Two soldiers, and Dunraven ranch. Two novels

I

T HE rain was plashing dismally on the grimy window-sill and over the awning of the shops below. The street-cars went jingling by with a dripping load of outside passengers on both platforms. Wagons and drays, cabs and closed carriages, that rattled or rumbled along the ordinarily busy thoroughfare, looked as though they had been dipped in the river before being turned loose on the street, and their Jehus, a bedraggled lot, must needs have had something amphibious in their composition, else they could not have borne up against the deluge that had been soaking the city for two days past. The policeman, waddling aimlessly about at the opposite corner, enveloped in rubber cap and overcoat, cast occasional wistful glances into the bar-room across the way, wherein the gas was burning in deference to the general gloom that overhung the neighborhood, and such pedestrians as had to be abroad hurried along under their umbrellas as though they half expected to have to swim before they could reach their destination. The dense cloud of sooty smoke that had overhung the metropolis for weeks past, and that wind from any direction could never entirely dissipate, for the simple reason that smoke-stacks by the score shot up in the outskirts on every side, now seemed to be hurled upon the roofs and walls, the windows and the pavement, in a black, pasty, carboniferous deposit, and every object out of doors that one could touch would leave its inky response upon the hand. A. more depressing “ spell of weather” had not been known for a year, and every living being in sight seemed saturated with the general gloom, — every living being except one : Captain Fred Lane, of the Eleventh Cavalry, was sitting at the dingy window of his office in the recruiting rendezvous on Sycamore Street and actually whistling softly to himself in supreme contentment.

1 *

TWO SOLDIERS.

Two missives had reached him that ghastly morning that had served to make him impervious to wind or weather. One — large, formal, impressive, and bearing the stamp of the War Department in heavy type across its upper corner — had borne to him the notification of his promotion to the rank of Captain (Troop D) Eleventh Cavalry, vice Curran, retired. The other — a tiny billet — had given him even greater happiness. It might be hard to say how many times he had read and re-read it since he found it on the snowy cloth of his particular breakfast-table in his particular corner of the snug refectory of “ The Queen City,” on the books of which most respectable if somewhat venerable club his name had been borne among the list of Army or Navy Members ever since his “ graduation-leave,” fifteen years before.

All his boyhood, up to the time of his winning his cadetship at West Point, had been spent in the city where for the past sixteen months he had considered himself fortunate in being stationed on recruiting-service. During the second year of his term at the Academy he was startled by the receipt of a sad letter from his mother, telling him briefly that his father, long one of the best-known among the business-men of the city, had been compelled to make an assignment. What was worse, he had utterly broken down under the strain, and would probably never be himself again. Proud, sensitive, and honorable, Mr. Lane had insisted on paying to the uttermost farthing of his means. Even the old homestead went, and the broken-hearted man retired with his faithful wife to a humble roof in the suburbs. There, a few months afterwards, he breathed his last, and there, during Fred’s graduating year, she followed him. When the boy entered on his career in the army he was practically alone in the world. Out of the wreck of his father’s fortune there came to him a little sum that started him in the service free from debt and that served as a nest-egg to attract future accumulations. This he had promptly banked until some good and safe investment should present itself, and, once with his regiment on the frontier, Mr. Lane had found his pay ample for all his needs.

It is unnecessary to recount the history of his fifteen years’ service as a subaltern. Suffice it to say that, steering clear of most of the temptations to which young officers were subjected, he had won a reputation as a capital “ duty-officer,” that was accented here and there by some brilliant and dashing exploits in the numerous Indian campaigns through which the Eleventh had passed with no small credit. Lane was never one of the jovial souls of the regiment. His mood

TWO SOLDIERS.

was rather taciturn and contemplative. He read a good deal, and spent many days in the saddle exploring the country in the neighborhood of his post and in hunting and fishing.

