IIP 
 
 Hi 
 
 TANGLE 
 
 
 
 (^CAPTAIN 
 CHARLES KING 
 U- S- A-
 
 A Garrison Tangle 
 
 BY 
 
 CAPTAIN CHARLES KING, U. S. A. 
 
 AUTHOR OK 
 
 " Fort Frayne, " "An Army Wife," " Warrior 
 
 Gap," "Noble Blood and a West Point 
 
 Parallel," " Trumpeter Fred, " "Found 
 
 in the Philippines," " A Wounded 
 
 Name," tc., etc. 
 
 THE HOBART COMPANY, 
 
 New York City.
 
 Copyrighted 1896, b^ 
 F. Tennyson Neely. 
 
 Copyrighted IQOI, by 
 The Hobart Compaay
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CAPTAIN TURNER had been up since first call for 
 reveille, had spent a shivering hour at his troop 
 stables, had tramped through the snow from the 
 creek valley, up past the long line of ramshackle 
 sheds that defaced the east front of the original 
 Fort Russell, had declined the invitation of some of 
 the old stagers and young plungers of his regiment 
 to " come in and have something " at the trader's 
 store by the gate, had plodded thoughtfully on to 
 his own quarters some distance up the row, had had 
 his bath and changed his stable garb for the best 
 undress uniform he owned, and was now waiting 
 somewhat impatiently for breakfast. The Cheyenne 
 Leader had little in the way of telegraphic news, 
 and its local gossip failed to interest him. He 
 tossed it aside and, after a look into the little dining- 
 room where the breakfast table was set for two, 
 began pacing slowly up and down the tiny parlor, five 
 paces one way and five back. Occasionally be 
 
 2136S74
 
 2 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 would cast a glance upward and listen for sounds of 
 movement aloft, but none rewarded his attention. 
 Presently he went to the window and, throwing 
 aside the curtains, gazed gloomily out upon the 
 snow-covered parade. Over across the barren, 
 wind-swept level, bordered by its row of leafless, 
 desolate, stripling cottonwoods. quivering in the 
 rising breeze, the unsightly brown barracks were 
 echeloned, their gable ends to the north and south, 
 with the wooden tower, the official home of the 
 officer of the guard, and behind it the dun-colored 
 walls of the guardhouse, filling the gap at the op- 
 posite angle of the diamond-shaped quadrilateral. 
 Here and there along the parade lay bare, unsightly 
 patches of dead gray buffalo grass, where the 
 wintry gales had swept away the falling snow, only 
 to whirl it into deep drifts about the barracks. 
 Beyond the rough wooden one-story buildings that 
 framed the roadway bounding the parade, the 
 snowy slopes dipped out of sight into the valley of 
 the Crow, only to reappear half a mile beyond, de- 
 faced with the same broad gray patches and 
 streaked with jagged lines of fleecy white where 
 the snow lay fathoms deep in the ravines and 
 coulees. Beyond them all, a hundred miles to the 
 south, cold, remote and majestic, towered the peaks 
 and domes of the Kockies, dazzling when the morn-
 
 A. t*~*RISON T ANGLE. 3 
 
 ing sun shone, but repellent and frowning now that 
 his face was hid behind a dense veil of cloud that 
 was drawn athwart the heavens. The scene was 
 dreary in the last degree. Only about the guard- 
 house was there sign of life and action, for in the 
 intense cold the troopers hugged the comfort of 
 their barracks and huddled about the red-hot stoves. 
 The captain's face, somber and melancholy, yet a 
 refined, clear cut, handsome face withal, seemed to 
 take on an additional shade of gloom as he stood 
 there, lonely and silent, drumming on the window 
 panes with his finger tips. Through the thin 
 partition in the party wall of wood, that sepa- 
 rated his soldier home from that of Captain Wayne 
 next door, came the sound of cheery voices, of 
 joyous laughter and childish glee. Turner sighed 
 heavily as he took out his watch, glanced at it and 
 turned impatiently. Even as he left the window a 
 trumpeter, muffled in heavy overcoat, came briskly 
 out from the adjutant's office and sounded first 
 call for guard mounting, whereat the captain strode 
 through the dining-room and poked his head into 
 the kitchen beyond. 
 
 " Nora," he said, " be so kind as to run up and 
 tell Mrs. Turner not to hurry if she's tired, but that 
 I'm on a garrison court this morning and must have 
 my breakfast at once."
 
 4 A GARRISON T ANGLE. 
 
 Wiping her hands on her apron, the Irish inaid- 
 of-all-work proceeded on her mission. She was 
 back in a moment. " The missus says not to wait. 
 She'll be down directly," was her report. 
 
 " Yery well. Bring me whatever is ready," said 
 Turner, briefly, and sat him down at the table. 
 
 There had been a lively hop the night before and 
 joy was uncon fined. A dozen pleasant people had 
 driven out from Cheyenne. The music was capital. 
 Half a dozen young officers from other posts were 
 visiting at Russell. Half a dozen young ladies from 
 the distant East were visiting relatives and friends 
 among the officers' families in the garrison. Many 
 of the ladies of the th Cavalry were charming 
 " society " women ; many were pretty and attract- 
 ive ; several were wealthy and able to display stun- 
 ning toilets, and nearly all were graceful and ac- 
 complished dancers. As a consequence, anywhere 
 from thirty to forty couples were to be seen on the 
 polished floor of the hop-room, and visiting officers 
 from other regiments promptly owned that when it 
 came to " hopping " the th could put up the 
 prettiest dance in the army. 
 
 And hops were things Mrs. Turner dearly loved. 
 Ten years the junior of her solemn-looking spouse, 
 she had married when only eighteen, had never 
 borne him son or daughter, had been with the reg-
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 5 
 
 iraent in the South just after the great war, in 
 Nebraska when they were guarding the track-layers 
 of the Union Pacific, in Arizona during that four 
 years exile, in Kansas on their return, and was now 
 facing, with the sisterhood, the skin-scorching Wyo- 
 ming blizzards, and bemoaning when alone witli her 
 lord the horrid effect of the dazzling suns and blast- 
 ing gales upon her once peachlike complexion. 
 Among her garrison and Cheyenne intimates and 
 acquaintances, however, Fanny Turner had no such 
 admission to make. She could not help seeing, she 
 said, the havoc played with the cuticle of the other 
 ladies. Even their bride, the lovely blonde, Mrs. 
 Bill}'- Kay, had completely lost, said Mrs. Turner, 
 the delicate bloom and softness of her fair white 
 skin. " But as for me," she continued," I declare it 
 seems to make no difference whatever." 
 
 Certainly, under the light of the lamps and candles 
 of the hop-room, her complexion seemed as peachy 
 as on her wedding day thirteen years gone by. But 
 there were a dozen women in garrison who were 
 ready to explain and account for that. " No one in 
 this regiment," said the colonel's wife, " can ap- 
 proach Fanny Turner in the art of ' making up.' 
 She's thirty-two if she's a week old, and she dances 
 and dresses and decorates as though she were not 
 twenty."
 
 6 A QAHRIxON TANGLE. 
 
 All of which was practically true. Spoiled and 
 petted by an over-indulgent mother in her girlhood, 
 Fanny had no idea of any will or way but her own 
 when she married Captain Turner. He had fallen 
 deeply in love with her when home wounded after 
 Cedar Creek in the fall of '64. He was the hero of 
 their semi-rural community, and she married him be- 
 cause he was so much thought of and admired bysome 
 of the others. For several weeks Turner thought 
 himself the happiest and luckiest of men to have 
 captured this fair young beauty, and then disillusion 
 set in and one disappointment followed another. 
 She was empty-headed, frivolous, fond of every kind 
 of social gayety, but with neither heart nor hand 
 for domestic duty of any kind. She loved to dance, 
 and his wounds had put an end to even the little he 
 ever knew of that art. She gloried in the atten- 
 tions of the society and garrison beaux they met, 
 and plainly showed him he was often in the way. 
 She was recklessly extravagant in her tastes and 
 spent his savings with a lavish hand, principally 
 on herself in dress or jewelry. She had been 
 denied almost everything of the kind at home, for 
 her parents had been for years in straightened cir- 
 cumstances. Turner, deeply in love, could deny her 
 nothing until his savings were exhausted, and they 
 had to come down to his pay She read nothing
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 7 
 
 but novels. She knew nothing but garrison gossip 
 and ho\v to make herself look fascinating. She had 
 a fund of small talk, and a faculty of setting her 
 cap for each new young officer that joined the regi- 
 ment, speedily fascinating him and attaching him 
 for a term of months, or possibly a year, to her 
 apron strings. She was artless, kittenish, confid- 
 ingly, trustingly youthful this mature dame of 
 thirty-one when out in society or among her sisters 
 of the garrison ; but it was anything but a fresh, 
 youthful, radiant girl that came yawning languidly 
 down the stairs this dark March morning, and with a 
 " Why didn't you order your breakfast earlier if you 
 wanted it?" and barely a glance at her spouse, 
 passed him by without other salutation, and took 
 her seat behind the coffee-pot at the head of the 
 table. 
 
 " I much preferred to wait for you," said Turner 
 gently. He had never rebuked, and rarely attempted 
 to correct her, since the initial attempt that well 
 nigh wrecked their honeymoon. He could not scold 
 her now, yet his heart ached at her indifference, 
 and his weary eyes did not fail to notice the mar- 
 velous change in her appearance since she left the 
 hop-room the night before, or rather at two o'clock 
 that morning. The soft pink lips were dry and 
 purple now, the delicately tinted cheek was sallow
 
 8 A GARRISON' TANGLE. 
 
 and colorless , dark purple circles bad formed under 
 her eyes; deep lines cracked out through their tem- 
 porary filling and gave the lie to her pretentions to 
 youth. Her hair, so beautifully and becomingly ar- 
 ranged the night before, was simply twisted up into 
 a knot at the back of her head. She wore a loose 
 flowered wrapper, gathered in at the slender waist 
 with a cord. Even her white, fragile hands, that 
 trembled as she filled the captain's cup with coffee, 
 looked wrinkled and old, while upon her visage, so 
 radiant with smiles and sunshine a few hours since, 
 there sat an expression of profound and envious dis- 
 content. Turner had hard work to repress a second 
 sigh as he glanced furtively at her from over the 
 Leader, which he had picked up again when her 
 footsteps were heard descending the stairs. 
 
 " May I help you to, steak ?" he asked, in cour- 
 teous tone. " I fear you are very tired this morning, 
 Fanny. You had a grand time last night though. 
 You never missed a dance, did you ?" 
 
 " I ? Why how odd that would be ! I never do 
 miss a dance. That's one of the advantages of 
 having so many old friends among the young 
 officers." 
 
 " But you must be hungry, dear. Won't you try 
 to eat something ?" 
 
 " What is there ?" she asked languidly. " Steak,
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 9 
 
 stewed potatoes. Bah! Scrambled eggs cold; 
 rolls ditto. I wish those children next door wouldn't 
 make such a noise. Captain Turner," she went on, 
 toying with her coffee spoon, "did you see that 
 gown of Mrs. Gregg's last night? It was one she 
 had made in Chicago three hundred dollars if it 
 cost a cent. Now you know perfectly well she 
 can't afford that since the failure of their bank." 
 
 Turner was studying the advertisements hard, and 
 made no answer. 
 
 " And his pay isn't as big as yours by one fogy," 
 she went on. Then as he was still silent she queried, 
 "7iU" 
 
 "Oh! ah! Is it what?" 
 
 " I wish you would listen to me instead of losing 
 yourself in that stupid paper, Captain Turner. I 
 asked whether Captain Gregg's pay was not less 
 than yours by a fogy or so." 
 
 "Very probably. He entered service some 
 years after I did, and is nearly fifteen years 
 younger." 
 
 But Turner talks from behind his paper. He 
 has finished his breakfast, all but the cup of steam- 
 ing coffee with which she has at last supplied him. 
 
 "What did you think of that gown of Mrs. 
 Gregg's ? She had it made only two months ago 
 two months after their bank broke. Seems to me
 
 10 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 mighty queer she should be ' swelling ' in such ex- 
 travagant style Mrs. Raymond thinks so too." 
 
 Turner's eyes are glued to the columns of the 
 Leader. He is apparently deaf to any comments 
 on Mrs. Gregg's costume. 
 
 "Don't you think so?" persists Mrs. Turner, 
 determined to extract an opinion from her liege. 
 
 "Why I'm sure I haven't given the matter any 
 thought. It's none of our affair, you know. Doubt- 
 less they have means that were not involved in the 
 crash of that particular bank." 
 
 " They haven't," interposes Mrs. Turner. " Mrs. 
 "Wallace is from Cleveland and knows all Mrs. 
 Gregg's people, and she says they lost every 
 penny." -\ 
 
 " Oh, well, Gregg has something outside his pay," 
 says Turner, shrugging his shoulders and sinking 
 down into his chair. He hates these perennial com- 
 ments and criticisms on the affairs of his brother 
 officers and their families, but he still loves his shal* 
 lowpate of a wife and can't bear to rebuke her. 
 This, too, is her table-talk. She has no other. 
 
 " There were at least half a dozen bills came in 
 their mail two days ago," persists madame presently. 
 K I couldn't help seeing them when the orderly came 
 here with my letter from Kate. If /had so many 
 bills coming in you'd be frantic. I don't see hovt
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 11 
 
 she can stand being dunned in that way. / 
 couldn't." 
 
 Again the captain seeks shelter behind his con- 
 ventional bomb-proof the paper and strives to 
 avoid the discussion. 
 
 " Could you ?" she asks. 
 
 " Well," he answers slowly, " I've had to once or 
 twice. Don't you remember ?" 
 
 " I might have known you'd remind me of that," 
 she answers, with tears in her voice if not in her 
 eyes. " I was much less experienced then." Even 
 to her liege lord Mrs. Turner does not like to own 
 she has ever been younger. 
 
 He notes the symptoms of approaching storm, 
 and to give a cheerier tone to the talk, drops the 
 Leader and adopts a " chipper," spirited style. 
 
 "I thought you looked uncommonly well last 
 night, Fanny, and I thought Mrs. Ray's dress ex- 
 tremely pretty." 
 
 " Pretty I" says madame disdainfully. " Why, 
 Captain Turner, she was positively dowdy. The 
 idea of a woman of her wealth and social position 
 coming to one of our swellest hops in a simple 
 China silk is almost an affront to the regiment. If 
 she had nothing handsomer it would be all well and 
 good, but she has loads of handsome gowns and 
 won't wear them."
 
 12 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 "China silk or Canton flannel, you know, I 
 couldn't tell t'other from which," says poor Turner 
 " I only say I thought it pretty and appropriate. 
 Perhaps she wears a simple toilet because so many 
 of the ladies of the regiment cannot afford to dress 
 expensively." 
 
 "Captain Turner, you make mo tired !" exclaims 
 his better half, in deep displeasure. " No one wants 
 Mrs. Eay to be setting examples in economy. The 
 ladies of the th are quite capable of manag- 
 ing their own affairs except perhaps Mrs. Gregg." 
 
 Are the} r , thinks poor Turner, as he mentally runs 
 over the list of bills accumulated in his desk, the 
 result of madame's orders and extravagances, but 
 again he relapses into silence and seeks refuge be- 
 hind the Leader. Then relief and rescue come in 
 sudden shape. The boards of the piazza creak and 
 snap in the biting cold under a quick, bounding 
 footstep. The gong bell on the hall door gives a 
 loud, impatient clang, and Nora hastens through 
 into the hall. 
 
 "The orderly with the colonel's compliments, I 
 suppose," says Mrs. Turner dejectedly. " They never 
 will let you finish your breakfast in peace." 
 
 " They might," thinks Turner, " if I could only 
 get started a little earlier." Then back comes Nora. 
 
 "It's Loot'n't Maynard wants to see you, sir."
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 13 
 
 "Oh ! Show him into the parlor," answers the 
 captain, dropping the Leadw and beginning to 
 fold his napkin. 
 
 "Captain Turner, have you no consideration 
 whatever for me?" gasps his lady, as she rises and 
 betakes herself hurriedly to the kitchen. 
 
 A very presentable specimen of the young officer 
 type is the junior lieutenant who, forage cap in 
 hand and his cavalry circular, the cape of his over- 
 coat, thrown over his arm, stands respectfully in 
 the little army parlor as the captain enters and ex- 
 tends a cordial hand. 
 
 "Good-morning, Maynard. Glad to see you. 
 What brings you over here so early? Nothing 
 amiss, I hope." 
 
 " I didn't mean I hope I didn't disturb your 
 breakfast, sir," answers the subaltern, a shade of 
 embarrassment on his fine, frank face. " Mrs. 
 Turner was so good as to say if I would come 
 around this morning, er she'd teach me some new 
 methods at Patience, and the adjutant has just de- 
 tailed me to take a patrol to go to town after some 
 absentees still on payday spree. If you'll be kind 
 enough to tell her I suppose she's not yet down 
 after dancing every dance until two this morn- 
 ing " 
 
 "I'll tell her," says Turner. "She'll be disap-
 
 14 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 pointed, of course, but come again some other time. 
 Any news at the office ?" 
 
 " Why, yes, sir. There's quite a little stir there. 
 It seems a gang of the Southern Cheyennes have 
 had a row with their agent and have been playing 
 the mischief about their reservation. The agent 
 has wired for troops, and if they're sent from 
 Leavenworth and Gibson they say the Indians will 
 jump. Spring has set in down there. The chief 
 believes that in that event we'll be called upon to 
 head them off." 
 
 " May the Lord deliver us from a winter cam- 
 paign," says Turner anxioasly. " "Well, I'll tell Mrs. 
 Turner. Wish you good luck in catching the run- 
 aways. How many are still out?" 
 
