Button listened to his adjutant's report with something almost like a sneer. Stannard and Sumter heard it with grave faces, but without a word. Snaffle, who had drifted in, sniggered with obvious triumph.
"Gentlemen," said the colonel, "you have not heard the half of what I know, and every day brings something new. This comes in from Laramie to-day, brought with the mail that lay over at the Chugwater during the storm. Read that, Stannard." And Stannard took the paper and glanced over it, blinked his eyes, sniffed, and said: "I've heard about that case, and I'll take Lanier's story any day against—that fellow's affidavit."
"Major Stannard," said Button severely, "you are speaking contemptuously of your superior officer."
"Colonel Button," answered Stannard, with high held head, but with firm hand on his temper, "I am speaking contemptuously of my superior officer's informant, not of the commanding officer of Fort Laramie. If you care to look you will see that he quotes, not asserts, that 'this money was advanced to Mr. Lowndes on Mr. Lanier's statement that the young man was summoned home by the serious illness of his mother, and that he, Mr. Lanier, would be responsible for the transaction. Mr. Lowndes has never repaid it, and Mr. Lanier when appealed to four weeks since not only refused to make it good, but abused and cursed me for simply asking for what was my own.' Now, sir," concluded Stannard, "I haven't sought to learn the facts in the case, but I'll bet ten dollars to ten cents you have yet to hear them."
"Very good, gentlemen," answered Button, rising in obvious chagrin. "It is quite evident in your opinion Mr. Lanier is a persecuted saint and I am an abandoned sinner, but just as soon as I can reach Omaha this case shall be laid before a general court-martial, and meanwhile I waste no more words defending my actions."
Whereupon, with formal "Good-night, sir," from Stannard and Sumter, and a grumpy dismissal from the indignant commander, the ill-starred conference broke up. Snaffle, pouring balm into Button's ready ear, as he saw him home, went in and drank his health at the well-stocked sideboard, and then started straightway across the parade to his troop quarters, and, late as it was, called for his first sergeant.
The men were mostly in bed, as they should be at such an hour, but there had been an informal dance, and many of the sergeants were still at the hop room. Beyond this brightly lighted building, and about in the rear of the infantry barracks at the westward end, was the slide into the creek valley, whereat so many of the officers' children had been coasting early in the evening, and where now—nearly eleven o'clock—half a hundred young people of both sexes, wives and daughters of quartermaster's employees and of the elder sergeants, attended by their gallants from the garrison, were having a merry time of it. The moon shone in brilliance. The night air, frosty and still, was full of exhilaration. The officer-of-the-guard, merely cautioning the revellers to control their impulse to shout, had gone on his way with implied permission to keep up the fun, and presently other officers appeared upon the brow of the bluff, interested observers. One of them, the junior medical officer of the post, was known to all, for his duty it was to attend the families of the soldiery resident in the little village of their own, just west of the quartermaster's corral, and sheltered by the long line of bluffs from the northerly gale. Deep in snowdrifts lay the snug little cabins, cottages and shacks, wherein dwelt these blithe-hearted folk—many of the girls as pretty, and to the full as coquettish, as their sisters of the official circle in the big "fort" enclosure above. Still farther to the west lay three little houses on the level "bench," by the swift-running stream—the homes of the corral-master, the wagon-master and the veterinarian—civilians all, as then ordained, yet men who had lived their lives with the army on the frontier.
And it was one of these, the veterinary surgeon, a gray-haired man of nearly sixty, who presently came toiling up the hillside, touched his fur cap front in salutation to tall Lieutenant Ennis, and begged leave to speak a moment with Doctor Schuchardt, whom he led slowly away.
Looking gravely after them and pondering many things in mind, Ennis, none the less, had attentive ear for the chatter and gossip of a neighboring group that had suspended their sledding for the moment and were curiously watching the pair.
"There's no more the matter wid Dora Mayhew than there is wid me, 'cept one," said a red-cheeked maid of "laundress row," to the eager group about her. "She's been daft about that young dude Rawdon ever since he came last spring to Frayne."