Under Fire

by Charles King

The sleeping-car, said the conductor afterwards, was fuller than usual that night. Some officers got aboard at Rock Springs, and sat up quite late, chatting with others who had boarded them at Butte and Pawnee. There were five officers in all. One of them, who had not taken a berth, went forward about ten o'clock and made a "roost" in the day car. The conductor heard the others talking about it, and how the lieutenant would never spend an unnecessary cent, and some of them thought he was foolish, and others said he was right, and they respected him for it. These gentlemen slept late, saying they would rather breakfast after they got to Omaha. The lady who came aboard at Braska was the first one up in the morning. She was astir with the sun, and came back from the dressing-room as soon as the porter had made up her section, looking as fresh and fair as the day. Presently a gentleman joined her,—a man he had often seen on the road,—who travelled, as most cattlemen did in those days, with a pass, and who boarded them at Duncan Switch, and went at once to his berth. He seemed very much surprised to meet the lady, but sat down and talked with her until we whistled for Grand Island, and there, said the conductor, "as I bustled off the train, the operator handed me a despatch just at same minute that the brakeman came to tell me we had a cracked wheel on the smoker. One look at the wheel told me that the car must be left behind, so I ordered out the passengers while another car was being put on."

But the telegram took more than one look. It puzzled him, said the conductor. It was sent by the chaplain, a man he knew well, and in brief words it said, "The lady in Section 7 is the wife of Lieutenant Davies, Eleventh Cavalry. She needs escort to Omaha, where Lieutenant Leonard will meet her. If any army officer is aboard, show him this and introduce him. She should not leave the train."

"Now, there were officers on the car, but they were not yet up," continued the official. "Of course I supposed at once that she must be out of her mind, and that was the trouble. Just at that moment I caught sight of the young lieutenant who had spent the night in the forward car. He was a tall, slender fellow, with thick, close-cropped brown beard and clear blue eyes, and he had got that poor devil of a prisoner and his guard together, and was fetching them back along the track to the coffee-stand that happened to be right opposite where the sleeper stopped. 'Will you read this, and see if you know what to make of it?' said I, handing him the despatch, and then, as he stopped to read, my brakeman asked me some question, and I turned around to answer, and there, just stepping off the Pullman, was Mr. Willett, looking back and giving his hand to the lady herself. The handcuffed prisoner was just opposite them at the moment, between two soldiers, and then the next thing I knew I heard an awful scream, and the lady had covered her face with her hands and fallen back on the steps, right at the feet of an officer who was just coming out, and the prisoner thought he saw a chance, perhaps, and gave a spring and dove like a rat under the car, the guard clumsily following, and Mr. Willett stared about him one instant, with a face that turned the color of chalk, then he too gave a sort of stifled exclamation, 'My God!' and sprang up the steps and over the platform of the day-car and was out of sight in the flash of an eye. We heard shouts of 'Halt, halt, or we fire!' from the guards on the other side of the car, and then two quick shots a little distance away, and another wail or cry from the lady, and then I felt some one brush by me, and the lieutenant sprang to her side, lifted her in his arms as he reached the steps, and carried her, without a word, into the car by an open window, where she cowered and sobbed and shivered and moaned, and he all the time bending over and striving to soothe and calm her."

But when that train drew up at the station at Omaha an ambulance received the bleeding, pain-distorted form of the prisoner Howard, shot through the leg in his mad effort to escape. Leonard and Truman, scanning every face as the passengers stepped off the cars, waved their hands in greeting to the knot of officers on the sleeper platform, and Leonard sprang aboard, inquiry in his snapping black eyes. They made way silently for him to enter, and then he knew not whether to believe his senses.

"Leonard," said Davies, quietly, "my wife came on to surprise me at Omaha, not expecting me this way. I supposed she'd already come in with the Cranstons. She was hardly well enough for the journey. Will you kindly order a carriage?"

She was driven away in the very dust of the ambulance that was trundling one poor wounded fellow to hospital, the conductor lamenting that a woman so young and lovely should be thus afflicted. No one else aboard that train could dream from Davies's words or manner that any other explanation for her coming existed than that she was simply hastening to Omaha to meet him.

But no claimant appeared for the handsome leather bag and hat-box and umbrella left in Section 10.