 "Eight, sir; so I'm told at the office. Then I'll 
 say good morning," and Mr. Maynard starts to go. 
 
 But a soft, silvery voice, a voice utterly unlike 
 the petulant tones so recently heard at the break- 
 fast table, comes from behind the portiere that 
 hangs from the archway between the parlor and 
 dining-room, and halts him at the threshold. 
 
 "Don't look back, Mr. Maynard; I'm simply a 
 fright this morning, but I couldn't help speaking to 
 you. I'm so sorry you can't be here at eleven. 
 Oome this afternoon, if you get back in time, won't 
 you ? Oome at threa That'll give you an hoar 
 before stables. ,
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 15 
 
 Maynard hesitates. " I'd like to, awfully, Mrs. 
 Turner," he says, " but I I've got an engagement 
 at that hour." 
 
 " Ah, yes," answers Mrs. Turner. " No need to 
 say where. I know who's expecting you at the 
 Barrys'. I'm positively getting jealous, Mr. May- 
 nard." 
 
 The young fellow's cheeks are burning with a 
 flush that is not caused by the buffetings of the 
 Wyoming winds. " I'll be glad to come almost any 
 other time you say, Mrs. Turner. I'm sure it's 
 very good of you but, pardon me, won't you, the 
 patrol is saddling at the stable and I must hurry 
 down there." 
 
 She has no time to fire another shot before he is 
 out of the house and slamming the storm door be- 
 hind him. Then she comes into the parlor and 
 peers out of the window as though to see whether 
 he goes at once to stables, or stops, as she more than 
 half believes he will, at the Barrys'. The captain 
 is pulling on his " Arctics" in the hallway and pres- 
 ently appears at the door, looping the frogs of his 
 heavy, fur-lined coat a coat that had once been a 
 handsome garment, but is old and worn and shabby 
 now. 
 
 " I think Mrs. Barry ought to put a stop to that 
 affair before it goes any further," gays Mrs. Turner,
 
 15 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 whereat the captain becomes sphinxlike and in- 
 scrutable. Apparently he hasn't heard. "Neither 
 of them has a cent in the world except his second 
 lieutenant's pay," she goes on, and Turner finds 
 himself rummaging through his pockets as though 
 in search of some much-needed article, for he still 
 has nothing to say. Then she turns and faces him. 
 ;< Don't you ?" she asks. 
 
 "Don't I what?" he replies, in simulated igno- 
 rance. He is fencing for time." 
 
 "Now, Captain Turner, I know you heard what 
 I asked. You always behave in this absurd way 
 when what I am thinking and talking about doesn't 
 happen to suit you. I said neither Mr. Maynard 
 nor Miss Baird had a cent, and that Mrs. Barry 
 ought to put a stop to their flirtation at once and 
 you heard it." 
 
 " I think it is none of our business, Fanny," say* 
 Turner mildly. " Just as I said about Mrs. Gregg's 
 gown. I can't help wishing you concerned yourself 
 less about other people's affairs, my dear little 
 woman," he adds, after a pause. " You you 
 haven't said anything to anybody but me as to the 
 letters that came for Mrs. Gregg, have you?" he 
 asks almost timidly. 
 
 " Her bills, I suppose you mean. If I have, Cap- 
 tain Turner, it only serves her righV I'm sure she 
 has shown me little mercy or consideration."
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 17 
 
 " "Well, clear, for my sake, then, don't speak of it 
 to anybody. Gregg is one of my firmest friends, 
 and whatever you say of his wife is sure to get 
 around to them sooner or later in aggravated 
 exaggerated form, and it would hurt him cruelly." 
 
 Mrs. Turner has impatiently whirled about and is 
 once more gazing out upon the parade. A petulant 
 exclamation escapes her before his words are 
 finished. She is black-browed pouting now. 
 
 " You haven't spoken of it to any one, have you, 
 dear ?'' he asks. 
 ^ No answer. 
 
 Turner walks close up to her as she stands half 
 shrouded by the curtains. "Don't be afraid to tell 
 me, Fan," he pleads. "I think I ought to know." 
 
 " Afraid 1" she flashes indignantly. " What is 
 there to be afraid of ? Very possibly I have spokeu 
 of it to Mrs. Eaymond, who notices just exactly 
 what I have and there may have been others who 
 heard, for all I care. They know it's just exactly 
 as I say. How can you be so absurd and make 
 such a fuss over such a little matter. I'd just as 
 lief say it to her face/' 
 
 " Say it to no one," are Turner's next words. 
 " Your imprudence has cost me two or three friend- 
 ships I valued, and I should hate to be at odds with 
 Gregg. Now it is time for me to go. Do not ex-
 
 IB A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 pect me until luncheon. The moment court adjourns 
 I must go to the troop office." 
 
 She never turns to say good-by. Her sullen face 
 is pressed close to the pane, but she darts back 
 quickly as two tall officers come suddenly in sight 
 Captain Truscott and Lieutenant Blake. Turner, 
 too, catches sight of them as they march quickly 
 by, and waits a moment to let them get well up the 
 row ahead of him. He is in no mood for compan- 
 ionship. He looks sadly, wistfully at the willful 
 woman before him a moment, but her back is obsti- 
 nately turned to him. She returns to the window, 
 and without another word he leaves the house. At 
 the gate he glances toward the casement, hopeful 
 of one relenting look or smile, but now she has dis- 
 appeared, and Turner goes on to his duty with a 
 long sigh and a heavy heart. 
 
 "It is my own doing," he says. "If I had set 
 my foot down firmly years ago she would have 
 learned and forgiven; but its too late now too 
 late." 
 
 As he is passing Major Barry's quarters the storm 
 door flies open and out comes the senior battalion 
 commander himself, gray mustached, jtkeen eyed, 
 spare of flesh, alert, and vigorous. " Ha ! Turner," 
 he says, " well met. Have you heard any particu- 
 lar ? Do you know what we're to do ?"
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 19 
 
 " I've heard nothing, major, except a rumor of 
 trouble at the South Cheyenne agency." 
 
 " Indeed ! "Well, the colonel has just sent me 
 word that our battalion is to be put in readiness for 
 immediate field service, and a scrimmage is coming 
 sure."
 
 20 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 WHEN the little" two-company post of Fort Fred 
 Winthrop was broken up, Major Barry, of the th 
 Cavalry, was left without a command, and so was 
 sent to the headquarters of the regiment at Russell. 
 The junior major, Stannard, was already there, but 
 eight troops had been crowded within the rickety 
 fenced enclosure, and that gave each major four 
 troops what was then called a battalion. Stannard 
 swore a little after his explosive fashion. He had 
 been second in command ever since their return 
 from the Sioux campaign of 1876, and he hated to 
 see an officer come in between him and the top. 
 Not that he disliked Barry. They were on very 
 good terms, though not exactly intimate. But 
 Barry's coming necessitated a general shaking up 
 as to quarters, for he had to turn out a senior cap- 
 tain in order to get the house to which his rank 
 entitled him, and there were several more midwinter 
 movings as a consequence. "I'm sorry," he said, 
 " heartily sorry, but you all know Mrs. Barry is an 
 invalid, and I have to find comfortable quarters for 
 her."
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. *1 
 
 Mrs. Barry was indeed an invalid. She lay for 
 hours every day on a couch especially prepared for 
 her, rarely even drove in the open air, and was in 
 bed every night by nine o'clock. Her main enter- 
 tainment consisted in being read to, and this duty 
 was divided between her devoted husband and her 
 companion. Miss Nathalie Baird. Mrs. Barry wa 
 essentially a gentlewoman, courteous and consid- 
 erate by nature, and refined with that almost ultra 
 refinement that is the product of long-protracted 
 physical suffering. The few relatives left to Miss 
 Baird considered her a very fortunate girl when she 
 was offered the position of companion to Mrs. Barry, 
 even though the salary was not large ; and indeed 
 her lot, for an orphan girl practically homeless, was 
 anvthing but a hard one. She had been teaching 
 in the village school and leading a life of almost 
 thankless drudgery. Her health was suffering. She 
 had not even nourishing food; boarding around, first 
 in one family, then in another, in that narrow New 
 England circle, and she hailed with delight the 
 chano-e that took her to the broad, free frontier, to 
 
 O ' * 
 
 a little army home where there was sympathy, kind- 
 liness, and comfort. Her duties were light. She 
 read aloud from books of Mrs. Barry's selection 
 each morning from ten to twelve, but was given 
 most of the afternoon for exercise and recreation.
 
 ft* A GARRISON TANQLB. 
 
 From two to four the major himself sat by the side 
 of the gentle invalid, and in the evening, as a rule, 
 both were with her. Mrs. Barry's tastes were 
 scholarly, and the morning readings were a liberal 
 education to the village girl whose previous life had 
 been so cramped and restricted. She proved most 
 faithful indeed, most grateful. She grew and 
 thrived and blossomed in the society of her pro- 
 tectors and friends. She grew to love Mrs. Barry 
 as she had loved none of her own kith and kin since 
 the death of her mother five years gone by. Her 
 father she could remember only vaguely; She was 
 barely four years old when his coffined remains, 
 draped in the flag he had died to defend, were 
 brought back from Virginia and laid away in the 
 little churchyard. She was a gentle, pure-hearted 
 maid, only nineteen this stormy spring of 1878. She 
 had been somewhat angular, and bony, and hollow- 
 eyed, and sallow-cheeked when first she came to the 
 Barry s, but healthful food, and exercise, and the 
 bracing mountain air, and sound sleep, and sweet 
 companionship, and freedom from care and worry, 
 one and all had done their work ; and Mrs. Barry 
 woke up one fine day to the realization that they 
 had a genuine New England beauty under their 
 roof a winsome girl, whose features and coloring 
 were as dainty and fair as those of the Puritan
 
 A GARRISON T ANGLE. 23 
 
 maid, Priscilla. The thin neck and bony shoulders 
 and arms had given plaoe to firm, rounded, dimpled 
 members, beneath a skin so white as to be almost 
 dazzling. The hollow eyes were gone, for a tender 
 light burned in their blue depths, a delicate flush 
 played over the soft, rounded cheeks, and a smile of 
 sweet content hovered about the corners of her rosy 
 mouth, that, a year gone by, quivered, pale and 
 piteous. 
 
 " How that girl has improved since you brought 
 her out, dear !" said the major, one sunshiny after- 
 noon as Nathalie started for her brisk walk over 
 the prairie. 
 
 "Then you've noticed it," answered the invalid, 
 patting his big brown hand. " It has been very 
 sweet to me to watcb it. She's a good, true-hearted 
 girl, Arthur." 
 
 " Oh, I'm not the only one to notice it, Mary. 
 Several people have spoken of it to me, and as for 
 young Maynard, I'm afraid it's getting serious." 
 
 " My responsibility is a very grave one where 
 she is concerned," said Mrs. Barry, after a thought- 
 ful pause. " Of course I could not but' know that 
 Mr. Maynard was greatly attracted, else ho wouldn't 
 have managed to walk with her or to call here so 
 often. Do you know anything of his people 1" 
 
 ** Nothing whatever, and little of him except that
 
 34 -4 GARRISON" TANGLE. 
 
 he acts like a gentleman on all occasions, attends to 
 his duties, doesn't drink or gamble, and lives within 
 his means. Stannard and Truscott say he's one of 
 the best of the youngsters, and Blake says he stood 
 the initiatory six months at Mrs. Turner's apron 
 strings without a sign of singeing his wings." 
 
 " "Well, that thralldoin is at an end, certainly," 
 said Mrs. Barry. " He came here and asked her to 
 go to the next hop with him, and begged me to in- 
 tercede. I did. I told her I'd like to have her go 
 if only to look on, but she wouldn't do it. She says 
 she never danced in her life. Mrs. Stannard came 
 in a while ago and she talked with her offered to 
 be her chaperon, and was as kind and sweet as pos- 
 sible, but Nathalie shook her head and compressed 
 her lips, and we saw it was useless. But others ad* 
 mire her beside Mr. Maynard Hunter and Dana 
 visit us frequently, and Dana has invited her to 
 drive, but she declined. TFAy, do you suppose ?" 
 
 "Her puritanical bringing up probably. Dana 
 isn't half a bad fellow and comes of good stock. 
 Hunter doesn't amount to much. He's feather- 
 brained. Well, let's get at our book." 
 
 And meantime the object of this household chat 
 was picking her way among the drifts, and walking 
 blithely and briskly over the barren prairie, well to 
 the north of the post, singing solemn little songs to
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. JJ5 
 
 herself sober, old-fashioned hymn tunes as a rule, 
 yet catching herself now and then humming some 
 one of the stirring quicksteps or waltzes she had 
 heard at the band concerts, whereat she would sud- 
 denly break off and return to " Brattle Street " or 
 " Coronation." " Jerusalem the Golden," it seems, 
 had been deemed too jubilant, consequently too 
 carnal, by the elders of her village church elders, 
 several of whom came, as did her paternal ancestors, 
 from the old Scotch Covenanters. That she dearly 
 loved music and had a quick and accurate ear was 
 manifest the moment she opened her pretty mouth 
 and gave voice to her favorites. So, too, was it ap- 
 parent that all her childhood and young maiden- 
 hood had been spent under the strict tutelage of the 
 descendants of a Puritan ancestry to whom a smile 
 upon the Sabbath day was akin to sacrilege. One 
 of Mrs. Barry's amusing stories, told when Nathalie 
 was out for her daily exercise, was of the girl's dis- 
 may and distress when, the very first Sunday after 
 their arrival at Russell, the band played its jolliest 
 "double time" for the details marching out to 
 guard mounting. " She ran to her room and stop- 
 ped her ears," said Mrs. Barry, laughing at the 
 reminiscence, " and could not be induced to come 
 to the window and watch the ceremony, nor would 
 she come out of her room until I assured her the
 
 26 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 band had gone back to barracks. She should have 
 been named Prudence or Rachel or Patience or 
 Charity. How on earth could such a little Puritan 
 have come \>y the name of Nathalie. One would 
 imagine Sunday to be a day of penance with her. 
 I'm sure she is shocked to see the major opening 
 his morning paper and reading his letters. Some- 
 times a letter from her old home comes to her on 
 Sunday, but she-puts it away until Monday morning. 
 I never have her read to me on Sunday. She goes 
 to service morning and evening, reads her Bible and 
 some very edifying church library volumes between 
 times, and is so solemn, nol to say lugubrious, that 
 I am heartily sorry when Saturday night comes, 
 and correspondingly rejoiced when the sun goes 
 down on Sunday. Then she can smile again. 
 Think what her childhood must have been." 
 
 Solemn and sedate as she had been taught to be 
 on Sunday there was no question as to her elasticity 
 and health and spirits the rest of the week. She 
 skimmed away over the prairie fast and free, glory- 
 ing in the upland breeze, the rare and exhilarating 
 atmosphere, the radiant sunshine, and her own 
 exuberant strength and vitality. " How that girl 
 could dance if she only would dance !" said Mr. 
 Tommy Hollis, whose highest idea of garrison life 
 was a german every week and a hop every night.
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 27 
 
 Up at Winthrop all the olRcers were married, and, 
 this being her first experience in array life, Natha- 
 lie was very shy and constrained. She thought 
 both men and women frivolous in the extreme, 
 utterly lacking in that serious, meditative quality 
 which at her home was accepted as evidence of a 
 religious nature and a reasonable hope of ultimate 
 salvation* Elder Pease, she was sure, would have 
 comprehensively stamped them all, except perhaps 
 Mrs. Barry, and possibly the major, as "carnal." But 
 she was physically in a sort of state of transition 
 then, being still angular and sallow for the first few 
 weeks, and only slowly evolving into the lily-like 
 beauty that manifested itself at Kussell. She had 
 had no one to interrupt her prairie tramps at 
 "Winthrop. te 
 
 But here at Eussell a new world burst upon her 
 astonished vision. Here she found herself followed, 
 sought, waylaid by three or four very presentable 
 and pleasing young men in most becoming uniforms 
 " regimentals " she called them, as she had learned 
 to in her far New England home and all the 
 Puritanism in the world was not proof against the 
 woman latent in her. Do Avhat she could to shame 
 it, beat it down, abjure it as " carnal and worldly," 
 this homage was sweet to her fresh girlish heart. 
 It made her deliciously happy in spite of herself.
 
 gg A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 She tried to overcome it by dressing in still more 
 somber shades and styles at first, but her kind 
 friend and protector protested. Mrs. Barry told her 
 emphatically that no girl should be allowed to make 
 herself hideous when nature manifestly intended 
 her to look radiantly pretty. The Quakerlike hood 
 and cloak were consequently discarded, not without 
 prickings of conscience on Nathalie's part, and yet, 
 with easier resignation than she had deemed pos- 
 sible, she allowed herself to be attired in the hat 
 and jacket and gloves Mrs. Barry had ordered from 
 Chicago, and then, as Hunter said, she was simply 
 as stunning as anything he had ever seen at "West 
 Point. 
 
 Then, too, she had at first been grievously em- 
 barrassed by the attentions of the bachelor officers. 
 No gentleman had ever asked her to walk or drive 
 or ride much less to dance before, although it 
 had often occurred that Elder Pease or Deacon 
 Drummond would happen along about the time she 
 dismissed her scholars and started on her long, 
 lonely walk in the wintry gloaming, and, whichever 
 one it was, he wonld accompany her much of the 
 way and talk in most edifying fashion of the world, 
 the flesh and the devil. Twice it came to pass that 
 these two pillars of the church appeared upon the 
 scene as they had not come together. They
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 29 
 
 seemed to have concentrated on the little stone 
 schoolhouse from widely different directions, each 
 serenely unconscious of the other's movements. 
 These two worthy men, it is remembered, were 
 most vehemently opposed to Nathalie's acceptance 
 of the Barrys' offer. She ought never to be allowed 
 to live among the godless men and women who 
 dwelt in army barracks. They were children of 
 wrath whose presence was contamination. But 
 there was a hard-headed old uncle, a scoffer, said 
 Elder Pease, who loved Nathalie, both for herself 
 and for her mother's sake, an uncle who had a pain- 
 fully big and dependent brood of his own, who bade 
 her go by all means, though he nearly broke down 
 at parting. Yet when sne was gone he turned upon 
 elder and deacon both, with triumph in his eyes. 
 
