As for Ray, no officer in the regiment is better known or more talked about. Ten years of his life he has spent under the standard of the —th, barring a very short but eventful detail at "the Point." Nebraska, Kansas, and Arizona he knows as well as the savannas of his native blue-grass country. He has been in more skirmishes with the regiment and more scrapes of his own than any fellow of his age in service, but he has the faculty of "lighting on his feet every time," as he himself would express it, and to-day he rides along as buoyantly and recklessly as he did ten years ago, and the saddle is Ray's home. Ephemeral pleasure he finds in the hop-room, for he dances well; perennial attraction, his detractors say, he finds at the card-table, but Ray is never quite himself until he throws his leg over the horse he loves. He is facile princeps the light rider of the regiment, and to this claim there are none to say him nay. A tip-top soldier too is Ray. Keen on the scout, tireless on the trail, daring to a fault in action, and either preternaturally cool or enthusiastically excited when under fire. He is a man the rank and file swear by and love. "You never hear Loot'nant Ray saying 'Go in there, fellers.' 'Tis always, 'Come on, boys.' That's why I like him," is the way Sergeant Moriarty puts it. Among his comrades, his brother officers that is to say, opinions are divided. Ray has trusty friends and he has his bitter enemies, though the latter, when charged with the fact, are prone to say that no one is so much Ray's enemy as Ray himself,—an assertion which cannot be altogether denied. But as his own worst enemy Ray is thoroughly open and above-board; he has not a hidden fault; his sins are many and they are public property for all he cares; whereas the men who dislike Ray in the regiment are of the opposite stamp. Among themselves they pick him to pieces with comparative safety, but outside their limited circle, the damnation of faint praise, the covert insinuations, or that intangible species of backbiting which can,
"Without sneering, others teach to sneer,"
has to be their resort, and for good reason. Ray tolerates no slander, and let him once get wind of the fact that some man has maligned him, there is a row in the camp. Minding his own business, however unsuccessfully, he meddles with the affairs of no one else, and thinking twice before he alludes once to the shortcomings of a comrade, he claims that consideration for himself, but doesn't get it. There be men who outrival the weaker sex in the sinister effect they can throw into the faintest allusion to another's conduct, and in the dexterity with which they evade the consequences, and of such specimens the —th has its share. There was Crane, whom Ray had fearfully snubbed and afterwards "cut" in Arizona; there was Wilkins, whom Ray had treated with scant courtesy for over a year, because of some gossip that veteran had been instrumental in putting into circulation; there was Captain Canker, who used to like and admire Ray in the rough old days in the cañons and deserts, but who had forfeited his esteem while they were stationed at Camp Sandy, and when they met again in Kansas, Ray touched his cap to his superior officer but withheld his hand. Canker felt very bitterly towards Ray, claiming that there was no officer in the regiment whom he had treated with such marked courtesy, and to this, when he heard it, Ray made response in his characteristic way. He would have no middleman. He went straight to Canker and said his say in few terse words: "You consider me unjustified in refusing to treat you as a friend, Captain Canker; now let us have no misunderstanding whatever. Your conduct towards my best friend, Captain Truscott, and towards—towards another good friend of mine at Sandy, was an outrage in my opinion, and I have yet to learn that you have expressed regret or made amends. That's my position, sir; and if you care for my friendship, you know how to regain it." Canker was too much astonished by such directness to make any reply. Other officers who happened to be standing near maintained an embarrassed silence, and Ray faced about and walked off. "For all the world," said Wilkins, "as though he had that d——d chip on his shoulder again and was begging somebody to knock it off." Canker was hit in a sore place. Long before this occurrence he realized that several officers of the regiment had withdrawn every semblance of esteem in their intercourse with him. He well knew why, but the officer whose cause Ray so vehemently championed was away on detached service, and Canker really did not know just what to do, and was too proud and sensitive to seek advice. He was a gallant soldier in the field, but a man of singularly unfortunate disposition,—crabbed, cranky, and suspicious; and thus it resulted that he, too, joined the little band of Ray haters, despite the fact that he felt ashamed of himself for so doing.
