Fort Frayne

Front matter

BY

CAPTAIN CHARLES KING

U. S. ARM?

Preface

There is a story within a story which should perhaps be told in presenting to the indulgent reader this tale of army life. Three years ago I was surprised and pleased by an invitation to collaborate in the preparation of an army play, for the invitation came from those who had won high honors in their chosen field. The months spent in the gradual develop ment of our drama were full of pleasure, yet great was our rejoicing when the work was done. But then came blighting illness to her who was its inspiration and long, long months of utter seclusion. Then followed the mysterious disappearance of the manuscript story of the play — a manuscript of which there was no copy, for it had not even been typed. Finally came the suggestion that the story be promptly rewritten and published, not in the origi nal four parts corresponding to the four acts, but in twenty chapters wherein the entire tale might be told, and this was the work assigned to me.

Reading over now the completed pages, I realize how very much I have missed the guiding hand of one, — the valued suggestions of the other, — of my gifted and gracious collaborators, and how many apologies I owe to both. C. K.

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FOET FBAYKE.

Chapter I

THE snow was mantling the wild waste of barren prairie stretching toward the white peaks of the Big Horn, shrouding its desolation, hiding its accus tomed ugliness, and warning scout, soldier or cow boy to look well to his landmarks before venturing forth upon its trackless sea, for even the cattle trails were hidden, and the stage road lost to view. Be tween its banks of glistening white the Platte rolled black and swollen, for a rare thing had happened — one so rare that old trappers and traders said they never knew the like before since first they sighted * ' Larmie " peak or forced the passes of the Medicine Bow — there had been three days of softly-falling snow, and not a whisper of a Wyoming gale. There had been a thaw in the Laramie plains, preceded by a soft south wind in the Park country of Colorado, and whole fleecy hillsides, said the natives, were "slumping off" in the upper waters of the river, and that was how the Platte came to be tossing high its Wintry wave under the old stockade at the ferry and sweeping in power, instead of sleeping in peace, be neath its icy blanket, around the huge bluff where waved the colors of old Fort Frayne.

6 _ . VOBT FKATNE.

The roadway winding from the river-side up to the adjutant's office at the southern end of the garri son, was still unbroken. The guard at the ferryhouse had been withdrawn, and as for the veteran stockade, sole relic of the early days of the overland stage route, it looked now in its silence and desolation, heavily capped as it was with its weight of snow, like some huge, flattened-out Charlotte de Russe, at least that was what Ellis Farrar, daughter of the post commander, likened it to as she peered from the north window of their cosy quarters on the crest of the bluff. "And to think of Christmas being almost here, and not a chance of getting a wagon through from the railway," she mumured, "and I so longed to make it bright and joyous for mother. It is al ways her saddest season."

These low-toned words were addressed to Captain Leale of her father's regiment, a strong, soldierly-look ing man of nearly forty years, who, with field glass in hand, had been studying the wintry landscape to the north and east. He turned as the young girl spoke, and, lowering his glasses, followed her eyes and looked anxiously across the bright army parlor to where the fire-light from the blazing logs upon the hearth fell full upon a matronly woman whose luxuriant hair was already turning gray and whose sweet, patient face bore the unmistakable trace of deep sorrow. She was seated at a desk, an unfinished letter before her, and had paused in the midst of her writing and dropped off into the dreamland of far away scenes and memories. From a drawer in the desk she had taken what was evidently a portrait, a small photograph, and had been intently studying it while the only other occupants of the room were busy at the window.

" It is — you know — Royle's, my brother's picture. " whispered Ellis. " I know it, though I haven't seen it in ever so long — five years I think."

Again the captain bowed, inclining his head in tke slow, grave way, that was habitual with him. "I know," he said, briefly, and the gaze he fixed upon his colonel's wife was full of anxiety and sympathy. "I have often wished that your father's promotion had brought him to any other garrison in the army. You remember he was stationed here when lieuten ant-colonel, and it was from here that Royle went to West Point.1'

" I remember it but vaguely. That was nine years ago, captain, and I was but seven. We saw him during his cadet fmrlough two years later — in 1883 — and that was the last. Mother only rarely speaks of him, and father, mever, unless — unless," she added, with timid appeal, " he does to you. Does he?"

