"And——?"
"Yes, we go to-night. She is not too ill to move, and once at Urbana—no one need know."
"Do you mean——?" began the chaplain.
"I mean," said Davies, looking calmly and with dry, tired eyes into the chaplain's face, "that she is utterly alone in the world,—homeless, friendless. Who knows but that her story may be true, despite indications? What would be her fate if I were to fail her now? It was 'for better, for worse,' chaplain. I have tried to do my duty in the past. God help me to do it to the end."
The tears were running down the old clergyman's face when, around the corner, he came suddenly on Cranston and his friends, and they seemed to understand.
There was a new post commander at Scott when the first snows fell that winter, for honest Pegleg had retired and Leonard had a colonel after his own heart, and the Fortieth sang songs of praise when the campaign was over, and moved into quarters and renewed acquaintances with their families and "assurances" with the Eleventh when they happened to meet along the Union Pacific, and said they sorely missed them at the post, as probably they did, but the Eleventh didn't care to go back. It was too near civilization, said Truman. Tintop had his warriors under his own wing after the close of the fighting season, and they were having grand times at Ransom. There this winter were most of the familiar names and faces. The Cranstons, Trumans, and Hays, Boynton, Hastings, and Sanders, battle-scarred heroes, most of them, and dozens of others in the congenial circle; but Margaret Cranston sorely missed her boys, who were big enough now to be at school, and far too big to be staying around garrison. She missed, too, their fair teacher and her friend, but Agatha Loomis firmly told her she had decided not to return to the frontier now that she no longer had her pupils. To the unspeakable indignation and grief of her cousin, she had chosen what Margaret termed "a life of drudgery" as a teacher in Mrs. Forester's seminary for young ladies, only a few miles out of Chicago. Even there had Langston followed, but in vain. That, however, was a subject on which Margaret had promised to dilate no more. She had done her best, she said, for Agatha. She had striven to aid and abet this distinguished and worthy gentleman in his suit. She thought the difference of some twenty-five years between his age and her cousin's a feeble consideration as against his sterling worth and wealth. Agatha owned that she respected and esteemed him highly,—looked up to him, in fact,—but as a maid of twenty looks up to the man of forty-five. She did not love and therefore would not marry him. The whole regiment seemed to feel for him, but he came to them no more. He was East again, and seeking resignation in the one safe solace, hard and constant work.
But the Davieses, where were they? Time and again was that question asked. He hurried back for the grand chase they had in September when Chief Joseph made his memorable rush cross continent. He left Mira at Urbana installed in lodgings near her father's home. He went back to her in December when the troops returned, and then came orders announcing that Lieutenant Percy Davies, Eleventh Cavalry, was detailed on temporary duty at division head-quarters. It was at this time that Aunt Almira urgently offered him and her pretty niece, his wife, the hospitality of her home, begging that he, her boy's friend and fellow-soldier and admiration, should bring her and be their guest in Chicago as long as they could possibly stay, and Aunt Almira was amazed at the refusal, grateful, gentle, courteous though it was in every way. Mira, junior, had been devoted to society when there before, was it possible she had so soon tired of it all? Davies had some topographical work to do, it soon transpired, for the lieutenant-general wanted certain maps made of the Bad Lands traversed during the campaigns of the two years, and the Gray Fox recommended the silent, observant young graduate, whose field-notes had proved so accurate and complete. Not oftener than once a week did Davies go in to consult the chief engineer at head-quarters. The work he did in quiet at Urbana, and it might detain him several months. Aunt Almira thought it really strange that he could succeed in it at all. She was sure that the descriptions her boy had given of the Bad Lands were so vividly accurate that he must know them even better than did her nephew-in-law, the lieutenant. She asked her husband if it did not seem almost as though Davies might be afraid to have her lambkin take any part in it lest it should rob the officer of the credit, but that hard-headed old railway-man thought not. He shared her gratification in the wonderfully improved appearance of the boy, and secretly marvelled at his apparent reformation. He had several talks with him, gave her for him abundant money, so that on his home visit he might dress as became his mother's son and enjoy himself like a gentleman. He expected him to turn up speedily somewhere on a tremendous drunk, and was rejoiced and surprised that he did not. Aunt Almira had planned a grand dinner to which should be bidden the general and staff, the Cranstons and others, all in honor of the home-coming of their fellow-soldier, her son, and was utterly bewildered and crestfallen when the latter laughingly told her to go ahead with the dinner, but count him out; corporals didn't dine with their generals and captains, despite the teachings of the modern military drama. The mother indignantly protested. The son was firm. If her boy, said she, wasn't good enough to sit at table with the President of the United States then she wasn't. If that was the result of his joining the cavalry, the sooner he resigned and quit the better, and then he saw the indignant tears and teased no more, but took her in his arms and soothed and strove to explain. Soothe he could, but explain he could not. She gave up the dinner until after he had gone back to his regiment, for go he would, as he meant to be a sergeant inside of two years, and when she found that the sole difference between sergeant and corporal in our blessedly democratic service was simply half an inch or so more of stripe on his trousers, and brought him no nearer the commission and little farther from the rank and file, she marvelled that the Department of War could be so slow to appreciate a soldier ready to do so much for so little. Go back to "C" Troop he would and did, and was proud of it, and her husband comforted her by saying "Bran" was a man at last.
