The matter was indeed one to give him deep concern. The massacre of the little detachment from Warren's battalion late in September—all of them members of Devers's troop—had brought down sharp and deserved criticism, and there was every prospect that the matter would be officially investigated just as soon as the department commander could turn his attention from the rounding up of the hostile band still at large. Meantime, between Warren and his senior troop commander, Captain Devers, strained relations existed,—the former holding to the theory that the responsibility for the disaster lay with Devers and no one else, the latter volubly, plausibly, incessantly protesting against the imputation as utterly unjust, indeed, as utterly outrageous, and moving heaven and earth to unload the entire blame on the shoulders of the absent and defenceless.
Now, as a rule this is an easy matter, almost as easy in the army as out of it, and had his accuser been any other captain in the entire field column, poor Davies might indeed have been prejudged; but with Devers it was different. His idiosyncrasies were notorious. His whole mental and moral fabric was one of antagonism to his fellows in general and his seniors in particular. It was said, and generally said, of him that the mere fact that everybody liked or respected a man was enough to set Devers dead against him. The fact that Mr. Davies had thrown up his graduating leave and sought instant service in the field as a result of the tragedies of the early days of the campaign had won him instantly the interest and good will of officers and men throughout the entire command. He started well, so to speak, and his quiet, reticent, observant, but unobtrusive ways favorably impressed his regimental comrades and led to many a commendatory remark from veteran officers. But there was universal comment, half humorous, half commiserating, upon his assignment to Devers's troop, and Devers knew it. He treated the young man with cool civility at first, but became speedily captious and irritating, rebuking him openly in the presence and hearing of other officers and of enlisted men for matters for which he was not justly blamable. Old Winthrop spoke to Devers about it one day, and spoke seriously. "You'll disgust that young gentleman with the service if you're not careful, Devers," said he, "and be the means of depriving us of a good officer."
"That's just where I'm compelled to differ with you, colonel," was the response, and it was this propensity for differing that had led to his sobriquet. "I've had constant and daily opportunity of observing him, and he's mistaken his vocation. That young man should be a missionary or a Sunday-school superintendent. He's too pious for Indian fighting, which is the only thing expected of us."
But for weeks after there was no Indian fighting. What had become of the swarms of red warriors that had swooped upon the front, flank, and rear earlier in the campaign no one could say. Their trails led all over the northwest, and the pursuing column pushed on night and day in dust and sun-glare, in mud and rain, in pelting hail-storm and darkness, and never once until late in the autumn could they again come within striking distance. By that time the jaunty riders of the early spring-tide were worn to skeletons; the mettlesome horses—those that were left—barely able to stagger through weakness, exhaustion, and starvation. Then like prairie wolves the warriors closed once more about the jaded flanks, waiting, watching every chance of picking off the stragglers. Just one day did Differs's troop get under fire,—a long way from under, said satirical subalterns of a command that sustained some losses,—but so scientifically did the captain handle his men that not a trooper or horse was scratched. Mr. Davies on this occasion commanded a platoon, dismounted on the skirmish line. It was his first affair, and he kept his appropriate thirty paces in rear of his dispersed men to watch and direct their fire, expecting that the enemy would charge or attack or do something, he didn't know just what. He simply behaved as he had been taught at skirmish drill at the Point,—was ready to do his full duty, but having no experience in Indian battle, thought it his business to wait orders, which was precisely what Differs had told him to do, until attacked. All the same, when others twitted Devers on the fact that his troop "didn't seem to get in," that officer did not hesitate to respond that they'd have to settle that with their admiration, Mr. Davies, who was commanding the fighting line, but probably wasn't done saying his prayers. There was a lively, rattling skirmish next morning between the rear-guard and the Indians, and at one time things looked as though the thinned battalion of their comrades of the —th might be cut off, and some of Devers's regiment thought the rearmost troops ought to be deployed in support of the fellows who were fighting off the warriors, who came charging after them over wave after wave of prairie. But Devers couldn't see it in that light. He was bringing up the rear of his own regiment. Indeed, not until the fatal day of their débouchement from the Bad Lands and sighting the broad valley of the Ska had Devers's men felt the sting of Indian lead, and then he was not with them.
And now while the worn and ragged commands lay basking day after day in the warm October sunshine at Camp Recovery, and men for the time had nothing to do but eat and sleep and discuss the events of the late campaign, the Eleventh was in turmoil over the tragedy of Antelope Springs.