Captain Leale paused a moment before replying. Only that very morning had his colonel talked with him, the most trusted of his troop commanders, of Ellis's long-missing brother. Only within an hour had Farrar sought again his advice as to one whom he could not bring himself to name, and referred to in shame and sorrow as "my eldest," and only rarely as "my son." First born of the little flock, the boy had been given. his father's name. The only child for several years, petted, spoiled, over-indulged by a fond, purehearted mother, then reared among the isolated army garrisons of the far West, the handsome, headstrong, daring youth but all too early had shown a tendency to wild companionship and reckless living. Few men in the cavalry arm of the service were held in higher esteem than Colonel Royle Farrar, who, entering the service with the first regiment to be sent to the front from New York City in the spring of 1861, had fought his way to the command of a brigade in the last campaign, and then been commissioned as a junior major of cavalry at the reorganization of the regular army. The president himself had tendered Farrar, long afterwards, a cadetship for his son, and it was gratefully yet almost fearfully accepted. The mother could not be brought to believe her boy would not strive to do honor to his name at the Point. The father dreaded that the wayward, reckless fellow, in tolerant of restraint or discipline, would merit pun ishment, and, being punished, would resent. Royle stood the ordeal only fairly well at first. Demerits in profusion and " light prison " twice had clouded his record before the furlough year, but the mother's eyes rejoiced in the sight of the handsome, stalwart young soldier after his two years of rigorous train ing, even though the mother heart grieved over the evidences of dissipation and vice which speedily marred the long-looked-for days of his vacation. Be tween him and his father had been more than one stormy scene before Royle returned to the academy — interviews from which the senior issued pale, Btern, tfORT FEAYNE. 9

sorrowful; the young man gloomy, sullen, and more than half defiant. In his second class year came tid ings of misdemeanor that almost broke the mother's heart. Farrar hastened from the distant frontier to the banks of the Hudson expecting nothing short of dismissal for the boy, and promising the mother to fetch him at once to her, but the court, even in sen tencing, had signed a plea for mercy for the cadet who bore so honored a name, a plea that his classmates would never have indorsed, and the president re mitted the punishment to a term of confinement to barracks and camp. The father wasted no words in reproach. He pointed out to the son that this was his last chance. Royle, Jr., had sullenly responded that his disgrace was due entirely to spies and tale bearers and showed neither contrition nor promise of amend. A year later came the last straw. Reported for a violation of regulations in having liquor in his possession, Cadet Farrar wrote a lying explanation to the effect that it was placed in his room by parties unknown to him, and for the purpose of bringing him into trouble, but he had been seen "off limits" at a questionable resort in the neighboring village the previous night, had been drinking and card play ing there, had lost money and refused to pay, had been seen returning by two lower classmen to whom he offered liquor, then staggered to his quarters only an hour or so before reveille roll call. He was placed in close arrest after being confronted with the array of evidence, and that night deserted and was seen no more. Again the colonel made his mournful pil-

!• FORT PBATNE.

grimage to the Point, and old comrades pityingly, sorrowfully told him the whole story. He went back to his regiment looking ten years older, took his wife and two younger children, Will and Ellis, to his heart, and from that day never spoke again his first born's name. It had been for years his custom to sign all official papers in full — Royle Farrar — but the very sound of the Christian name seemed from that time on to give him distress, and R. Farrar be came his signature personal or official.

The young man was heard of occasionally, how ever, borrowing money from officers and friends and relatives on his father's account. Then he went to sea, then returned to New York and wrote a long letter to his mother, telling how he mourned the old days, and was going to lead a new life, and she too gladly sent him all the money she had. Then there was another interval, and, after a year, he again ap peared as a suppliant for aid. He had been des perately ill, he said, and kind, but poor, humble people had cared for him, and they ought to be re warded. The mother would have sent again her last cent to him direct, but Farrar interposed. His check went to a trusted friend, with instructions to investigate, and that friend was his old comrade, Major Fen ton, and, as he expected, it proved only another lie.

Then there came an era of apparent prosperity, and now the poor mother in joy besought her husband to recognize the son, for he reported him self in good employ, with a fair salary and brilliant prospects. He even sent a draft to repay a small portion of what he termed his father's loan, but this was soon followed by a draft on his father for double the amount, and later another, and then letters of inquiry came from his employer, and then rueful complaint of how that trusting person had been swindled. In her agony of grief and disap pointment tke mother's health was giving away, and Farrar concealed from her particulars even worse — that their wretched son had won the love of his em ployer's only daughter, and that she had followed him from her father's house. There had been a secret marriage. There was another Royle. This news had come to the colonel but a day or two before. It was this that had unsealed his lips and turned him to Captain Leale for counsel and support.

