One soft spring morning, some two weeks later, a little knot of officers had gathered about the Cranstons' quarters at the cantonment. Under an awning of tent flies they were conning the papers that had just reached them and eagerly discussing their contents. Mrs. Cranston, a shade of anxiety on her winsome, sunburned face, was glancing quickly from one speaker to another. Through the open door-way in the cool interior Miss Loomis could be seen bending over the boys as they fidgeted at their books. Neither felt like studying this day of days, for absorbing news, and lots of it, had come. To begin with, a general court-martial had been ordered to meet at Omaha for the trial of Captain Devers, Eleventh Cavalry, and officers of high rank and distinction were to be his judges. With Atherton as president of the court there could be no "monkey business," said Mr. Sanders, by which that young gentleman was understood to mean that there would be no trifling with the subject. It was noticeable that neither Riggs nor Winthrop was of the detail, an omission readily understood, as Devers would unquestionably object, as was his privilege, to either or both on the ground of bias, prejudice, or malice, which, whether sustained or not, would lead to their asking to be excused from serving and so reducing the array. The court had been ordered from division head-quarters by the lieutenant-general himself, and its members, as a rule, were summoned from distant posts and commands, so as to preclude the possibility of the accused captain saying it was "packed" from the ranks of his enemies. In other words, except Atherton, the court was made up entirely of officers who had taken no part in the campaign of the previous summer. It was understood that the charges were grave and numerous; rumors of misconduct in the face of the enemy, disobedience of orders, misrepresentation of facts, etc., being among the items mentioned. Major Warren had been summoned from abroad a month earlier than he had planned to come. Colonel Peleg Stone and Mr. Leonard had both been notified that they would be required as witnesses, so had Captains Cranston, Truman and Hay, Lieutenants Boynton, Hastings and Davies. The court could not meet before mid-May because several of the members came from the department of Dakota, far up the Missouri, but that it was to be a "clinch" at last was the generally expressed sentiment. Devers had run to the end of his tether, said Boynton, unfeelingly. "I could add a charge or two myself if I didn't know he was loaded with them so deep that he can't stagger." Boynton, limping still, had come back to resume command of the agency guard, for Davies's wound had proved deep and serious. He had been stabbed by Red Dog after that warrior was raised to his feet, after Cranston's skirmishers had swept the field, after Davies thought the struggle at an end, and was unprepared for the stealthy blow. Nothing but Brannan's vigilance, and the warning cry which caused the lieutenant to turn in the nick of time, had saved his life. Red Dog in irons lay in the log guard-house. Thunder Hawk, on parole,—for White had dared the wrath of the bureau and refused to let McPhail have him,—walked the garrison at will. Mr. Davies, still weak and languid, lay in the big hospital tent, really the most comfortable dwelling at the station, now that the weather was growing warm, and there, attended by Burroughs and ministered to by a pathetically pretty wife (who had somewhat recovered from her panic, now that she was within the stockade of a military post with lots of men around to watch her and be fascinated), was on the road to speedy convalescence. He was being allowed occasional visitors, and while his own comrades vied in their attentions, nothing could exceed the anxiety of old White, the major commanding. Twice did he have Thunder Hawk recount to him the details of Davies's calm courage in this second daring capture, red-handed, of the rebellious chief, and White went to Cranston like the blunt, outspoken campaigner that he was.

"It begins to look to me," said he, "as if this young fellow had been most damnably backbitten. You can haul Devers before a court, but what can we do with these women?"

"You have never told me, major, what these women had to say against him."

"And I'm not going to," said White. "When a man's ashamed of having believed a mean story, the sooner he buries it the better. Men like him don't go round abusing their own wife or insulting anybody else's. It's my belief that the swarm that buzzes around the throne there at Mrs. Pegleg's ought to be muzzled, and if the old man hadn't lost his grip in this seizure he's had, I'd tell him so."