A few days later when the witnesses were scattering back to their stations, or going on brief leaves of absence before so doing, Cranston took his soldierly-looking corporal, the recruit of the previous year, to gladden the eyes of the mother so eagerly awaiting him in Chicago; but before starting they had been summoned to the hospital where Howard lay, where "Brannan" formally, though still with sorrow and reluctance, identified him as Powlett. Leonard was there with the leather writing-case and its contents, at sight of which Brannan's last barrier of compunction fell, and Davies stood by the bedside, looking pale, haggard, and ten years older, and Colonel Rand, the inspector of the department, and another sad-faced fellow, Langston. And Archer was there, and Hastings, when Sergeant Haney's formal confession was read. There was little sensation over it. Everybody seemed to know just about what it would be. He said nothing to directly accuse Captain Devers of conspiracy, but Haney had been his first sergeant for five years, and the devious ways of his troop commander had necessitated the existence of a right bower who could swear straight and strong to what the captain thought should be established. They got to know each other thoroughly, and each lived in mortal dread of some betrayal on the other's part. There was a squad of six or eight men in the troop which practically "ran things," and Haney was its head. For years these men had triumphed over all efforts to break their line, just as Devers had baffled those which would have cornered him, but they could see plainly that the captain was nearing the end of his "tether," and his downfall meant theirs. The catastrophe of Antelope Springs brought matters to a climax. Half the men in the troop heard Major Warren's orders to Devers, and all knew he had slighted if not disobeyed them. This, if proved, meant ruin to the ring, and the plan to shift the blame on Davies's shoulders,—to make the investigating officer believe the troop had marched right down along the ridge within supporting distance, and that Davies had become terror-stricken and had hidden instead of instantly communicating with his captain, was the result. Devers, indeed, boldly announced that as his theory and explanation of the whole affair, and Haney, Finucane, Boyd, and the intelligent Howard were there ready to swear to it and save the captain the trouble. So long as Davies and McGrath never turned up to combat the accusation all would go well. The captain didn't tell them in so many words they must swear to the ridge trail as the one they pursued the evening of the tragedy, but he did not oppose it. He asked them for their recollection of the matter and made his map, as did Mr. Archer his report, accordingly.

Then when it was found that Recruit Brannan as well as certain old hands resented the idea of Mr. Davies being held accountable, they had to muzzle him. Brannan declared he would warn the lieutenant the moment he returned to the troop, so they made up their minds that he must be discredited, if not ruined. Howard said that there was in his writing-case a sealed packet that contained evidence that would send him to State's prison and "kill" him in the lieutenant's eyes; and this, indeed, was no idle threat, for Powlett, fearing detection if he either sold or kept the watch he had torn from Davies's pocket after the cowardly assault, had sealed it in one package and tied Mira's gushing letters in another, and long before had induced the unsuspecting boy to promise to keep and guard them for him as a sacred trust. Only as a last resort, said Haney, were they to exhibit the proofs of Brannan's apparent criminality. Meantime, by sending him to the agency or tempting him with liquor they hoped to keep him harmless.

But Howard soon began striking for leadership. He held the secrets of his captain and two of his sergeants and was safely out of the troubles that involved him at home. (He had been wise enough to confide these to no one and to make poor Brannan swear to preserve his secret.) He was beginning to hear from relations and receive money from them. He began to put on airs over everybody, captain and all, and though Haney hated, and was jealous of his influence, he dared not offend him. They knew it was he who was seen prowling about Davies's quarters, but they could not account for it, and strove to make it appear that Brannan was the culprit. And then he began "sparking" Robideau's daughter in town, and had become moody, nervous, excitable; talked about mysterious spies and trailers, and then, suddenly and unaccountably, deserted after a spree in Braska that had cost him much money,—after a mad scrape in which he had terrified Mrs. Davies and thrashed Mr. Willett. Who he was or what he was Sergeant Haney didn't know, but that he was a villain with a history and a capacity for further devilment was certain. Haney had still more to tell. The captain had sent for him and told him of the adjutant's being in conference with the chaplain and Mr. Davies, and he felt sure it was about the Antelope Springs matter. He was sure they had his map, the one on which Archer based his report, and that this would some day be brought up in evidence against him. It was locked for the night in the second drawer of the adjutant's desk, said he, and Haney understood. The drawer was chiselled that night and the map and papers taken, but not until the robbery was known all over the post did the captain see the map and see that it wasn't his original at all, but simply a copy. Except for information obtained in the memoranda, they had robbed the desk to no purpose.