Untitled

Auckland Star, Volume XXIII, Issue 288, 3 December 1892, Page 1 (Supplement)

CHAPTER lE.

The northwest winds that had finally banked up the southern clouds and squeezed down a dismal drizzle tho night of Miss Guthrie's departure now veered and whisked away the moist and plashing veil, and the afternoon sunshine of the day that followed streamed across the broad mesa in a flood of grateful warmth and radiance. The colonel ordered out the entire command, to the utter consternation of Mi3s Winifred Berrien and the supreme disgust of some half a dozen junior officers, who, counting on the weather indications at nine a. in., had eagerly accepted Mrs. Berrien's suggestion that they spend their rainy afternoon at the major's hospitable quarters, by way of making it pleasant for two young damsels from town and three or four from the fort itself, all of whom were supposed to be deeply interested and engaged in the embroidery of certain altar cloths, lecturn and pulpit adornments, with which to rejoice the eyes of their amiable chaplain at Christmastide. Here it was well along in November, and beyond a vast amount of chatter and conjecture over the prospective pleasure of the reverend dominie, nothing had been done.

True, the colonel had astonished everybody by ordering out the entire regiment, at least the eight companies thereof present at the post, to parade for inspection and review, equipped for field service, at nine-thirty that morning, and only reluctantly recalled the order when the persistent plashing of the rain warned him that it would take a day or two of sunshine to dry out the clothing and equipments subjected to such a downpour. And then if anything should happen and they should be suddenly called upon to bundle everything right into the waiting train— But, pshaw! the thing wasn't possible; the idea could not be entertained. Of course matters were looking squally, very, squally, up there in the Dakotas, and everybody from Missouri to the mountains .and north of the Platte was already out in the field, and in little detachments from the scattered posts even far away in Mnri__,i_a_ even far in southern Wvom-

ing, the soldiery were converging toward those swarming agencies where thousands of truculent warriors of the great Dakota nation were drawing rations for every man, woman, child and pappoose they possessed. Be it known to the reader that paternalism is rampant in the land—that while peace societies and Indian rights associations and prayerful congregations away at the Atlantic seaboard are deluging the press with diatribes upon the wrongs of the red man and the criminal neglect of the nation, and declaring that

Man's inhumanity to Lo Makes countless Indiana mourn.

in this last "century of dishonor" Uncle Sam has disbursed millions upon millions in the desperately hopeless task of filling the aboriginal stomach, and in striving by means of honest census to reduce the number of the "countless" so pathetically referred to. Indians would make splendid ward politicians, and how it is that the sachems of Tammany have not long since possessed themselves of so available a means of swelling their ranks passeth all understanding. After the Indian had had himself, several wives and his blooming olive branches, "oksheelah, wicincha," boys and girls, and such pappooses as his better halves had at the back (either of home production or borrowed for the moment from the tepee of Two-Bricks-in-his-Hat), duly enumerated, would he not swell the census of his tribe by judicious distribution of all his wives' relations among thos. tepees not already checked off? Oh, if the truth could ever reach the ears of the general public what tales of Indian sagacity might not yet bo in store for them! What annals might not be unfolded! Dealing with his own, his white children, who are nonvoters, Uncle Sam serves out one ration a day to each enlisted soldier.

The wife and the lads and lasses that tumbled about the married men's quarters iii the queer old days were all to be fed from that one ration, unless, perchance, mamma was a laundress. But when dealing with the wronged and injured red man he could not be too magnanimous. Every head counted. The mumbling old beldam, great-grand-mother of "countless thousands," braced up from the edge of the grave for the occasion. The big bellied little four-year-olds, reveling in the dirt about the reeking shambles, the tiny hour-old papoose, even many a puppy, blanket swathed and slung squaw back, passing Eor a wee baby, anything he could show as possessing a spark of Indian life was duly credited to the warrior lord, of the lodge for another ration, a full one. Cattle might and did shrink, but to the Indian there is more meat in a lean cow than in the stall fed ox to the white, for the reason that "everything goes." Horns and hoofs are the only things the Indian doesn't eat.

