"Yes, sir,—Mr. Davies; but he's more dead than alive. There is no sign of McGrath."
"Do you mean Mr. Davies is wounded?"
"No, sir. He seems just dazed-like."
"That's what I said all along," spoke the captain, loudly, so that it was heard by all the soldiers near at hand. "He never tried to rejoin his detachment. He never had any nerve. He probably saw what was going on and hid himself, never daring even to let us know. Damn these psalm-singing, Sunday-go-to-meeting soldiers anyhow! Here, Howard," he continued, turning to a young trooper who stood silently at his horse's head, "you come with me. Lead on, corporal. Sergeant Haney, mount the troop and follow." And with that the captain rode away.
For a moment, as the men were bringing up their horses and leading them into line, there was silence. Looking after the three horsemen now well out on the prairie to the west, the party saw that the messenger was riding some distance in advance, and that Howard, a recruit who joined with the detachment early in the campaign, was now side by side and evidently in conversation with the captain. It had been a summer of campaigning in which not only the nicer distinctions as between officer and man—not only all symbols of rank and uniform—had gradually disappeared, but with them, little by little, some of the first principles of good order and military discipline. Officers had been heard openly condemning or covertly sneering at the seniors in command. It was not strange that the rank and file should fall into similar ways.
"Never had any nerve, is it?" muttered Private Dooley, after a moment. "Boy and man I've soldiered in this regiment longer than you, Captain Differs, and I know an officer and a gentleman when I see wan, and it's the public opinion av more than wan private that there's more av both in that young feller's starvin' stummick than in your whole damn overfed, bow-legged carcass. How's that, Brannan?" said he, turning to his next neighbor, a wan, sad-faced recruit.
"Shut up there, Dooley!" ordered Sergeant Haney, briefly. "No more of that! Count fours."
CHAPTER X.
So far as the Eleventh and one or two other regiments were concerned, that summer's campaign, so fraught with incident and tribulation, was now at an end. It would take weeks and months of care to restore their horses to serviceable condition. Others were ordered up to replace the worn-out command, and while an indomitable general pushed fresh columns into the field to track the savages to their winter lairs, the ragged troopers—for all the world like so many beggars a horseback, so many mounted scarecrows—were ordered in to the big garrisons near the supply depots to refit, recuperate, and restore to discipline. Some, officers and men both, had been sent ahead, too weak or ill to remain in the field, and among these, consigned to the tender care of the post surgeon of Fort Cameron, was Lieutenant Davies, over whose condition the doctors shook their heads. Brain fever was the malady, but his system was so reduced by starvation and exposure that even a moderate fever would have been most serious. Not until he had been gone nearly a month did the regiment follow, and then, scattered in detachments to various posts, became busily occupied in the work of rehabilitation. Cameron was a big new frontier fort with few accommodations, over-crowded, too; yet, being the nearest to the field of action, thither had Captain Wilbur Cranston gone just as soon as he was convalescent and able to move. Thither with him went his devoted wife and her devoted cousin and companion, Miss Loomis, for whose reception the subalterns of the infantry guard promptly gave up their frame quarters and moved into tents, and Cranston was there on light duty in charge of the big corral of remount horses when Davies was bundled in and established under Cranston's roof. There, carefully treated by Dr. Glover and regularly visited, often tenderly nursed, by Mrs. Cranston and her friend, the naturally strong constitution of the young officer triumphed and he began slowly to mend. Meantime, as is or was the way, it fell to the lot of the gentle and sympathetic army wives or maidens at the post to keep the distant mother informed of her boy's slow progress toward recovery, and presently to answer the importunate letters of another. Mrs. Cranston, a shrewd observer, could not fail to note that as soon as her patient was allowed to read at all it was his mother's letters, not the great packet in Miss Quimby's unformed hand, that he eagerly opened. Then when at last he did begin these latter the steady progress of his convalescence was impaired. He became again feverish, restless, and depressed. Too ill and weak as yet to write for himself, he read with grateful eyes his mother's allusions to the kind and sympathetic missives sent her by Mrs. Cranston, and occasionally, as happened, by Miss Loomis. Gladly, too, did he avail himself of their services in reply. But when it became necessary presently to answer those of his fiancée, there might have been embarrassment but for Mrs. Cranston's tact. She had begun to feel a strong interest in and respect for her patient. So, too, had her husband, who came daily to sit by his bedside, but who avoided, as much as possible, all reference to the closing days of the campaign.