But, from the colonel down, there was not a man in the Eleventh who did not thoroughly respect and like him. Among the ladies, however, there were one or two who never lost an opportunity of giving the lieutenant a feline and not ineffective clawing when his name came up for discussion in the feminine conclaves occasionally held in the regiment. Sometimes, too, when opportunity served, he was made the victim of some sharp or sarcastic speech that was not always easy to bear in silence. Mrs. Judson, wife of the captain of B Troop, was reputed to be “ down on Lane,” and the men had no difficulty whatever in locating the time when her change of heart took place.

The truth of the matter was that, thanks to simple habits and to hi 3 sense of economy, Lane had quite a snug little balance in the bank, and the ladies of the regiment believed it to be bigger than it really was ; and, having approved the furnishing and fitting up of his quarters, the next thing, of course, that they essayed to do was tc provide him with a wife. There the trouble began. Simultaneously wit! the arrival of his first bar as a first lieutenant there came fron the distant East Mrs. Judson’s younger sister “Emmy” and Mrs. Loring’s pretty niece Pansy Fletcher. Lane was prompt to call on both, to take the young ladies driving or riding, to be attentive anl courteous in every way ; but, while he did thus “ perceive a divided duty,” what was Mrs. Loring’s horror on discovering that pretty Pansy had fallen rapturously in love with “Jerry” Lattimore, as aandsome, reckless, and impecunious a young dragoon as ever lived, and nothing but prompt measures prevented their marriage! Miss Fletcher was suddenly re-transported to the East, whither Jerry was too hard up to follow ; and then, in bitterness of heart, Mrs. Loring blamed poor Fred for the whole transaction. “ Why had he held aloof and allowed that — that scamp — that ne’er-do-weel — to cut in and win that innocent child’s heart, as he certainly did do?” Against Lattimore the vials of her wrath were emptied cor am publico , but against Lane she could not talk so openly.

Mrs. Judson had beheld the sudden departure of Miss Pansy with an equanimity she could barely disguise. Indeed, there were not lacking good Christians in the garrison who pointed significantly to the fact that she had almost too hospitably opened her doors to Miss

TWO SOLDIERS.

Fletcher and her lover during that brief but volcanic romance. Certain it is, however, that it was in her house and in a certain little nook off the sitting-room that their long, delicious meetings occurred almost daily, the lady of the house being busy about the dining-room, the kitchen, or the chambers overhead, and Emmy, who was a good girl, but densely uninteresting, strumming on the piano or yawning over a book at the front window.

“ What Mr. Lane needs is a gentle, modest, domestic little woman who will make his home a restful, peaceful refuge always,” said Mrs. Judson ; and, inferentially, Emmy was the gentle and modest creiture who was destined so to bless him. The invitations to tea, the lures by which he was induced to become Emmy’s escort to all the hope and dances, redoubled themselves after Miss Fletcher’s departure ; but it was all in vain. Without feeling any particular affinity fol Mr. Lane, Emmy stood ready to say “ Yes” whensoever he should ask ; but weeks went on, he never seemed to draw nearer the subject, and just as Mrs. Judson had determined to resort to heroic measures and point out that his attentions to Emmy had excited the remark of the entire garrison, and that the poor child herself was looking wan and strange, there was a stage-robbery not twenty miles from the post. Lane, with fifteen troopers, was sent in pursuit of the desperadoes, and captured them, after a sharp fight, ninety miles up the river and near the little infantry cantonment at the Indian reserration; and thither the lieutenant was carried with a bullet through his thigh. By the time he was well enough to ride, the regiment was again in the field on Indian campaign, and for six months he never saw Fort Curtis again. When he did, Emmy had gone home, and Mrs Judson’s politeness was something awful.

Lane was out with the Eleventh again in three more sharp and severe campaigns, received an ugly bullet-wound through the left shoulder in the memorable chase after Chief Joseph, was quartermaster of his regiment a year after that episode, then adjutant, and finally was given the recruiting-detail as he neared the top of the list of first lieutenants, and, for the first time in fifteen years, found himself once more among the friends of his youth, — and still a bachelor.