Agents might and did cheat and steal, but so did the Indian, and many a rejoicing old sinner has been credited with a family of twelve when his sole available domestic assets consisted of two squaws and three children, the papooses having been borrowed or personated by bundled up doggies, the grandmother being public property passed around for the occasion; the others, pickaninnies painted so as to look entirely unlike the grinning urchins counted in the flock of brother Stab-in-the-Dark. whose peoplo. had just been enumerated. There were agents who lent themselves to that sort of thing because the more Indians they could show as their especial wards, the moro barrels and boxes and bales were invoiced to that agency and deftly "raked off" en route. There was a time when the man who wouldn't make hay when such a sun shone was looked upon as an unprofitable servant who couldn't contribute to oampaign funds. "What the devil do you suppose we had you made agent 'way up at Gallatin for?" asked an irate political "boss" of a deposed and crestfallen late incumbent who came home superseded.

"Why, it was you and our congressman who exposed the stealings of my predecessor and had him fired. I supposed you wouldn't stand that sort of thing. I supposed you wanted mo to be perfectly honest."

"Of course we did; but, damn it, you don't seem to understand; he was paying to the other party."

But railways and telegraphs have brought all this, or much of it, within range, so to speak. Things have changed, except perhaps human nature, white or Indian. There has been failure to provide for carrying out the earnest recommendations of the best friend the Indian has known for years—the man whose word was his bond, whom they feared in war and loved and trusted in peace. There has been shrinkage both in the cattle and the count. No matter how much beef might shrivel on tho hoof in the old days, the Sioux, if he were at all sharp, got more than was his share, and most of the Sioux were as sharp as their knives. Other tribes might have starved and suffered, but not they. With the new order of tilings came full stomachs for hosts of other aborigines, but fault finding for these Dakotas. No more "tepee counts;" on the contrary heads of families paraded their entire fores, and while enumerators with book and pencil went along the front of the line, Uncle Sam's bluecoats on tha border keenly watched the rear and put sudden stop to all sham and swapping. Now the shrinkage came to be privation, and, turning in appeal to the general who headed the great commission and won their faith, appealing to Crook for the remedies congress had utterly failed to provide, their hearts were bowed with the tidings that the Great Spirit had summoned the "Gray Fox" to happier hunting grounds.

Then was there no other appeal? One —one which had never failed to wring from the government the concession desired. Old chiefs might plead in vain, but the blood of the young warriors is hot and strong, the lust for reputation as vehement as of yore. Every brave stood ripe for action, and no Indian leader ever equaled in craft, in cunning. in adroitness the scowling old sinner Sitting Bull, and no man need doubt that it was he who gave the cue. Every medicine man in the Dakota Nation began to preach the coming of the Messiah, but the Messiah craze was only tho means to an end. Un-koi-to, the Indian redeemer—he who ordained that his children should prepare themselves by the savage rites of the ghost dance to meet him and all their dead ancestry and with them wipe the paleface from the landV-Un-koi-to was a fraud of the first water, a masquerading scamp of a white man at odds with his own kind, and progressive Indians knew it. But even to such a saviour. •stH-sn urged Vy

the charlatans in every village, the superstitious nature of the red man turned in eager adulation, and the ghastly, maddening dance went on.

Night after night all over the broad northwest the skies were aglow with the Indian fires. The vault of the heavens echoed to the sound of frenzied shriek and yell and the furious beat of the Indian drum. It is but a step from the ghost dance to the scalp dance—from Indian worship to Indian war. A year ago in every valley of beautiful South Dakota cattle were browsing on the bunch grass, settlers plowing on the plains.women sewing and singing under the new raised roof trees, and gleeful children playing in the golden heaps of corn. Now the plow stands idle in the abandoned furrow, the cattle have gone, to make up, presumably, for the reservation shrinkage; women's songs have changed to sobs, children's laughter hushed to terrified silence, as the settlers seek the refuge of the towns. New red glare in the sky at night, and the new ranch house lights the way of many a savage warrior, bound with arms and ponies to swell the hostile ranks in the mazes of the Bad Lands.

