"Come on! It's fire!" said Ennis, and sprang in pursuit of the leaders, "Shoe," and Mayhew following. "It's fire!" went up the cry along the hillside. "Fire!" echoed the nearest sentry, letting fly the load in his rifle. "Fire!" shouted the few wakeful fellows in barracks, tumbling instantly every man from his bunk to his boots and into his ready clothes. "Fire!" yelled the sergeant-of-the-guard, as he tore in among his sleeping comrades. "Fire!" echoed the cry from barrack to barrack, as the men poured forth into the night, and then, as Ennis rounded the corner and came in full view of the wide open parade with the long line of quarters beyond, his heart leaped for his throat in wild dismay. "My God, lieutenant, it's your house!" panted a racing trooper. "My God, and Bob's all alone!" sobbed Ennis, as he sped through the snow, for already from the front dormer and from the lower windows the flames were mounting high in the trail of a black volume of smoke, and over the crackle and roar of the fire, the rush and clamor of men, the thrilling alarum of echoing bugle and trumpet, there rose on the night air the scream of a girl, imploring instant aid, and this time at least there could be no doubt, for the cry was, "Save him! Save him!"
Of the minutes that followed no man could give collected account. All Ennis saw as he came staggering round to the rear of the flaming furnace that once was a house, was a wild-eyed girl being led away by a group of sympathetic women, and a little group of men bundling a slender yet vigorously protesting form in a snow drift, where one or two others were being rolled and buffeted; while others still, with a keening Irishman in their grasp, were lugging him back to hospital; while Corporal Cassidy, with his hair singed close to his head, his face and hands seared and his clothing soaked, smoking, and a general wreck, was striving to evade his handlers and stand attention to the colonel, who for his part was bending over Bob Lanier just emerging from his third involuntary plunge in the drifts, and sputtering objurgations on his would-be benefactors.
"In God's name, Lanier," almost wailed the colonel, as at last that young gentleman, likewise singed and scorched and soaked and dripping, yet preternaturally cool for one just out of a blazing hell, found his feet and faced his commander—"in God's name, why didn't you jump when they told you? There was nothing but snowdrifts below——"
"There was a colonel coming," said Bob, with a grin of mingled anguish and satisfaction, "who held that sort of thing to be breach of arrest."
IX
Few men slept the rest of the night for talking over the stirring scenes of that spectacular fire. Indeed, there had been a strenuous fight to keep it from spreading, and the Graysons' quarters next door were badly scorched, and the Graysons woefully scared, before the little bachelor hall had burned itself out. Big Jim Ennis had lost pretty much everything he owned except what he had on. Lanier was not much better off. As to the origin of the fire, Bob merely said that he had turned the lights low in the sitting-room, and, obedient to "Shoe's" orders, had gone up to his roost, too wrathful and amazed over what had occurred even to think of sleep—to think, in fact, of anything but the colonel's words. So absorbed was he, as he slowly undressed, he never noted the sounds from below until his room of a sudden seemed filled with smoke, and, throwing open the door, he was amazed to find the hallway ablaze, the stairs impassable. Running to his dormer window, he yelled fire at the top of his voice. Sentry Number Five heard and came running down along the back fence; saw the peril, let drive a shot and gave the yell that roused every one at the hospital—poor Rafferty, half crazed, half dazed, and by no means half dressed, coming leaping along among the first.
And there at his back window, choking with smoke and tossing out clothing and other belongings, stood Mr. Lanier. Some men went searching for ladders up the line of back yards, the post hook and ladder truck being, of course, on the far side of the garrison. There being no extension and sheds to this little box, as to the larger quarters up the line, other men began shouting, and Lieutenant Grayson imploring Mr. Lanier to jump, for already the flames had burst through the windows below. Then came the episode the regiment laughed over, swore over, talked over, many a long year thereafter. To Grayson's appeal Bob's only answer was a calm and deliberate:
"Give my compliments to the colonel, will you, and tell him that, my quarters being all ablaze, I'd like an extension of arrest?"