“I know it. But is there any harm if I only tell it to—to just this one, single man?” she asked, earnestly, not aware that her eyes as well as her voice were pleading—that her whole body, bent forward in the saddle, had become eloquent with a confession as winning as it was innocent.
The colonel looked curiously into the eager, flushed face, framed in its setting of dark, curly hair, then he lifted a gauntleted hand from his bridle and slowly stroked his crisp mustache upward to hide the smile he could not control.
“I did not know,” he said gravely, “that Captain Stanley was the—ah—‘one’ and ‘only’ man.”
She blushed furiously, the vivid color ran from throat to temple, burning her ears till they looked like rose petals caught in her dark hair.
“You may tell Captain Stanley—if you must,” observed the colonel of the Fourth Missouri. He was gazing absently straight between his horse’s ears when he spoke. After a few moments he looked at the sky where, overhead, the afterglow pulsated in bands of fire.
“I always thought,” he murmured to himself, “that old Stanley was in love with that Southern girl he saw at Sandy River.... I had no idea he knew the Special Messenger. It appears that I am slightly in error.” And, very thoughtfully, he continued to twist his mustache skyward as he rode on.
When he ventured to glance around again the Special Messenger had disappeared.
“Fancy!” he muttered; “fancy old Stanley knowing the mystery of the three armies! And, by gad, gentlemen!” addressing, sotto voce, the entire regiment, as he turned in his stirrups and looked back at the darkening column behind him—“by gad! gentlemen of the Fourth Dragoons, no prettier woman ever sat a saddle than is riding this moment with the captain of Troop F!”
What Captain Stanley saw riding up to him through the dull afterglow was a slightly built youth in the uniform of the regular cavalry, yellow trimming on collar, yellow welts about the seams of the jacket, yellow stripes on the breeches; and, as the youth drew bridle, saluted, and turned to ride forward beside him, he caught sight of a lieutenant’s shoulder straps on the sergeant’s shell jacket.
“Well, youngster,” he said, smiling, “don’t they clothe you in the regulars? You’re as eccentric as our butternut friends yonder.”