"God only knows how soon it may come," read Farquhar, but a week before, "but 1 think you would better be with your command," Farquhar relinquished his shooting trip and at once got him home. He could not bear to tell his people, in the happiest garrison the regiment had ever known, that perhaps it might be as well to drop tbe plans for the cavalry ball and the Christmas theatricals, the cherished projects for the coming holidays, He hated to have any one ask him if he (•bought there were not just a chancejust a chance—of their being ordered up there. But even before he left he and Berrien had been talking the matter over. The idea was to always have the regiment ready for anything, and it did seem as though with all the sum rner and fall marching and scouting and maneuvering in the field they were, as the Englishmen would say, "pretty fit," Fit, certainly, for any amount of scouting or fighting on the southern plains, and yet utterly unprepared for the rigors of a Dakota winter. Any colonel who, serving in Arizona or in the Indian Territory, was to apply for canvas overcoats, blanket lined, for fur caps gloves, boots, leggings, etc., intended only for service in the high latitudes would have been laughed at, if not snubbed. Farquhar decided'it best not to let any of the women worry over a possibility. No use borrowing trouble he said. Long years had the regiment served in that wintry land. Fierce and incessant had been its campaigns against the Indians. Dire had been its suffer ings and losses. Only recently—only within the year—had they reached this paradise, with its hazy landscape, its lovely, peaceful homes, its kindliness and greeting yet warm in remembrance the edge of its cheer still new and unworn.

And then Xenyon came back from leave, a burly major of foot who had beon visiting at his old home in Chicago and was reported to be wearing the willow for a girl who had but just married a mere junior first lieutenant in the Eleventh, their predecessors along thi. lino. It might be that Kenyon was cross and crabbed. The youngsters called him "grnmbly" at first acquaintance. It might be that he was so hipped and unhappy himself he could not beat' to see tho bliss and content on every face about him. He and Rolfe were con genial spirit,., said tho boys, for "both of them got left." But Kenyon, close mouthed as he was at times, bad watched things a day or two and then had given Farquhar a "pointer." He had heard something, he said, at division head quarters. Hence the order for "turn out everybody, field kits and fifty rounds."

The maddest, man at mess at one-thir-ty was Mr. Carroll Brewster—"Curly B" his comrades called him in the year. gone by, when he had much kink to the blond hair of his handsome head, and not a vestige thereof to the down on hi" lip. Now, as first lieutenant of the "Black Troop," with a mustache all bristle and curl, and with a pate where on the curls were cropped to regulation lines, he was a very different sort of fel low. All the morning long ho had sat on a garrison sourt, where as "swing member" he had not enough to do to keep him from brooding over his woes. Ho had counted on spending the hours from two until stables basking in the light of those wonderful, deep, dark eyes of Miss Winifred Berrien. Somewhat petted and spoiled in his earlier years of service, Brewster had had much of the nonsense knocked out of him in the harsh experiences of seven years in tho saddle with a regiment renowned for its touch-and-go sort of work. He had steadied greatly in those years, part of the process being due to his own latent good sense, and not a little thereof to incessant striving on the range to win high honors as a sharpshooter, and today there was not a finer looking soldier wearing the broad yellow stripes in the Twelfth than^ this same ex-dandy "Curly Brewster."

Thero still lingered about him a certain repute for self consciousness, if not for actual conceit, but he had grown to be thoroughly respected in the regi' ment and was vastly popular with the men. He was ever ready to umpire their matches at baseball, coach their shooting, lend his own fishing tackle or shotguns to longing sportsmen in the ranks who had none of their own and he had won the lasting gratitude of C troop, two of whose men were being mobbed by a gang of tough* one windy night in Sheridan City just as Curly came trotting back en route to the post. "He was off his horse and into that crowd quicker than winking," said Murphy, "and the way he laid over that gang with them white fists of his just made my sides crack with delight." He had more s9nso than they gave him credit for, said the sen iors of the regiment after a while, and barring an early experience, a cadet love affair that he was long ago well over, had never let himself go again--never until the Twelfth came to settle in this happy valley and Winifred Ber rien returned from her eastern school Then he went all of a sudden. Only one man did not see it; that was Berrien Only one woman couldn't forgive his devotion, and she had no business inter fering, being herself otherwise disposed of.

To his credit be it said, Brewster and the Lady's husband were about the only men who appeared unaware of this an tuninal i_f%tp_v^i<m. Nevertheless^ in

those numberless ways in wmcn women can claim and secure the appearance, at least, of attention from men, the dame had managed to monopolize considerable of his spare time up to the week of Miss Berrien's coming, after which it was not he who rode to town, but she who drove out to the post and sent for him to come and talk to her as she leaned back in her stylish victoria and looked up at him from under her tinted lashes. She could have found it in her heart to strangle the lovely girl so darkly, richly beautiful, but her call upon "the ladies" had been returned when she was conspicuously absent from home, and opportunities for meeting were not afforded by the damsel's parents. There were girls at the post who were quick to see how "Antinous" had lost his heart; but these, those at least who were near enough to Winifred to dare allude to the matter at all, were content to archly quote the warning—

Change the name and not the letter, Marry for worse and not for better.

