"I'll do this, Blake. You go on with your dressing. Of course I understand you mean to go in with me; but now let me say a word. I have had plenty of time to think, and this is just what I want, what I must have. Nothing short of a full trial can satisfy me now; and as for being handed over to the civil authorities,—well, is it any worse than what I have had to bear here?"
"By heaven! but there'll come a day of reckoning for that cold-blooded, soulless, bowelless, old block in the headquarters office. Just think of the kicking he'll get when the —th comes home! But, Ray, what I'm worried about is this,—bail, you know. You can't stay there in jail, and I don't know any of these local plutocrats——"
"I've thought of all that. You are to ask no one. If I were out on bail I would have to come back here, and in all the world there is no spot where I have known such misery. I prefer the jail at Cheyenne to such freedom as this has been at Russell. In a few days my sister will reach me, and then we'll see. Now hurry, I want to get away before guard-mounting."
In a few minutes Blake was ready, and Ray told him to call in the officers. They entered the room, and the first one, as he did so, by an instinct which he could not himself explain, took off his hat as he caught sight of Ray standing quietly at the window; his followers, though evidently unused to such a display, followed suit. The leader began to read his warrant, but Ray raised his hand and smilingly checked him.
"Never mind it, my friend; it is all in due form, no doubt. You brought handcuffs, I suppose?"
And the man was already fumbling in his left pocket for them. Ray went on in the same quiet tone,—
"You won't need them, so keep them in your pocket. I am glad to go with you now if you are ready."
And the officer, who, like every man in Cheyenne, had heard all about the night ride that saved Wayne's command, and respected the "young feller" that made it, was glad to find an awkward question put out of his way. He had reddened with embarrassment, but was grateful to Ray for taking the trouble off his mind. As they left the house, and poor Hogan, looking over the banisters up-stairs, broke into an Irish wail of grief, and the corporal of the guard instinctively brought his left hand up to the shoulder in a salute that made his musket ring, a casual observer would have said that Mr. Ray was showing his visitors to their carriage. The door shut with a snap, the horses started with a crack of the whip, and in another moment the silent quartette were whirled away through the east gate before anybody "up the row" was fully aware of what was going on.
Meantime, there had been a night of misery elsewhere in the garrison. Mrs. Stannard had asked permission of the officer of the day to go to Ray with the doctor at nine o'clock; the officer of the day said he would go and see the colonel and let her know. He went, but did not return. At ten o'clock Mrs. Stannard wrote a note to the colonel, and that punctilious soldier replied through his adjutant at half-past ten. He was very sorry, but for several reasons he was compelled to refuse all applications to see Mr. Ray until the morrow. Mrs. Stannard in her indignation could hardly find words to thank Mr. Warner for the courtesy he personally displayed in the matter. She sent a servant to the corporal of the guard to ask him to say to Mr. Blake that she desired earnestly to see him a moment; the corporal said he would as soon as he had posted the next sentry; but he forgot it until long after eleven, owing to an excitement over in the band quarters, and then Blake thought it best to wait until morning, and so it happened that one woman whose heart was full of faith in and sympathy for Ray was balked of her desire to send him full assurance of her thought for him. She could not sleep, however, and at midnight walked alone down the row and asked the soldier at the gate to give this little note for Ray to the sentinel within, but the man came sadly and respectfully back. The sentry dare not pass it in: it was against his orders. She looked wistfully at the dim light showing through the curtains of the front room, but turned wearily away. A dim light was burning, too, in Mrs. Truscott's room up the row, and she tapped softly at the door, thinking that, like herself, they might be still awake; but no answer came, and, at last, she went to her own lonely quarters. Oh, how she longed for her brave, blunt, outspoken Luce that night! He could find a way of helping Ray, and would do it despite all the official trammels that the post commander could devise. She was sick at heart, but next door lay a woman whose unrest was greater still, whose trouble seemed more than she could bear. Mrs. Truscott had arrived at the conclusion before ten o'clock that night that she was the most miserable woman on the face of the globe.
Jack's letter arriving the day previous was as kind, as well expressed, and as thoughtful a screed as ever mortal husband penned, but, being like other husbands, only mortal, he had failed to bring about the exact effect which was intended. Whether this was his fault or hers could not be determined entirely by an inspection of a copy of the letter, since letters may be read with a thousand different inflections, and the most passionate heart-offering be made to sound like a torrent of sarcasm. Perhaps it is neither here nor there whose fault it was. Grace read the letter with burning self-reproach. It was the second time he had had reason to find fault with her. True, she had acted as she supposed for the best, and after consultation with Mrs. Stannard. Mrs. Stannard's letter was to go by the next mail and explain the whole thing to the major, who, if he deemed advisable, would carry everything to Truscott; but, as we have seen, that explanatory letter had never reached the regiment. It, with bags full of other letters, was lying in the wagons at Goose Creek, while the —th was on the chase away to the Yellowstone, and Grace had the misery of believing that Jack's last thought of her as he rode off to battle was that she had had some sentimental scene with Ray, had been surprised in the midst of it, and had concealed it from him. She had spent a distracted afternoon, had written Jack page after page, in which amid tears and kisses she had recorded her determination never to let another man see her alone an instant, never to receive a note of any kind from Ray or anybody else, never to speak to a man if she could help it; she hated them all,—all but one, whom she had wronged and deceived, and whom she adored and worshipped now, and heaven only knows what all! She felt comforted somehow when she had slipped that letter into the box at the adjutant's office late that night, and had gone so soundly asleep that she might not have known of the murder until morning but for Marion. And then, that next afternoon,—that very next afternoon, after she had written all her impulsive, wifelike, loving promises to Jack, what should come but a note from Ray to be delivered privately to her. Let any young wife of less than a year's disenchantment put herself in Mrs. Truscott's place and say what she would have done. Of course, dear madam, I hear you say, vous autres, "She needn't have made such a fool of herself! She might have explained or—something!" I quite agree with you. That is what all of us think who have survived the delirium of the honeymoon, that mielle de la lune-acy which all of us must encounter as our children do the measles; but, you see, Mrs. Truscott was not yet through with it, and what is more, I have heard you remark on several occasions that she was an awfully weak sort of a heroine and would make Jack wretched yet. Bless your womanly hearts! I never pretended that she was a Zenobia, or a Jeanne la Pucelle, or a Susan B. Anthony. She was absurd, if you will, but she was utterly in love with her husband, as Mrs. Turner said, and thought far more of him than the rest of mankind put together, which is more than some of you can say, though I'm bound to admit that she had better reason than most of you, placens uxor mea frankly included.