"Hello, Parson! Up for all day and meditating a sermon?"
Davies ignored the question and went straight to business. "I want to see Captain Cranston as soon as possible. Does he go to stables this morning?"
"Never misses 'em. What's up? Hope Mrs. Davies isn't ill."
"Mrs. Davies isn't very well, but it's on personal business I want to see the captain. I'll go down with him."
"Come over to my house and have some coffee, or a cocktail," said Sanders, with cheery hospitality. "Just what you need, old man. You look as if you'd been dragged by the heels through a knot-hole."
"Barnickel is making some coffee for me, thank you, Sanders. It will pull me together all right, I fancy." And Sanders went whistling on. The world and its cares, the flesh and the devil all dropped lightly on the shoulders of this young sinner, and either rode there or fell to the ground unnoticed. Garrison days were but a merry-go-round with him. "If that's a specimen of the bridegroom cometh," said he to himself, "I've got no more use for matrimony than I have for the catechism." And doubtless to this gay and nonchalant spirit the deeply religious temperament of the Parson seemed a sombre and repellent thing,—a thing to be lamented, yet indulged as something too solemn or sacred for remonstrance.
The morning air was bitter and Davies felt his toes and fingers tingling. The boards cracked and snapped under his tread, so, rather than disturb Almira, he stepped out on the walk and began pacing up and down, still burning with indignation over the events of the previous night. There had been a fresh fall of snow Sunday morning, and though the walks and paths were cleared, the soft white mantle lay like a glistening carpet over the parade and prairie and along the slanting roofs of the quarters. There was an open space of sixty feet from outer wall to wall along officers' row, and a paling or picket fence, running at right angles to the roadway in front, divided this space equally, so that each set of quarters had its own yard. Davies had remarked with a smile the previous evening, the contrast presented by the Leonards's yard at the west end and his at the east of the double set in which they lived. Leonard's yard was criss-crossed, cut up in every direction by tracks of sled-runners and sturdy little rubber boots. His own lay like a flawless sheet without even a kitten's footprint to mar its virgin surface. Now as he strode rapidly westward again and came in front of the Leonard playground, he noted once more the traces that spoke so eloquently of happy, healthy childhood, of rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes and merry laughter. Then he turned back to his own, still tramping briskly in the endeavor to send the blood to his finger-tips, and then coming in view of what at nightfall had been an unbroken coverlet of snow, Davies stopped short, amazed. Straight from the corner at the front where the fences met, straight as a lance, went the footprints of a man, in long, unhesitating stride, to a point immediately underneath the closed blinds of the window behind which his wife now lay placidly sleeping. Davies stood and studied the tracks a moment, then went to the point of meeting of the front fence,—a flat-topped affair,—with its picketed offshoot. Beyond doubt the maker of those tracks had swung himself over the fence at that point, dropped lightly to the ground inside and gone straightway to that side window. There he must have stood a moment or two, for the snow was trampled. Thence the tracks led around to the back of the house. Returning to his gate and hall-way, Davies tiptoed noiselessly through the little dining-room to the kitchen in the shed at the back. There Barnickel was sleepily starting a fire, and the door leading into his little den farther back discovered the soldier blankets of his bunk tumbled over as though he had just arisen. The door to the yard was still bolted. Davies slipped the bolt and stepped out on the plank walk leading from the kitchen to the gate in the rear fence. These had been tramped by many feet in that direction, and by only one pair in the other. Coming around from the side of the house were the tracks of the same foot gear, the heavy soldier arctics worn then by officers and men alike, that he had marked at the front. They led to a point underneath the rear or north window of Almira's room, and there, after evident shifting and tramping of a minute or two, had turned sharply away, led straight past the kitchen door and were lost in the general run of those towards the gate.
"What time did you come in to bed last night, Barnickel?" asked the lieutenant, at the kitchen door.
"About 10.30, sir. I'd been over to Sergeant Walsh's quarters. I went in to see if the lieutenant wanted anything, sir, but he'd turned down the lights and gone out."
"Yes. And now did you hear any noise,—any footsteps?"