 At first, too, Nathalie shrank from accepting 
 these invitations to walk, and as for going driving, 
 Mrs. Barry had almost to order her. She was pain- 
 fully shy and embarrassed for a few days, and then 
 that began to wear off and keen enjoyment replaced 
 the shyness. Even when she started out alone she 
 speedily became aware of Maynard scouring the 
 prairie on his spirited horse, leaping the broad ace- 
 q/uia again and again, and finally riding up in sur- 
 prise to see her, and dismounting to walk by her 
 side, while Rienzi, __with mincing- gait, came towing 
 along behind.
 
 30 -4 GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 But for this keen, raw, darksome afternoon the 
 engagement had been made beforehand. " The 
 boys " \vere finding each other very much in the 
 way. To get a walk or chat with Miss Baird no\i 
 one had to see her several days ahead and make an 
 appointment. There had been no very bad weather 
 since the Barrys came, and she rarely missed her 
 week-day exercise of a three-mile tramp each after- 
 noon, and the man who walked with her need not 
 hope to saunter, much less to " spoon." Miss Baird 
 was "out for business," as Dana said, and it was 
 quick march, one hundred and twenty to the minute, 
 and a good swinging stride from start to finish. 
 
 Then Mrs. Barry was becoming interested in 
 Maynard's devotions. When she first arrived at 
 the post, and knew him and heard him referred to 
 as " Mrs. Turner's latest," she was not disposed to 
 like him. She had heard of Mrs. Turner, but never 
 before had been stationed at the same post with 
 her. She forgot at first that every young fellow on 
 reporting for duty at regimental headquarters was 
 immediately " annexed" by this fair, volatile, and 
 would-be youthful matron. She forgot, until laugh- 
 ingly reminded by Mrs. Stannard, that Hunter, Dana, 
 Hollis almost all the boys in fact had served their 
 apprenticeship. Blake, the regimental jester, said 
 that plebehood in the regiment had its infallibly
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 31 
 
 visible signs just as it had at West Point. In the 
 th the most prominent symptom was dancing 
 attendance on Mrs. Turner. But Maynard had 
 barely been well settled down into the traces had 
 served much less than half the allotted twelve- 
 month when the Barrys crme to the post, and 
 with them this blue-eyed, fair-haired, peachy- 
 cheeked Puritan maid, and Mrs. Turner's sway 
 became uncertain, She still assumed airs of pro- 
 prietorship Maynard still had to call for and 
 escort her (,o the weekly hops, and only the night 
 before, seeing him making for the outer air in the 
 midst of the dance, although she was leaning on 
 the arm of a partner at the moment, she called 
 after her " orderly," as Blake designated her suc- 
 cessive victims, and languidly spoke: "Oh, Mr. 
 Maynard, would you mind bringing me a glass of 
 water," and then when he obediently turned and 
 presently appeared with a brimming goblet, she 
 sipped a ripple or two from the surface and, ignor- 
 ing her partner for the moment, murmured, " Where 
 were you going ?" 
 
 " Over home a few minutes. I have no dances 
 now, you know, until after supper." 
 
 " You won't find a soul up at the Barrys, unless 
 you've made an appointment. Have you ?" 
 
 " None whatever, Mrs. Turner," answered May-
 
 82 A OAHRISON TANGLE. 
 
 nard, flushing with anno3 T ance and embarrassment. 
 " Nor did I think of going there." 
 
 " I think you are very mean to want to leave me 
 the moment you've had your dance. You haven't 
 been as kind as you were before Miss Baird came. 
 Come, Mr. Crane," she said, turning to her partner 
 with an air of patient, pathetic, but undeserved sor- 
 row. " Let us go and sit down somewhere. I don't 
 think I care to dance this set." 
 
 And Maynard strode away across the dark parade 
 toward the distant lights of officers' row, feeling 
 as though he must have inflicted something akin to 
 heartache on a winsome and appealing woman, yet 
 vaguely conscious that he ought not to be held to 
 the species of servitude or subjected to the surveil- 
 lance which seemed to be his lot since falling within 
 the sphere of Mrs. Turner's attractions. His own 
 quarters were well down toward the east end 
 of the row. Major Barry's were just as far toward 
 the west ; but no sooner was he beyond the range 
 of the hop-room lights than the young officer 
 veered toward the west end, and presently brought 
 up at the picket fence that fronted the entire line. 
 The Barrys' parlor lights were extinguished, but a 
 faint glimmer came through the shades of the front 
 dormer window of the second floor, and that was 
 h&r room Mrs. Barry's being on the ground floor.
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 33 
 
 The night, as has been said, was dark and overcast. 
 The Cheyenne zephyr, a stiff gale that blew three 
 days out of four down from the mountain pass to 
 the north west, and across the open prairie, had died 
 away at nightfall, and all was as still as the night 
 was dark. Over across the parade the string band 
 of the th was playing rollicking, opera louffe 
 music for the Lancers which Mrs. Turner felt too 
 fatigued or hurt to dance. They were winding 
 through the final figure now, and even though the 
 doors and windows were closed against the keen 
 wintry air, so still and breathless was nature that 
 the soft hum of voices or occasional burst of silvery 
 laughter was borne with the music upon the wings of 
 night. Leaning there upon the fence, young May 
 nard had turned his back to the sounds of merri- 
 ment and was gazing fixedly at that upper window. 
 For nearly a week he ha4 realized that within that 
 little room, behind that screening shade, there dwelt 
 the one fair girl who held his fate, for cveal or woe, 
 in the hollow of her soft white hand. 
 
 Then the music suddenly ceased. The " Lancers " 
 was over. The musicians could have a five minutes* 
 breathing spell before they struck up the waltz, and 
 then, as if she had only been waiting for the stop- 
 ping of that profane and frivolous dance tune, the 
 fair occupant, or at least her faint shadow, appeared
 
 34 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 at the window. Maynard started with joy. He 
 could feel the instant bounding of his heart. 
 Quickly the shade was raised. Up went the window, 
 and the outlines of the pretty head, and the slender 
 girlish form that were the object of his idolatry, 
 appeared at the casement. Resting her elbows on 
 the sill, her cheeks upon her hands, Nathalie leaned 
 out into the night, drinking in the mountain air. 
 It was just ten o'clock and the trumpeter from the 
 adjutant's office had come out upon the dark parade 
 and was sounding, as was the custom at that time, 
 "lights out" at that comparatively early hour. 
 Just as the window was raised Maynard was sure 
 he heard the sound of footsteps across the road, the 
 crunching of boot heels in the snow and ice heaped 
 up along the acequia that edged the parade, and, 
 glancing thither, he distinctly saw the figure of a 
 man in heavy overcoat and derby hat between him 
 and the lights of " B " troop's barracks. But at the 
 first note of " taps " these lights were extinguished 
 and he could see no more of the stranger, nor did 
 he care to. All his thoughts and longings were 
 concentrated on that fair, yet dark form at the case- 
 ment above. He watched it with worship in his 
 eyes. To-morrow to-morrow afternoon he was to 
 accompany her on her walk. Could he summon 
 courage enough to tell his sweet secret 2 Was it
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 35 
 
 wisdom to do so now when she had known him so 
 short a time ? Would it not be apt to startle, even 
 to shock her ? 
 
 That footstep again and still in front of the 
 Barry s' quartersl Maynard had almost forgotten 
 the wanderer. " Some one of the hack drivers from, 
 town," he said to himself, " trying to make his way 
 to the store for a drink and a ' loaf ' by the stove." 
 But instead of going on down to the store the fellow- 
 was still prowling somewhere there in the dark 
 across the road, and dark it was as Erebus. No ! 
 He's coming across, coming steathily, too, for the 
 footfalls though audible told that the prowler was 
 tiptoeing as well as he could in heavy, triple-soled 
 boots. What could that mean ? 
 
 From his post, at the fence opposite the open 
 space at the side of the house, Maynard listened, 
 breathless. The footfalls ceased, but still no form 
 could be seen. Then a strange thing happened. 
 He could have sworn he heard in hoarse whisper 
 her name, " Nathalie." Straining his ears he heard 
 it, beyond possibility of doubt, again. But she re- 
 mained immovable, except that now her face was 
 turned upward as though she were communing with 
 the spirits of those she loved who had been taken 
 from earth. Marveling, wondering, stricken with 
 a jealous dread, Maynard felt that ho was growing
 
 38 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 suddenly cold, that his knees were trembling or 
 was it a shiver ? 
 
 The next instant there came the sound of sudden 
 snap or crack, then a bounding and rolling, as of a 
 pebble, down the shingle roof of the piazza into the 
 tin gutter that edged it. Startled from her reverie, 
 frightened she knew not at what, the girl instantly 
 fell back and pulled down the shade. Maynard 
 could stand it no longer. Bounding out into the 
 road he hurled himself upon the tall, dim but burly 
 figure a man whose hat was pulled down over his 
 eyes and whose coat collar was up about his ears. 
 " Who are you and what are you doing here ?" he 
 fiercely demanded. For just about three seconds 
 the advantage of a surprise was his. Then he felt 
 himself suddenly hurled backward, tripped and flung 
 with overpowering, stunning force upon the icy 
 roadway. His head struck the solid earth with a 
 crack that sent a thousand stars dancing before his 
 eyes, and when he scrambled dizzily to his feet the 
 muscular intruder had vanished.
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 37 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MA.YNAKD'S head was still sore when he turned 
 out for reveille roll call the next morning. He had 
 made ineffectual search for his conqueror, had 
 questioned the sentry at the east front, and the 
 hackman who brought the town guests out to the 
 hop, but no such person as he described had been 
 seen by any of them. He went to his quarters and 
 bathed his aching head, and then he had to return 
 to the hop-room. Mrs. Turner rallied him upon his 
 pallor and his utter lack of devotion, and finding him 
 still in somber mood had changed her tactics and 
 adopted the anxious and sympathetic role. Surely 
 something must have gone amiss with him, she 
 said. But Maynard would admit nothing. He was 
 dazed by the strange adventure. He could not he 
 would not speak of it to a soul. What would not 
 be the excitement in garrison were he to announce 
 that a stranger, a civilian, was under Miss Baird's 
 window at ten o'clock, calling her by her Christian 
 name and tossing pebbles at her window to attract 
 her attention 1 He was glad of the detail which took
 
 3g A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 him with his little patrol to town the following 
 morning. The duty on which he was sent was 
 one no officer relished, and it should not have been 
 thrust upon him, the junior of the regiment, nor 
 would it have been had the colonel known whom 
 the adjutant had detailed. The duty involved 
 visiting groggeries, gambling hells and brothels in 
 search of the missing men; being abused and insulted 
 by slatternly women and bar-room loafers living 
 like parasites for the time being on the bounty of 
 the half-stupefied soldiers, yet Maynard wanted to 
 get away from his engagement with Mrs. Turner. 
 He wanted to think quietly as he rode town ward 
 at the head of his little detachment, with the yellow 
 ambulance bringing up the rear, how or whether he 
 could tell Miss Baird he was a witness, through his 
 sense of hearing, at least, to what took place the 
 night before ; but he had by no means made up his 
 mind when they entered the outskirts of Cheyenne, 
 and riding briskly to a big stable-yard near the 
 center of the town, left their horses there with one 
 man in charge, and then, armed with their revolvers, 
 started on their search. No good could come of 
 asking questions. The populace of those days was 
 always in league with the deserter or absentee 
 without leave so long as he had money. Then not 
 infrequently would they turn the poor fellow over
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 39 
 
 to the marshal or sheriff and get half the re- 
 ward offered for the apprehension of soldier ren- 
 egades. To load them drunk into a hack, turn 
 them over at the guardhouse and claim the entire 
 reward of thirty dollars per man would have been 
 bad generalship. The hand of every soldier would 
 have been against the traitor from that time on. 
 They would have killed the goose that laid the 
 golden egg. Maynard had an old sergeant with 
 him who knew the ins and outs of every haunt of 
 the bibulous among the boys in blue, and he led on, 
 silent, relentless, unerring. Five minutes' brisk 
 tramp brought them to a combination concert hall 
 and gambling house. One or two loungers in front, 
 at sight of the coming patrol, darted inside, and 
 when the sergeant reached the glazed doors they 
 were bolted. "Quick," he ordered the corporal, 
 " take Schultz and Meyer and get around to the 
 rear door. Nab every one of our fellows that comes 
 out." Then he banged on the frontdoor for admis- 
 sion. 
 
 But the "fellows" didn't come. It was full a 
 minute before the sergeant's summons was answered. 
 Then a head was poked out of an upper window, a 
 head on a broad grin, and an oily, Milesian voice 
 demanded, " What the devil is wanted ? There's no 
 game until to-night/'
 
 40 A GARRISON TANGLti. 
 
 " The game we want is under this roof, Maloney, 
 and you know it," was the sergeant's sturdy reply. 
 " Now we don't mean to break in, neither can they 
 break out. It's only a reasonable fine and a few 
 days' fatigue duty they'll be getting for going back 
 quietly with us now, but it'll be a dollar an hour for 
 every hour we have to wait, and we can camp 
 right here until they're starved out, if need be. So 
 tell the gang to be wise and come at once ..'* 
 
 By this time a little crowd had begun to gather. 
 Maynard, silently awaiting the result of the ser- 
 geant's appeal, and trusting to his larger experience 
 in such matters, was pondering over the legal aspect 
 of the case and wondering whether Wyoming laws 
 would be very savage at his expense in case he 
 forced an entrance in search of his truant troopers, 
 when he noticed that the glazed doors of a some- 
 what similar establishment across the way were 
 swinging slowly open, and that a knot of curious 
 and attentive spectators huddled close behind 
 them, yet keeping within shelter and as much as 
 possible out of sight, evidently desirous of escaping 
 observation. Closer at hand the rapidly arriving 
 populace began to indulge in chaff and facetious 
 remarks, much to the annoyance of the sergeant 
 and the comfort of the Irishman aloft, who, recog- 
 nizing sympathetic souls in the crowd, stuck his
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 41 
 
 head still further out and exchanged jubilant greet- 
 ing with cronies on the sidewalk. 
 
 " How much a head will ye give me, sergeant, for 
 preserving their lives? Sure Hannifin's whisky 
 across the way there would burn the stomach out of 
 a brass monkey. It's rewarded heavily I ought to 
 be. But I'm wastin' wurds wid you, sergeant. 
 Let the liftenant spake. Sure he looks like a 
 liberal, high-minded gentleman, which you don't, 
 sergeant. Sure it's Mister Maynard I know, an' ye 
 mustn't be givin' it away, boys ; but it's him knows 
 ivery room on the premises and wins his month's 
 pay twice over at Scolly's table. Doan't ye now, 
 liftenant ?" 
 
 The street crowd shouted its approbation of this 
 sally, and yelled with delight when Maloney was 
 shoved to one side and another face, on a feminine 
 head, was thrust beside that of the first occupant. 
 It was fiery, or rather carroty red, while the eyes 
 were bleary and the nose purple. Maloney was the 
 chartered "bouncer" of the establishment and this his 
 brawny helpmate. In the cosmopolitan make-up of 
 the populace of Cheyenne of those days the Irish 
 were scarce. Even John Chinaman was seldom to 
 be seen. The crowd was typically frontier Ameri- 
 can, and gifted with all the American's passion for 
 personal liberty and propensity for fun at any ex-
 
 43 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 pense. Here was a squad of regulars, with a trig 
 young West Pointer in command, seeking to com- 
 pass the arrest of an equal number of renegade com- 
 rades, and balked in the attempt by the very fact 
 that they represented the force and majesty of the 
 federal government. Had the offender or offenders 
 been guilty of any crime against the person or 
 property of a fellow citizen of Cheyenne, they, the 
 crowd, would have smashed in those fragile glazed 
 doors and nabbed the culprits instanter; but as it 
 was simply Uncle Sam who was wronged and defied, 
 only their risibilities were appealed to. It was fun 
 to contemplate the impotence of the armed force 
 sent by the government to reclaim its own, provided 
 it could be done without recourse to invasion of 
 private property. Maloney's master's gambling 
 hell was his castle, open to any citizen when its 
 master chose, but forbidden to the law abiding at 
 other times, and to Uncle Sam when he had no 
 search warrant. 
 
 Then the crowd began to cheer Mrs. Maloney and 
 call for a speech, and more of the populace arrived. 
 The absurdity of the situation was patent to May nard 
 from the start, but the sergeant was fiery and wrath- 
 ful. His little squad was being elbowed and crowded 
 and encompassed round about, not in angry threat 
 or abuse, but in jovial fashion. Mrs. Maloney,
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 43 
 
 nothing loath, had begun her harangue, and her 
 voice had the carrying power of a rifle. Maynard 
 saw the hopelessness of the situation and stepped to 
 the sergeant's side. " Get your men together at 
 once," he said, "we must pull out of this." The 
 sergeant looked astonished, hesitated a moment, 
 then said, "All right, sir, if you say so," and bustled 
 round to the back door after the corporal. In 
 silence the patrol then bored a way through the 
 laughing, jeering, chaffing throng, and started up 
 the street. "Where to, sir?" said the sergeant 
 sulkily. He hated to retire, and had had no such 
 schooling in respect to civil laws as had been pounded 
 into his young superior at the Point. 
 
