No answer. Only beating hearts, only quick-drawn breath, only the distant call of the sentry, "Half-past eleven o'clock;" only the dying strains of the "Immortellen" wafting out through the open casements.
"Try, Maidie," he whispered, eagerly. "Try before the call comes back to the guard-house. Try before the last notes of that sweet waltz die away for good and all. Try, sweet love,—'Will, I think I do.'"
A moment's pause, then—then—
And the strong, straining arms clasped about her under that blessed cavalry cape, and the bonny face was hidden on his breast, and Ray's trembling lips were raining passionate kisses on that softly rippling bang, just as the last thrill of the "Immortellen" dreamed away, and the rich, ringing, soldierly voice of the sentry on number one echoed far out over the moonlit prairie the soldier watch-cry, "All's well."
What a gem of a morning was the morrow when they rode away northward! After the command had filed out of the garrison, led by the band on their placid grays, and the ladies all along the row had waved their good-byes and kissed their dainty white hands, and the children had hurrahed and shouted and rushed out among the horses' hoofs in their eagerness to have one more farewell shake of the hand from some favorite officer or man, and two or three dames and damsels had stolen away to the back rooms up-stairs, Marion Sanford stood with tear-dimmed eyes at the window, gazing far out over the prairie at the long blue column disappearing in the dust over the "divide." By her side stood Grace Truscott, twining her arms around that slender waist and clinging to her with a new and sweeter sympathy. Who, who was the cynic that wrote that even as she stood at the altar plighting her troth to the husband she had chosen, no woman yet forgave the man whom, having rejected, she knew to have consoled himself with another? Grace never for a moment admitted that Ray had been her lover in Arizona; he had been devoted to her—always—for Jack's sake; but there were those who thought that only a little encouragement would have tumbled Mr. Ray over head and heels in love with her in those queer old days. But all that was past. There was no doubt that Mr. Ray was desperately, deeply in love now, and that two women in that garrison—Mrs. Stannard and Mrs. Truscott—knew it well, and rejoiced that his love was requited. But, late as it was, Ray had had a very happy yet earnest talk with Marion on their return from the hop. He told her plainly that he had a term of probation to serve, and that not until he had freed himself from his burden of debt and furnished his quarters, so that he might not be utterly ashamed to welcome her to such a roof as even frontier cottages afforded, he would not ask her to be his wife; he would not ask her to consider herself even engaged to him. He had no right, he said, to speak to her of his love, much less to plead for hers; but that was irresistible,—'twas done. Long engagements are fearful strains, and our social license of questionings renders them wellnigh intolerable to men and women, who naturally shrink from speaking of matters which are to them so sacred. Ray declared that she should not be harassed by any such torturing talk and prying and questioning as that which has to be undergone by almost every girl whom civilized society fancies to be engaged. She could never doubt him for an instant, he felt assured, and he—well, he couldn't begin to realize his blessed fortune at all, so she must excuse his incredulity; but he declared he would leave her utterly untrammelled. There should not even be an "understanding." He would not ask her to accept his class-ring, all he had to offer, but write to her he would. Grace and Mrs. Stannard should know if she saw fit, and Truscott, but no one else at Russell. Then, if she came to her senses when she went back to New York and her friends the Zabriskies in November, and met some fellow worthy her acceptance, why—but here a little white hand was laid firmly upon his lips; he said no more, but compromised by kissing it—rapturously.
But he, and Dandy, too, had come to say good-by before marching, and Dandy's coat shone like silk, and he arched his pretty neck and looked at her with his soft brown eyes as though he wanted to tell her he knew all about it, as indeed he did. Had not Ray gone into the stable early that morning while he was crunching his oats and whispered it all, and ever so much more, into that sensitive ear? A famous confidant was Dandy on the long march that followed, for Ray used to bend down on his neck and talk about her to him time and again, to the wonderment of his "sub." Ray breakfasted at Mrs. Stannard's the morning of the start, and when he came away and it was time to mount, he wore in the button-hole of his scouting-shirt a single daisy—Marion's own flower—and a tiny speck of dark-blue ribbon. The yellow facings of the cavalry were linked with the Sanford blue.
And wasn't Blake in a gale that morning? Rattling with nonsense and misquotation and eagerness to be off, he strode from gallery to gallery with his Mexican spurs clattering at his heels. He had bought in town a little china match-safe, which he gravely presented to Mrs. Whaling as a slight addition to the collection of what she termed her brick-a-braw. He implored Mrs. Turner to sing to him just once, for singing was a doubtful accomplishment of hers, and she had already good reason to know that he had paraphrased one of her songs, because of her defective enunciation, into—
"Some day, some day, some day
I shall meat chew,"