
Mindful of all the harm she had done him in San Francisco, rather than of what had passed before, he met her in stern silence. On his generosity, his magnanimity she threw herself. She had deceived and wronged him in ever engaging herself to him, she said, and would have gone on to say more. "That is all past and done with," he coldly interposed. "What is it now?" And then it transpired that good Mr. Lambert had been the means of securing for Naomi an excellent position, that Naomi had gone to enter on her duties and had sent for her sister to come and live at Mrs. Burton's until she could better provide for her, that Naomi was living under an assumed name, and that she prayed that no one might know their unhappy past. The interview was cut short by the curiosity of some member of the household who came in ostensibly to trim the lamp.
"It shall be as you wish until you hear from your sister," said Loring, bowing her out with punctilious civility and praying in secret that there it might end, but end it did not. Within another forty-eight hours she was there with another quest. The servant who announced her presence in the parlor below did so with a confidential and impertinent grin. "The same lady wants to see Lieutenant Loring," and this time he was colder and sterner than before. Her evident purpose was to revert to the relations that once existed, though her plea was only for news from California. Had nothing ever been heard of the missing jewels? she asked. Their need was so great. She had most excellent prospects of an engagement in Boston if she could only have six months instruction under Signor Calabresi, but his terms were so high and she would have to live in New York, and people kept writing her that she and Naomi really ought to make some effort to recover the value of that property, and she had come, friendless as she was, to ask if he thought a suit against the steamship company would result in their getting anything. Captain Pet—a gentleman, that is, who had been most kind in San Francisco, had promised to do something, but now that the General was dead what could he do? There was no doubting the identity or intentions of that gentleman, thought Loring as he gravely replied that they would only be defeated in any such attempt. Then with swimming eyes she had bemoaned her past, her fatal errors, her greed for wealth and position that had led her to stifle her own heart throbs and deceive the one true friend she had ever known, and Loring broke short the conversation by leaving the room. Then she came again, alone, and he refused to see her. Then she came with Mrs. Burton, and the house was in a titter, and he broke up his establishment and moved back to the hotel, to the scandal of his landlord, as has been said, who made loud complaint to the powers at headquarters. Then she wrote that she was being followed and persecuted by a man she never knew before, the man who was with her the night Mr. Lambert said they met them in front of Mrs. Burton's, a dreadful man who said that he believed that she loved Lieutenant Loring and made threats against him. She implored Loring's protection, and Loring saw through the flimsy device and returned the letter unanswered, and later letters unopened, and then the woman seemed to take fire, and in turn she threatened him.
And now she had brought Mrs. Burton to witness his cruelty to her, the meek, suffering girl to whom he was pledged and plighted, who she had followed to Omaha in hopes of softening his heart and winning back his wayward love, as was the burden of her sorrowing song to that most sympathetic of women, already burning with prejudice and fancied wrong of her own. One "woman scorned" is more than enough for many a reputation. Two, in double harness, would wreck that of Saint Anthony.
All this and more had sped through Loring's mind that night and was uppermost in his thoughts as he stood there facing his patient commander. The General's fine, clear-cut features clouded with anxiety as he noted the long silence and hesitation. Again he spoke, with grave, yet gentle reproof in his tone.
"Surely, Loring, if you know of the fellow, it is our right to know."