 " Back to the horses," was the answer. " We 
 can accomplish nothing here." 
 
 But the crowd, like most Cheyenne assemblages 
 in the days of old, had nothing in particular to do. 
 It had been recruited from all the bar-rooms 
 in the neighborhood, and desired to be amused, 
 so it promptly resolved itself into an escort 
 for the troopers, and traveled along after them a 
 block or so. Then an- inspiration seized several of 
 its prominent constituents and a dozen of the num 
 ber slipped away from the escorting party and ran 
 rapidly down a side street, and two minutes later, as 
 Maynard turned into the broad thoroughfare on
 
 44 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 which opened the corral where they had left their 
 horses with their single guardian, he was treated to 
 a sensation. Confident of the applause of their 
 fellow citizens, and reckless of law or order, a gang 
 of the choicest spirits had dashed upon the enclos- 
 ure, instantly overpowering the bewildered sentry; 
 and while some stood guard over his prostrate form, 
 the others unlinked the excited horses, threw them- 
 selves into saddle and, laughing and cheering, came 
 clattering out into the street. This changed the 
 whole situation in the twinkling of an eye. Taught 
 to respect the rights and protect the property of 
 other men, Maynard had very positive convictions 
 for a youngster as to the sacred nature of the claims 
 of Uncle Sam. So long as only chaff and ridicule 
 were the weapons of the populace his equanimity 
 had not been disturbed, but now he blazed with 
 wrath. A yell of delight went up from some of the 
 throng at sight of the motley troop ranging into 
 line a hundred yards away, but, even then and there, 
 were men who realized at once how wild and how 
 serious a prank was this, and how widespread might 
 be the havoc of its consequences. Instantly two or 
 three men started for the young officer, shouting : 
 " Don't notice it, lieutenant. Don't do anything. 
 We'll get the horses." 
 
 Very possibly if Maynard had halted his party
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 45 
 
 then ana tnere, or turned back and marched them 
 into the adjoining street, the wiser among the citi- 
 zens could have persuaded the offenders of the mag- 
 nitude of their sin, and the horses would have been 
 restored with rough, but profuse, frontier apologies. 
 But the blood of the patrol was up. Here, at least, 
 was something they had a right to resent, and all in 
 an instant Maynard and his little party started on 
 the jump for the despoilers. It was a bitter cold 
 day, as has been said. The troopers were in heavy 
 overcoats and shoes, fur caps and gloves, and they 
 could not make a sprint despite their best efforts. 
 It would have been easy enough for the riders to 
 dash away, but all the devil of frontier fun, reck- 
 lessness and whisky was at work, and clinging, as 
 some of them had to do, to their plunging and excited 
 steeds, down they came, following the lead of a 
 jovial tough who had mounted Maynard's own 
 horse. Luckily the leader had no spurs; luckily the 
 horse seemed to recognize his master as the foremost 
 of the familiar blue-coats, for despite the furious 
 urging and kicking of the tall townsman on his 
 back, " Rienzi " came snorting and plunging straight 
 to Maynard's side, and the lieutenant, never laying: 
 hand upon the rein, was at the joker's stirrup in a 
 second. Another second and both his sinewy hands 
 had grasped the rider's boot and had toppled
 
 46 4 GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 hurled him head foremost out of saddle to the icy 
 ground. It was all done so quickly that no one 
 realized what had happened until, as the other 
 horses seemed instinctively to halt and cluster about 
 their loader, and the other troopers to seize their 
 mounts, and the momentary riders to tumble or 
 throw themselves from their seats, it was seen that 
 the ringleader of the gang lay prostrate as he had 
 plunged, his head turned to one side and a dark 
 stream of blood oozing from underneath. 
 
 Some one had set up a sympathetic cheer at 
 Mayard's exploit. So long as all remained on the 
 same footing, the crowd was a unit in its desire to 
 have fun at the expense of the soldiers, but when its 
 bolder spirits appeared in saddle they forfeited the 
 full measure of the sympathy of a fickle populace, 
 and Maynard's deft and skillful and marvelously 
 quick settlement of the question won their admira- 
 tion. All the same there was a prompt rush to aid 
 and lift the prostrate man, a task none too easy, for 
 he proved to be tall, very powerfully built, and utterly 
 a dead weight on the hands of those who bore him. 
 The blood was streaming from a jagged gash on 
 the right side of the forehead, and it was evident at 
 a glance that the contusion and shock had been 
 severe. The rollicking mood of the crowd had sud- 
 denly changed, and as one man they flocked densely
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 47 
 
 about the central figure, Maynard, who, turning his 
 horse over to the care of one of the troopers, and 
 directing the sergeant to lead the patrol a little 
 distance away, was now busy in the effort to revive 
 his late tormentor. 
 
 " Does anybody know where he lives who he 
 is ?" he inquired, as he knelt and began bathing 
 away the blood with a sponge handed him by some 
 sympathetic soul. 
 
 " He's only been here a few days, lieutenant," an- 
 swered one of the throng, a stalwart fellow in a 
 buffalo overcoat and wolfskin cap. " He's been 
 playing at the Empire, where you were a few min- 
 utes ago, since Monday. First off he quit winner 
 two or three times and treated liberal, but luck 
 turned on him. I reckon he's about cleaned out. 
 Didn't show up at the table last night at all." 
 
 Maynard looked up into the speaker's face. 
 " Would you mind calling a doctor ?" he said. " I'll 
 pay his bill. Of course I'm sorry the man is so 
 badly hurt, but " 
 
 " Oh, you're all right, lieutenant. Nobody's 
 going to blame you in the matter. We were all ripe 
 for a little fun, but had no idea these fellows would 
 be such damned fools as to try to steal your 
 horses ;" and here the fur-clad giant cast a disdain- 
 ful glance at one or two of the would-be cavaliers,
 
 48 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 the only ones of that luckless party to remain and 
 hang shamefacedly about their late leader. " You 
 fellows were eager enough to follow this man," 
 said he, triumphing over the comments and ques- 
 tions hazarded by others in the crowd. "Don't 
 you know his name ?" 
 
 "Nut bin' more'n what he told me," sheepishly 
 answered one of the two, with copious libation of 
 tobacco juice and a shrug of his broad shoulders. 
 " Said he'd been in the San Juan country had 
 made a stake mining and ha/1 been robbed of most 
 of it in Denver by fellows who had run up here. 
 There was a rooster with him two or three days ago 
 who called him Boston, and he 'lowed that was the 
 name he generally went by." 
 
 Somebody elbowed a way to the side of the vic- 
 tim and his amateur nurses, a glass of whisky in 
 his hand the one restorative almost sure to be ob- 
 tainable on the frontier and Maynard forced a few 
 drops between his patient's teeth. 
 
 " That won't help, lieutenant," chuckled a by- 
 stander. "Nuthin' short of four fingers will begin 
 to tell on his mucus. He's copper-lined, he is ;" 
 whereat the assemblage snickered. Maynard re- 
 peated the dose, and a fluttering sigh was the speedy 
 response. The sponge was actively plied. More 
 whisky was administered, this time with less diffi-
 
 A VARRI80N TANGLE. 49 
 
 culty, and then the feeble hand sought to find the 
 battered head, but fell back limply. " Open his 
 shirt, lieutenant," suggested the man who knew him 
 as " Boston," and the young officer's hand sought 
 the heavy muffler that was twisted loosely about 
 the neck. A coarse blue flannel shirt was revealed, 
 was opened at the throat, and then a package in 
 oiled silk, hanging by a silken cord, was found, and 
 then came a doctor. Lifting an eyelid, he peeped 
 into the dull pupiL felt the pulse, and placed his 
 hand over the heart. " My office is only a few steps 
 away. Lift him up and bring him there," said he, 
 in the quiet, authoritative tone of the professional 
 who had dwelt long among men, most of whose dead 
 he had attended immediately before or after their 
 sudden dissolution, and had seen them buried as 
 they fell, with their boots on. The order was 
 obeyed in silence. A shutter was lifted from its 
 hinges at the nearest saloon, the patient was hoisted 
 thereon, and the march began. Maynard stopped a 
 moment. 
 
 " Leave Schultz here with my horse, sergeant, and 
 go with the other men to gather what you can of 
 the absentees. This has made a diversion in our 
 favor. I'll join you at the Empire presently." 
 
 A discontented crowd hovered at the foot of the 
 doctor's stairs. That level-headed personage had
 
 50 A GARHI80N TANGLE. 
 
 ordered out everybody but Buffalo Coat and the 
 man who knew the patient as Boston, but he opened 
 to Maynard's knock. " Come in, lieutenant," he 
 promptly said, as soon as he saw the face at the 
 door. " You gave this big fellow a sharp lesson, 
 but I fancy he deserved it. These gentlemen (here 
 he winked sagely at the officer) have given me the 
 particulars. No," he continued, " there's no fract- 
 ure, no serious concussion. He'll come around 
 presently. All that's likely to be necessary is a 
 quiet room and complete rest for a few days. We 
 have no public hospital as yet. The coroner's office 
 ordinarily is all that is necessary." 
 
 " Will you kindly see that he gets every attention, 
 doctor, and send the bill to me at the fort. My 
 name's Maynard," said the officer. " Now I have 
 to join my men, if I can be of no further use or 
 service here," whereupon the two shook hands and 
 parted. 
 
 Buffalo Coat followed to the door. " You're a 
 damned good fellow, lieutenant/' said he, "and 
 I'm sorry the gang behaved as they did. It was 
 the sergeant they were after, not you. He's all 
 right, too, only he gets huffy when they guy, and 
 that's nuts for the crowd. Now I'll let you in to 
 the whereabouts of your strays. There was only 
 one at the Empire, lying dead drunk in the back
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 51 
 
 room, but there's a raft of 'em across the road at 
 Hannifin's, some in plain clothes. Their money's 
 about given out and he'll be glad to get rid of 'em." 
 Maynard thanked the man rather coldly, and im- 
 patiently too, though he could hardly say why, 
 mounted his horse, overtook the patrol a few blocks 
 away, and imparted the tidings to his sergeant. 
 Two minutes later they had dismounted again in a 
 side street, molested and followed no longer, 
 though the populace still hovered curiously about 
 bar-room doors. The corporal with two men was 
 sent through a back alley to the rear yard and door- 
 way of Hannifin's place. Maynard and his party 
 suddenly appeared at the invitingly open front, and 
 with the tacit consent of the proprietor began their 
 search of the premises, upstairs and down. From 
 under beds and out of closets they dragged three of 
 the absentees, then they invaded the cellar. Al- 
 most immediately there was a rush from a dark 
 corner, a crash of boxes and barrels upon the re- 
 sounding floor. The sergeant's lantern was shivered 
 to bits. There followed a sound of blows, curses 
 and struggles. Two dim figures bounded away up 
 the steps, and Maynard, striving to follow, stum- 
 bled over a prostrate form, and then, suddenly 
 conscious of a sharp pang in the side, found his 
 searching hand deluged with his own blood and 
 everything growing dim and dark about him.
 
 52 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 Before he had finished bandaging patient number 
 one, Dr. Corry was hurriedly summoned to Han- 
 nifin's by the report that Lieutenant Maynard had 
 been stabbed to death. 
 
 There was a telegraph line from Cheyenne to 
 the adjutant's office at Fort Russell in those days. 
 Orderly call had just sounded and the adjutant was 
 still at his work when in came the soldier operator 
 with white, scared face. "Lieutenant," said he, 
 " the town office says Loot'nant Maynard's stabbed 
 through the heart trying to arrest deserters." 
 
 The colonel and Major Barry had been having a 
 consultation about the probable movement of the 
 battalion to the field, and were just coming forth 
 into the hall. Both heard the abrupt announce- 
 ment. Both started the colonel into the adjutant's 
 room the major for his home. 
 
 " For God's sake keep it quiet as you can," were 
 the latter's words, "at least until I've had time to 
 Weak it to my wife."
 
 A GARRISON TAXtiLE. fij 
 
 A SPELL of dull weather had fallen on tb* fort. 
 Except when a snowstorm was raging tho Wyo- 
 ming skies were generally clear and cloudless, and 
 they had had earlier in the month a snowstorm 
 fierce enough and long enough to render further 
 specimens entirely unnecessary. The wind had 
 taken a freak of blowing from the south for thirty- 
 six hours, and the men were scurrying about with- 
 out overcoats the men of Stannard's battalion, that 
 is, for, true to prediction, Barry had gone. Buxton 
 and Freeman, Raymond and Turner, Gregg and 
 Wayne, Truscott and Ray were the eight captains 
 whose troops were quartered at Russell. Buxton 
 was away on leave, but his troop was in Barry's bat- 
 talion and so were Freeman's, Raymond's and 
 Wayne's. There wasn't a woman whose husband 
 had to go who did not think, down in the bottom of 
 her heart, that it ought to have been the other bat- 
 talion, or at least that if one had to go both should 
 have gone, and most of them said so. To Mrs. 
 Barry there was greater trial and hardship in the
 
 54 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 separation from her devoted husband than to the 
 wives of many of his juniors. But she was silent. 
 Nathalie Baird alone knew what it meant to the 
 invalid, and her own attentions would have been 
 redoubled, but Mrs. Stannard had promptly ap- 
 peared to beg that she might take the major's place 
 at the afternoon readings, and Mrs. Ray and Mrs. 
 Atherton, the colonel's wife, had been almost equally 
 insistent, and other ladies had called to know if 
 there wasn't something they could do even Mrs. 
 Turner who never read anything. And they all had 
 so much to say about " dear Mr. Maynard," ancl 
 what a shocking thing it was, and how dreadful to 
 have to wire to his home people that he was so 
 seriously wounded. His mother, it appears, was 
 dead, his father old and too feeble to undertake the 
 long journey, but his sister was already on the way. 
 He still lay in a room at the Inter Ocean in town, 
 too severely injured and too weak to be moved. 
 There was fear of fever, possibly of blood poison- 
 ing, so said the savants, and his friends at the fort 
 could only submit. 
 
 Atherton was an angry man when told all that 
 had transpired in town. He came down, said the 
 troopers, like a thousand of brick on the fellows 
 brought back by the patrol, had caused rewards to 
 be offered for the two still at large, one of whom at
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 55 
 
 least had been guilty of stabbing the lieutenant. 
 Maynard and his men, coming fr<3ra the brightly 
 lighted saloon into the dark cellar, could seo nothing. 
 The two skulkers, whose eyes had become accus- 
 tomed to the gloom, and who were aided by the 
 broad streak of light from the trap iu the saloon 
 floor, had plainly seen the searchers as they de- 
 scended, had made their bold rush for freedom, and 
 easily escaped. But this they could have done with- 
 out bloodshed, and even those who had been their 
 friends at the fort would none of them now. The 
 stabbing of young Mr. Maynard was absolutely 
 without justification, even by men who had prison 
 staring them in the face. They were crazed by 
 protracted drinking, was the only explanation, but 
 it was nothing more than explanation it was no 
 excuse. Ever since the end of September the pre^ 
 vious year the young officer had been steadily on 
 duty with his troop. It takes much less than fiva 
 months for veteran soldiers to take the measure of t 
 or, as they express it, "size up" an officer, and May. 
 nard was thoroughly well liked by the men of the 
 entire command. Only those black sheep of the 
 fold, the irreconcilable toughs who are to be found 
 to the number of two or three in almost every gar. 
 rison, could find it in their hearts to say aught 
 against him. As luck would have it, the two de*
 
 66 4 GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 sorters still at large were characters of this type 
 blackguards incarnate, who had served, doubtless, 
 under other names in more than one company until 
 the loose recruiting methods of that day had landed 
 them in Buxton's troop. Here, so long as the burly 
 captain was on duty, they had no bad time. Buxton 
 had a peculiar affiliation for the tough element of 
 the rank and file, possibly because he had spent some 
 years before the war as one of them. But Buxton had 
 gone on leave, and his first lieutenant was giving 
 the troop a needed straightening out, a process that 
 involved privates Yell and Culligan in disciplinary 
 methods hitherto untried, and led to their deter- 
 mination to sever., for the third or fourth time, 
 probably, the bonds that welded them to Uncle 
 Sam. No vestige of doubt remained that these ruf- 
 fians, or one of them at least, had dealt Maynard 
 the well-nigh fatal blow ; and, had the garrison had 
 its say, all Fort Russell would have joined in the 
 search and pursuit, and a short shrift and sudden 
 cord would have been the lot of both. 
 
 And so it happened that Nathalie Baird found 
 herself sorely missing the sight of that dashing 
 rider, and the sound of his cheery, ringing voice as 
 she took her afternoon exercise on the prairie, and 
 could not help thinking a great deal about him, and 
 feeling very, very fall of interest and pity, and not a
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 57 
 
 little desire to be of some use to him in his critical 
 state. She could not help wishing 1 it was the 
 proper the obvious thing 1 for young girls like her- 
 self to become the nurses and caretakers of warriors 
 \vounded in the line of duty. They did such things 
 in romance and fiction, but Nathalie had never read 
 Ivanhoe and the host of stories that blessed their 
 hero with such sweet companionship and care. She 
 found herself wondering very much what Mr. 
 Maynard's sister would be like, and wishing she 
 knew and could go to see her ; and ruminating over 
 all these things, Nathalie's step was slower, her eyes 
 downcast, and her round, soft cheek lost the lively 
 flush that buoyant health and exercise had given it. 
 There were still some young fellows left in the 
 garrison, though both Dana and Hunter had gone 
 with the field column, the latter in Maynard's place 
 in Wayne's troop, but something told them the tall 
 girl at the Barrys would rather be alone just now, 
 and noting her pallor and the wistful, anxious look 
 with which the blue e} r es regarded everybody who 
 had just come out from town, garrison gossips 
 began to talk, especially Mrs. Turner. 
 
