CHAPTER XXVIII.
One soft spring morning, some two weeks later, a little knot of officers had gathered about the Cranstons' quarters at the cantonment. Under an awning of tent flies they were conning the papers that had just reached them and eagerly discussing their contents. Mrs. Cranston, a shade of anxiety on her winsome, sunburned face, was glancing quickly from one speaker to another. Through the open door-way in the cool interior Miss Loomis could be seen bending over the boys as they fidgeted at their books. Neither felt like studying this day of days, for absorbing news, and lots of it, had come. To begin with, a general court-martial had been ordered to meet at Omaha for the trial of Captain Devers, Eleventh Cavalry, and officers of high rank and distinction were to be his judges. With Atherton as president of the court there could be no "monkey business," said Mr. Sanders, by which that young gentleman was understood to mean that there would be no trifling with the subject. It was noticeable that neither Riggs nor Winthrop was of the detail, an omission readily understood, as Devers would unquestionably object, as was his privilege, to either or both on the ground of bias, prejudice, or malice, which, whether sustained or not, would lead to their asking to be excused from serving and so reducing the array. The court had been ordered from division head-quarters by the lieutenant-general himself, and its members, as a rule, were summoned from distant posts and commands, so as to preclude the possibility of the accused captain saying it was "packed" from the ranks of his enemies. In other words, except Atherton, the court was made up entirely of officers who had taken no part in the campaign of the previous summer. It was understood that the charges were grave and numerous; rumors of misconduct in the face of the enemy, disobedience of orders, misrepresentation of facts, etc., being among the items mentioned. Major Warren had been summoned from abroad a month earlier than he had planned to come. Colonel Peleg Stone and Mr. Leonard had both been notified that they would be required as witnesses, so had Captains Cranston, Truman and Hay, Lieutenants Boynton, Hastings and Davies. The court could not meet before mid-May because several of the members came from the department of Dakota, far up the Missouri, but that it was to be a "clinch" at last was the generally expressed sentiment. Devers had run to the end of his tether, said Boynton, unfeelingly. "I could add a charge or two myself if I didn't know he was loaded with them so deep that he can't stagger." Boynton, limping still, had come back to resume command of the agency guard, for Davies's wound had proved deep and serious. He had been stabbed by Red Dog after that warrior was raised to his feet, after Cranston's skirmishers had swept the field, after Davies thought the struggle at an end, and was unprepared for the stealthy blow. Nothing but Brannan's vigilance, and the warning cry which caused the lieutenant to turn in the nick of time, had saved his life. Red Dog in irons lay in the log guard-house. Thunder Hawk, on parole,—for White had dared the wrath of the bureau and refused to let McPhail have him,—walked the garrison at will. Mr. Davies, still weak and languid, lay in the big hospital tent, really the most comfortable dwelling at the station, now that the weather was growing warm, and there, attended by Burroughs and ministered to by a pathetically pretty wife (who had somewhat recovered from her panic, now that she was within the stockade of a military post with lots of men around to watch her and be fascinated), was on the road to speedy convalescence. He was being allowed occasional visitors, and while his own comrades vied in their attentions, nothing could exceed the anxiety of old White, the major commanding. Twice did he have Thunder Hawk recount to him the details of Davies's calm courage in this second daring capture, red-handed, of the rebellious chief, and White went to Cranston like the blunt, outspoken campaigner that he was.
"It begins to look to me," said he, "as if this young fellow had been most damnably backbitten. You can haul Devers before a court, but what can we do with these women?"
"You have never told me, major, what these women had to say against him."
"And I'm not going to," said White. "When a man's ashamed of having believed a mean story, the sooner he buries it the better. Men like him don't go round abusing their own wife or insulting anybody else's. It's my belief that the swarm that buzzes around the throne there at Mrs. Pegleg's ought to be muzzled, and if the old man hadn't lost his grip in this seizure he's had, I'd tell him so."
But this seizure of Pegleg's had indeed proved a serious matter. So far from recovering his accustomed spirits, the old colonel seemed to grow feebler and less inclined to move about with every day. One morning he sent word to Captain Devers that he would not leave his bed, as he felt too weak, and that night it was that Leonard got back from Chicago. When told by Pollock, who met him at the railway station, that Devers was again in command, Leonard stepped into the telegraph-office and wrote a message which he showed to nobody. Within thirty-six hours Lieutenant Archer of the department staff reached Fort Scott with orders from the general commanding. Captain Pollock was placed in command of the post and Devers in close arrest. The next day Mr. Langston came out from Braska and was closeted an hour with Leonard at the adjutant's office, and then, taking advantage of a returning escort and ambulance, the civilian lawyer left for the agency. Even while the group of officers at Cranston's was eagerly discussing the news, he had made his bow to a deeply blushing Mira over at the hospital tent, and was seated by Davies's side. "Business first, pleasure afterwards," hummed Cranston to himself when he heard of the arrival, and noted how Meg's bright eyes dilated.