Then there was Gleason,—"That man Gleason," as he was generally alluded to, and to those familiar with army life or army ways the mere style is indicative of this character. For good and sufficient reason Mr. Ray had slapped Mr. Gleason's face some years back, when the —th was serving in Arizona, and there was no possible reason for his failure to seek the immediate reparation due him as an officer, no possible reason except the absolute certainty of Ray's promptly according him the demanded luxury. The —th was commanded by a colonel of the old school in those days, one who had observed "the code" when a junior officer, and would have been glad to see it carried out to this day; but Gleason was not made of that stuff, and to the scandal of the regiment and the incredulous mirth of Mr. Ray, Gleason pocketed the blow as complacently as he did the money he had won from the Kentuckian by a trick which was transparent to every looker-on, and would have been harmless with Ray—had he been himself. Those were the rough days of the regiment's campaign against the Apaches; officers and men were scattered in small commands through the mountains; in the general and absorbing interest of the chase and scout after a common foe there was no time to take up and settle the affair as something affecting the credit of the entire corps; many officers never heard of it at all until long afterwards, and then it was too late; but to this day Gleason stood an unsparing, bitter, but secret and treacherous enemy of the younger officer. He hated Ray with the venom of a snake.
So far as the regiment was concerned, the enmity of a man of Gleason's calibre could hardly be of consequence. Like Canker, he had come into the —th from the "supernumerary list" at the time of the general reorganization in '71. Scores of infantry officers left out of their regiments by consolidation were saddled upon the cavalry and artillery, and in many instances proved utterly out of their element in the mounted service. All the cavalry regiments growled more or less at the enforced addition to their list of "total commissioned," and the —th had not been especially fortunate. Many a fine soldier and excellent comrade had come into the cavalry in this way, and of them the —th had found a few; but a dozen or more, valuable neither as soldiers nor comrades, had drifted into the mounted service, and of these the regiment had, to say the least, its full share. "All I've got to remark on the subject," said old "Black Bill," the senior major at that eventful period,—"all I've got to remark is simply this: those infantry fellows showed profound discrimination in getting rid of their chaff, but they had no mercy on us. When a man ain't good enough for a doughboy officer he ain't fit for anything."
Now, it by no means resulted from inefficiency on their part that so many of the transferred officers had left their own regiments. Many had requested the move; many more were rendered supernumerary as being the juniors of their grades; but there were others still who ranked well up in their old regiments, and yet were mysteriously "left out in the cold." And of such was "that man Gleason." Six years had he served with the new regiment in the field, and not a friend could he muster among the officers,—not one who either liked or respected him,—not one who more than tolerated him except among the two or three who daily and nightly haunted the card-room at the trader's store; but to hear Gleason talk one would fancy him to be on terms of intimacy with every "solid" man of the regiment, and the casual visitor at the garrison would be more than apt to leave it with the impression that Gleason was the figure-head of the commissioned element. He had fair manners; his appearance was prepossessing; he was bland and insinuating among daily associates, confidential and hospitable with strangers. A visitor could go nowhere without meeting Gleason, for his social status was just so balanced between adverse influences that one could neither forbid nor welcome him to his home. No matter who might be the entertaining officer, the first to call and pay his respects to the guest would be that objectionable Gleason, and very sprightly and interesting could he be. Ten to one the chances were that when he took his departure he had left a pleasant impression on the mind of the new arrival, who would find himself at a loss to account for the evident perturbation with which his host proper regarded his acceptance of Gleason's hospitable invitations. Gleason's horse, Gleason's dogs or guns or rods were promptly at the door for him to try, and when others sought to do him honor, and other invitations came to hunt or ride or dine, Gleason had the inside track, and somehow or other it seemed to make the better men of the —th retire into their shells when they heard of it. This had been the way with visiting officers from other posts and regiments when in Arizona, and the same thing was being repeated here in Kansas. The —th did not like it, but could not exactly see how to help it. The only vulnerable and tangible points upon which he could be "sent to Coventry" were shady transactions at cards or horse-racing that had