But this seizure of Pegleg's had indeed proved a serious matter. So far from recovering his accustomed spirits, the old colonel seemed to grow feebler and less inclined to move about with every day. One morning he sent word to Captain Devers that he would not leave his bed, as he felt too weak, and that night it was that Leonard got back from Chicago. When told by Pollock, who met him at the railway station, that Devers was again in command, Leonard stepped into the telegraph-office and wrote a message which he showed to nobody. Within thirty-six hours Lieutenant Archer of the department staff reached Fort Scott with orders from the general commanding. Captain Pollock was placed in command of the post and Devers in close arrest. The next day Mr. Langston came out from Braska and was closeted an hour with Leonard at the adjutant's office, and then, taking advantage of a returning escort and ambulance, the civilian lawyer left for the agency. Even while the group of officers at Cranston's was eagerly discussing the news, he had made his bow to a deeply blushing Mira over at the hospital tent, and was seated by Davies's side. "Business first, pleasure afterwards," hummed Cranston to himself when he heard of the arrival, and noted how Meg's bright eyes dilated.

"Business, indeed!" thought she. "I know the business that brings him here, despite Agatha's assumption of sublime indifference."

But grave though some of the older faces grew as the news was read, and eager and excited as were some of the younger, it was not because of the long-prophesied trial of Captain Devers. The papers, letters, and despatches were full of detail of the serious condition of affairs to the northwest. Inspired by the success of the Sioux in their grand uprising of the previous year, and reasoning that they had little to lose and everything to gain by similar methods, a big tribe had cut loose from its reservation and taken the field, one band of it prudently massacring all the white men to be found in their neighborhood as necessary preliminary to the move. This was bad to begin with, but worse was to follow. The other agencies were overrun by a number of young Indians of what might be termed the unreconstructed class, and these, excited by reports brought in by runners from the openly hostile, were slipping off in scores to join them. Already had the epidemic struck McPhail's "angels." Already had Mac, with long face and longer story, been up to see Major White and beg for cavalry to be sent in pursuit. White said it was preposterous. The renegades had two or three days' start to begin with, and if pursued, all they had to do was to hide in the Bad Lands and pick off their pursuers. Cavalry could only go there in single file. Ten Indians could hold the narrow, tortuous trail against ten hundred troops. Relations were strained between Mac and the military anyhow. Everybody knew by this time that he had lied about Boynton and Davies, and had striven to make it appear, and with no little success, too, so far as Eastern newspapers were concerned, that all the turbulence and rioting at Ogallalla was caused by the arrogance of the army. Then Mac pointed out that if something weren't done to drive those renegades back, all the young braves over at the big reservation beyond the Mini Ska would follow suit. Already the cattlemen were complaining. Already settlers were drifting in to Pawnee station and Minden on the railway to the west, and besieging old Tintop at regimental head-quarters at Fort Ransom, and stirring up "screamers" in the columns of the infantile dailies at Butte and Braska, alleging apathy on part of the authorities and cowardice on that of the cavalry. Already letters had passed between the officers of the Eleventh at the cantonment and their comrades at Ransom. "If we have to take the field again this summer let us try to get together as a regiment and not be split up in all manner of crowds," was the cry. What Cranston and Truman dreaded, too, was that they might be squadroned with some of the —th under Major Chrome. The —th was all right, but Chrome was so horribly slow that his own comrades chafed under his command, and Atherton really wanted him to retire and get "a live man" in his place. Truman, Hay, and Cranston felt certain that it would not be a fortnight before they were ordered into the field. Tintop and Gray were sure of it. Captain Fenton and others at Ransom were talking of sending their families East, and now the question that agitated Cranston was, what to do with his dear ones? It was all well enough to have them at the cantonment while the cavalry were there, but with all the troops in the field except a single company of infantry, he did not dare leave them. They must go back to Scott.

No wonder then that Mrs. Cranston's bonny face was clouded this sweet spring morning. No wonder the boys could not pin their vagrant thoughts to the books before them while snatches of the low, eager talk came drifting in through the open door. No wonder Miss Loomis went about her work with conscious effort, but when told of the arrival of Robert Langston, the woman in her knew he would not go until he had seen and spoken with her.