Securing pleasant quarters in the adjoining street, Mr. Lane speedily made himself known at the club to which he had been paying his moderate annual dues without having seen anything of it but its bills for years past, yet never knowing just when he might want to drop in.

TWO SOLDIERS.

Then he proceeded, after office hours, to hunt up old chums, and in the course of the first week after his arrival he had found almost all of them. Bailey, who sat next him in school, was now a prominent and prosperous lawyer. Terry, who sat just behind him and occasionally inserted crooked pins in a convenient crack in his chair, was thriving in the iron business. Warden had made a fortune “ on ’Change,” and was one of the leading brokers and commission-merchants of the metropolis. He had always liked Warden : they lived close together, and used to walk to and from school with each other almost every day. Mr. Lane had started on his quest with a feeling akin to enthusiasm. Calm and reticent and retiring as he generally was, he felt a glow of delight at the prospect of once more meeting “ the old crowd but that evening he returned to his rooms with a distinct sense of disappointment. Bailey had jumped up and shaken hands with much effusion of manner, and had “ my-dear-fellow”-ed him for a minute or two, and then, “ Now, where are you stopping ? I’ll be round to look you up the very first evening I can get away, and — of course we’ll have you at the house but Lane clearly saw he was eager to get back to his desk, and so took his leave. Terry did not know him at all until he began to laugh, and then he blandly inquired what he’d been doing with himself all these years. But the man who rasped him from top to toe was Warden. Business hours were over, and their meeting occurred at the club. Two minutes after they had shaken hands, Warden was standing with his back to the log fire, his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat, tilting on his toes, his head well back, and most affably and distinctly patronizing him.

“ Well, Fred, you’re still in the army, are you ?” he asked.

“ Still in the array, Warden.”

“Well, what on earth do you find to do with yourself out there? How do you manage to kill time ?”

“ Time never hung heavily on my hands. It often happened that there wasn’t half enough for all we had to do.”

“ You don’t tell me ! Why, I supposed that about all you did was to drink and play poker.”

“ Not an unusual idea, I find, Warden, but a very unjust one.”

“ Oh, yes, I know, of course, you have some Indian-fighting to do once in a while ; but that probably amounts to very little. I mean when you’re in permanent camp or garrison. I should think a man of

A*

TWO SOLDIERS.

jour temperament would just stagnate in such a life. I wonder you hadn’t resigned years ago and come here and made a name for yourself.”

u The life has been rather more brisk than you imagine,” he answered, with a quiet smile, “ and I have grown very fond of my profession. But you speak of making a name for myself. Now, in what would that have consisted ?”

“ Oh, well, of course, if you really like the army and living in a desert and that sort of thing, Fve nothing to say,” said Warden ; “ but it always struck me as such a — such a — well, Fred, such a wasted life, all very well for fellows who hadn’t brains or energy enough to achieve success in the real battle of life” (and here Warden was “ swelling visibly”), “ but not at all the thing for a man of your ability. We all conceded at school that you were head and shoulders above the rest of us. We were talking of it some years ago here in this very room : there’d been something about you in the papers, — some general or other had mentioned you in a report. Let’s see : didn’t you get wounded, or something, chasing some Indians ?” Lane replied that he believed that “ something like that had happened,” but begged his friend to go on; and Warden proceeded to further expound his views :

“Now, you might have resigned years ago, taken hold of your father’s old business, and made a fortune. There’s been a perfect boom in railroad iron and every other kind of iron since that panic of ’73. Look at Terry : he is rolling in money, — one of our most substantial men ; and you know he was a mere drone at school. Why, Fred, if your father could have held on six months longer he’d have been the richest man in town to-day. It always seemed to me that he made such a mistake in not getting his friends to help him tide things over.”

“ You probably are not aware,” was the reply, “ that he went to friend after friend, — so called, — and that it was their failure or refusal to help that broke him down. The most active man in pushing him to the wall, I am told, was Terry’s father, who had formerly been his chief clerk.”

