Starlight Ranch, and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier

by Charles King

  CHAPTER II.

  A CADET SCAPEGRACE.

  The evening that opened so clear and sunshiny has clouded rapidly over.Even as the four gray companies come "trotting" in from parade, and,with the ease of long habit, quickly forming line in the barrack area,some heavy rain-drops begin to fall; the drum-major has hurried his bandaway; the crowd of spectators, unusually large for so early in theseason, scatters for shelter; umbrellas pop up here and there under thebeautiful trees along the western roadway; the adjutant rushes through"delinquency list" in a style distinguishable only to his stolid, silentaudience standing immovably before him,--a long perspective of grayuniforms and glistening white belts. The fateful book is closed with asnap, and the echoing walls ring to the quick commands of the firstsergeants, at which the bayonets are struck from the rifle-barrels, andthe long line bursts into a living torrent sweeping into the hall-waysto escape the coming shower.

  When the battalion reappears, a few moments later, every man is in hisovercoat, and here and there little knots of upper classmen gather, andthere is eager and excited talk.

  A soldierly, dark-eyed young fellow, with the red sash of the officer ofthe day over his shoulder, comes briskly out of the hall of the fourthdivision. The chevrons of a cadet captain are glistening on his arm, andhe alone has not donned the gray overcoat, although he has discarded theplumed shako in deference to the coming storm; yet he hardly seems tonotice the downpour of the rain; his face is grave and his lips set andcompressed as he rapidly makes his way through the groups awaiting thesignal to "fall in" for supper.

  "Stanley! O Stanley!" is the hail from a knot of classmates, and hehalts and looks about as two or three of the party hasten after him.

  "What does Billy say about it?" is the eager inquiry.

  "Nothing--new."

  "Well, that report as good as finds him on demerit, doesn't it?"

  "The next thing to it; though he has been as close to the brink before."

  "But--great Scott! He has two weeks yet to run; and Billy McKay can nomore live two weeks without demerit than Patsy, here, without'spooning.'"

  Mr. Stanley's eyes look tired as he glances up from under the visor ofhis forage cap. He is not as tall by half a head as the young soldiersby whom he is surrounded.

  "We were talking of his chances at dinner-time," he says, gravely."Billy never mentioned this break of his yesterday, and was surprised tohear the report read out to-night. I believe he had forgotten the wholething."

  "Who 'skinned' him?--Lee? He was there."

  "I don't know; McKay says so, but there were several officers over thereat the time. It is a report he cannot get off, and it comes at a mostunlucky moment."

  With this remark Mr. Stanley turns away and goes striding through thecrowded area towards the guard-house. Another moment and there is suddendrum-beat; the gray overcoats leap into ranks; the subject of the recentdiscussion--a jaunty young fellow with laughing blue eyes--comes tearingout of the fourth division just in time to avoid a "late," and theclamor of tenscore voices gives place to silence broken only by therapid calling of the rolls and the prompt "here"--"here," in response.

  If ever there was a pet in the corps of cadets he lived in the person ofBilly McKay. Bright as one of his own buttons; jovial, generous,impulsive; he had only one enemy in the battalion,--and that one, as hehad been frequently told, was himself. This, however, was a matter whichhe could not at all be induced to believe. Of the Academic Board ingeneral, of his instructors in large measure, but of the four or fiveill-starred soldiers known as "tactical officers" in particular, Mr.McKay entertained very decided and most unflattering opinions. He hadwon his cadetship through rigid competitive examination against allcomers; he was a natural mathematician of whom a professor had said thathe "_could_ stand in the fives and _wouldn't_ stand in the forties;"years of his boyhood spent in France had made him master of thecolloquial forms of the court language of Europe, yet a dozen classmateswho had never seen a French verb before their admission stood above himat the end of the first term. He had gone to the first section like arocket and settled to the bottom of it like a stick. No subject in thecourse was really hard to him, his natural aptitude enabling him totriumph over the toughest problems. Yet he hated work, and would oftenface about with an empty black-board and take a zero and a report forneglect of studies that half an hour's application would have renderedimpossible. Classmates who saw impending danger would frequently makestolen visits to his room towards the close of the term and profess tobe baffled by the lesson for the morrow, and Billy would promptly knockthe ashes out of the pipe he was smoking contrary to regulations and layaside the guitar on which he had been softly strumming--also contrary toregulations; would pick up the neglected calculus or mechanics; getinterested in the work of explanation, and end by having learned thelesson in spite of himself. This was too good a joke to be kept asecret, and by the time the last year came Billy had found it all outand refused to be longer hoodwinked.

  There was never the faintest danger of his being found deficient instudies, but there was ever the glaring prospect of his being discharged"on demerit." Mr. McKay and the regulations of the United StatesMilitary Academy had been at loggerheads from the start.