"Business, indeed!" thought she. "I know the business that brings him here, despite Agatha's assumption of sublime indifference."
But grave though some of the older faces grew as the news was read, and eager and excited as were some of the younger, it was not because of the long-prophesied trial of Captain Devers. The papers, letters, and despatches were full of detail of the serious condition of affairs to the northwest. Inspired by the success of the Sioux in their grand uprising of the previous year, and reasoning that they had little to lose and everything to gain by similar methods, a big tribe had cut loose from its reservation and taken the field, one band of it prudently massacring all the white men to be found in their neighborhood as necessary preliminary to the move. This was bad to begin with, but worse was to follow. The other agencies were overrun by a number of young Indians of what might be termed the unreconstructed class, and these, excited by reports brought in by runners from the openly hostile, were slipping off in scores to join them. Already had the epidemic struck McPhail's "angels." Already had Mac, with long face and longer story, been up to see Major White and beg for cavalry to be sent in pursuit. White said it was preposterous. The renegades had two or three days' start to begin with, and if pursued, all they had to do was to hide in the Bad Lands and pick off their pursuers. Cavalry could only go there in single file. Ten Indians could hold the narrow, tortuous trail against ten hundred troops. Relations were strained between Mac and the military anyhow. Everybody knew by this time that he had lied about Boynton and Davies, and had striven to make it appear, and with no little success, too, so far as Eastern newspapers were concerned, that all the turbulence and rioting at Ogallalla was caused by the arrogance of the army. Then Mac pointed out that if something weren't done to drive those renegades back, all the young braves over at the big reservation beyond the Mini Ska would follow suit. Already the cattlemen were complaining. Already settlers were drifting in to Pawnee station and Minden on the railway to the west, and besieging old Tintop at regimental head-quarters at Fort Ransom, and stirring up "screamers" in the columns of the infantile dailies at Butte and Braska, alleging apathy on part of the authorities and cowardice on that of the cavalry. Already letters had passed between the officers of the Eleventh at the cantonment and their comrades at Ransom. "If we have to take the field again this summer let us try to get together as a regiment and not be split up in all manner of crowds," was the cry. What Cranston and Truman dreaded, too, was that they might be squadroned with some of the —th under Major Chrome. The —th was all right, but Chrome was so horribly slow that his own comrades chafed under his command, and Atherton really wanted him to retire and get "a live man" in his place. Truman, Hay, and Cranston felt certain that it would not be a fortnight before they were ordered into the field. Tintop and Gray were sure of it. Captain Fenton and others at Ransom were talking of sending their families East, and now the question that agitated Cranston was, what to do with his dear ones? It was all well enough to have them at the cantonment while the cavalry were there, but with all the troops in the field except a single company of infantry, he did not dare leave them. They must go back to Scott.
No wonder then that Mrs. Cranston's bonny face was clouded this sweet spring morning. No wonder the boys could not pin their vagrant thoughts to the books before them while snatches of the low, eager talk came drifting in through the open door. No wonder Miss Loomis went about her work with conscious effort, but when told of the arrival of Robert Langston, the woman in her knew he would not go until he had seen and spoken with her.
The day of Red Dog's capture was still fresh in the minds of Cranston's household, as indeed in that of every household at the cantonment. With field-glasses they had marked the threatening gathering at the distant village, and the ominous advance in line. Old White had his men in ranks in less than no time, and the cavalry column, masked by the agency buildings, was sent at brisk trot to the eastward, so that McPhail's messenger, spurring at mad gallop for aid, met them midway. Cranston's troop was instantly deployed into long skirmish line at the gallop, and the affair was practically over by the time Major White, leaving the infantry battalion to guard the post, had reached the scene. Meantime the composure of the mothers and children left at the cantonment was in no wise augmented by the panic-stricken guise of the arriving refugees, Mrs. McPhail, with her children, and Mira being the first to appear. It so happened that the Cranstons' bungalow, being near the eastern end of the line, proved the natural refuge of the first wagon-load, and that Mrs. Cranston and Miss Loomis were the angels who thus had to minister to their weaker sisters. Even then, when nearly "dead with terror," as she expressed it, Mira would gladly have gone somewhere else, but as Mrs. McPhail promptly bundled herself and her youngsters out of the wagon and under the shelter of the Cranstons' wing, there was nothing left for Mira but to follow suit. Dr. Burroughs came promptly to see what he could do for her. Both Mrs. Cranston and Miss Loomis mastered their own anxiety in the effort to comfort these weaklings, and as no sounds of battle came from the eastward, and the watchers on the roofs reported Red Dog's people as scattering for their tepees before the advance of the cavalry, comparative composure was gradually being restored when the first messenger came in from the front, a corporal of Cranston's troop, whom the boys hailed with eager acclaim.