"Not a thing, Luce. Did you suppose Mrs. Turner was possessed of all the information and would come to me with it?"
The major looked uncomfortable. "She would be apt to go to somebody, and you were the nearest. Both those youngsters, Dana and Hunter, were present, and they are leaky vessels, I'm told. Turner never tells her anything, but the boys do."
"What a thing to say, Luce!"
"Can't help it," growled the major, thrusting out his spurred boot-heels towards the railing and tilting back in his chair. "You never heard, I suppose, that between her and Mrs. Raymond and Mrs. Wilkins there was a regular intelligence bureau at Sandy two years ago. So you heard nothing about this affair?"
"Not a word; and it occurs to me, Major Stannard, that you look vastly as though you wish Mrs. Turner had come with the details. That's just the way with you men. You rail at our sex for gossiping, and growl when we can't or won't tell you anything. Luce! Luce! How consistent!" And in her enjoyment of her burly lord's discomfiture, Mrs. Stannard forgot for the moment her many anxieties and laughed blithely.
The major had too much to worry him, however, and this was so evident to his devoted wife that her laugh was brief,—it was never loud or strident,—and she moved her chair nearer to his own.
"Is Mr. Ray in any trouble?" she asked, with genuine concern.
"I don't know. Of the officers present at the conversation in the store this morning all I have since seen were infantrymen, whom I couldn't ask. Wayne and Merrill heard something of it and came to me at once because of their regard for Ray, but Blake has gone to town. He is the man who snubbed Crane and Wilkins. It seems Wilkins claims to have a letter from somebody—that man Gleason probably—to the effect that Ray has been on a perpetual tear with the very man of all others I dreaded his meeting. You remember that contractor, Rallston."
"Mr. Ray's brother-in-law?"
"Yes; worse luck! I knew the fellow by reputation before we went to Arizona. He's a scoundrel, and a very polished one, too. Ray is smart enough ordinarily, but if Rallston has been trying to sell him horses there will be trouble sooner or later. I'm more worried about that than over the campaign news. Sorry about H——, of course, though I'd never met him: They say he is a capital officer; but I can't start to-morrow and have this thing haunting me all the way up to Laramie. I'll go down to camp and hunt up Wilkins, and ask him flat-footed for his whole story; then there will be time to write to Ray, or telegraph if need be."