There was one man with whom Brewster was at odds, a sentiment due to an old difference when both were younger and that was Rolfe. There was one man the gallant major especially liked and swore by, and that was Rolfe, These facts, added to the coincidence that the captain had never forgotten the hot words used by his second lieutenant long years before, made a combination most unfortunate for a fellow so much in love as was Carroll Brewster.

On this particular morning he had striven to hurry matters through on the court—to try three or four cases where the accused were only too ready to plead guilty and "throw themselves on the mercy," etc., and then adjourn on the specious plea of giving the judge advocate time to write up the proceedings. But the president of the tribunal had other views and held him. Brewster knew that Randolph and Hunt and Ridgeway, perhaps others, had taken advantage of the weather and no drill to slip over to Berrien's for a blithe morning hour with the girls. He could imagine that pretty parlor, with its pictures and piano, its attractive curtains and portieres, the group of bright, sweet faces, the animated chat, Winifred herself, in her dark, rich beauty, seated at the piano, with Ridgeway hanging over her, eager to turn the leaves, eager to do anything that might keep him at her side. Confound the fellow Ihe had money and a handsome old family homestead. What business had he roughing it in the cavalry, with no end of chances of getting his head knocked off, when his doting mother was so eager to have him come home, marry, settle down and take up the management of the property his father had left him two years before? Poor "Curly!" he could only gaze wistfully out across the dripping parade from his seat in the dark courtroom and watch the glinting of the firelight on tho Berriens' parlor window. The major loved a broad fireplace and a hickory blaze, and hero he had them to his heart's content for the first time in full twenty years of army wanderings. How must that firelight enhance the coziness and comfort of the scene within! How must it be flickering about the dark masses of her lustrous hair at this very moment! How

"How do you vote, Brewster? Are your wits wool gathering?"

He pulled himself together as best he could, but that was a morning of torment. And now to think that, after all, he could have no moment at her side this day! To think that Farquhar should have ordered them out for hours of pottering around at saddlebags, nosebags, side lines, lariats, picket pins and all that sort of truck! It wa3 simply barbarous. He curbed his tongue as well as he knew how, for plainly he saw that his chums were mischievously exulting over him, but any one who knew Brewster could see his wrath and discomfiture. The announcement was made just before luncheon was over. The adjutant came bolting in with the order, and shutting his ears to the chorus of expletives.

"What time did you say boots and saddles would sound?" fiercely demanded Randolph.

"In a quarter of an hour; so you've no time to waste saying swear words or asking damn fool questions. And as for you, Curly, you're for guard tomorrow."

Brewster finished his cup of tea in an undignified gulp, quitting the table and the room in three strides. There was just time to scurry over to Berrien's and see her for five minutes before he had to jump back to his quarters and into riding boots, etc. Any pretext would answer—the dance tonight, for instance.

"Get my field rig ready at once and bring my horse up here in ten minutes," he called to his servant, slashed at his natty uniform with a whisk broom and bounded out of the door, only to encounter the man of all others he least cared to see coming in.

"'Were you just going, Brewster? There is a matter I want very much to ask you about, and I thought this the time to catch you without fail." -. The voice was that of Captain Rolfe.

"I am just going out, captain, and I'm hurried, but if you will step hi I'll be back in ten minutes."

"Well-1, ordinarily, I would not detain you, and-d, pardon me, if you wero going to Major Berrien's, they are all at luncheon. I have just left there."

Brewster flushed in spite of his effort at control. His first impulse was to say he was going over anyhow, if only to leave word, but, since he could not hope to see her, what was the use? It chafed him, however, to note that Rolfe, in that calmly superior way of his, was pressing on into the hall, as much as to say, "It is my will that you give up what you have in view and attend at once to my behest," just as though Brewster were still his second lieutenant, instead of First Lieutenant Brewster, commanding the "Black Horse" troop. It must be confessed that there was about Rolfe an intangible something that ever seemed to give that impression to the juniors. It was one of the things that set their teeth on edge, as they expressed it, and set them against him. Feeling as he did toward tho captain and exasperated at the way in which events seemed conspiring against him, Brewster threw open his door.