  And yet, frank, jolly, and generous as he was in all intercourse withhis comrades, there was never a time when this young gentleman could bebrought to see that in such matters he was the arbiter of his owndestiny. Like the Irishman whose first announcement on setting foot onAmerican soil was that he was "agin the government," Billy McKaybelieved that regulations were made only to oppress; that the men whodrafted such a code were idiots, and that those whose duty it became toenforce it were simply spies and tyrants, resistance to whom was innatevirtue. He was forever ignoring or violating some written or unwrittenlaw of the Academy; was frequently being caught in the act, and wasinvariably ready to attribute the resultant report to ill luck whichpursued no one else, or to a deliberate persecution which followed himforever. Every six months he had been on the verge of dismissal, andnow, a fortnight from the final examination, with a margin of only sixdemerit to run on, Mr. Billy McKay had just been read out in the dailylist of culprits or victims as "Shouting from window of barracks tocadets in area during study hours,--three forty-five and four P.M."

  There was absolutely no excuse for this performance. The regulationsenjoined silence and order in barracks during "call to quarters." It hadbeen raining a little, and he was in hopes there would be no battaliondrill, in which event he would venture on throwing off his uniform andspreading himself out on his bed with a pipe and a novel,--two things hedearly loved. Ten minutes would have decided the question legitimatelyfor him, but, being of impatient temperament, he could not wait, and,catching sight of the adjutant and the senior captain coming from theguard-house, Mr. McKay sung out in tones familiar to every man withinear-shot,--

  "Hi, Jim! Is it battalion drill?"

  The adjutant glanced quickly up,--a warning glance as he could haveseen,--merely shook his head, and went rapidly on, while his comrade,the cadet first captain, clinched his fist at the window and growledbetween his set teeth, "Be quiet, you idiot!"

  But poor Billy persisted. Louder yet he called,--

  "Well--say--Jimmy! Come up here after four o'clock. I'll be inconfinement, and can't come out. Want to see you."

  And the windows over at the office of the commandant being wide open,and that official being seated there in consultation with three or fourof his assistants, and as Mr. McKay's voice was as well known to them asto the corps, there was no alternative. The colonel himself "confounded"the young scamp for his recklessness, and directed a report to beentered against him.

  And now, as Mr. Stanley is betaking himself to his post at theguard-house, his heart is heavy within him because of this new load onhis comrade's shoulders.

  "How on earth could you have been so careless, Billy?" he had asked himas McKay, fuming and indignant, was throwing off his accoutrements inhis room on the second floor.
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br />   "How'd I know anybody was over there?" was the boyish reply. "It's justa skin on suspicion anyhow. Lee couldn't have seen me, nor could anybodyelse. I stood way back by the clothes-press."

  "There's no suspicion about it, Billy. There isn't a man that walks thearea that doesn't know your voice as well as he does Jim Pennock's.Confound it! You'll get over the limit yet, man, and break your--yourmother's heart."

  "Oh, come now, Stan! You've been nagging me ever since last camp. Why'nthunder can't you see I'm doing my best? Other men don't row me as youdo, or stand up for the 'tacks.' I tell you that fellow Lee never losesa chance of skinning me: he _takes_ chances, by gad, and I'll make hiseyes pop out of his head when he reads what I've got to say about it."

  "You're too hot for reason now, McKay," said Stanley, sadly. "Step outor you'll get a late for supper. I'll see you after awhile. I gave thatnote to the orderly, by the way, and he said he'd take it down to thedock himself."

  "Mother and Nan will probably come to the guard-house right aftersupper. Look out for them for me, will you, Stan, until old Snipes getsthere and sends for me?"

  And as Mr. Stanley shut the door instantly and went clattering down theiron stairs, Mr. McKay caught no sign on his face of the sudden flutterbeneath that snugly-buttoned coat.

  It was noticed by more than one of the little coterie at his own tablethat the officer of the day hurried through his supper and left themess-hall long before the command for the first company to rise. It wasa matter well known to every member of the graduating class that, almostfrom the day of her arrival during the encampment of the previoussummer, Phil Stanley had been a devoted admirer of Miss Nannie McKay. Itwas not at all to be wondered at.

  Without being what is called an ideal beauty, there was a fascinationabout this winsome little maid which few could resist. She had all herbrother's impulsiveness, all his enthusiasm, and, it may be safelyasserted, all his abiding faith in the sacred and unimpeachablecharacter of cadet friendships. If she possessed a little streak ofromance that was not discernible in him, she managed to keep it well inthe background; and though she had her favorites in the corps, she wasso frank and cordial and joyous in her manner to all that it wasimpossible to say which one, if any, she regarded in the light of alover. Whatever comfort her gentle mother may have derived from thisstate of affairs, it was "hard lines on Stanley," as his classmates putit, for there could be little doubt that the captain of the colorcompany was a sorely-smitten man.