 Then Maynard's sister reached Cheyenne, was 
 met at the train by Major and Mrs. Stannard and 
 the adjutant, and escorted at once to her brother's 
 bedside at the hotel, where a communicating room
 
 58 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 had been made ready for her. She proved to be 
 older than the sufferer by several years, and a 
 woman whom grief, anxiety and care had told upon 
 before her thirtieth year. She was a trifle cold and 
 undemonstrative, too, thought the trio who met and 
 welcomed her, but every allowance was made. 
 
 "Some of us will be in every day until Mr. 
 Maynard is well enough to be moved," said Mrs. 
 Stannard, " so you must be sure to let us know of 
 anything that you or he may need ; and when you 
 do come to Russell we have spare rooms in our 
 big quarters, and you're to come right there, both of 
 you." Miss Maynard had no idea how kind this was 
 of Mrs. Stannard. She did not realize that her 
 brother had only a single room under a roof that 
 could barely cover an ordinary parlor, yet that had 
 to shelter the abodes of three bachelor subalterns 
 two beside himself. But Miss Maynard was very, 
 very glad to go to the Stannards when, five days 
 later, the doctors and nurses lifted her soldier boy 
 into the yellow ambulance, trundled him slowly out 
 to the fort, and then bore him upstairs into the 
 major's front room. April had come by that time 
 and a warm south wind, as has been said, played 
 for several days, and the skies were murky, the air 
 soft and unusually humid, and Maynard was pres- 
 ently allowed to sit propped up in bed, while Grace^
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 59 
 
 his adoring sister, read to or chatted with him, and 
 the doctors let him see occasional visitors. Mrs. 
 Stannard was there by the hour, and the stern 
 colonel had called and had been most kind and 
 thoughtful, and, so far from finding fault, had 
 praised Maynard's conduct, and still the patient was 
 not happy. 
 
 One day after long silence he turned suddenly. 
 " Grace, what ladies have called to see } r ou ?" 
 
 " "Why, all of them, I suppose, Ronald ever so 
 many anyway." 
 
 " Not all, because Mrs. Barry cannot leave her 
 room, I am told," said he. 
 
 " Xo, very true ; but she sent her card and ex- 
 plained it all Miss Baird brought it." 
 
 " When was she here ?" demanded the brother 
 eagerly. 
 
 " Day before yesterday and again to-day, bringing 
 some delicious jelly Mrs. Stannard is going to give 
 you by and by" And then the sister saw the joy- 
 light burning in his eyes, and the faint flush that 
 was mounting to his cheek, and her face took on an 
 instant shade of gray. " Why, Ronald," she said 
 " do you know her well ? You like her ?" 
 
 Then she could ask no more, for all at once there 
 sprang up in her heart the question, " What will this 
 mean to Gertrude Bonner ?"
 
 60 A QAERISON TANGLK. 
 
 Kising presently and without a word, the sister 
 slowly left the room and returned to her own. 
 Stopping for a moment to bathe her temples in 
 cold water, she then stepped to the dormer window 
 looking out over the bleak, northward prairie, 
 and pressed her forehead upon the cool pane. 
 She had had her own sorrows, poor girl. Her 
 own love had left her after a brief, joyous furlough 
 when she was but eighteen, and rejoined his 
 regiment just in time for Five Forks. He had 
 fought gallantly in earlier engagements ; had won 
 promotion, and come home sorely wounded to be 
 wooed back to health and strength among the 
 kindly people of their Mohawk village; had re- 
 turned to duty for the last campaign full of hope, 
 happiness, love of country, and of her, and the 
 brief glory of that campaign was indeed his last. 
 The joy of the news of Lee's surrender was 
 stifled throughout the narrowing valley at Little 
 Falls by the telegram that briefly told them 
 Captain Kalph Bonner was mortally wounded at 
 Sailor's Creek. Grace Maynard's life from that 
 time on was taken up in devotion to her own 
 mother and to his, and when they, too, were 
 called from earth she had still left to nurse, her 
 aging father, himself a wounded veteran of the 
 war, and to rear and love were her boy brother
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 61 
 
 Ronald and "his" girl sister Gertrude. The 
 father's one ambition was for his son that he 
 might be educated at West Point and commissioned 
 in the army. The sister's main hope had been that 
 when Ronald came back to them, an officer, he 
 might look with loving eyes upon the shy little 
 village girl, who as laughing, romping maiden had 
 been the playmate and tease of his early boyhood. 
 He had looked kindly, even affectionately upon her, 
 but with the same serene fondness with which he 
 regarded his sister, and then had gone on his way, 
 after weeks of long talk and counsel with the father, 
 to join his regiment in far Wyoming. 
 
 In every letter Grace had written there was 
 mention of Gertrude, how lovely she had grown, 
 how good and devoted she was to father, how help- 
 ful and attentive to him, "and then always so eager 
 to hear about you," and now was all her planning 
 to go for naught? Was it possible that her hero 
 brother, who had been her care as well as pride for 
 years, now that he was free to choose would turn 
 from the fond and faithful little heart that was 
 beating for him there at home and dower this un- 
 known New England girl with the wealth of his 
 first love ? At the first meeting Grace had noted 
 her beauty, the radiant color that so quickly came 
 and went and came again, but other women had
 
 62 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 entered upon their interview, and Miss Baird had 
 presently retired. The second time she came Mrs. 
 Stannard was there, and several callers, and Grace 
 had had but few words with her shy visitor, but 
 never had she thought of this as a possibility. They 
 spoke of her as Mrs. Barry's companion, a very re- 
 tiring, not to say repellent young person, who was 
 so painfully diffident and austere that few of their 
 number had grown to know her at all. Some be- 
 lieved her to be a sort of ward of Mrs. Barry's, 
 though that was denied. The subject had had little 
 interest before ; now it became imbued with a some- 
 thing stronger than fascination. Grace Maynard 
 felt that she could not too soon learn all that was 
 to be learned of this dangerous girl, and even as she 
 stood and planned and pondered, out over the open 
 prairie, picking her way among the little pools and 
 rapidly dwindling drifts, stooping in places as 
 though to pluck the tiny white flowerets that dotted 
 the surface with the first soft sunshine and southerly 
 breeze, there strolled Nathalie Baird. She had 
 just emerged from behind the brown bulk of the 
 old hospital. She was well-nigh four hundred yards 
 away, but Grace Maynard knew her at a glance 
 and watched her watched and studied and marked 
 her every move until she was a mere speck far out 
 toward the foothills, and then, when at last the
 
 TANGLE. fi3 
 
 watcher would have turned away, that speck sud- 
 denly became two. 
 
 Mrs. Stannard, busy about her household duties 
 a moment later heard Miss Maynard hurrying- down- 
 stairs, and was surprised to see her running- up again 
 with the major's field glasses in her hand. 
 
 "is anything wanted? Can I help you in any 
 way?'* she called. 
 
 But there was no answer.
 
 64 A GARRISON TANGL&. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THAT evening Mrs. Turner, with her chum, Mrs 
 Raymond, " hunting in couples" as of old, carne to 
 call again at the Stannards, prepared to be civil to 
 Mr. Maynard's sister. With Maynard confined to 
 his bed, and most of the other young men off with 
 Barry on a winter campaign, time was hanging 
 heavily on Mrs. Turner's hands, and one thing she 
 could not do was sit at home alone, even, as she 
 said, "when the captain was there." The Stan- 
 nards' little parlor was bright and cheerful, but the 
 master of the house was over at the colonel's just 
 then, talking of the probabilities of Barry's needing 
 help, and growling not a little that he was held in 
 leash when he longed to be on the war path. 
 Whether the Cheyennes had heard of the prepara- 
 tions to head them off, and were heeding them, no 
 officer could say. At all events the threatened out- 
 break had not come to pass, but the troops from 
 Leavenworth and Riley were rapidly closing on the 
 reservation, while, farther to the north, squadrons 
 from McPherson and Russell had been sent to the 
 field.
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 65 
 
 Mrs. Stannard came in to greet her guests, blithe 
 and smiling, and presently Miss Maynard was heard 
 descending the stairs. She entered, looking as 
 prim and impassive as ever, yet fancying she was 
 receiving the visitors with all cordiality. These 
 latter began, at once, of course, with inquiries for 
 the invalid, accompanying them with every assur 
 ance of sympathetic interest, and Miss Maynard 
 was pleased to say that he had had a very comfort- 
 able day and had vastly enjoyed the warm tea Mrs. 
 Stannard had made for him half an hour since. To 
 refer to it or to any edible or potable as hot would 
 have been a crass violation of Miss Maynard's tenets 
 as to what was delicate and refined in speech. She 
 experienced something akin to a shock on hearing 
 an officer of the regular army, her burly host, im- 
 portune his smiling wife to order more hot buck- 
 wheats, for village ethics in this behalf, first applied 
 by imported schoolma'ams to purely personal con- 
 ditions as when they gently rebuked the maidens 
 running in from the game of tag at recess and say- 
 ing " I'm so hot" had gradually extended to a 
 provincial embargo against the adjective on any 
 terms. All the same " warm" meant " hot" when 
 applied to toast and tea, and Mrs. Turner took the 
 word, as say the French, and bustled briskly into 
 conversation.
 
 gg A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 " Ah, yes, we all know how good Mrs. Stannard's 
 tea is. My cook never can get it like hers, but just 
 as soon as Mr. Maynard's able to eat anything I'll 
 be too happy to bring him some dainties myself. 
 Does he like jelly ?" 
 
 " Very much," answered Miss Maynard, with a 
 somewhat astringent smile. " His appetite is com- 
 ing back and he wants to eat everything." But 
 she made no mention of the jelly he had eaten and 
 rejoiced in only an hour before, far more than he 
 did Mrs. Stannard's tea, so it was the latter who 
 spoke. 
 
 " Miss Baird brought him some delicious jelly this 
 afternoon," she announced, " and it was good to see 
 how he enjoyed it." 
 
 " Yes, but it was Mrs. Barry not Miss Baird who 
 was the donor," quickly interposed Miss Maynard. 
 " Miss Baird was merely the bearer, though I am 
 sure she was very kind, and I am very grateful to 
 her." 
 
 It was impossible that such veteran society women 
 as their visitors should not note the almost intense 
 eagerness with which Miss Maynard seemed to desire 
 to impress them with her theory that Miss Baird 
 was in nowise connected with the preparation of 
 the jelly for her invalid brother. A quick glance 
 was exchanged, but no comment made ; indeed there
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 07 
 
 was no time, for the major's voice and step were 
 heard at the door as he came noisily into the hall, 
 ushering the adjutant and a subaltern or two who 
 had come to inquire for Maynard and to pay their 
 respects to the ladies. They flocked into the little 
 army parlor with the easy confidence of comrades 
 sure of welcome, and dropped into seats wherever 
 they could find them, even the piano stool bearing 
 its share, and the chat and laughter rippled on 
 Miss Maynard speedily relapsing into silence and 
 study of the faces about her with deep interest, yet 
 with the same impassive, almost solemn visage old 
 Stannard beaming on the party from the doorway 
 where he stood in his habitual off-duty attitude, 
 hands deep in trousers' pockets and legs straddled 
 apart as though long years in saddle had rendered 
 it impossible to lounge in any other pose. Pres- 
 ently he turned and tiptoed up the narrow stairway, 
 saying he r d go and have a peep at Maynard, who 
 was reported half awake, half dozing, and pretend- 
 ing to read. 
 
 " Queer we don't hear a word from Barry," said 
 one of the younger officers, flushing a bit as he 
 caught the adjutant's baleful eye glowering at him 
 for the omission of Barry's title at the hands of one 
 so many years his junior. " "We dropped in there," 
 he plunged ahead, in nervous effort to cover the
 
 68 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 solecism, " hoping to get some news, but Mrs. Barry 
 hadn't had a line for two days." 
 
 "Did you see her, Mr. Graham?" queried Mrs. 
 Stannard, " or did Miss Baird receive you ?" 
 
 " We saw her. She was lying on her couch be- 
 fore the parlor fire. Mrs. Ray was with her. "We 
 didn't see Miss Baird." And then young Graham 
 became suddenly aware that the other three women 
 had not only discontinued chat, but were listening 
 to him and not to the other men. It embarrassed 
 him still the more. " She wasn't feeling very well, 
 Mrs. Barry said. She came home from her walk 
 rather later than usual and had to go to her room." 
 
 " I hope Miss Baird is not going to be ill," said 
 Mrs. Stannard anxiously. " She has been looking 
 a little pale of late," and Mrs. Stannard did not sew 
 how intently Miss Maynard was eying her as she 
 spoke. 
 
 " Oh, I didn't understand that anything serious 
 was the matter, only she^didn't come down to tea, 
 and Mrs. Ray was taking her place temporarily." 
 
 There was a moment's silence. Every one present 
 except Miss Maynard was aware of her brother's 
 manifest devotion to Nathalie Baird for two weeks 
 previous to his serious adventure in town, and each 
 and every one was wondering how much the young 
 girl's indisposition might be clue to anxiety on his 
 account. Mrs, Turner was the first to speak :
 
 A &ARRI80N TANGLE. 69 
 
 very queer that she should be ill, don't you 
 think so ?" she queried, true to her practice of com- 
 mitting her hearer to some expression indicative of 
 support of Mrs. Turner's views and opinions. 
 
 " Very queer," murmured Mrs. Raymond, glanc- 
 ing furtr <ely at Miss Maynard, whose face, pale and 
 patient, still gave no sign. 
 
 " Oh, I I don't suppose it's anything serious," 
 interposed Lieutenant "Walker ; " I met her near the 
 gate as she was coming in. She seemed in a hurry, 
 and I thought she looked more as she used to when 
 I first saw her up at Winthrop when I was there on 
 court-martial duty. She was looking mighty pretty 
 last week, but seems to have kind of broken up 
 recently. She hardly noticed me at all when she 
 went by." 
 
 " Why, how strange," said Mrs. Turner. " Well, 
 we must be going. We've been here long enough 
 to make you all think we'd come to spend the night. 
 Miss Maynard," she continued, rising and turning 
 a deaf ear to Mrs. Stannard's polite expostulations 
 and assurances that they had been in the house 
 barely ten minutes, " do come and see me as soon as 
 you're ablo to run about. I declare I don't see 
 nowadays, and we all miss Mr. Maynard 
 
 To rtaich Mrs. Raymond murmured a purring
 
 70 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 second, and then after various other farewells, and 
 at the close of five minutes devoted to these leave- 
 takings, the two ladies made their exit, declining for 
 a wonder the escort of any of the gallants present. 
 Once outside, and the door closed, Mis. Turner 
 turned to her companion : 
 
 "Do you think we can venture in ? It isn't nine 
 yet. We can say we came to help, as we'd heard 
 Miss Baird was ill, you know." 
 
 Mrs. Raymond hesitated. " I haven't been there, 
 except to call formally, since the day she came. I'm 
 afraid it would be too thin." 
 
 But Mrs. Turner was a leader of women when 
 they wanted to be led, and her motion prevailed. 
 Mrs. Barry on her sofa and Mrs. Ray bending over 
 her, were in earnest conversation when the two 
 were ushered in. 
 
 And this was how it happened that Mrs. Turner 
 herself should be the bearer of an important and 
 exciting piece of news back to the Stannards' parlor 
 not fifteen minutes later. She came rushing in 
 without even stopping to ring. 
 
 " What do you think," she cried. " Colonel 
 Atherton's got a despatch from headquarters and 
 another from Major Barry. The Indians have 
 broken loose. The whole command may have to 
 go. He came to see her right after they reached
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 71 
 
 him and he's going- over to the office now. You'll 
 all be wanted," she continued, with a comprehensive 
 glance at the boys. The adjutant edged at once to 
 the door. Stannard's footfalls were heard overhead 
 as he left Maynard's bedside and hastened to the 
 stairs. 
 
 " What's that ? What's the news ?" he cried, as 
 he came hurriedly down, and again Mrs. Turner had 
 the comfort of holding the floor and the absorbed 
 attention of her auditors for half a minute, and 
 then, loud, ringing, and imperative, the cavalry 
 trumpet out upon the parade broke up the gather- 
 ing with the stirring summons of " Officers' Call." 
 Only the women were left to discuss the situation, 
 and Miss Maynard for the moment forgot her 
 vivid interest in all that had been said or implied 
 regarding Nathalie Baird in this her first ex- 
 perience with sudden orders for the field an old- 
 time and all too familiar episode in garrison life 
 as it was led a score of years ago. 
 