The day of Red Dog's capture was still fresh in the minds of Cranston's household, as indeed in that of every household at the cantonment. With field-glasses they had marked the threatening gathering at the distant village, and the ominous advance in line. Old White had his men in ranks in less than no time, and the cavalry column, masked by the agency buildings, was sent at brisk trot to the eastward, so that McPhail's messenger, spurring at mad gallop for aid, met them midway. Cranston's troop was instantly deployed into long skirmish line at the gallop, and the affair was practically over by the time Major White, leaving the infantry battalion to guard the post, had reached the scene. Meantime the composure of the mothers and children left at the cantonment was in no wise augmented by the panic-stricken guise of the arriving refugees, Mrs. McPhail, with her children, and Mira being the first to appear. It so happened that the Cranstons' bungalow, being near the eastern end of the line, proved the natural refuge of the first wagon-load, and that Mrs. Cranston and Miss Loomis were the angels who thus had to minister to their weaker sisters. Even then, when nearly "dead with terror," as she expressed it, Mira would gladly have gone somewhere else, but as Mrs. McPhail promptly bundled herself and her youngsters out of the wagon and under the shelter of the Cranstons' wing, there was nothing left for Mira but to follow suit. Dr. Burroughs came promptly to see what he could do for her. Both Mrs. Cranston and Miss Loomis mastered their own anxiety in the effort to comfort these weaklings, and as no sounds of battle came from the eastward, and the watchers on the roofs reported Red Dog's people as scattering for their tepees before the advance of the cavalry, comparative composure was gradually being restored when the first messenger came in from the front, a corporal of Cranston's troop, whom the boys hailed with eager acclaim.

"Everything's all right, mum," he blithely saluted Mrs. Cranston. "We've got old Red Dog again,—Lieutenant Davies nabbed him," he added, with prompt recognition of Mira's lovely face. "They want Dr. Burroughs to come down to the agency though." And as the doctor mounted the trooper said something more in a low tone, glancing furtively at Mrs. Davies as he did so. Burroughs nodded, but rode rapidly away, the corporal after him. Mrs. McPhail became instantly lachrymose. Dr. Burroughs wanted at the agency? That could mean only one thing,—Mr. McPhail must be wounded, he was always so impetuous. In vain Mrs. Cranston strove to soothe her. She ran out on the roadway in front and hailed the very next party straggling in,—the wife and the cook of the agency clerk, importuning them to say was Mac badly hurt.

"Mac ain't hurt at all," said the new arrivals, hot after a long and needless tramp. "How was he to get hurt? It's Loot'nant Davies that's shot. Red Dog tried to kill him."

And here Mira promptly and appropriately shrieked and fainted.

Nor was she of use when presently restored to a limp and dejected consciousness. Other messengers had come by this time. Dr. Burroughs had examined Mr. Davies's hurts. He was stabbed, not shot. It was serious, not dangerous. He was being made comfortable at home, where Captain Cranston said it was perfectly safe for Mrs. Davies to join him, and the ambulance was speedily ready to take her to the bedside of her wounded hero, but again poor Mira's nerves gave way. She could not go to that dreadful place, so much nearer those frightful savages. Oh, why, why hadn't they brought her Percy here? Even Mrs. McPhail was no such coward as that. She drove back without her, and not for hours after was Mira strong enough to go. By that time he was sleeping placidly when, trembling still and pathetically pale, Mira was escorted to his bedside, and that night Mrs. Cranston had her revenge.

"Agatha Loomis," said she, "you declared all along that he did perfectly right in marrying that—that—in marrying her. What do you say now?"

And Miss Loomis said—nothing.

They had been talking of Davies again this very morning before the mails and Langston came. No sooner had he been well enough to move than he asked to be sent up to the garrison. He was no longer commander of the guard, and no longer entitled to the house. What was more, he must decline to serve McPhail in any such capacity again, and had had a letter written to department head-quarters representing the facts, and one was received from the general promising that another officer should be detailed immediately. Furthermore, Mr. Davies announced that Mrs. Davies simply could not stand the life at that point. Then Boynton expressed a desire to return to it, as he was now able to stump around a little, and he enjoyed chaffing McPhail, and so the wounded second lieutenant of Devers's troop was shifted to the hospital tent put up for his accommodation at the cantonment, and there Mira was made far more comfortable than many an army wife had been, awaiting the day when they could with safety be started on the road to Scott, now his proper station.

"Langston's paying the Parson a mighty long visit," exclaimed Mr. Sanders, unslinging his sabre and flopping down into the first camp-chair on his way back from morning drill. "Mrs. Cranston, what do you want to bet y'all go back to Scott inside of a week?"

"I like it very much better here, especially as our going to Scott would mean 'y'all' were to be again in the field," was the laughing reply.

"Well, I like duty here better, but I do hanker for a waltz on that old waxed floor. Think, we haven't had a dance since we came."