"My daughter," wrote the bereaved father, "was the idol of my heart, the image of the mother who was taken from her long years ago. Yet she turned from me in the passion of her love for him, and they have gone God alone knows where. If you can find him, say that though he has robbed me poor, I can forgive him all if he will but be good and kind to her. She was delicately nurtured, as carefully edu cated as your own daughter could be, sir, and she was more to me, for she was my all. I own that, having married him, her duty was with her husband, but why should she have hidden that marriage from her father? My own fortune is well-nigh wrecked, but §he has her mother's little portion — enough, if

IS FORT FRAYNE.

he can resist his craving for drink and gambling, to support them in comfort. I pray you help me save my child."

All this sad history was now well known to Malcolm Leale, and his eyes were full of sorrow as he bent them, upon the gentle, yearning woman at the desk, lost in her study of her first-born's face. Ellis in turn stood watching him. She was a girl of sixteen, yet seemed older far, because of the years in which she had been her mother's companion and closest friend. Then as he made no answer to her query and seemed plunged in thought, she turned and stepped lightly over to the mother's side.

"Day dreaming again, Queen Mother?" she asked, in the half-playful way that was habitual with her. ''If you don't go on with your letter to Will, it won't be ready for the courier. Captain Leale tells me they are to send one out at noon."

"Will they really? " asked Mrs. Farrar, rousing suddenly. "Why, I had given up all hopes of hearing from him this week, or of getting a letter to him. Who is to go, captain? The pass must be breast deep in snow."

"I think not, Mrs. Farrar. There was very little wind, you know, and the fall seems to have been very uniform. Corporal Rorke and a couple of my men are getting ready now. The colonel was only waiting, hoping that there might be still some news from Red Cloud."

"Why, how can it come? The wires are down, the road hidden, and the river unfordable," said

PORT FBAYKE. 13

Ellis, eagerly. "The last news was bad enough. I own I don't want to hear further. "

Over Leale's face a graver shadow fell. t * There arc Indian riders who could easily make the journey," he said. "Crow Knife, for instance, whom the colonel sent over with the scouts five days ago. The fact that he hasn't returned makes me hopeful that matters are quieting down," but here he turned again to the window to level his glass upon the broad rolling expanse of white, stretching in wave after wave to the bleak horizon.

"God forbid there should be further trouble," said Mrs. Farrar, slowly, lingeringly replacing the portrait in its drawer. "Surely the general has force enough there now to keep those Indians in check," she ventured, appealingly.

Leale lowered his binocular again. " He has, provided the renegades captured on the Cheyenne are not sent back there. Those people should not be taken to the agency. They are Minneconjous, Uncapapas, Brules, a turbulent, ill-conditioned lot, who make trouble wherever the others are peaceably disposed. They should have been disarmed and dis mounted and put under guard at Fort Robinson until this question is settled. What I fear is that Red Wolf's band is still out and is defying the agent, and that the revolt will spread to Kill Eagle's village. If they go on the warpath, some of our best scouts will be involved. That boy, Crow Knife, is worth his weight in gold, but his father and mother would follow Kill Eagle."

14 F*»T FBATNB.

' ' Do you think — do you think that if they should revolt, we — our command — would have to be ordered out? " asked Ellis, anxiously.

"It might be," he replied, cautiously, "but I am hoping that no winter campaign is in store for us. Think of a march over such a waste as that," and he pointed to the snow-clad scene before them. "We couldn't cross the Platte this side of Laramie, either, even if the stream were fordable. The run ning ice would cut the horses from under us."

Out across the parade, clear, yet soft, as though muffled by the snow, the cavalry trumpet began sounding orderly call.

* « Rorke and his men will start as soon as they have had dinner, Mrs. Farrar," said Leale, "and I must see the colonel before they go. I will send for your letters. " He took up the glasses again for one last survey, Ellis narrowly watching him, while her mother went on with her writing. For a moment the search seemed barren of result, as be fore, but suddenly Leale started, stepped nearer the window, and riveted his attention on one spot. Ellis quickly noted it.

"You see some one? " she asked.

A brief nod was the only answer. Then, glass in hand, the captain suddenly turned to a side door, let himself out into another room, and thence to the outer gallery surrounding the house. Here his view was unobstructed. Two gentlemen were coming up the pathway from the adjutant's office, and a soldier in immaculate uniform and side arms following a

FOET FBATNE. 1*

•fcort distance behind, indicated that the one in uai' form was the post commander — the elder one, a dis tinguished-looking man of nearly sixty, whose pointed mustache and imperial were well-nigh as white as the new-fallen snow about him, whose complexion, bronzed by years of exposure to prairie sun and wind, was ruddy brown, almost like Russian leather.

Over Leale's face fell the same shadow of anxiety that was noted when he stood gazing in silence upon the sorrowing mother at the desk within. The colonel was talking in an earnest manner to the man at his side, a civilian, so far as his dress would indi cate, yet a civilian with the erect carriage and brisk step of a soldier — a handsome fellow, too, of perhaps seven and twenty years. Leale turned from them with some impatience.