But if the Eleventh heard but little of the Davieses for a time, they had abundant news of Devers, and much comfort did he seem to find in sending to them stacks of local papers, and in writing long, argumentative letters in which he sought to convince his readers that he was a wronged and injured man. When Trooper Howard came up for the trial which resulted in his going in irons for a five years' tour in prison, an effort was made to get Devers before the court as a witness, and a subpœna duces tecum was duly served upon him in his far distant home within sight of the sounding sea, but it did not fetch him. Devers explained that as a civilian he had no interest in the proceedings and could not be required to obey the mandate of a purely military court, a view in which the judiciary of the great republic, ever steadfast in the principle that military must be subservient to the civil power, virtually sustained him. It was perfectly competent for a court-martial to summon a civilian witness, said the bench, but it had no recourse in case the civilian treated both court and summons with contempt, and Devers's fellow-citizens in the far East, headed by the editor of the Mooselemeguntic Mirror, congratulated their returned hero on the spirited and just rebuke he had administered to a satrapy which should have no place among an enlightened people. Indeed, the Mirror's interviews and editorials were both full of brilliant mendacity just now. Devers's story was in every issue, more or less of it, and West Point jealousy was the theme of many a paragraphic fling. Brilliant, daring, conspicuous as had been Devers's services during the civil war and on the wild frontier, he had never succeeded in winning recognition, owing to the persistent calumnies of his seniors, who, graduates of the great national charity school on the Hudson, were leagued to down any man whose ability, dash, and daring made him the object of their narrow jealousy and the victim of their inordinate greed. After years of patient service, loyal and dutiful, their distinguished fellow-citizen, said the Mirror, had been relieved from his command on trumped-up charges, and, though he pleaded hard to be allowed to go with them in any capacity, even as an humble trooper in the ranks, his company took the field on the late campaign without him, and, deprived of the services of their beloved captain, met with grievous and irreparable disaster. Even then his enemies were not silenced. The faithful soldiers who clamored for the restoration of their captain were driven to death or desertion. He himself begged to be confronted with his accusers, but met denial, delay, and deceit at every hand. One pretext after another was resorted to in postponing the meeting of the court, and at last, worn out with long struggle against prejudice, injustice, and organized enmity, he had thrown up his commission in a thankless service and returned to the welcoming arms of his fellow-citizens. The Mirror, in which Devers had a controlling interest, inquired whether the time had not come for the recall of the amiable fossil then misrepresenting the district in Congress, and the unanimous election of Colonel Devers as his successor. The governor, needing the support of the Mirror in a coming campaign, gladly availed himself of the opportunity of rewarding a war-tried veteran, and named the returning soldier an aide-de-camp with the rank of colonel on his staff, and humble subalterns of artillery from the two-battery post at the entrance of Mooselemeguntic Bay looked with awe upon the future military committeeman of the —th Congress, yet were charmed with his affability at the governor's ball, where his new uniform fitted him better than did those of his associate aides, and where the artillerymen heard things confirmatory of their convictions that their comrades of the cavalry really had no idea how to fight Indians. Devers was on the high-road to fame and Congress, and might indeed have made successful run had the election occurred within four months after his return, but four months was too long for him to live without differing, and little by little the Mirror became dimmed and Devers's image faded out of public sight.
Only once did it revive, and that was when, several years after, all on a sudden there appeared in the columns of the army paper notice that a bill had been introduced in Congress providing for the restoration to the army, with the rank he would have held had he remained continuously in the cavalry service, of Jared B. Devers, formerly captain Eleventh Cavalry, who had tendered his resignation some years before owing to disagreements with certain officers representing the West Point element, which was hostile to him, and friends in Washington warned the Eleventh that old Differs had strong political backing.