"Walk in, as I said, captain. Make yourself at home. I wish to go into Haddock's a moment, and will be right back." It wasn't that he had anything to say to Haddock, but Haddock had succeeded him as second lieutenant of Rolfe's troop, and was no fonder of his __■____, self willed oommander than Cnr-

ly himself had been, it was simply that he would not yield a moral victory to Rolfe, and that in naming Haddock he knew he gave at least a slight return for the annoyance afforded him by the captain's untimely call.

Giving no sign whatever as Brewster sprang away down the steps the captain passed on into the plainly furnished sitting room. Already McCann was busy hauling out the lieutenant's field boots, breeches and overcoat, whisking off tho dust and indulging in Milesian comment as he did so. At sight of Rolfe he abruptly ceased, bustled forward and offered the captain a chair, and a moment later bolted across the hall to perform similar services in overhauling and dusting Mr. Randolph's possessions.

Left to himself, Rolfe wearily turned to the mantel, and without show of interest glanced over the various photographs there displayed. They wer« mainly of army friends, young fellow? in whom he felt slight interest at any time and none at all now. So were those in the basket on the round table. Brewster was popular, if one were to judga by the array of pictures that had been sent to him by their prototypes. Then there was a large, handsome album lying open on the desk near the window. Turning listlessly thither Rolfe gave a ehrug of the shoulders, something almost like a shudder, at sight of the photograph which lay-uppermost, a cabinet portrait, highly burnished and finished, of an exuberant woman in evening dress. In that neighborhood everybody knew her by sight. He himself had received invitations in her hand to lunch or to dinner. He knew the writing of the note that lay beside the album, first page uppermost, He would have had no eyes at all had he not seen the "Carroll, mon ami," with which it began. With a shiver of disgust he whirled over a page of the album, as though to cover and hide the beguiling face, the betraying words, and then Brewster came bounding back and in. Rolfe's hand was still on the album as he turned to face him.

The eyes of the two men met, and again Brewster flushed hotly. He remembered that only in the morning'-l mail had the large packet arrived containing this unasked for and unexpected addition to his portrait gallery. He had not opened it until after court—had not more than glanced at the photograph even then, beautiful as it was from aa artistic point of view. Then that note, and that idiotic, semisen-hnental beginning! She had never called him Carroll, but in certain evasive, insinnating, in—well, we have no word for it in all the vocabulary of the United States—in a way he could not but see and co-old not find a way to object to, she had been lately verging in that direction. It was, "Now, Mr. Carroll Brewster," or "my good friend Carroll," or "Sir Carroll," or in some way Carroll; but here was an out and out Carroll, tho first of the kind. A month before he might not have flinched; now he shrank from tha mere idea of familiarity of the faintest kind. He had been striving to out loose from her in every possible way, but hers was a friendship that "clung closer than a brother," and just as sure as shooting Rolfe must have seen that infernal picture, those misleading words. Brewster read it in Rolf c's calm brown eyes, but he would not discuss matters with him, much less stoop to explain.

"You wish to see me, captain. Will you take a seat?"

"No. What I have to ask need oconpy but little time, and the Gall will sound in a moment or two. lam going to ask you a question, and as man to man I want you to answer it." He paused, as though awaiting submissive reply.

"And the question?" asked Brewster, finally and unyielding.

"I was in hopes you would assure me of a readiness to answer. Whatsoever have been the differences between us in the past, you can never accuse me of having pried into your affairs, and the question I wish to ask is one of deep importance to myself, and its answer cannot, I believe, unpleasantly involve you." And still Brewster stood silent, the blue eye 3 looking straight into the brown. "I will not prolong matters unnecessarily. What I desire to know, Mr. Brewster, is this*. Have you or have yon not some knowledge of the past history of Sergeant Ellis?" '"

"Pardon me, Captain Rolfe, but I do not see how that can concern yon in the least."

"I have stated substantially that it did," was the quiet reply, after a moment's thought. "It concerns me very deeply. I need to know something of his antecedents. I have reason to ask, and I repeat my question."

There was a painful pause. Then Brewster spoke firmly:

"Captain Rolfe, it is a question I re* fuse to answer."

[to be continued.]