Fort Frayne, Wyoming,
December 11, 1876.S. O. }
} (Extract)
No. 81. }
3. On arriving with his detachment at Fort Cushing, and in compliance with the telegraphic instructions from Department Headquarters, Trooper G. P. Rawdon, Troop "L," —th Cavalry, is granted thirty days' furlough, at the expiration of which he will report to the commanding officer of Fort Cushing for transportation to his proper station.
By order of Lieutenant-Colonel Kent,
Douglas Jerrold,
Second Lieut. —th Inf.,
Post Adjutant.
IV
Just as the paymaster predicted, the wintry storm broke with the early afternoon. A genuine blizzard came shrieking down from the mountain pass to the northwest, charging madly through the post, blinding the eyes and snatching the breath of the few hardy men who had to venture out of doors, driving before it a dense white snow-cloud, sweeping clean the westward roofs and prairie wastes, and banking up to the very eaves on the lee side of every building. Even the sentries had to be severally taken off post and lodged within. (Number Five, so it was reported, had been blown bodily into the Snaffles' kitchen.) Even the commanding officer's "orderly," who had barely managed to make his way back after dinner, was now relieved. Only by hauling himself hand over hand along the picket fence, and turning his back to the gale every ten seconds to catch his breath, had he succeeded in returning to his post. Even stable duty was abandoned, so far as grooming was concerned, for though the men could readily be blown from barracks to their steeds, no power could fetch them back for supper. Veteran first sergeants told off a stout squad in each troop, and sent them with a sack-load of rations to reinforce the stable sergeant and grooms, there to stay to feed, guard, and water the horses. Unless the roofs blew away, and all were buried in drifts, there was safety, if not comfort, in the sheltered flats below the bluffs.
But the telegraph wires went with the first hour. The stage, of course, couldn't be hoped to return from town, and, so far as getting news from the surrounding universe was concerned, Fort Cushing might as well have been in Nova Zembla. And the Sumters, three, with Miriam Arnold, had set forth at noon, intending to intercept the east-bound express, and the colonel's spirit was raging in sympathy with the storm, and in spite of his wife, for some one had started a tale that Sumter and his household had ostentatiously called upon Robert Ray Lanier, in close arrest, in utter disfavor and inferential disgrace.
Now, while an officer in arrest may not quit his quarters under seven days, and may not even thereafter visit his commanding officer unless ordered, or his brother officers unless authorized by that magnate, there is no regulation prohibiting other officers or their households visiting him. Nevertheless, they who publicly do so lay themselves liable to the imputation of sympathizing with the accused at the expense of the accuser, and some commanding officers are so sensitive that they look upon such demonstrations as utterly subversive of discipline, and aimed directly at them.
And of such was Colonel Button, a brave soldier, a gentleman at heart, a kind, if crotchety, commander, and a lenient man rather than a disciplinarian. Much given, himself, to criticism of his own superiors or contemporaries, he could not abide it that he should lack the full and enthusiastic support, much less be made the object of the criticism, of his officers or men. A vain man, was Button, and dearly he loved the adulation of his comrades, high or low. Veteran Irish sergeants knew well how to reach the soft side of "The Old Man." Astute troop commanders, like Snaffle, saved themselves many a deserved wigging by judicious use of blarney. Sterling, straightforward men like Major Stannard, like Sumter, Raymond, and Truscott, of his captains—men who could not fawn and would not flatter—were never Button's intimates. He admired them; he respected them; but down in his heart he did not like them, because they were, in a word, independent.
And during the long and trying campaign that began early in June and closed only late in November, Button had made more than one error that set men to saying things, and at least one blunder that had called for rebuke. It was supposed at the time that the rebuke would end it, but, to Button's wrath, and indeed that of most of his friends, the story appeared in exaggerated form in many an Eastern paper. What made it worse was that, as told in Boston, Philadelphia, and other far Eastern communities, where the Indian is little known and much considered, Button's interests were bound to suffer, for he was declared to have butchered defenseless women and children in a surrendered village—a most unjust accusation in spite of the fact that certain squaws and boys had died fighting with their braves by night, when bullets could not well discriminate. Button had but just got his promotion to regimental command, and friends at court were working hard for his further advancement to the grade of brigadier-general—a fact that hurt him in an army so benighted as then was ours, in believing that generalships should be bestowed only upon the seniors and service-tried among the colonels. We have broadened much since then, and, as it was once said that every French soldier carried the baton of a marshal in his knapsack, so now may the silver star be hidden in the pocket of the lieutenants of every staff department as well as those of the Fighting Force. There are none who may not aspire.
So Button believed it of Sumter that he and his, on the way to the railway station, went in and condoled with Bob Lanier, and doubtless vituperated him, the commander, when in point of fact no one of their number had seen, or spoken with, Bob. Sumter merely left a big basket filled with fruit, and a little note with friendliness, from Mrs. Sumter, then sprang into the curtained escort wagon, and was whisked away.