But as she turned triumphantly away, the color suddenly left her cheek and there was an instant’s falter. As though he had heard her words, Stanley Armstrong too had suddenly turned and stood looking sternly into her eyes.
CHAPTER XIII.
Still another expedition was destined to start for Manila, and keen was the rivalry among the regiments held to daily drill at San Francisco. The rumor was current in the camps that the next review was to decide the matter, and that the commands pronounced to be foremost in discipline and efficiency would be designated to embark. The transports that had conveyed the earlier expeditions to the Philippines began to reappear in the bay, and coaling and refitting were hurried to the utmost. The man most eager to get away was Stanley Armstrong; and if merit were to decide the matter it was conceded among the volunteers that in point of style and equipment the “Primeval Dudes” “held over” all competitors, even though every competitor believed itself more than a match for the Dudes if actual campaigning and fighting were in contemplation. Senators and members from the States represented by the volunteers at San Francisco led burdensome lives, for officers and men were pulling every wire to secure the longed-for orders for an immediate voyage to Manila, when, all on a sudden, the hopes of all were crushed. Spain had begged for peace. “No more men can be sent to Manila,” said the officials consulted, and Camp Merritt put on mourning forthwith.
But Armstrong had been studying the situation and was not easily daunted. He was a man whose opinion carried weight, and from the very first he had maintained that while fifteen or twenty thousand might be men enough to hold Manila, fifty thousand might not be enough to subdue at once the forces of Aguinaldo in case they should turn upon the Americans, which said he, placidly, they will most certainly do before we are a year older.
The Dudes, therefore, much to their disgust, were kept steadily at work. Other regiments, profiting by example, followed suit; but in others still, a small proportion of their membership, believing as they said, that the “jig was up,” took to lawless and unhallowed expression of their disgust and became thereby a nuisance to the neighborhood. San Franciscans, who had wept copiously when others sailed away, would have seen these patriots sent into exile without shedding a tear.
“Every man of this command will yet be needed and yet be sent,” said Armstrong. So, too, did the veteran division commander, and the brigade took heart accordingly. The last of the regulars, with the recruit detachments for regiments already in the Philippines, had been shipped to Honolulu, there to await orders, and September seemed destined to go by without a change for the better in the prospects of the men still left in camp about the reservation. The Primes, convinced at last that the boy they sought was not to be found in California, had gone to Santa Anita visiting their kindred, the Lawrences; and Armstrong, buckling down to hard and constant work, was striving to persuade himself that he did not care that the mornings no longer brought with them the carriage and the fair face of that gentle girl; the department commander himself had gone to take a look at his new responsibilities in Hawaii; little Mrs. Garrison still held court, though with diminished retinue, at the Presidio, when one day, just as October was ushered in, there came a message from the adjutant-general in town. Would Armstrong drop in at the office at the first opportunity? A matter of some importance had come up in the general’s first letter from Honolulu, one on which Armstrong’s opinion was desired; and the colonel, hoping for tidings of a chance to move even that far to the front, made immediate opportunity and took the first car for the Phelan Building. The adjutant-general looked up from a littered desk as Armstrong entered.
“It is good of you to come so promptly,” said he. “I’m in a stew, to tell the truth, and I want your advice.” Then he tapped his bell. “Excuse me to any one who comes for the next ten minutes,” said he, to the attendant who entered. “I have business with Colonel Armstrong.”
No sooner did the orderly vanish than the man of the desk whirled full on the man of the saddle. “Armstrong,” said he, “you defended Gray and proved him innocent. What else has Canker against him?”