“Well,” answered Warden, in some little confusion, for this and other matters in connection with the failure of Samuel Lane & Co., years before, were now suddenly recalled to mind, “ that’s probably true. Business is business, you know, and those were tough times in the money market. Still, you could have come back here when you left Wsst Point, and built up that concern again, and been a big may

TWO SOLDIERS.

to-day, — had your own establishment here, married some rich girl — you’re not married, are you ?”

Lane shook his head.

“ On the other hand, then, you’ve been fooling away all this time in the army, and what have you got to show for it ?”

“ Nothing — to speak of,” was the half-whimsical, half-serious answer.

“ Well, there ! Now don’t you see ? That’s just what I’m driving at. You’ve thrown away your opportunities. — All right, Strong : I’ll be with you in a minute,” he called to a man who was signalling to him from the stairway. “ Come in and see us, Fred. Come and dine with us, — any day. We’re always ready for friends who drop in. I want you to meet Mrs. Warden and see my house. Now excuse me, will you ? I have to take a hand at whist.” And so away went Warden, leaving Lane to walk homeward and think over the experiences of the day.

He had “ made a name for himself” that was well known from the Yellowstone to the Colorado. Thrice had that name been sent to the President with the recommendation of his department commander for brevets for conspicuous and gallant conduct in action against hostile Indians. The Pacific coast had made him welcome. Busy San Fran cisco had found time to read the Alta’s and the Chronicle’s correspondence from the scene of hostilities, and cordially shook hands with the young officer who had been so prominent in more than one campaign. Santa F6 and San Antonio, Denver, Cheyenne, and Miles City, were points where he could not go without meeting “ troops of friends.” It was only when he got back to his old home in the East that the lieutenant found his name associated only with his father’s failure, and that his years of honorable service conveyed no interest to the friends of his youth. “ Money makes the mare go,” said Mr. Warden, in a subsequent conversation ; and money, it seems, was what he meant in telling Lane he should have come home and “ made a name for himself.”

Lane had been on duty a year in the city when a rumor began to circulate, to the effect that investments of his in mining stocks had brought him large returns, and men at the club and matronly women at the few parties he attended began asking significant questions which now it pleased him to parry rather than answer directly. His twelve months’ experiences in society had developed in him a somewhat sardonic vein of humor and made him, if anything, more reticent than before. And then — then all of a sudden there came over the spirit ot

TWO SOLDIERS.

his dream a marked a*nd wondrous change. He no longer declined invitations to balls, parties, or dinners when he knew that certain persons were to be present. Mabel Vincent had just returned from a year’s tour abroad, and Lieutenant Fred Lane bad fallen in love at first sight.

It was a note from her that made even that dingy old office, on this most dismal of days, fairly glow and shine with a radiance of hope, with a halo of joy and gladness such as his lonely life had never known before. The very first time he ever saw himself addressed as Captain Fred Lane, Eleventh Cavalry, was in her dainty. hand. He turned his chair to the window to read once again the precious words ; but there entered, dripping, a Western Union messenger with a telegram.

Tearing it open, Lane read these words : “ All join in congratulations on your promotion and in wonderment at the colonel’s selection of your successor. Noel is named.”

Lane gave a long whistle of amazement. “ Of all men in the regiment 1” he exclaimed. “ Who would have thought of Gordon Noel ?”

II

The colonel of the Eleventh Cavalry was a gentleman who had some peculiarities of temperament and disposition. This fact is not cited as a thing at all unusual, for the unbiassed testimony of the subalterns and even the troop commanders of every cavalry regiment in service would go far towards establishing the fact that all colonels of cavalry are similarly afflicted. One of the salient peculiarities of the commanding officer of the Eleventh was a conviction that nothing went smoothly in the regiment unless the captains were all on duty with their companies ; for, while at any time Colonel Riggs would approve an application for a lieutenant’s leave of absence, it was worse than pulling teeth to get him to do likewise for a gentleman with the double bars on his shoulder. “ Confound the man !” growled Captain Greene, “ here I’ve been seven years with my troop, saving up for a six months’ leave, and the old rip disapproves it ! What on earth can a fellow say ?”

