Under Fire. Charles King
way I know how," said Cranston.
And so they parted. She infinitely comforted, he oddly impressed. But Mrs. Barnard felt that fate was still against her and her boy when, four weeks later, flashed the news of savage battle with the Sioux, of Captain Cranston shot through the body and fearfully wounded in the fierce encounter.
CHAPTER II.
Fifty seats in the parquette had been reserved for the members of the class graduated from West Point on the beautiful morning of the 12th of June. The brilliant auditorium was thronged with friends of the young fellows. Officers of the Academy were seated in the boxes, interested no more in the play than in the enjoyment of "the boys" just released from their four years of hard study and rigid discipline. Two of the chairs were vacant almost until the close of the first act, then their owners came in.
"You fellows have missed a heap of fun," whispered a classmate. Then a burst of laughter and applause drowned his words. "All the same we didn't miss the train," was the reply as soon as the new-comer could make himself heard, after the lowering of the curtain. "Poor old Dad! It wasn't easy to let him go."
"What took him off in such a devil of a hurry? We counted on his being with us at the last supper."
"Oh, the Parson don't take much stock in last suppers—of this kind," answered the other in no irreverence of spirit, for the young fellow spoke in genuine earnestness; "still, he couldn't have gone back on us if it hadn't been for bad news from home."
"What, his mother?"
"No—o. It's a girl. He said he had to go."
"Ah, yes, we knew all along he was engaged, though he never said anything about it. Parson never struck me as being one of the spoony kind."
"No, he wasn't a bit. He wrote to her every week, but her letters kept coming all the time—regular continued stories; but he wouldn't stand chaffing about them and didn't fancy remarks, so I quit."
"Know anything about her? Ever see her picture?"
"Once, by accident—a mighty pretty girl, too—but he never talked about her; it wasn't his way. We lived together the last two years, and I reckon there isn't anything I didn't tell him. I remember how you all laughed at the idea of my taking up with 'Parson' Davies, but he's pure gold."
"There's no discount on that, Jimmy; but what a time it took to find it out! If it weren't for the riding-hall we never would have known how much there was to him. There may be some prettier riders than Parson, but he's all round the best horseman in the class. What on earth did he choose the infantry for?"
"Something about that girl, I reckon. Looks to me as though he were going to get married before he joined the regiment."
"Sacrificing himself and his profession for the sake of a spoons, is it? Well, thank God, I'm not in love, and I wish he weren't."
Meantime the subject of this cadet chat, a tall, slender, serious-faced young fellow, was sitting in one of the crowded cars of the night express whistling away up the shores of the Hudson, shadowy yet familiar, fifty miles to the hour. His new civilian dress—donned that morning for the first time—bore something of the cadet about it in its trim adjustment to the lines of his erect, even gaunt figure. He sat very straight, looking silently across the aisle out on the starlit river to his left, and holding on his knees the new dark-blue cape and an old travelling-bag. A lone woman in search of a seat had entered the car at Harlem and passed by a dozen unsympathetic travellers, who made no move to share the seat over which they sprawled aggressively. The first to lift his satchel and make way for her was the tall, thin-faced young man in the straw hat and pepper-and-salt suit. He rose and offered her the inner half, which she accepted gratefully, then thanked him in broken English for stowing her various bundles in the rack above.
The conductor looked oddly at him as he unrolled his ticket.
"Going through? Don't you want a sleeper?"
"How much is a single berth to Chicago?"
"Five dollars."
"No. I'll get along here."
Not until they reached Albany, after midnight, had he a seat to himself. Meantime, finding his companion overcome by drowsiness and her poor old head bobbing helplessly, he rolled his new cloak cape into a sort of pillow, wedged it between her and the window seat, and bade her use it. As they came in view of the brightly-lighted station she awoke with a start and made a spring for her belongings. She had slept soundly ever since they left Poughkeepsie, and was again profuse in gratitude. "We stay here several minutes," said Mr. Davies. "Let me help you with your bundles." And, unheeding her protest, he marched off with a bird-cage and a big band-box. A burly German made a rush for the car the moment she appeared upon the platform and lifted her off with vehement osculatory welcome, Davies standing silently and patiently by the while, then surrendering her traps to her legal protector. "He is such a kind young man," said the smiling frau. "He gif me his seat. We have a sohn, yust so old as you," she added, "but he is farder as Chick-ago. He is a soldier, out by Fort Larmie."
"Yes?" said Davies, smiling. "Then perhaps I'll see him some day. I expect to be out there before long."
"And you are a soldier, too! Ach Gott! ein offizier?" she exclaimed, in consternation, born of German associations.
"Not yet, though I suppose I shall be very soon. What is your boy's regiment?"
And, jabbering excitedly now, both at once, the two old people began pouring their tale into his ears; told their boy's name—"He was a gorboral alretty,"—and they were justly proud, and Davies made them happy by noting the name and company in his book and giving his own, though he explained that he was not yet a lieutenant, only a just-graduated cadet, but that if ever he found the corporal, he said, he should tell him of his pleasant meeting with the old folks, and then, after a cup of coffee at the restaurant counter, he returned to his own thoughts and the car.
Soon they were spinning up along the shining Mohawk, and still his eyelids would not close. In his waistcoat-pocket lay a bulky letter, the last of many in the same superscription—a prim, unformed, school-girlish hand—that had come to him during the last two years of his cadet life. Its predecessors, carefully wrapped and tied, were in the old trunk somewhere ahead among the baggage. In his hand again was the telegram that, reaching him at the moment when he was bidding adieu to the academic shades he had grown so deeply to love, had determined him in the already half-formed resolution to cut loose from his comrades and the class festivities in New York and take the first train for the far West.
"Urbana, June 12.
"Doctor says come quick. Almira worse.
"B."
"B" was Almira's elder sister. Urbana, the home of his boy- and her girlhood, the home where his father lived and died, pastor of the village flock, a man whose devotion and patriotism during the great war had won for himself the friendship of the leaders of the armies of the West and for his only son, years afterwards, the prize of a cadetship at West Point. Deeply religious in every fibre of his soul, the chaplain had labored among the hospitals in the field from first to last, and died not long after the close of the historic struggle, a martyr to the cause. He died poor, too, as such men ever die, laying up no treasures upon earth, where moth and rust and thieves are said to lessen treasure there accumulated, yet where its accumulation seems the chief end of man not spiritually constituted as was Davies, who was imposed upon by every beat and beggar, tramp and drab, within reachable distance of Urbana. Far and wide had spread abroad the words of his personal creed—that he would rather it were recorded against him that he had been duped a million times than that one human being had left his door hungering. His widow was not only merely penniless, she was helpless but for the strong arms of her son, who slaved for her as the father had slaved for the Union. Those were the days when pensions were few. It was too soon after the war, and facts were fresher in men's minds. Percy did all