But the gloom at the garrison was dispelled perforce by the arrival of troop after troop, company after company, from east, west, and south, fast as cars could carry them,—all bound for the Black Hills to meet and support Crook, who was reported fighting his way southward through unknown regions and unknown numbers of the red men. Nothing had been heard even by telegraph from the —th from any source whatever since the steamer came down to Bismarck with sick and wounded, and the news that they had pushed out again for the Little Missouri country the last of August, and here it was beyond mid September. A whole regiment of cavalry encamped for a day or two on the prairie, then marched northward. Natty artillerymen from San Francisco dropped in to pay their respects on their way to "the Hills;" not a day passed without the arrival of strange officers, scores of men, and squadrons of horses. Russell had suddenly blossomed into first rank as a great supply depot, and in all the excitement of greeting the new-comers, and sending messages and missives to the dear ones at the front, the pall of tragedy was lifted from the post. Gleason and Wolf were, alike, wellnigh forgotten.
And then with sudden thrill the news tore through the post, and flashed over the wires in every direction, that a courier had ridden down from the northern limits of the hills bringing despatches from Crook, and announcing that, though half starved, ragged, and practically dismounted, the followers of the Gray Fox had reached the Belle Fourche, and would soon be able to push on to the agencies. They had dashed upon the Sioux villages at Slim Buttes, capturing hundreds of their fat ponies (and greedily eating many of them that very night), had found the lodges crammed with the spoil of the Custer battle, had killed several warriors and burned every ounce of Indian stores or provisions they could not use, and had two days' ringing, spirited fighting with Crazy Horse and his charging hosts among the fog wreaths and dripping crags of those strange, picturesque upheavals; then burying their dead and bringing away their wounded, they were once more within reach of supplies, though it might be weeks before they could come home. "Another battle and we not there," was Blake's sympathetic despatch to Ray at Denver; but now the last seemed to be recorded. Another week and letters might be expected. Another fortnight and it was known that all the forces were concentrating at Red Cloud to disarm the disaffected bands near the agencies. And then Blake and Ray, too, had both sped northward again to join their regiment. Ray's affairs had been summarily settled in this wise.
Rallston's illness had been severe, and Ray and Nell had been constantly at his side. When the fever broke and consciousness returned, and the patient realized where he was and who were his nurses, the man's remorse and shame were something pitiable. Of him, as an impartial historian, it is difficult to write, since long association with Stannard had forcibly impressed his views as to Rallston's character. Perhaps we were as reluctant to hear of his subsequent behavior and to believe in his contrition as Mrs. Whaling with all her meek and lowly piety was to conceive of Ray's innocence of the various charges laid at his door; but, in the absence of proof to the contrary, we simply place before the patient reader Nellie Ray Rallston's own statement: that her husband emerged from that trying illness a very different man, that he humbly begged Will's forgiveness and hers, and that when he was well enough to be moved home he had grown so fond of Will that he could not bear to have him out of his sight, and that he was rejoiced when orders came for Will to go to Chicago, as it enabled him to travel with them as far as Omaha. But you must remember, we feel bound to say, that she was of that loyal loving Kentucky nature—singularly like her brother for that matter—that having once given itself in its entirety to the service of lover or friend, is apt to stick to it through thick and thin. We may be pardoned—we worldlings—for doubting as yet the depth and sincerity of Rallston's repentance. "When the devil was ill, the devil a saint would be," etc. You know the application; but, for the time being, Mrs. Rallston went home happier than she had been for ages.
And Ray went on to division headquarters at Chicago, wondering what on earth was up now. He was still on leave, still clamoring to be tried, that he might be cleared of those charges and allowed to rejoin his regiment. His wound had healed, though he was still thin and worn, and he could not bear to think that there might be any more fighting for the dear old —th and he not there.
But Rand had taken Rallston's letters and some other papers with him to Chicago, as directed, and the commanding general had seen in less than no time what an outrageous case had been built up against a young officer whose record up to date had been one that appealed to all his sympathies. Ever since that daring night ride Ray had been an object of the liveliest interest to the general,—himself the cavalry leader par excellence of his day,—and when Rand laid before him all the papers in the case there was an eruption that made the rafters ring.
But when it came to cooling down and acting on the case, much as the general might think Ray deserved a triumphant vindication at the hands of a court, there were a dozen things to make it impracticable. To begin with, the court had been ordered before it looked so black for Crook's command and the Black Hills settlers, and all those infantry officers who were on the original detail were now plodding up to Red Cloud. The division was wellnigh stripped of everything but staff-officers, and if a court did meet, what a scoring it might give old Whaling and to his own staff-officer, who took all that hearsay talk down around Leavenworth and never gave Ray's friends a chance. It ended in the general's impetuously directing that the court be dissolved, and that Ray be ordered there post-haste. "I'll vindicate him!" he said.
And he did. Ray's pale, anxious face turned all sorts of colors when the general jumped up from his chair and griped his hand like a vise, and looked into his brave young eyes and said things to him that filled them with tears and his soul with confusion. Ray had no words, but his heart was full of a delight that none but soldiers know, and the lionizing he got that day at division headquarters would have spoiled many another fellow. The general could, indeed, "vindicate" him. He showed him the draft of the letters sent to the regiment, and asked with a smile if he didn't think that would do as well as the "not guilty" of a court; and that evening Ray took the westward train so as to stop over in Omaha one night and see Nell, and then hurry on by the Union Pacific to Cheyenne. His heart was bounding with hope, with pride, with gratitude and joy; but through it all there was a sense of something strange and new to him that tempered every feeling of exultation. He had been tried as by fire, and humbled, softened, chastened by the fierceness of the flame. Even bitterness and resentment seemed expelled from his soul. Ray was a changed, a graver man. All that was truthful, gallant, loyal in his nature was there yet, but the recklessness of the past was gone.
Many letters had come to him in the few days he had spent at Denver by Rallston's sick-bed, and while Mrs. Stannard had frequently written to tell him how they all were, and the colonel sent a courteously-worded expression of his regret at the credence he had given to the statements of a brother officer and what he termed the "misunderstandings" of the summer, Ray was most touched at Warner's "solid" and earnest appeal to be regarded as a friend and not as one of the opposition.
He answered promptly and cordially everything Mr. Warner wrote with a single exception. The young adjutant was requested by Colonel Whaling to put in a word or two for the Hibernian quartermaster whom Blake had cut dead, and who was perturbed in spirit over the prospect of being otherwise lacerated when Ray got back. Warner thought that the colonel or the quartermaster himself should make the proper amende in this case, but the latter was a poor hand at epistolary expression, and the former had long been a pronounced adherent of that "divine right of" commanding officers which makes the adjutant the transmitter and medium of all correspondence involving matters of delicate or diplomatic import. If the result be successful, all right. It was written by direction of Colonel So and So, and is presumably his own wording. If it fail, then anybody can see that failure is due solely to the clumsy and blockheaded manipulation of the adjutant.
Mr. Warner conveyed a hope that the quartermaster might be included in the general amnesty, but to this Ray made no response. He drew the line at those who had been unkind to Dandy.