 That night the lanterns were dancing about the 
 barracks and quarters long after the usual hour for 
 " taps," and the officers and men of Stannard's bat- 
 tallion were busily at work packing and preparing 
 for the campaign. The special trains ordered to 
 transport tnem to North Platte, far to the east, from 
 which point they could most easily reach the old
 
 72 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 trail of the Cheyennes when traveling between the 
 northern and southern villages of the tribe, v/erc tc 
 be in readiness with the dawn of the Doming day, 
 and many a man, many a woman krtp;<v no wink of 
 sleep the live-long hours that intervened. And yet 
 Mrs. Stannard had found titie, in the midst of all 
 she had to do for her major's mess-chest, to run 
 over to see that Mrs. Barry lacked no comfort. 
 Mrs. Kay, of course, had had to hasten home ; but 
 Miss Baird was on duty with her invalid again 
 silent, helpful, thoughtful as ever, yet seeming, as 
 Mrs. Stannard could not help but see, very far from 
 well. There was a strange, hopeless, harassed, ap- 
 pealing look about the eyes, that were but recently 
 so placidly blue and tender, that the loving-hearted 
 army woman was touched and troubled to see. 'She 
 was the one woman in the th in those days to 
 whom all the youngsters confided their [troubles, 
 hopes, or fears. She was the repository of the cher- 
 ished secrets of half the garrison of men and women 
 both. She was the object of the sublime envy of 
 other officers' wives, because of the implicit trust 
 placed in her silence and discretion, and the un- 
 bounded respect felt for her opinion. She had been 
 arbitrator in many a family difference in the old 
 days, but of late years had declined to serve the 
 climate of Arizona, where the th had spent four
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 73 
 
 years before returning to the plains, having proved 
 far too arid and peppery, and therefore so temper- 
 trying that even her mediation had been occasionally 
 rejected. But envy her as they might, and deplore 
 the partiality and bad judgment of the young offi- 
 cers as they might, the other matrons of the regi- 
 ment could not help loving and admiring Mrs. Stan- 
 nard, and all this Miss Baird had heard in one form 
 or another time and again. 
 
 Was it fancy, then? thought Mrs. Stannard, as 
 she sat by the invalid's bedside. "Was she mistaken 
 in thinking that every little while, as Nathalie flit- 
 ted about the room, she caught the girl's eyes seek- 
 ing hers with such a look of distress and appeal in, 
 their blue depths that it filled her with longing to 
 take the motherless child to her heart and bid her 
 pour out the torrent of her sorrows, and find at 
 least sympathy and comfort, if not immediate relief. 
 
 And yet Nathalie fled when Mrs. Stannard's 
 swimming eyes betrayed the depths of her interest 
 as she rose to go. 
 
 " We shall both be widowed for the time being," 
 she said, as she bent over Mrs. Barry's pillow, " and 
 I hope you will let me come in every day and read 
 to you. I fear Miss Baird isn't quite as strong as 
 we could wish. She looks very fragile to-night." 
 
 For answer Mrs. Barry first placed her finger on
 
 74 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 ter lips, then by an inquiring glance seemed to say, 
 " Is she gone ?" and then aloud, " "Would you mind 
 closing the door ?" 
 
 Softly Mrs. Stannard stepped thither, glanced 
 into the adjoining room and saw that it was empty, 
 shut the door and came back to the bedside. Mrs. 
 Barry took her visitor's hand. "Mrs. Stannard," 
 said she, " like everybody else in the regiment, I 
 come to you when troubled, and I'm sorely troubled 
 about Nathalie. You know, do you not, how I 
 came to find her ? No ? Well, I haven't told it as 
 a rule. Her father had served on the same division 
 staff with Major Barry during the war, and a strong 
 friendship grew up between them. When Captain 
 Baird was killed, his brother-in-law came all the 
 way to Virginia after bis body, and Major Barry 
 was allowed to go with it as far as Washington, and 
 there he met this gentleman, Nathalie's uncle by 
 marriage. He impressed Major Barry as being a 
 sturdy, warm-hearted fellow who would do all he 
 could for the widow and orphan, especially for this 
 little girl who was named, as Nathalie has only 
 recently told me, for his own wife. I wondered 
 how sh came by that name, but it seems that this 
 was Mrs. Baird's younger and favorite sister. Al- 
 ready, however, this gentleman had four children of 
 his own, and could not well provide for more. A
 
 A GARRISON TANGLJf. 75 
 
 desultory correspondence was kept up for awhile 
 and then it dropped off, but in 1876 this Mr. Will- 
 iams wrote that his niece was practically destitute, 
 that his own business was completely ruined, and he 
 begged us to do something for her, saying that she 
 was a good, pure-minded, lovely girl, and intimating 
 that he would have been only too thankful had 
 heaven blessed him with such children. 
 
 So the major went there when East on leave, and 
 she has been with us for a year now, and she is 
 lovely and was content and happy until just a few 
 days ago. I watched her narrowly at the time of 
 Mr. Maynard's mishap, half expecting her to be 
 greatly shocked and distressed. Shocked she was, 
 and measurably distressed, but not to the extent I 
 had expected. This change in her has not come 
 through him. She has suddenly met some serious 
 mental strain, and it is the more trying because she 
 cannot tell or will not tell what it is. She begs me 
 not to ask any more, but sometimes," and here 
 Mrs. Barry looked appealingly up into the gentle 
 face of her friend, " sometimes I feel sure she would 
 confide in you, and you could help her. Will 
 you?" 
 
 " Indeed I will if she will let me," was the warm- 
 hearted reply. "Now I must get back to Major 
 Stannard or he'll be seeking for me and saying
 
 7tf A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 dreadful things in Apache. To-morrow morning 
 I'll come to you again." 
 
 An hour later Nathalie Baird, kneeling by the 
 bedside of her friend and protector, gazed long and 
 earnestly into the placid face, bent her ear to listen to 
 the gentle, measured breathing as though to assure 
 herself that the sleep was sound ; then slowly, cau- 
 tiously, noiselessly rose to her feet, extinguished the 
 lamp, and set the night light on the floor, slipped 
 into the dimly lighted front room, and thence to the 
 hall. There, taking a hooded cloak from a peg, she 
 as noiselessly opened the front door, peered up and 
 down the row, noted the flitting lights at the bar- 
 racks, and the sound of busy preparation, hastily 
 withdrew a moment as an officer's orderly, blanket 
 and robe-laden, came laboring down the line, then, 
 once more glancing out, stepped softly forth upon 
 the piazza and, huddling within the warm folds of 
 her cloak, tiptoed around the corner of the house 
 and through the dark passage leading to the spacious 
 yard that lay to the north. The servants had long 
 since retired to their little rooms in the annex at 
 the rear, but the girl trembled as she passed their 
 windows, yet pressed resolutely on, and presently, 
 clearing the wooden buildings, was swallowed up in 
 the blackness of the cloud-covered night.
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 77 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 MRS. RAYMOND was growing jealous. For years, 
 despite those occasional tiffs and spats with which 
 feminine intimacies are so frequently diversified, she 
 had been Fanny Turner's closest friend. There had 
 been occasions in the lives of both when neither had 
 spoken to the other forasmuch as forty-eight hours, 
 and when neither believed it possible for her ever 
 to speak to the other again. In this suspension of 
 diplomatic and personal relations, however, no em- 
 bargo existed as to language descriptive of each 
 other's faults, foibles or falsifications. What the 
 two ladies failed to say to was more than compen- 
 sated by what they said of each other. Notwith- 
 standing which disturbance of the atmospheric con- 
 ditions in the fair sky of their friendship, the 
 intimacy lived and throve was even strengthened 
 if not purified by the brief flashings of such summer 
 lightnings and the reverberations of vocal thunder 
 Indeed it would be hard to say where in all the 
 th either lady could have found an intimate save 
 in the other, for the maids and matrons then torn-
 
 78 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 posing the social element of the regiment had 
 learned wisdom in their generation were under 
 the influence and guidance of such pure spirits as 
 Mrs. Stannard, Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Freeman, and Mrs. 
 Ray, so that even domestic and social terrors like 
 Mrs. Wilkins had been tamed into a certain fealty 
 to the new creed expounded by them, and many a 
 man, many a woman, had remarked that " the th 
 was a mighty different regiment from what it used 
 to be in the days of Lady Pelham and Arizona." 
 
 It was a better regiment in every way, much as 
 they had all loved " Old Catnip," as they called the 
 colonel who led them in the days of their exile, but 
 who, lucklessly, was too often and disastrously led 
 by his wife. The new commander, like the modern 
 Tommy Atkins, was " every inch a soldier and 
 every inch a man," and though Mrs. Atherton 
 loved a cozy chat with her cronies as much as any 
 woman alive, she had lived and moved and had her 
 being in wider social circles too long not to have 
 learned the golden rule of silence. Several objec- 
 tionables had been eliminated in the course of years, 
 some by transfer to other arms of the service, be it 
 understood, one or two to other spheres, and still 
 Buxton lingered among the men and Mrs. Turner 
 ampng the women, and if ever there lived a lady 
 blessed with unbounded confidence in the infallibil-
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 79 
 
 ity of her opinions and the unerring rectitude of her 
 intentions, it was that same Mrs. Frances Turner. 
 
 Other women there were, of course, to circulate 
 her views ; but in bold, inspiring originality of con- 
 ception there was none to equal her. Mrs. Turner 
 might not be alone as adisburserof regimental gossip, 
 but, as Lieutenant Blake was heard to say, she could 
 start more in a minute than could be stopped in a 
 month. 
 
 And now Mrs. Raymond was actually disturbed 
 and jealous because of a new, sudden and mysterious 
 intimacy that had sprung up between the friend of 
 her bosom and the hitherto impassive and unap- 
 proachable Miss Maynard. From meeting only 
 formally and semi-occasionally there had developed 
 an unlocked for and apparently unquenchable desire 
 for each other's company, and where Mrs. Turner 
 used to be dropping in on Mrs. Raymond any 
 morning after her toilet was completed for the day, 
 she had taken to bustling by en route to Mrs. Stan- 
 nard's, never so much as stopping at the Raymonds 
 to explain the meaning of her haste; and there ii? 
 Mrs. Stannard's parlor, or in solemn promenade 
 along the walk, did Mrs. Turner and her new-found 
 friend spend hours in close and confidential com- 
 munion, the object of which was a mystery to Mrs. 
 Raymond, not to mention the rest of RusselL
 
 80 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 Meantime Lieutenant Maynard AYas mending fast 
 and needing little nursing. Therefore was his sister 
 at liberty to seek more and more the stimulant 
 and exhilaration of the open. air. Therefore, too, 
 was it suggested by Mrs. Raymond that the neces- 
 sity of her remaining a burden on her brother and 
 the Stannards no longer existed. Stannard and his 
 stanch battalion had gone. The populace of Russell 
 was now made up mainly of the temporarily 
 widowed and fatherless, the invalids and the band. 
 A small squad had been left from each troop to 
 take care of the stables, quarters and corrals, and 
 from these the post quartermaster detailed night 
 watchmen to patrol the garrison pending the com- 
 ing of an infantry company. The colonel and 
 adjutant, too, had taken the field one train ahead 
 of Stannard's. Mrs. Atherton had gone in to visit 
 relatives in Chicago, and, when they could laugh at 
 all, the ladies were asking each other which of their 
 elders was really in temporary command of the 
 camp, or did the surgeon, chaplain and quarter- 
 master deserve consideration. 
 
 Meantime poor Maynard was fuming and fretting 
 in his pretty room, devotedly nursed, carefully at- 
 tended and prescribed for, but with every day be- 
 coming more irascible and unreasonable. It was 
 his first year with the regiment, be it remembered,
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE 81 
 
 and the idea that it should be on the warpath and 
 he mewling in bed, was intolerable. Yet the doctor 
 gravely told him he could not ride without cer- 
 tainty of reopening his wound and endangering his 
 life. Maynard could not believe it. Both Mrs. 
 Stannard and his sister strove to read to him, but 
 he would not listen. He wanted all the papers 
 that had news of the field columns, but no other 
 subject in their pages interested him in the least. 
 There was one subject much nearer home to which 
 he would have given ear with more than avidity, 
 but on this subject he could not talk, and Mrs. Stan- 
 nard and his sister would not talk to him. He 
 longed for daily news of Nathalie Baird, and got 
 none. She had even ceased her visits to the house. 
 Ever since the night of her first apparent illness 
 the night that orders came for Stannard's men 
 to move, she had been drooping visibly, and Mrs. 
 Barry was sore distressed. No more did Nathalie 
 take her long, exhilarating walks upon the open 
 prairie. She stole forth on sunshiny days at Mrs. 
 Barry's urging, and went timidly up and down the 
 long walk within the sentry lines, but never neared 
 the gate at the east or the open roadway that passed 
 out to the westward beyond the old headquarters 
 building. She seemed to shrink from observation 
 even, then. She seemed reluctant to meet or talk with
 
 83 A GARHISON TANGLE. 
 
 the many kind and sympathetic women who would 
 have welcomed her to their firesides when the swift 
 gales burst upon them from the mountain pass to the 
 northwest, or to their sunshiny piazzas on the rare 
 afternoons when soft breezes blew from the Colo- 
 rado foothills, and the band played sweet melodies, 
 and the children frolicked merrily out on the broad 
 level of- the parade. Shy she had ever seemed to 
 be, but not startled and afraid as now, and Mrs. 
 Stannard, generally self-contained and self-reliant, 
 had even taken counsel with Mesdames Kay and Trus< 
 cott, two young matrons she much approved of, and 
 invoked their aid in the good work of banishing the 
 evil spirit that had darkened the day-dreams of this 
 strange New England girl. Both were ready and 
 willing to help in any way, yet neither could suggest 
 a line of operation. The girl seemed so utterly un- 
 approachable. Mrs. Truscott had paraded Baby 
 Jack for Miss Baird's inspection, and expected her 
 to become a slave to that conquering hero's fas- 
 cinations as did other women, old and young, but 
 Miss Baird had passed his little highness by with 
 scant recognition the very next time she met him, 
 and an injured and indignant nurse was not slow to 
 take the tidings home. Mrs. Ray had bidden her 
 to luncheon or tea, or both, always with the same 
 result. Nathalie could not leave, she said, her in-
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE, 83 
 
 valid at home except for the walk she took each 
 day. Mrs. Stannard had sought, gently and kindly, 
 to win the confidence of the girl, but Nathalie 
 seemed to divine her object and fled from her in 
 nervous alarm. " It is a most uncanny^ thing," said 
 Mrs. Stannard to Nathalie's friend and protector. 
 "I never met a girl of her years so utterly set 
 against her kind." There was a lovely young girl 
 often visiting at the Freemans then a Miss Nannie 
 Bryan, who was freshness, vivacity and frankness 
 personified, and these schemers sought to induce her 
 to cultivate Miss Baird, but that fell through, for 
 Nan's outspoken, open-hearted manner seemed to 
 be a reproach in Nathalie's eyes she who would 
 not or could not confide in anybody. 
 
 " She is the loneliest girl in Wyoming," said Mrs. 
 Barry, 'despairingly, to a friend, one sunny after- 
 noon. " Ah, well," was the reassuring reply, " Mr. 
 Maynard is to be allowed to sit up in the sunshine 
 presently, and then you'll see how soon she flutters 
 to his side." 
 
 And they did see. She came out from the Barrys 
 for her customary exercise one brilliant afternoon, 
 and there he sat reclining in an easy-chair, well 
 wrapped up in overcoat, robes and blankets, and he 
 caught instant glimpse of her, and his eyes flashed 
 their signal of joy and recognition, his pale cheek
 
 84 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 mounted its radiant color in honor of her coming, 
 but she went pale as a lily, and, turning hurriedly, 
 snapped the gate behind her, and with obstinately 
 averted head hastened away down the row. It was 
 impossible for his sister not to see the depth and 
 bitterness of his disappointment and chagrin. She 
 determined that the hour for her to speak and to 
 speak plainly was now at hand, so relentlessly she 
 began. There are women who choose the time when. 
 a fellow is down, a helpless invalid, to tell him, in 
 extenso, the worst news, perhaps, that could be 
 brought to his ears. At the moment when he 
 should be free from new or grievous distress, they 
 load upon him, then and there, the latest rumors or 
 reports that can be relied upon to bring him infinite 
 anxiety and concern. Not that they wish to see 
 him suffer, but because the temptation to tell dire- 
 ful tidings is so uncontrollable. Then, again, when 
 he is up and well and able to dodge away, she may 
 not so easily reach his ear. Whatever be the 
 reasoning, Miss Maynard felt that the time for her 
 to speak had come, and speak she did. 
 
 " Ronald," she began, " do you care already 
 for that girl 2" 
 
 And Ronald, without speaking, answered. 
 
 Whereupon Miss Maynard, in tones of deep dig- 
 may, ejaculated, " Oh, Ronald 1" and lapsed into a
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 85 
 
 silence indicative of unspeakable woe, leaving him 
 no alternative but to demand the reason for her 
 strangely significant conduct. No little urging ac- 
 complished the object. It required strong persua- 
 sion, apparently, to induce the woman to tell what 
 she knew, or believed she knew, concerning Nathalie 
 Baird, but when once the ice was broken there was 
 no stint to the current of her accusations. 
 
 If gave her infinite pain, she declared, to have to 
 sav one word against a girl who was orphaned, home- 
 less and, but for Mrs. Barry, practically friendless, but 
 duty to her brother and the good name their father 
 had given them prompted her to the task. Shy and 
 pure and innocent as Miss Baird might look, there 
 was a cloud over her name and character. She was 
 carrying on a clandestine correspondence and hold- 
 ing secret meetings in the dead of night with a 
 man, a total stranger to the garrison. 
 
 For a moment Maynard could not speak. His 
 face, pallid through illness and suffering, took on a 
 shade of gray that intensified its. ghastly hue. His 
 sister looked upon him in astonishment and in 
 fright. " Konald !" she cried, " I did not know I 
 did not dream it could mean so much to you." 
 
 " It doesn't mean," he interrupted, finding husky 
 voice at last. Then each word seemed to come like 
 the crack of a whip sharp, snapping, a tone that
 
 86 i A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 never in his life had she heard from his lips before. 
 "It doesn't mean, for I don't believe a damned word 
 of it." 
 