occurred in Arizona, and his failure to resent Ray's blow; but two and three years had elapsed since these occurrences; the scattered condition of the regiment had prevented regimental notice of them at the time, and it was generally held that now it was too late for any such action. With any other man coldness, distance of manner, or at the least the pronounced snubs that greeted Gleason, would have long since had effect, but he was proof against such methods, and no sooner detected them than he found excuses to force himself upon the attention or conversation of the officer, and in so insidious a way as to disarm resistance. He would fairly beam with cordiality and respect upon the commanding officer who was short and gruff with him; he would invade old Stannard's quarters to ask his advice about the purchase of a horse or the proper method of dealing with some one of his men,—and the major had a soft side in looking after the rights of the rank and file; he would drop in to ask Mrs. Stannard the name of a new flower he had picked up out near the targets. He cared no more for flowers than she did for him, but it gave him temporary admission, generally when other ladies had called for a morning chat, and though she cordially disliked him, Mrs. Stannard was too thorough a lady to show the least discourtesy to an officer of her husband's regiment. Gleason well knew it, and laid his plans accordingly. For a long time, indeed, there were ladies who could not understand why Mr. Gleason should be so contemptuously spoken of by the officers. He was so thoughtful, so delicate, and then he was so lonely. Gleason was a widower, whose eyes would often overflow when he spoke of the little woman whom he had buried years ago down in Connecticut; but when Mrs. Turner once questioned Captain Baxter, who knew them when they were in the old infantry regiment in Louisiana, and referred to its being so sad and touching to hear Mr. Gleason talk of his dead wife and their happy days among the orange-groves near Jackson Barracks, the captain astonished her by an outburst of derisive laughter. "Happy, madam?" said he; "by gad! if ever a woman died of neglect, abuse, and ill-treatment Mrs. Gleason did, and next time he attempts to gull you with sentiment, just you refer him to me." But then, as Mrs. Turner said, poor Captain Baxter's finer sensibilities seemed to have been blunted by a lifetime in the quartermaster's department, and for quite a while Mr. Gleason was one of her favorites,—quite a devotee in fact, until the disastrous day when she discovered that so far from having been ill and unable to ride with her, as he claimed, he had been spending the afternoon in the fascinations of poker. One by one the ladies of the —th had learned to trust Mr. Gleason as little as did their lords, but there was no snubbing him. "Snubs," said the senior major, "are lost on such a pachydermatous ass as Gleason," and however tough might be his moral hide, and however deserved might have been the applied adjective, the major was in error in calling Gleason an ass. Intriguing, full of low malice and scheming, a "slanderer and substractor" he certainly was, but no fool. More's the pity, Mr. Gleason was far too smart for the direct methods and simple minds of his associates in the —th. He never in all his life failed to take full note of every slight or coldness, and though it was his rôle to hide the sting, and "smile and smile and be a villain still," never was it his purpose to permit the faintest snub to go unpunished. Sooner or later, unrelentingly but secretly he would return that stab with interest ten times compounded. And sooner or later to the bitter end he meant to feed fat his ancient grudge on Ray.
Up to this time he had scant opportunity. For two or three years preceding their removal to the East Gleason had been stationed in Southern Arizona, while Ray, after months of lively service in the mountains, had been sent to regimental headquarters, and marched with them when they came into Kansas. Now once more six companies were gathered at the post of the standard,—two were tenting on the prairie just outside the garrison, the other four were regularly in barracks, and the concentration there boded a move or "business" of some kind. "Old Catnip," the colonel, was East, but the lieutenant-colonel was commanding, and the junior major was there. Drills were incessant, but scouts were few, and after the years of "go-as-you-please" work in Arizona the —th was getting rapidly back into soldierly shape. The little frontier fort was blithe and gay with its merry populace. All the officers' families had joined; several young ladies were spending the spring in garrison and taking their first taste of military life; hops and dances came off almost every night, a "german" every week; rides, drives, hunts, and picnic-parties were of daily occurrence; the young officers were in clover, the young ladies in ecstasy, the young matrons—perhaps not quite so well pleased as when they had the field to themselves in Arizona, where young ladies had been few and far between, and all promised delightfully for the coming summer,—all but the war-cloud rising in the far Northwest.