"The men had some good music the other evening; why didn't you suggest a waltz on the prairie to Mrs. Davies?"

"Well, I did think of it. She looks bored to death. I saw her just now as I came by. She was yawning in the shade of the tent fly while Langston and the Parson were chatting inside." Why don't you and Miss Loomis go over there and cheer her up sometimes? was the question he checked just as it trembled on his lips. Some brief inspiration of discretion warned him that that was ground too sacred for his blundering intrusion. "She seems downright lonely," he concluded, somewhat lamely and suggestively. "I don't think Mrs. Davies is cut out for this kind of army life. Here comes Langston now." He needn't have made that announcement. Mrs. Cranston was watching, waiting for him, and she glanced quickly to see where Miss Loomis was. That young lady, however, never looked up from the slate whereon Louis's hieroglyphics were in mad arithmetical tangle, even when she heard Langston's courteous greeting to the lady of the house and his inquiries for the captain, and heard them without evidence of any emotion whatsoever.

"The captain is at the stables, Mr. Langston. We are so glad to see you. I'll send him word in a moment. Do sit down and tell us all the news from Braska," said Mrs. Cranston, hospitably.

"I will do all that most gladly, Mrs. Cranston, but the matter on which I desire to see him at once is urgent, and perhaps Mr. Sanders will walk over to the stables with me. Then, may I not call and see you later?"

"By all means! and will you not dine with us? A real campaign dinner, you know, but we shall be so pleased to have you."

Langston's face fairly glowed. "I'll be here in half an hour, if I may, but I must see the captain at once, and will go. I trust—Miss Loomis—is well."

"Very well, and quite able to answer for herself," said Mrs. Cranston, mischievously, while Langston's eyes eagerly searched the door-way and dim interior; but Miss Loomis was nowhere in sight, and chose to appear to be not within hearing.

"Why didn't you come or speak?" said Meg, reproachfully, the moment he was gone.

"I was busy. These are school days," was the calm reply, one that would have been no comfort to Langston, who walked rather ruefully on with the subaltern. The business with Cranston proved interesting.

"You have a young trooper, Brannan, whom I need to see confidentially, and at once. May I do so, captain?"

"Certainly. Send Corporal Brannan here," said the troop commander, wondering what new complication had involved this wayward son; and presently, erect and soldierly, with a fine tan on his cheek and brand-new chevrons on his sleeves, "lanced for bravery in the field," as the troopers expressed it in those days, the young soldier stood attention before them.

"You probably do not remember me, Corporal Brannan," said Langston, in courteous tone, "but I remember you favorably and well for the day at Bluff Siding last June." And the light in the young soldier's eyes indicated that he recalled the civilian. "Your captain knows something of the matter on which I wish to see you, and I have asked him to remain here with us." And now an anxious, troubled look crept over Brannan's face, some swift overshadowing from the coming cloud. "You have never yet told any one whose knife it was that cut you that day."

Brannan's lips moved and he turned even paler, but he said no word.

"Well, corporal, the time seems to have come when instead of keeping silence to protect another man you may have to speak for your own sake."

Brannan glanced quickly, anxiously, from one face to another, from the lawyer to his troop commander, as though appealing to the latter to say how could that be. Presently he faltered, "I don't understand." "Well, I will tell you, in part at least. Your captain and I know something of your past history, and I do not think you will have cause to regret that fact. We know that you were at Dr. Powlett's at the time Mr. Davies was assaulted and robbed near his Urbana home. You had there been on terms of intimacy with young Powlett, who disappeared after much disreputable doing. You soon enlisted, and were for a time very intimate with a recruit, Howard, who corresponded with the description I have of Powlett. You both had frequent letters,—you from your mother and he from several sources. Then came a disagreement and you held yourself apart from him and his new chum, a young fellow called Paine, and, while you continued loyal to an old friendship and kept silent as to Howard's past, he was less considerate of you. There was serious trouble between yourself and Sergeant Haney and Howard the night you reached Fort Scott after the campaign, and you were ordered confined. I have heard there at Scott a story I do not believe. Will you not tell your captain and me the real cause?"

