A Trooper Galahad. Charles King
then he turned, entered the building, and paused with hopeless eyes and pallid, careworn features at the office doorway. His old single-breasted captain's frock-coat, with its tarnished silver leaves at the shoulders, hung loosely about his shrunken form. The trousers, with their narrow welt of yellow at the seam, looked far too big for him. His forage-cap, still natty in shape, was old and worn. His chin and cheeks bristled with a stubbly grayish beard. All the old alert manner was gone. The once bright eyes were bleary and dull. Neighbors said that poor Ned had been drinking deep of the contents of a demijohn a sympathetic soul had sent him, and half an eye could tell that his lip was tremulous. The colonel arose and held out his hand.
"Come in, Lawrence, old fellow, and tell me what I can do for you." He spoke kindly, and Brooks, too, turned towards the desolate man.
"You've done—all you could—both of you. God bless you!" was the faltering answer. "I've come to say I start at once. I'm going right to Washington to have this straightened out. I want to thank you, colonel, and you too, Brooks, for all your willing help. I'll try to show my appreciation of it when I get back."
"But Ada and little Jim, Lawrence; surely they're not ready for that long journey yet," said Frazier, thinking sorrowfully of what his wife had told him only the day before,—that they had no decent winter clothing to their names.
"It's all right. Old Mammy stays right here with them. She has taken care of them, you know, ever since my poor wife died. I can keep my old quarters a month, can't I?" he queried, with a quivering smile. "Even if the order isn't revoked, it would be a month or more before any one could come to take my place. Mrs. Blythe will look after the children day and night."
Frazier turned appealingly to Brooks, who shook his head and refused to speak, and so the colonel had to.
"Lawrence, God knows I hate to say one word of discouragement, but I fear—I fear you'd better wait till next week's stage and take those poor little folks with you. I've watched this thing. I know how a dozen good fellows, confident as yourself, have gone on to Washington and found it all useless."
"It can't be useless, sir," burst in the captain, impetuously. "Truth is truth and must prevail. If after all my years of service I can find no friends in the War Office, then life is a lie and a sham. Senator Hall writes me that he will leave no stone unturned. No, colonel, I take the stage at noon to-day. Will you let Winn ride with me as far as Castle Peak? I've got to run down and see Fuller now."
"Winn can go with you, certainly; but indeed, Lawrence, I shall have to see you again about this."
"I'll stop on the way back," said Lawrence, nervously. "Fuller promised to see me before he went out to his ranch." And hastily the captain turned away.
For a moment the two seniors stood there silently gazing into each other's eyes. "What can one do or say?" asked the colonel, at last. "I suppose Fuller is going to let him have money for the trip. He can afford to, God knows, after all he's made out of this garrison. But the question is, ought I not to make poor Lawrence understand that it's a gone case? He is legally out already. His successor is on his way here. I got the letter this morning."
"On his way here? Who is he?" queried the major, in sudden interest. "They didn't know when Stone came through San Antonio ten days ago."
"Man named Barclay; just got his captaincy in the 30th,—but was consolidated out of that, of course."
"Barclay—Barclay, you say?" ejaculated the major, in excitement. "Well, of all the——"
"Of all the what?" demanded the colonel, impatiently. "Nothing wrong with him, I hope."
"Wrong? No, or they wouldn't have dubbed him Galahad. But, talk about ups and downs in Texas, this beats all. Does Winn know?"
"I don't know that any one knows but you and me," answered the veteran, half testily. "What's amiss? What has Winn to do with it?"
"Blood and blue blazes! Why, of course you couldn't know. Three years ago Barclay believed himself engaged to a girl, and she threw him over for Winn, and now we'll have all three of them right here at Worth."
CHAPTER II.
In spite of what Colonel Frazier could say, Captain Lawrence had gone the long and devious journey to Washington. Those were the days when the lumbering stage-coach once a week, or a rattling ambulance, bore our army travellers from the far frontier to San Antonio. Another trundled and bumped them away to the Gulf. A Morgan Line steamer picked them up and tossed and rolled with them to the mouth of the Mississippi and unloaded them at New Orleans, whence by dusty railway journey of forty-eight hours or more they could hope to reach the North. The parting between Lawrence and his tall slip of a daughter and boisterous little Jimmy was something women wept over in telling or hearing, for only two looked on, well-nigh blinded,—Mrs. Blythe, who had been devoted to their mother, and old "Mammy," who was devoted to them all. A month had rolled by, and the letters that came from Lawrence from San Antonio and Indianola and New Orleans had been read by sympathizing friends to the children. Then all awaited the news from Washington. Every one knew he would wire to Department Head-Quarters the moment the case was settled in his favor; but the days went by without other tidings, and the croakers who had predicted ill success were mournfully happy. February passed, March was ushered in; orders came transferring certain portions of Frazier's big command, and certain new officers began to arrive to fill the three or four vacancies existing, but the new captain of Troop "D" of the cavalry had not yet appeared. His fame, however, had preceded him, and all Fort Worth was agog to meet him. Brooks knew but a modest bit of his story, and what he knew he kept from every man but Frazier, yet had had to tell his wife. The Winns were silent on the subject. Winn himself was a man of few intimates,—a young first lieutenant of cavalry,—and the tie that bound him to Lawrence was the fact that he and Kitty Tyrrell were first-cousins, their mothers sisters, and Winn, a tall, athletic, slender fellow, frank, buoyant, handsome, and connected with some of the best names in the old army, was one of the swells of his class at the Point and the beau among all the young officers the summer of his graduation,—the summer that Laura Waite, engaged to Brevet Captain Galbraith Barclay of the Infantry, came from the West to visit relatives at that enchanting spot, spent just six weeks there, and, after writing letters all one month to close her absent lover's eyes, wound up by writing one that opened them. She was a beautiful girl then; she was a lovely-looking woman now, but the bloom was gone. The brilliant eyes were often clouded, for Harry Winn was "his aunt Kitty all over," said many a man who knew them both. Their name was impecuniosity. That Mrs. Winn could tell much about the coming captain letters from other regiments informed more than one bright woman at Worth; but that the young matron would tell next to nothing, more than one woman, bright or blundering, discovered on inquiry. Only one officer now at the post had ever served with Barclay, and that was Brooks, who became tongue-tied so soon as it was settled beyond peradventure that Captain Galbraith Barclay from the unassigned list had been gazetted to the 12th Cavalry, Troop "D," vice Lawrence, honorably discharged. But Brooks had letters, so had Frazier, from old officers who had served with the transferred man. Some of these letters referred to him in terms of admiration, while another spoke of him unhesitatingly as "more kinds of a damned fool" than the writer had ever met. Verily, various men have various minds.
Presently, however, there came a man who could tell lots about Barclay, whether he knew anything or not, and that was one of the new transfers, Lieutenant Hodge by title and name. Hodge said he had served with the 30th along the Union Pacific, and had met Barclay often. In his original regiment Mr. Hodge had been regarded as a very monotonous sort of man, a fellow who bored his hearers to death, and the contrast between his reception in social circles in the regiment he had left, and that accorded him here at Worth so soon as it was learned that he knew Barclay, inspired Mr. Hodge to say that these people were worth knowing; they had some life and intelligence about them. The gang he had left in Wyoming were a stupid lot of owls by comparison. For a week Hodge was invited to dinner by family after family, and people dropped in to spend the evening where he happened to be, for Hodge held the floor