“ You didn’t go about it right, Greeney,” was the calm rejoinder of a comrade who had been similarly “cut” the year previous. “ You should have laid siege to him through Madame a month or so. What she says as to who goes on leave and who doesn’t is law at head-quarters, and I know it. Now, you watch Noel. That fellow is wiser in

TWO SOLDIERS.

bis generation than all the rest of us put together. It isn’t six months since he got back from his staff detail, and you see how constant he is in his attentions to the old lady. Now, I’ll bet you anything you like the next plum that tumbles into the regiment will go to his maw and nobody else’s/’

“ Riggs wouldn’t have the face to give anything to Noel, — in the way of detached duty, I mean. I heard him say when ‘ Gordy’ was coming back to the regiment that he wished he had the power to transfer subs from troop to troop : he’d put Noel with the most exacting captain he knew and see if he couldn’t get a little square service out of the fellow.”

“ That’s all right, Greene. That’s what he said six months ago, before Noel was really back, and before he had begun doing the devoted to her ladyship at head-quarters. Riggs wouldn’t say so now, — much less do it. She wouldn’t let him, comrade mine ; and you know it.”

“ Noel has been doing first-rate since he got back, Jim,” said Captain Greene, after a pause.

“ Oh, Noel’s no bad soldier in garrison, — at drill or parade. It’s field-work and scouting that knocks him endwise; and if there’s an

Indian within a hundred miles Well, you know as much as I do

on that subject.”

Greene somewhat gloomily nodded assent, and his companion, being wound up for the day, plunged ahead with his remarks :

“Now, I’m just putting this and that together, Greene, and I’ll make you a bet. Riggs has managed things ever since he has been colonel so that a lieutenant is ordered detached for recruiting-service and never a captain. It won’t be long before Lane gets his promotion ; and I’ll bet you that even before he gets it Riggs will have his letter skimming to Washington begging his immediate recall and nominating a sub to take his place. I’ll give you odds on that ; and I’ll bet you even that the sub he names will be Gordy Noel.”

But, though he scouted the idea, Greene would not l>et, for at that instant the club-room was invaded by a rush of young officers just returning from target-practice, and the jolliest laugh, the most allpervading voice, the cheeriest personality, of the lot were those of the gentleman whose name Captain Jim Rawlins had just spoken.

“ What you going to have, fellows ?” he called. “ Here, Billy, old man, put up that spelter : I steered the gang in here, and it’s my treat

TWO SOLDIERS.

Don't go, Forbes ; come back, old fellow, and join ns. Captain, what shall it be? Say, you all know Dick Cassidy of the Seventh? I heard such a good rig on him this morning. I got a letter from Tommy Craig, who's on duty at the War Department, and he told me that Dick was there trying to get one of these blasted college details. What d'ye suppose a cavalryman wants to leave his regiment for, to take a thing like that ?"

“ Perhaps his health is impaired, Noel,'' said Wharton, with a humorous twinkle in his handsome eyes. “Even cavalrymen have been known to have to quit their beloved profession on that account and get something soft in the East for a year or so.”

The color mounted to Noel's cheeks, but he gave no other sign of understanding the shaft as aimed at him. Promptly and loudly as ever he spoke out :

“ Oh, of course, if he's used up in service and has to go in to recuperate, all well and good ; but I always supposed Cassidy was a stalwart in point of health and constitution. Who's going to the doctor's to-night? — you, Jack?”

Jack — otherwise Lieutenant John Tracy — shook his head as he whiffed at the cigarette he had just lighted and then stretched forth his hand for the foaming glass of beer which the attendant brought him, but vouchsafed no verbal reply. Lee and Martin edged over to where the two captains were playing their inevitable game of seven-up. Two of the juniors, — young second lieutenants, — despite the extreme cordiality of Noel's invitation, begged to be excused, as they did not care to drink anything, — even a lemonade ; and no sooner had the party finished their modest potation than there was a general move. Wallace and Hearn went in to the billiard-room; Wharton and Lee started in the direction of their quarters ; and presently Mr. Noel was the only man in the club-room without an occupation of some kind or a comrade to talk to.