" I'd bet a month's pay, if I ever bet a cent in the world," he muttered to himself, "that old Fen ton's nephew had no thought whatever of hunting when he came here in midwinter. The question is, What else has brought him besides what I have already learned, and why he haunts Farrar from morning till night? "

At the window the fair, girlish face brightened an instant at sight of the coming soldier, then clouded as quickly as the civilian came in view. "Mr. Ormsby again !" murmured Ellis below her breath, and the bow of recognition which she gave him in answer to the quick uplifting of hig sealskin CAB lacked all of the warmth and interest that beamed in Ormsby's face at sight of her. Seeing Leale, the colonel pressed on to join him on the northward porch. Catching sight of Ellis, the civilian fell back, entered the gateway, and came briskly to the door. An instant later and his step was heard in the hallway. Ellis turned to the window in something not unlike aversion. The mother it was who rose eagerly to welcome the coming guest.

"Prompt as ever, Mr. Ormsby," she cried as he entered the parlor, fresh and rosy from the keen air. "I wish you might teach my husband to be more punctual at luncheon."

"Indeed, I feared I was detaining him, Mrs. Farrar. He's merely stopped one moment to speak with Captain Leale. He was showing me over the barracks. You have no idea how vividly interesting all this is to me. I have shouldered the musket with the Seventh for eight years, and have never visited »n army post before."

" Oh, didn't you see your uncle when he was at Riley? He used to write to my husband of you time and again, and of your pride in your regi ment."

"No, he was in New York on recruiting service then, a few years ago, you remember, and we used to get him up to the armory or to our camp occasion ally."

* ' And he was very, very kind to my poor boy, my Royle," said Mrs. Farrar, wistfully, searching the face of her guest, "and when you came to us with

POET FEAYNE. If

letters from our old fiiend, for we had known him before our marriage," she continued, a faint color rising to her cheek, " it seemed almost like welcom ing him. There was nothing too good for Major Fenton that our home afforded after all he tried to do, at least for — him." The sigh with which she spoke seemed to well up from the depths of the mother's heart. Ellis, with light footsteps, had left the room to greet her father on the piazza without, and for the first time since his coming, three days previous, just in time to be hemmed in and held at Frayne by the great snowfall, Mrs. Farrar was alone with her guest. "There is something I have longed to ask you Mr. Ormsby," she went on, " something I must ask you, for a mother's intuition is keen, and I feel sure you have seen or known my poor boy in the past. Have you heard — do you know anything of him now? "

< ' Mrs. Farrar, I give you my word I have not the faintest idea of his whereabouts. "

"Forgive me if I am intrusive — importunate," she persisted. But — Major Fenton — he was Major Fen ton then, you know, and I think of him with the title he bore when he was so good — so friendly — when my unhappy boy most needed friends. You were with your uncle often then. Did you not meet — did you not know my Royle? "

Ormsby's honest eyes betrayed the deep em barrassment under which he labored, and she, watch ing every sign with painful intensity, read the truth, despite his faltering reply.

IS PORT FRAYNB.

" Once or twice, Mrs. Farrar, but I knew hi«a only very slightly."

"Tell me still more, Mr. Ormsby. You have been most considerate to me. You have sought to spare me, but in my husband's sad face and ab stracted manner I have read the truth. He has heard news — worse news of Royle, and so you have been the bearer. Is it not so? "

But Ormsby pulled himself together this time, at least, like a man and braved her.

< « I assure you it is not so, Mrs. Farrar. From me, at least, the colonel has heard nothing new, — nothing worse. I beg you to dismiss the thought."

But he did not say that he had come prepared to tell, aye, instructed to tell, of crowning disgrace — come with the written proposition of his employers to relinquish pursuit of Royle Farrar, provided the father would make good the sum they had lost through the son's forgery.

"God bless you, Mr. Ormsby, for the load you have lifted from my heart," she cried. " Ever since you came I have dreaded more and more each day that you were the bearer of evil tidings of him who has almost broken his father's heart, and yet can not, must not, shall not be beyond redemption, if a mother's love and prayers are of any avail. Even Ellis has seemed to share my dread. I hare read it in her manner, as, perhaps, you have, too. She did not mean to be unkind — inhospitable to our guest, but that sorrow has overshadowed us aJl. Even my bright, brave Will, who is doing all a bof

FORT FEATNE. 19

can do to redeem the name at the P*int — even Will, I say, is sometimes confronted by the record that his erring brother left."