  He was not what is commonly called a "popular man" in the corps. The sonof a cavalry officer, reared on the wide frontier and educated onlyimperfectly, he had not been able to enter the Academy until nearlytwenty years of age, and nothing but indomitable will and diligence hadcarried him through the difficulties of the first half of the course. Itwas not until the middle of the third year that the chevrons of asergeant were awarded him, and even then the battalion was taken bysurprise. There was no surprise a few months later, however, when he waspromoted over a score of classmates and made captain of his company. Itwas an open secret that the commandant had said that if he had it all todo over again, Mr. Stanley would be made "first captain,"--a rumor thatbig John Burton, the actual incumbent of that office, did not at allfancy. Stanley was "square" and impartial. His company was in admirablediscipline, though many of his classmates growled and wished he were not"so confoundedly military." The second classmen, always the mostcritical judges of the qualifications of their seniors, conceded that hewas more soldierly than any man of his year, but were unanimous in theopinion that he should show more deference to men of their standing inthe corps. The "yearlings" swore by him in any discussion as to therelative merits of the four captains; but with equal energy swore at himwhen contemplating that fateful volume known as "the skin book." Thefourth classmen--the "plebes"--simply worshipped the ground he trod on,and as between General Sherman and Philip Stanley, it is safe to saythese youngsters would have determined on the latter as the moresuitable candidate for the office of general-in-chief. Of course theyadmired the adjutant,--the plebes always do that,--and not infrequentlyto the exclusion of the other cadet officers; but there was somethinggrand, to them, about this dark-eyed, dark-faced, dignified captain whonever stooped to trifle with them; was always so precise and courteous,and yet so immeasurably distant. They were ten times more afraid of himthan they had been of Lieutenant Rolfe, who was their "tack" duringcamp, or of the great, handsome, kindly-voiced dragoon who succeededhim, Lieutenant Lee, of the --th Cavalry. They approved of this lattergentleman because he belonged to the regiment of which Mr. Stanley'sfather was lieutenant-colonel, and to which it was understood Mr.Stanley was to be assigned on his graduation. What they could not at allunderstand was that, once graduated, Mr. Stanley could step down fromhis high position in the battalion of cadets and become a merefile-closer. Yes. Stanley was too strict and soldierly to command thatdecidedly ephemeral tribute known as "popularity," but no man in thecorps of cadets was more thoroughly respected. If there were flaws inthe armor of his personal character they were not such as to bevigorously prodded by his comrades. He had firm friends,--devotedfriends, who grew to honor and trust him more with every year; but,strong though they knew him to be, he had found his conqueror. There wasa story in the first class that in Stanley's old leather writing-casewas a sort of secret compartment, and in this compartment was treasured"a knot of ribbon blue" that had been worn last summer close under thedimpled white chin of pretty Nannie McKay.

  And now on this moist May evening as he hastens back to barracks, Mr.Stanley spies a little group standing in front of the guard-house.Lieutenant Lee is there,--in his uniform now,--and with him are the tallgirl in the simple travelling-dress, and the trim, wiry, gray-moustachedsoldier whom we saw on the boat. The rain is falling steadily, whichaccounts for and possibly excuses Mr. Lee's retention of the younglady's arm in his as he holds the umbrella over both; but the colonel nosooner catches sight of the officer of the day than his own umbrella iscast aside, and with light, eager, buoyant steps, father and son hastento meet each other. In an instant their hands are clasped,--bothhands,--and through moistening eyes the veteran of years of service andthe boy in whom his hopes are centred gaze into each other's faces.

  "Phil,--my son!"

  "Father!"

  No other words. It is the first meeting in two long years. The area isdeserted save by the smiling pair watching from under the drippingumbrella with eyes nearly as moist as the skies. There is no one tocomment or to scoff. In the father's heart, mingling with the deep joyat this reunion with his son, there wells up sudden, irrepressiblesorrow. "Ah, God!" he thinks. "Could his mother but have lived to seehim now!" Perhaps Philip reads it all in the strong yet tremulous claspof those sinewy brown hands, but for the moment neither speaks again.There are some joys so deep, some heart longings so overpowering, thatmany a man is forced to silence, or to a levity of manner which isutterly repugnant to him, in the effort to conceal from the world thetumult of emotion that so nearly makes him weep. Who that has read thatinimitable page will ever forget the meeting of that genial sire andgallant son in the grimy old railway car filled with the wounded fromAntietam, in Doctor Holmes's "My Search for the Captain?"

  When Phil Stanley, still clinging to his father's hand, turns to greethis sister and her handsome escort, he is suddenly aware of anothergroup that has entered the area. Two ladies, marshalled by hisclassmate, Mr. Pennock, are almost at his side, and one of them is theblue-eyed girl he loves.