Now, why should this have been the case? Noel's whole manner was overflowing with jollity and kindliness; his eyes beamed and sparkled as he looked from one man to the other; he hailed each in turn by his Christian name and in tones of most cordial friendship ; he chatted and laughed and had comical anecdotes to tell the party ; he was a tall, stylish, fine-looking fellow, with expressive dark eyes and wavy dark-brown hair; his moustache was the secret envy of more than half his associates ; his figure was really elegant in its grace

TWO SOLDIERS.

and suppleness ; his uniforms fitted him like a glove, and were invariably of Hatfield’s choicest handiwork. Appearances were with him in every sense of the word ; and yet there was some reason why his society was politely but positively shunned by several of his brother officers and “ cultivated” by none.

It was only a few years after the great war when Gordon Noel joined the Eleventh from civil h*e. He came of an old and influential family, and was welcomed in the regiment as an acquisition. He made friends rapidly, and was for two or three years as popular a youngster as there was in the service. Then the troop to which he was attached was ordered to the Plains, via Leavenworth. It was a long journey by boat, and by the time they reached the old frontier city orders and telegrams were awaiting them, one of which, apparently to Mr. Noel’s great surprise, detached him from his company and directed him to report for temporary duty at the War Department in the city of Washington. He was there eighteen months, during which time his regiment had some sharp battles with the Cheyennes and Kiowas in Kansas and the Indian Territory. Then a new Secretary of War gave ear to the oft-repeated appeals of the colonel of the Eleventh to have Mr. Noel and one or two other detached gentlemen returned to duty with their respective companies, and just as they were moving to the Pacific coast the absentees reported for duty and went along. At Vancouver and Walla Walla Noel seemed to regain by his joviality and good-fellowship what he had lost in the year and a half of his absence, though there were out-and-out soldiers in the Eleventh who said that the man who would stay on “ fancy duty” in Washington or anywhere else while his comrades were in the midst of a stirring campaign against hostile Indians couldn’t be of the right sort.

Up in Oregon the Modoc troubles soon began, and several troops were sent southward from their stations, scouting. There were several little skirmishes between the various detachments and the agile Indians, with no great loss on either side ; but when “ Captain Jack” retired to the natural fastness of the lava-beds, serious work began, and here Mr. Noel was found to be too ill to take part in the campaign, and was sent in to San Francisco to recuperate. The short but bloody war was brought to a close without his having taken part in any of its actions, but he rejoined after a delightful convalescence in San Francisco (where it was understood that he had broken down only after riding night and day and all alone some three hundred miles through

TWO SOLDIERS.

the wilderness with orders to a battalion of his regiment that was urgently needed at the front), and was able to talk very glibly of what had occurred down in the Klamath Lake country. Then came his promotion to a first-lieutenancy, and, as luck would have it, to a troop stationed at the Presidio. For three months he was the gayest of the gay, the life of parties of every kind both in town and in garrison ; he was in exuberant health and spirits ; he danced night after night, and was the most popular partner ever welcomed in the parlors of hospitable San Francisco. And then all of a sudden there came tidings of an outbreak among the Arizona Apaches of so formidable a character that the division commander decided to send his Presidio troopers to reinforce the one regiment that was trying to cover a whole Territory. There was pathetic parting, with no end of lamentation, when Mr. Noel was spirited away with his lynx-eyed captain ; but they need not have worried, — those fair dames and damsels ; not a hair of his handsome head was in danger, for the — th had grappled with and throttled their foes before the detachment from the Eleventh were fairly in the Territory, and the latter were soon ordered to return and to bring with them, as prisoners to be confined at Alcatraz, the leaders of the outbreak, who would be turned over to them by the — th. To hear Noel tell of these fierce captives afterwards was somewhat confusing, as, from his account, it would appear that they had been taken in hand-to-hand conflict by himself and a small detachment of his own troop ; but these were stories told only to over-credulous friends.