When Davies was finally found that morning by Warren's scouts, he was lying in a depression of the prairie at least a mile to the west of the point where that long—that fatally long—curtaining ridge sank into the general level of the valley, and therefore full four and a half or five miles away from the point where his little detachment had died fighting, and very nearly two miles south, or west of south, of the point where he and McGrath had last been seen by their comrades,—just at dusk,—just at what looked to be the comb or crest of the ridge from the point where Devers had halted his troop and made the dramatic display of his dead. But what looked to be the crest from the west was in point of fact not the crest at all. Invisible to the halted command, there lay still farther over to the eastward, where the spur seemed to broaden considerably, a wave that overtopped the westward edge by a dozen feet or more. Supposing from Devers's account that the trail of his command could be found distinctly marked along the westward slope and close under the crest, Warren was searching there with his scouts when attracted by the signals two miles to the south announcing probably important discoveries. He had found some Indian pony tracks, also those of one shod horse, but dropped everything else to go at once in answer to the signals. Then they had borne the unconscious officer southeastward toward the clump of trees at the Springs, placed him in the ambulance, and then came a courier from the general himself directing Major Warren to report to him in person at Birchwood, thirty miles away, and the major went, the ambulance following. And so, to his unspeakable relief, Captain Devers was left once more the senior officer on the ground to continue the search for McGrath, and in the conduct of this he took excellent care that only himself and one or two of his chosen should search any portion of the prairie that might involve running over the trail west of the ravine which he had made the previous day. The scouts and searching parties were kept in the valley and in the timber along the river, not on the back track. That search Devers conducted in person, and made a rough topographical sketch of the neighborhood as it appeared in his eyes and as he wished it to appear in those of others. Just before dusk, sounding the rally far up the spur, he rode to the point where his two hunters had met their fate, and there assembled his men, gathering some fifty troopers, and thence led them in column of twos southward close under the spur and well to the east of the ravine which on the previous day had partially caused his wide departure from the line of direction indicated to him by the major. It was therefore very late, and his men were very tired,—much too tired to sit up and talk,—when they got to camp.
Pursuing its homeward march, the main column under the general commanding had gone on through the wild hill country, and not until nearly a month had elapsed was the scene of the tragedy revisited. The officer who went thither with an escort, and Captain Devers and Corporal Finucane and Troopers Boyd and Howard, had had pointed out to him the scene of the massacre itself, then, far up the spur, the spot where Mullen and Phillips were shot, and from thence the trail of Davies's little squad as it marched away on its fatal errand toward the Springs, and the trails of the various parties. Off to the southwest went Truman in chase of the murderers,—off after Truman went Calvert and the invalid corps,—off straight to the south—to the river—along the westward side of the ridge, far to the east of the ravine and close under the crest, went another; that, he was assured, was the trail made by Captain Devers. Many of these trails, said the officer's report, were now dim and nearly effaced, "but there can be no mistaking that of Captain Devers along the spur,—it is quite sharp and clear. It isn't more than five hundred yards from the point where Mr. Davies and Sergeant McGrath had disappeared over the ridge to the nearest point on the trail, where—while Captain Devers couldn't be sure—his troopers are positive Mr. Davies had left to return to his men, and where they are also positive the captain had again enjoined upon him the necessity of vigilance, and reminded him that as it was growing dark he could no longer see, and must therefore depend upon his lieutenant to keep him informed of what was going on over on that side, as under his new orders he, Captain Devers, must now go on and bury his dead. Mr. Davies and his sergeant must have seen the attack just as soon as they got back across the ridge, but what they did and why they had not instantly warned their captain remains a mystery. At all events it would seem that Captain Devers," so concluded the report, "had conscientiously carried out his instructions, though he might perhaps, if unburdened with his dead, have kept higher up towards the crest, and should perhaps have detached a couple of flankers to keep communication, and so relied less on Lieutenant Davies, who was at least inexperienced in frontier warfare." The officer could not understand how it was that in broad daylight Major Warren when searching had failed to see Devers's trail. It certainly was there. And so the old, old story was told again. The absent it was who had to take care of himself, and Devers was inferentially "whitewashed" and Davies held to explain, when convalescent, and McGrath to substantiate his statement if McGrath ever again turned up on earth. Otherwise there could be no substantiation until the judgment day. Now, McGrath, lost in the thick of an Indian fight, was as apt to be found alive, or found at all, as a pin in a mill-pond. Davies, broken by the campaign and sore smitten with brain fever, had but one chance in a hundred of recovery. All things considered, therefore, it may be conceded that Captain Devers was a very gifted man.
But Devers wasn't the first man, or the last, to count on another fellow's death or disappearance to cloak his own crime. It gave him a queer turn to hear that Cranston and his wife and niece had undertaken the building up of the absent patient. He hated Cranston,—his junior as an officer, but infinitely his superior as a soldier. He feared him when word came out to the homeward marching command that Cranston said Davies was on the mend and would soon be on the war-path. But he drew another long breath of relief when there reached them the news that General Sheridan himself had telegraphed directing Davies to hasten home, that his mother was dying. When next that young officer appeared upon the scene and reported for duty, it was in midwinter at Fort Scott, a big, brilliant, sunshiny post, the head-quarters of an infantry regiment, the station of a cavalry battalion, whose major, Warren, had gone on long leave abroad, whose senior captain, Devers, was its commander pro tempore, whose other captains, Cranston, Truman, and Hay, were present for duty; so were most of their subalterns, so were most of the infantry officers, so were the wives and families of nine-tenths of the array, for it was a much-married garrison, and there was not a little talk and speculation when it was announced that Lieutenant Davies would come accompanied by his bride.