 Shocked and stunned, the woman was for the 
 moment silenced. Never since childhood days had 
 he braved her. Taught by his soldier father the 
 most scrupulous courtesy and gentleness to woman 
 in general, his mother and elder sister in par- 
 ticular ; punished promptly if in boyish temper he 
 raised hand or voice against either, he had passed from 
 the jurisdiction of that mother to that of the sister as 
 unopposing as though her sway for all time were un- 
 questioned, and Grace, womanlike, had accepted his 
 submission as her just due ; had found him yielding 
 as ever to her dominion when he returned to her on 
 cadet furlough, and hardly less so when, with broad- 
 ened shoulders and in stalwart manhood and 
 bristling mustache, the young graduate came once 
 more to the peaceful Mohawk village before joining 
 his'regiment in the far West. She had looked upon 
 him as her own, to guide and mold and direct as 
 she had guided and directed his toddling footsteps. 
 She had never known him to oppose his will his 
 plans to hers. She recalled how when, only three 
 weeks before it was time for him to start for 
 Wyoming, he came in all eagerness one day to say 
 that Wharton,Ives and Draper, of his class, were to
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 87 
 
 sport their new uniforms for the first time at the 
 "Twenty-eighth Hop"* at West Point, and had 
 written for him to join them, and he was wild to go, 
 she had glanced at Gertrude Bonner sitting patiently 
 in the vine-shaded porch of the old homestead, and 
 bade him hold his reply until she could have 
 opportunity to speak with him, alone. How sub- 
 missively, how affectionately, he had yielded to her 
 brief argument ; how entirely he seemed to be 
 swayed by her wish ; how utterly for years had 
 the brother been her vassal " hers to command" 
 indeed how indefinitely might she not have 
 counted on the continuance of her queendom had 
 not another woman stepped upon the threshold of 
 her throne. Not only to her, to the sister who had 
 been his guide and guardian, k> these many years, 
 did he owe allegiance now, but in the jealous love 
 of power and possession burning in the woman's 
 breast, she had come to regard it as her right to say 
 to whom her princeling should tender, when the 
 time came, the heart and hand that she had held in 
 fancy as only hers to bestow. 
 
 And he had dared to look with eyes of love upon 
 another, and now had dared to say to her that not 
 one word would he believe of her aspersion of the 
 
 *The ball given by the cadets on the 28th of August, 
 annually.
 
 88 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 girl he loved. It stung her to quick resentment, to 
 one supreme effort to regain her old ascendancy. 
 Far down the row toward the east front the slendeF 
 form of the fair young girl could be seen. She had 
 well-nigh reached the end of the walk. It was too 
 early for the band, too soon after the midday meal 
 for the ladies to appear upon the piazzas. Only a 
 few children were chasing about the gray-green 
 carpet of the parade ; only a few nursemaids and 
 baby carriages were visible, lazily trundling along 
 the sunlit path. Not a man was in sight about the 
 great quadrangle. The barracks were silent and 
 deserted. The guard maintained over the few 
 general prisoners had been drawn within the wooden 
 prison. Grace Ma} 7 nard was alone with her brother, 
 weakened as he was by wounds and suffering and 
 mental worry, and it might be her last opportunity. 
 
 " Ronald," she exclaimed, in tragic resumption of 
 the old, almost forgotten tone of mingled amaze, 
 distress and horror with which erring little boys 
 are made to vaguely realize that tiny have been 
 guilty of some unpardonable crime, " Eonald, you 
 never, never would have dared to say such words to 
 me were our father still alive." 
 
 " Grace/' he answered, with fire burning in his 
 deep eyes, " you would never have dared to speak 
 so of such a girl in his presence, and I'll never listen 
 to it from you or any one again. 5 '
 
 A GARRISON TANGLS. 89 
 
 She had sprung to her feet, barely listening to 
 him now, and was gazing with dilated eyes in the 
 direction the girl had taken. 
 
 " You won't listen," she cried, in tones of mingled 
 wrath and triumph. " You won't believe the sister 
 who loves and would stand between you and deceit. 
 Well, then look!" 
 
 And, looking as she pointed, Ronald Maynard saw 
 that a tall man in civilian dress had suddenly issued 
 from behind the last house on the row, and was 
 bending eagerly, closely over the drooping head of 
 .^athalie Baird.
 
 90 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 ' NATHALIE, dear," said Mrs. Barry, looking up 
 from her sofa a day or two later, " it is high time 
 you were indulging in a new gown and a spring hat. 
 "Why don't you drive to town with Mrs. Freeman 
 one of these warm afternoons. She'd onl\ T be too 
 glad to take you and help you. and you'll be sur- 
 prised to see what pretty things you can get or have 
 made here in Cheyenne." 
 
 " The girl's color, ever betraying, came and went, 
 leaving her even paler than before. She turned 
 spsvay as though searching for a book and for a 
 moment made no reply. 
 
 " I know how self-denying you are, Nathalie, but 
 think, dear, a young girl like you should not be so 
 aggressively plain in her dress ; and while your 
 jacket and hat are all very well for winter, our 
 bright days are here now and there are warm hours 
 in the sunshine no matter how cold it grows toward 
 night. You're not sending money home, are you ?" 
 
 "I'm I've been helping dress Cousin Ruth," 
 faltered the girl.
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 91 
 
 " But that isn't right Nathalie, child, and your 
 uncle is the last man to allow it, if indeed he knows 
 of it. Your little salary should go to keeping you 
 nicely dressed, and in laying up for a rainy day. 
 The major told me you had put most of it in the 
 bank. Do they allow you interest on it ? Forgive 
 me, dear. I don't wish to intrude on your personal 
 affairs, but you've become very dear to me, Nathalie, 
 and I cannot see you pinching and denying yourself 
 if it be to provide for others who are quite as well 
 able to take care of themselves as you are; more so, 
 I fear, for you are not looking a bit well of late." 
 
 No answer, but the girl's face was averted and 
 she was trembling now from head to foot. Big 
 tears were starting from her eyes. She was biting 
 her lips in the effort to control their mad quivering. 
 
 Anxious and troubled, Mrs. Barry half turned on 
 her couch and strove to see what Nathalie was doing. 
 She held forth a fragile white hand. " Nathalie," 
 she said, softly. 
 
 It was too much. The girl turned suddenly, as 
 though to throw herself upon her knees and clasp 
 the extended hand, but at that very instant brisk 
 steps and cheery voices were heard at the door, tho 
 gong bell clanged, and Nathalie rushed from the 
 room and up the narrow stairs. 
 
 It was Mrs. Freeman and Mrs. Ray who entered,
 
 $2 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 fresh, radiant, blithe arid joyous, the pictures of 
 health and happiness despite the fact that their re- 
 spective lords were far afield and no man but Sher- 
 idan could say when they would be allowed to return 
 to their post and he wouldn't. The renegade 
 Indians, far from rushing northward on the old 
 accustomed trail, as had been predicted, had lashed 
 out westward and made a wide circuit before striking 
 for the sand hills of Nebraska. There had been no 
 conflict between them and the squadrons of the th. 
 The latter were now trotting a stern chase with the 
 quarry long leagues ahead, and while they were 
 say ing unbecoming and unpublishable things abroad, 
 their better halves were thanking heaven at their 
 army homes for the news that the fleeing warriors 
 were safely across the Union Pacific and " scooting " 
 for the savage fastnesses in far northwest Nebraska : 
 news which brought disgust unspeakable to the 
 pursuing troopers, but to these women left at 
 Russell joy utterly unconfined. 
 
 " Isn't it too good for anything ?" exclaimed Mrs. 
 Freeman, as she led the way into Mrs. Barry'e 
 pretty parlor. " They have got so long a start our 
 troops can't possibly catch them, and the cavalry 
 from Robinson and Red Cloud will have to do it all. 
 I've been in misery until I got the news just now, 
 Where's Nathalie? Is she ready? 1 wanted to 
 drive in before luncheon."
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 93 
 
 But Mrs. Barry put her finger to her lips and 
 glanced significantly aloft. 
 
 " Nathalie is utterly upset about something this 
 morning," she murmured. " Do sit down a moment, 
 won't you ? I want to talk with you about her. 
 I am so troubled on her account. She has been 
 ailing for days, as you know, seeming nervous and 
 troubled, and it has become so much worse of late. 
 What can be the matter ?" 
 
 Then Mrs. Freeman looked appealingly at Mrs. 
 Ray, and as she remained silent, the former spoke : 
 
 " Mrs. Barry, if we, too, didn't think everything 
 of Nathalie I shouldn't say this, but we both feel 
 Mrs. Ray and I that you should know the story 
 that has been going round. We've both heard it. 
 We couldn't help hearing it. Everybody seems to 
 have heard it in the last two days, and it isn't all 
 Mrs. Turner's doing either. Marion," she said, 
 turning impulsively to her younger friend, " do help 
 me, it is so hard." 
 
 Looking first at one, then at the other, Mrs. 
 Barry saw too plainly the sorrow and embarrass- 
 ment in each fair face. 
 
 " Tell me everything," she murmured. " Surely 
 if trouble comes to her we should be the ones to 
 help." 
 
 " It is briefly this, Mrs. Barry : It is told that
 
 94 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 Nathalie has several times been seen either away 
 out on the prairie before the troops went away, or 
 else down here near the store since that time, talk- 
 inof earnestly, pleadingly with a strange man not a 
 soldier a tall, powerful fellow. At first it was 
 thought to be you know one of Fanny Turner's 
 fabrications, but Miss Maynard solemnly assured 
 Mrs. Stannard she had seen it twice ; and now Mrs. 
 Ray, you've got to tell the rest." 
 
 " It is only this, Mrs. Barry : You know the one 
 failing Hogan, our Irish groom has. He is devoted 
 to Captain Kay, but once in a long while he yields 
 to temptation, and the other night he was in town 
 and had evidently been drinking when he came 
 back, and had lost his key to the door of the little 
 room he has in the extension at the rear of the 
 quarters. Will had gone over to the barracks, and 
 I heard our cook go to let Hogan in, and heard him 
 telling her thickly of an adventure he had had. He 
 was excited and talked loudly, and I feared it would 
 rouse the neighbors, so I threw open the back 
 window and told Jane to make him go to his bed 
 without another word, and he obeyed, but his eye 
 was all black and swollen in the morning and I saw 
 there was some truth in what he said that just 
 back of your quarters he had stumbled on a big, 
 burly man in civilian dress to whom a girl was talk-
 
 A GARRISON TAN OLE. 95 
 
 ing low, begging and imploring and crying, and the 
 man answered her roughly, and Hogan thought the 
 girl was your housemaid, for she heard his step and 
 ran indoors at once, and then he himself had some 
 words with the man, and got knocked down, he 
 said, so quick he never knew what hit him, and the 
 man had vanished when he regained his feet. 
 Hogan's man and that described by Miss Maynard 
 are apparently the same. Who can it be and what 
 possible hold can one like him, have on a girl so 
 sweet and refined as Nathalie?" 
 
 Mrs. Barry listened without interposing a word, 
 but her eyes were eloquent with sorrow and per- 
 plexity. At last she spoke. 
 
 " Can you remember the night, Mrs. Eay 2" 
 
 " Yes ; it was the night I was here with you the 
 night the news came that our battalion, too, had to 
 go." 
 
 There was a moment of silence. Mrs. Barry had 
 covered her eyes with her thin white hand and was 
 thinking intently, and presently, without removing 
 her hand, she asked, and the question itself was 
 significant : 
 
 " Do you know has Mrs. Turner been very much 
 with Miss Maynard lately ?" 
 
 And her visitors looked at each other without 
 speaking. After waiting^ a moment for an anscver
 
 96 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 and receiving none, Mrs. Barry looked up. " Why 
 do you not speak ?" she said to Mrs. Freeman, who 
 sat nearest. " You know that your silence tells me 
 that my conjecture is correct. And now about Mr. 
 Maynard. Mrs. Stannard told me that he sat up 
 two days ago, was out on the porch awhile, but 
 that he seemed anything but benefited. Did he 
 see Nathalie and this man down by the store ? Is 
 that one reason he has not left his room since ?" 
 
 " Yes, Mrs. Barry. Miss Maynard has told Mrs. 
 Stannard and others, too, that not only she, but 
 her brother, saw the meeting, and her brother rec- 
 ognized the man as one he had seen in the crowd 
 the day of the trouble in town. But now let me 
 say right here that I can believe no ill of her ; that 
 there is probably some hold, some claim, or she 
 would never be seen with such a looking character ; 
 and that he is reprobate I thoroughly believe. She 
 is shielding him for somebody's sake or she never in 
 the world would have concealed her meetings with 
 him from you. I say again, Mrs. Barry," persisted 
 Mrs. Freeman, her color rising with the warmth of 
 her appeal, " I will believe no ill of Nathalie, and 
 that's one reason why I so earnestly urged her to 
 go to town with me. I wanted to try in every way 
 to win her confidence and be a help to her. I had 
 hoped so much from her knowing Nannie Bryan,
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 97 
 
 but they didn't get along together at all. Nathalie 
 is utterly unerved by this trouble. That's the truth 
 of it, and she dare not tell the cause to anybody. 
 Did you say she was in her room ?" 
 
 "Yes, she was here with me and I was urging her 
 to go with you to town, and trying to get her to tell 
 me what was worrying her, when she heard your 
 steps and vanished. I think she was crying. I've 
 found this out, that she has been sending some 
 money home to help dress a cousin of hers." 
 
 And just then came another step, quick and busi- 
 ness-like upon the piazza. It was the orderly from 
 the adjutant's office with the mail. As the servant 
 entered with the little packet both the visitors 
 sprang to the door and called after the garrison 
 Mercury, eager to know what he had for them. He 
 came back, smiling, with letters for both, and yet 
 their faces were long as they re-entered, for there was 
 not a line from their lords. 
 
 But Mrs. Barry's face was clouded too. " Look 
 at this," she said, and held out a dingy missive with 
 the Cheyenne postmark and a scrawling super scrip- 
 tion, "Miss Nath. Baird. In care of Mrs. Majer 
 Barry, Fort Russell." "Once before a letter came for 
 her from town, but it was addressed in a scholarly 
 hand, and I remember now how agitated she was at 
 sight of it. But this is the work of some uneducated
 
 98 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 person. It seems Irish somehow, that 'In care of 
 Mrs. Majer' especially. What can we do what 
 shall we do to help her ? If she would only confide 
 in some one !" 
 
 But before evening it was definitely settled that 
 that was the one thing poor Nathalie could not or 
 would not do. Mrs. Barry sent the letter to her 
 room with the message that Mrs. Freeman was there 
 to take her driving, and would she not come down. 
 And the maid returned, saying Miss Baird was not 
 well enough to go. She had been lying on her bed, 
 the girl admitted, for she had to wait some little 
 time before the door was unlocked. Then] Mrs. 
 Freeman penned a little note. " Dearest Nathalie : 
 "Won't you see me just a minute or two ?" But the 
 maid came back in five minutes with the penciled 
 words, " Please, please do not think I am ungrateful 
 for all your patience and kindness, but indeed I am 
 not fit to see any one just now." 
 
 And so the friends had gone sadly away without 
 the longed-for word with her, and then Mrs. 
 Stannard came to read to the invalid, but the books 
 were set aside and the two took counsel together as 
 to what should be done. They sent tea and an 
 appetizing luncheon up to her room, and the maid 
 brought back her best thanks and said that she 
 would try to eat She was writing a letter then.
 
 A GARRISON T ANGLE. 99 
 
 But when two hours later they sent up to see how 
 she was, the maid reported that the luncheon was 
 untouched ; even the tea seemed to have been 
 neglected. They heard Nathalie's step on the land- 
 ing above, as in troubled silence the ladies looked at 
 each other and the maid stood patiently by. They 
 heard it light and almost stealthy on the little land- 
 ing to the stairway, and both looked eagerly to the 
 door as though expectant of her coming, but she 
 never neared it. Without an instant's falter, the 
 girl hastened through the hall and out of the house. 
 
 " She has been answering that note," said Mrs. 
 Barry, the moment she had dismissed the servant, 
 " and now, trusting to no one, has gone to put it in 
 the mail-bag herself." 
 
 It was late when Nathalie returned to the house, 
 and this time she came straight to her protector's 
 side, knelt at the sofa, and, never waiting for 
 welcoming word or caress, took the slender white 
 hand in both her own, bowed over it almost humbly 
 a moment, and then, lifting her head, throwing it 
 back with gesture almost desperate, abruptly spoke : 
 
 " Mrs. Barry I I've got to say it I can be of 
 no further use to you now. I'm bringing trouble, 
 yes, even shame to you who have been so loving and 
 kind to me, and to your friends who have been so 
 eager to help me. I'm not fit to stay. Do me one 
 last kindness. Send me home."
 
 100 , ^ GARRISON TANGLE- 
 
 Her fingers were working nervously. Her eyes 
 were hard and hot and dry. There was no weak- 
 ness, no indecision, no melting now. The girl had 
 spent long hours that day looking her trouble in the 
 face and had made her resolution. She was set and 
 determined. It was not as suppliant she knelt. It 
 was to urge, almost to demand. 
 
 "Nathalie, child," began Mrs. Barry, "you do 
 yourself infinite wrong. There has been no talk of 
 shame, no thought of even blame attached to you ; 
 but those who love you and would be your friends 
 are troubled because of your trouble." 
 
 " Mrs. Barry, don't tell me there has not been 
 evil report, if not shameful report, Can I not see ? 
 "Why, otherwise, should Mrs. Turner and Mrs. 
 Raymond turn their heads away and refuse to 
 recognize me on the walk? "Why should Miss 
 Maynard avoid meeting me as she has twice done, 
 shrinking back into her gate as though I were 
 contamination. There has been talk cruel talk, 
 and I know it, and what is worse ten times worse 
 is that much that is said I can never deny. In my 
 misery I've tried to hide it from everybody, but he 
 has been utterly reckless. He has dogged and 
 dared and followed everywhere, even here. Mrs. 
 Barry Mrs. Barry, there is only one place on earth 
 where I can avoid him, and that is, home. Send 
 me there. In pity send me home."
 