"Well, sir, it was about my writing-case," said the corporal, in low and hesitant voice. "I kept mother's letters and some pictures and things I valued in it. It went with me up to the Big Horn camp all right, but when we started on the campaign and cut loose from the wagons I had to turn it over to Sergeant Haney. I saw him lock it in the big company chest, and the night we got into Scott with the wagons and that chest was unloaded, over three months afterwards, I asked for it at once, and I had been kept back with the wagons, and I'd been drinking a little, for it was a bitter cold march, and Haney and Howard gave me more liquor and told me I'd better not take it until I'd quit drinking. We had trouble that night later, and I was confined for abusing the sergeant and being drunk, though I could prove I hadn't abused him, and that it was just the other way, and that I was only slightly affected by the liquor. The next day I sent word from the guard-house for my case, and the reply came that the sergeant gave it to me the previous night. I knew he hadn't and said so. They answered that I was drunk and must have lost it, and that was all the satisfaction I got."

"Why didn't you tell me about this at the time, Brannan?" asked Cranston, kindly.

"I meant to, sir, the moment I got out, but they fixed things so as to send me direct from the guard-house with Lieutenant Boynton's detachment to the agency, and when I wrote from there to Howard and Haney both, they answered that they had a clue, and if I'd only keep quiet they'd get it sure, and the man who stole it from me. I never told mother about it,—it shamed me so. I was afraid the liquor was drugged, and—it might be true, though I thought I knew everything that happened." Then he stopped abruptly.

"Go on," said Langston, with deep interest in his keen, shrewd face. "There is even more to this than I thought. What followed?"

"I got tired waiting, and there was a chance to go to Scott with the mail rider and I took it, and a bitter cold ride it proved to be. We couldn't get coffee on the way, the rider and I, but we could get whiskey, worse luck, for he had it with him, and so I had been drinking when we reached the post, and made my demand of Haney. He put me off with more liquor and soft words. Then I threatened to appeal to Captain Cranston or Lieutenant Davies, and the next thing they had me in hospital with Paine to watch me. I had been drinking enough to make me mad with suffering for more by that time."

"Well, did you never appeal to Captain Devers?"

"No, sir; there was no use in doing that," said Brannan, coloring uneasily as he spoke. "I beg Captain Cranston's pardon for saying so of an officer, but no one could hope for justice in 'A' Troop unless he was solid with Sergeant Haney."

"And you have never seen your writing-case to this day?" continued Langston.

"Never, sir."

"Well, one thing more. Now that you know Howard's character,—know him to have deserted and to have striven to injure you in many a way, will you still persist in saying he did not wield the knife that slashed you?"

"I have said, sir, that I knew no one in all the recruits who would have used a knife on me."

"True! You put it well, Brannan," said Langston, with a smile of deep meaning, "and among simple-minded military folk the answer would be enough, perhaps, but not to a lawyer. Would you declare that Howard did not wield the knife that slashed you—but was meant for Lieutenant Davies?"

And Brannan colored still deeper. "I cannot say anything about him, sir; at least not now."

"Very well. Then it is useless to ask just now what you know of his past?"

"Yes, sir."

"All right, Brannan. It is my belief that in the near future that writing-case of yours will turn up, and I mean to stay to see it, for when it does you'll need us both."

But Langston's hope for a speedy and brilliant coup was dashed by the news that came that very night. Forty-eight hours thereafter a little caravan of army wagons, Concords and ambulances, with an infantry escort, was slowly wending its way southward toward the welcoming roofs of old Fort Scott, with the wives and children of several families, with Mira and her newest friend, Mrs. Plodder, with the tall, martial-looking civilian riding in close attendance on the Cranston's equipage, basking in the life-giving sunshine and in the thrill and hope and sweet unrest of an ever-growing love, devoted and insistent in spite of vague and jealous dread, for there was not the feeblest flicker of encouragement in Miss Loomis's calm and oft-averted eyes. Langston asked himself in the still hours of the starlit night, camping on the banks of Dismal River, was it possible that her heart was following some soldier in the dusty column, riding hard, riding fast long miles away to the northwest now, eager to overtake the comrade soldiery already on the flank of the foe, and bear a trooper's part in the battle summer so suddenly to open. Even Percy Davies, laughing at the feeble protest of Dr. Burroughs, and heartily congratulated by old White himself, had donned his field dress and climbed stiffly into saddle, to ride once more with the fighting column, to the savage disappointment of his one red foe at the cantonments, and the utter confusion of other foes at Scott.