The tears were starting from her eyes now, and in uncontrollable emotion she turned away. Then came a loud rap at the front door, and a servant hastened to open it. A loud, cheery Irish voice re sounded through the hallway an instant later. "Corporal Rorke to report to the colonel for dis patches," and glancing thither, Ormsby saw a stout trooper, with broad, jovial, ruddy face, his burly form clad in winter service dress. Mrs. Farrar, striving to hide and to check her tears, had turned into the dining room. Ormsby stepped to the north window and glanced out upon the little group upon the porch, — Ellis half shiveringly clinging to her father's arm, he intently eying Leale, Leale, with leveled glasses, steadily at gaze at some dim, black object far, far across the turbid Platte, far out to the eastward, across those snow-clad slopes.

" Can you make out what's coming, Leale? "

"I think so, Colonel."

"What is it?"

Leale slowly lowered the glass, and, nerer tur* ing, answered in low but positive tone:

" Our marching orders — for the agency."

Chapter II

AT noon that bright December day the barracks and quarters of Fort Frayne were resounding with song and laughter, and all uthe good-natured, soldierly noise " with which the garrison was busily preparing for the blithe festivities of Christmas. Two hours later, though the scene was unchanged, the preparations were for war.

''Leave the band to guard the post, but take every available trooper," were the injunctions that ac companied the General's brief orders to Colonel Farrar. " Strike when you find — and wherever you find— Kill Eagle's Band."

Tearful eyes along officers' row, watching the silent group at headquarters, told all too plainly with what dread the tidings had been received. With the wires down, the railway blockaded, the stage road deep in snow, there was only one means of communication left, and two Indian scouts on their hardy ponies, leaving the field column at dawn the previous day, had made their unerring way through the trackless maze of snow-clad ridge, ravine, divide and coulee, through a labyrinth of Bad Lands, bad enough in midsummer, and across many a fro/en creek, until at last they struck the northern shore of the swollen Platte, and followed on up stream until opposite old Fort .Frayne.

PORT FEAYKE. 21

And now, indeed, was the road to the ferry broken and plowed and speedily trodden hard, for hosts of stalwart men had rushed to the river side, and out from its winter hiding place they dragged one of the huge pontoon boats and launched it in the ice-whirl ing flood, and the sweeps were manned by brawny arms in blue, and with boat hooks driving at the ice cakes and the foam flying from the oar blades and from under the blunt and sloping prow, cheered from the southern shore, they fought their way to where, like black, silent statues, the riders waited at the brink and then Indians and ponies both were bundled aboard and ferried back again, landing two hundred yards down stream; but even before they could breast the bluffs and carry their dispatches to the cavalry chief, the news they bore was shouted up the heights: "Red Wolf escaped — Kill Eagle's whole Tillage has jumped for the Bad Lands."

And that meant that the Twelfth must drop its Christmasing and fetch the wanderers home. The old, old story told again, and just as it had been time and time before. Absurdity in the Indian pol icy; mismanagement in the Indian bureau; starva tion in the Indian villages; murmurings of discontent among the old warriors; talk of summary action among the young braves; emissaries from disaffected bands; midnight councils, harangues, dances, threats, an arrest or two, escape, and then a general rush to join the hostiles in the field.

Prompt to act on this occasion, as ever before, the moment he was enabled to learn, through the eh*-

M FORT FRAYNE.

grined officials of the Indian bureau, of the escape of this turbulent leader, and the flight of Kill Eagle's people from the agency, the general commanding in the field dispatched a small force of cavalry to interpose between the latter and the large bands of hostiles already lurking in the Bad Lands, and, giv ing the commander of this force instructions to turn Kill Eagle westward, and by steady pursuit keep him "on the jump" toward his old hunting grounds behind the Black Hills, he sent couriers across coun try post haste to Frayne, with orders for Colonel Farrar to start at once with his entire force — four fine troops of the Twelfth Cavalry — to cross the Platte at the first possible point, and by forced marches throw himself across the Indians' front and strive to hem them in. With the Platte sweeping along as it was, bank full, a crossing might be impossible nearer than the rocky shallows at the Fetterman Bend, but that made no difference; prompt action was the thing.

More than half expecting just such a contingency, Farrar had long since completed his preparations. His packers and their lively mules had been kept in trim. Ten days' rations were always set aside in readiness to be packed on the apparejos the moment word should come. Boxes of extra ammunition for carbine and revolver were stacked up in the ord nance storeroom, ready to be lashed, two to each, on the sturdy little burden-bearers' backs. Double sacks of grain, precious as powder on a winter cam paign, were banked at the quartermaster's corral.