 A GARRISON TAXGLE. 101 
 
 And then at last the overcharged heart gave way ; 
 the poor girl burst into a passion of tears and, turn- 
 ing, she threw herself prone upon the rug at the 
 sofa side, buried her face in her arras and sobbed 
 like a spirit-broken child. 
 
 For several minutes the storm of her passionate 
 weeping raged unbroken. She was weak and ex- 
 hausted, weak even as the invalid herself, when at 
 last she was persuaded once more to kneel beside 
 the couch, lay her swollen face on her protector's 
 bosom, and submit to the soothing of her almost 
 motherly caress. For a long time, as the sunshine 
 vanished, and the twilight settled down, and the 
 gloom and shadow of the coming night enshrouded 
 the little parlor, the girl knelt nerveless, encircled 
 by those loving arms. Mrs. Barry would ask no 
 questions, seek no explanation now. Her one aim 
 was to calm and comfort. Confidences, she assured 
 herself, would follow. The maid came to the door- 
 way with the parlor lamp, but was bidden to leave 
 it in the adjoining room and to excuse the ladies 
 should visitors appear. At last Nathalie herself 
 attempted to move. " Why, it is long past time for 
 your tea," she murmured brokenly. " How selfish 
 and forgetful I've been. Let me get it," she 
 pleaded. 
 
 " And you, too, Nathalie, have not tasted a
 
 102 -^ GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 mouthful since breakfast. Order tea, dear. Then 
 we'll talk." 
 
 But even after the soothing cup Nathalie Baird 
 amazed her friend and comforter. To every plea 
 that she should reveal the name of the man who had 
 so destroyed her peace of mind and to disclose the 
 nature of the claim he held, the girl was deaf and 
 determined. " Do not ask me that," she said. " I 
 have pledged my very word not to tell. All I ask 
 is to be allowed to go, to relieve you of the shame 
 and anxiety my staying would surely cause. Oh, 
 Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Barry." she cried aloud, " you do 
 not dream what he could do. He threatens me 
 even here, under your roof. He says unless I bring 
 or send him more he will come here to this house 
 to demand it. Oh, don't } r ou see don't you know 
 why I do not end it all, and by stealing away at 
 night and hiding until the first train goes eastward, 
 I could relieve you of all this misery ? Mrs. Barry, 
 I haven't a penny in^the world he has taken every 
 cent!"
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 103 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE doctor came away from Ronald Maynard's 
 room that evening a puzzled man. He was not the 
 most astute practitioner in the service. Of the three 
 " medicos " employed at the post two were in the 
 field with the battalions of Barry and Stannard and 
 the third we need not give his name remained to 
 look after the women and children, the band and 
 non-combatants, and the infantry guard sent over- 
 from Steele. He was a good, conscientious young 
 man. He had found the lieutenant so much im- 
 proved two days before that he advised his sitting 
 out on the porch and sunning himself, and was sur- 
 prised at the result of his experiment. Maynard 
 said the sight of the far-away snowcaps of the 
 peaks only made him mad with eagerness to get 
 into saddle and away to join his friends in the field. 
 So if they couldn't let him go to the regiment there 
 was no use in his getting worse by fretting out of 
 doors. Maynard was distinctly and aggressively 
 ill-tempered in his remarks, thought the doctor, and 
 ought therefore to be getting well, but he was not
 
 104 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 fts well by several degrees as he had been three 
 days before, and for the life of him the doctor 
 couldn't say what had gone amiss, until, coming 
 down into that selfsame evening sunshine, he found 
 Mrs. Turner and Miss Ma\ 7 nard with their heads 
 close together so close that they could only find 
 time. for a very perfunctory greeting to Mrs. Kay- 
 mond who had just gone by, but who sprang up 
 quickly enough at his appearance on the piazza 
 with Mrs. Stannard by his side, and as he looked at 
 Fanny Turner's now coquettishly smiling face, the 
 little medico's eyes were suddenly enlightened. 
 He was a married man, it is perhaps unnecessary to 
 say, and therefore had a more comprehensive knowl- 
 edge of the personal characteristics of the ladies at 
 the post than could ever have been acquired as a 
 bachelor. He, in common with every man and 
 woman, had noted the rapid growth of Konald 
 Maynuid's devotions to Miss Baird, their equally 
 sudden cessation, and ho, too, had heard and pished 
 and pshawed and pooh-poohed the rapidly circulated 
 stories about her meetings with the mysterious man. 
 " You might as well tell me that Mrs. Barry was 
 out flirting with a stranger, now that the major's 
 gone," said he to his spouse, in somewhat wrathful 
 tone. " If ever a girl was truth and purit} 7 personi- 
 fied, it's that Miss Baird' 1 But he, too, was noa-
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 105 
 
 plussed and silenced when the wife of his bosom 
 declared, " Well, I'm not telling you alone what I've 
 heard, but what I've seen. Our spare room windows 
 look out over the prairie back of the hospital, and 
 I've seen her meet a man away out there." The 
 doctor \vas heard to express a wish that the spare 
 room was in Halifax for all the good it did them, 
 but that didn't help matters. It was something in 
 the faces of the two women Miss Maynard grave 
 and anxious, Mrs. Turner coquettishly smiling 
 that gave him a clue to his patient's feverish pulse 
 and lack-luster eye. Mrs. Turner, as has been said, 
 could rob a woman of her reputation and receive 
 her with open arms almost in the same instant. 
 
 Mrs. Stannard had been writing to her major in 
 a quiet corner, while the newly-made intimates were 
 busy outside. She had intended waylaying the 
 doctor as he came downstairs, in order that Stannard 
 might have the latest bulletin as to the patient, but 
 so absorbed had she become in telling " Luce " the 
 home news, and so slowly and quietly did he de- 
 scend the stair, that she never heard him until the 
 opening of the outer door aroused her, and she had 
 just time to catch him on the porch. 
 
 The little man looked badgered as the three sur- 
 rounded him. "Maynard isn't as well as he ought 
 to be," was, however, his downright reply. "His
 
 106 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 wound is doing well, but he isn't. That's all there 
 is to be said about it,^except " and here he looked 
 intently, first at the sister, then at the sister's new- 
 found friend " except that just now nothing of a 
 worrying or disturbing character should be allowed 
 to reach him. It is bad enough that he should be 
 fretting so to get to the regiment. Oh, you'll all 
 have letters to-morrow, Mrs. Stannard," he contin- 
 ued, " for we heard that the major crossed at North 
 Platte to-day." 
 
 " I was just writing to him, hoping to intercept 
 him there," she replied, " but couriers will undoubt- 
 edly be sent after them, will they not ? Have you 
 heard where Major Barry was likely to strike the 
 railway ? The Indians must be far ahead now." 
 
 " So far that I can see no chance of our people com- 
 ing up with them, unless they go to sleep," said the 
 doctor. " Now I've said nothing of their crossing to 
 Maynard. I want him kept quiet to-night, if possi- 
 ble. I'll be back by and by." And With those 
 parting injunctions the doctor took his leave, and 
 Mrs. Stannaru, after a courteous word or two with 
 her guests, left them together and returned to her 
 desk. 
 
 But up aloft, in his cozy room, Mr. Maynard was 
 not resting at all. Despite his stout declaration that 
 hedidhotbelieve,and would not believe a word said at
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 107 
 
 the expense of Nathalie Baird, deep down in his 
 heart, even before he saw her brief meeting with 
 the big stranger, that soft, sunshiny afternoon, he 
 knew that there was abundant reason for believing 
 that the disturber had been there before. He had 
 never forgotten for a moment that extraordinary 
 occurrence the night of the hop the shadowy civil- 
 ian who tossed pebbles up at her window, and then 
 floored him in the twinkling of an eye when he had 
 sought to challenge. Furthermore, Maynard had 
 caught the outlines of the stranger's bulk that night, 
 and those outlines strongly resembled those of the 
 man who bent so confidentially over her as she 
 stood with bowed head, yes, with apparently atten- 
 tive ear, down at the end of the row by old No. 1. 
 "What could be the explanation ? What but that 
 some former lover was pursuing her here, and that 
 she, though unable to welcome him to the garrison, 
 was not unwilling to meet him ; and if she would 
 meet him stealthily by day away out on the prairie, 
 in some of its swales or depressions, why not 
 by night, when none could spy upon her actions ? 
 What other explanation could there be? Was 
 not her beauty enough to lure a man from the ends 
 of the earth ? Would not he have sought and fol- 
 lowed her anywhere, had she but kept the queendom 
 of his faith and trust. Love her ? He did deeply,
 
 108 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 passionately, miserably ; for now he recalled 
 that she had never given him encouragement ; that 
 only for a day or two before his mishap had she 
 shown shy pleasure nt his coming; and all those 
 days that he used to ride out in search of her, was 
 it not more than probable now that he had only 
 been very much in the way a nuisance to her and 
 to her skulking lover? Very bitter were his 
 thoughts, and, manlike, he included in his jealous 
 anger not only the girl who had caused him such 
 poignant suffering, but that other the sister who 
 had been the first to open his eyes to his queen's 
 un worth in ess. 
 
 And so when Grace Maynard came to him soon 
 after evening gun-fire with some dainty refreshment 
 Mrs. Stannard had prepared for him, he turned away 
 almost petulantly, and with his face to the wall said 
 he could not bear the sight of anything to eat. 
 And this was the brother who ever since babyhood 
 had been her charge to keep, her loyal and obedient 
 vassal. 
 
 Sighing heavily, she turned away and would have 
 gone, but he called her back. " Grace," he said, 
 " there's something I've got to say. I'm getting all 
 right. I can sit up just as well as not, and there's 
 no reason why to-morrow or next day I shouldn't 
 go to my own room, and why within the week I 
 shouldn't hurry_after the regiment."
 
 A GAIUIISON TANGLE. 109 
 
 "Oh, Ronald," she iaterrupted, "the doctor 
 says it would be death to you to try it." 
 
 " Well, better that kind of death than fretting to 
 death here. It's killing me by inches, Grace, and I 
 want to get away, and we've stayed too long here 
 at the Stannards' anyhow. It's awfully good of 
 them, but we have no right, no claim, so I'm going 
 to move day after to-morrow to my own den, and 
 you ought to be thinking about starting for 
 home." 
 
 Think about starting for home, indeed ? "Was she 
 in her sound senses ? Was this her little Ronald 
 telling her she should be returning to that far 
 Mohawk village before he was fairly well ? It was 
 incredible; it was more than that, it was ungrateful, 
 undutif ul cruel, heartless. She had arranged it all 
 on very different lines. The doctor was to give a 
 certificate. she had studied out the whole situation 
 a certificate on which Ronald was to be granted a 
 month's leave with per.n: -;s: >.i to apply for another ; 
 and then she would bundle up her hero baby brother, 
 and by easy stages she would trundle him home, 
 and there he would swing in his hammock, and she 
 and Gertrude would do all the reading and nursing 
 and petting she and Gertrude at first, so as to 
 arouse no suspicion and consequent rebellion then 
 slie would gradually slip away for a few moments
 
 HO A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 at a time, then for half an hour or so, and more and 
 more leave them alone together, and Cupid and 
 proximity would do the rest. 
 
 But here he was calmly, positively telling her 
 that it was his purpose to move to that other roof, 
 never suggesting that she should follow and occupy 
 Dana's room or Hollis', but, with almost callous in- 
 difference, saying it was time for her to be thinking 
 of the homeward start, because he meant as soon as 
 possible to take the tield. It meant defeat to her 
 hopes and plans. It might leave him still under the 
 influence of this dangerously lovely New England 
 girl, whom she was bound to regard as unworthy 
 his notice, yet could s not really believe guilty, no 
 matter what Mrs. Turner thought, of anything 
 graver than indiscretion. 
 
 The same gloaming that shrouded Nathalie and 
 her gentle friend in the adjoining quarters had 
 stolen in upon this unprompted conference. The 
 sister could no longer see her brother's face. He 
 lay there vaguely conscious of, yet never hearing, 
 the rapid beating of her aching heart. Perhaps in 
 his own dumb misery the young fellow did not wish 
 to see or hear the first symptom of either pain or 
 remonstrance. The one thought uppermost in his 
 mind was, that for long, radiant, beautiful days, for 
 rapturous hours of night thoughts, Nathalie Baird
 
 A GAK1USOX TANGLE. Ill 
 
 had lived queen of his heart's first love, pure and 
 strong and fervent, and that from thatqueendom had 
 been dashed to earth a broken idol, and it was his 
 sister who dealt the blow that shattered her throne. 
 For Mrs. Turner he felt only impatient contempt, 
 lie recalled now how often he had heard of her as 
 seeing wrong in and saying wrong of every woman 
 of whom she felt the faintest envy, and already there 
 was growing up in his heart strong reaction against 
 the two " informers," as he called them, and new 
 excuse, new explanation of Nathalie's strange con- 
 duct. He did not wish to wound his sister, but if 
 he had to prepare her for the move he at least could 
 not wound her half so deep as her revelation had 
 stabbed him. For several minutes she had stood 
 there after he had ceased. Her first impulse was to 
 protest, and vehement!} 7 , against his decision. Then 
 she was minded of the doctor's demand that he 
 should be spared all worry and excitement, for his 
 sleep had been fitful and broken, and he sorely 
 needed caltn repose. At last she ventured to trust 
 herself : 
 
 " We will not decide to-night, Ronald," she said, 
 as gently as she could. " I will think over all you 
 say, and, if the doctor agrees with you " 
 
 " Whether he agrees with me or not," broke in 
 the young soldier impatiently, " I leave this house
 
 A GARUKON TANGLE. 
 
 to-morrow or next day. I will not remain here, a 
 tax on Mrs. Stannard's kindness ; and I'm going to 
 the field the moment I can walk. I shall tell Mrs. 
 Stannard the first thing to-morrow morning." 
 
 But when morning came it brought new distrac- 
 tion, and for the time at least banished all thought 
 of change of quarters. 
 
 He had passed a wretched night, despite the 
 doctor's late visit and a suspicion of soothing syrup 
 in his medicine. He was awake long hours, and 
 was only falling into a troubled doze when the 
 rafters shook with the dull boom of the reveille 
 gun, and the bugle of the infantry summoned the 
 little garrison to roll call. Not ten minutes there- 
 after came the sound of voices on the road below, 
 one broadly Irish, loud, truculent, semi-defiant 
 the other low, firm, but authoritative. 
 
 " I tell ye the leddy will see me she'll see me 
 the instant she sees this," the first was saying. 
 
 "Him that sint it's dying on me hands wid sorra 
 
 '' 
 
 "Stop your infernal noise!" was the fierce inter- 
 ruption. "You'll see no one here until people are 
 up, and not then until you can give an account of 
 yourself." 
 
 And Maynard, painfully struggling out of bed, 
 reached the window with no little effort, and
 
 A GARUISOX TANGLE. 113 
 
 gazed out upon the road. Writhing in the grasp 
 of the corporal of the guard, to whose assistance 
 another soldier had run, was a brawny Irishman, 
 and Maynard knew him at a glance. It was the 
 same fellow whose shock head had peered from the 
 upper window over the Empire saloon the day of 
 his luckless mission in search of absentees. Fran- 
 tically now he was waving a paper in his hand, as 
 though striving to attract attention, while a stalwart 
 arm and hand nearly throttled him and surely 
 stopped his speech. And even while Maynard 
 stood there, marveling, and with sinking heart, ask- 
 ing himself what new complication involved the 
 girl he so hopelessly loved, he felt a light touch on 
 his arm, and his sister, in loose wrapper, had 
 hastened to his side. 
 
 "Ronald, this is most imprudent," she began ; but 
 he shook her off roughly, relentlessly, for there, on 
 the roadway below, before his very eyes, a tall, 
 slender girl, her beautiful hair adrift, clad like his 
 sister, in loose wrapper, was hastening toward the 
 struggling group, and at sight of her the contest 
 ceased. The corporal respectfully touched his cap. 
 The furious captive forgot, for a moment at least, his 
 wrath, and eagerly held forth the scrap of paper in 
 his hand. She took it hastily, read it rapidly 
 through, turned as though in utter helplessness and
 
 114 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 despair. Was it fancy, Maynard asked himself 
 did not her eyes imploringly seek his window for an 
 instant ? Then as suddenly she turned. " Say I'm 
 coming quick as possible. Go 1" she cried, and then 
 fled back into the house.
 
 A GARRISON TANQLB. lift 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE excitement consequent upon the appearance 
 of the Empire's " bouncer," Mr. P. Maloney, at the 
 early hour of half-past five o'clock this fine April 
 morning, was not slow in spreading itself from the 
 guardhouse to the quarters and thence to officers' 
 row. By the time the bugle sounded for guard- 
 mounting at nine there was hardly a household 
 along the line that did not know that just before 
 gun-fire the Celtic Cerberus of this once popular 
 resort had turned up in garrison, boldly demanding 
 the right to ring at Major Barry's door, and 
 merely asking where it was. Yery properly the 
 corporal of the guard had been summoned by the 
 sentry who first sighted the presumable prowler, and 
 very properly the corporal had told Mr. Maloney 
 that this was no hour to be calling at officers' 
 quarters, and that he'd have to come with him to 
 the guardhouse and wait there the pleasure of the 
 temporary post-commander, and very properly the 
 corporal was amazed, if not shocked, at the sudden 
 appearance of the young lady inmate of the Barry a'
 
 116 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 quarters, and her announcement that she would 
 follow the messenger without delay. True to her 
 word, not half an hour later Miss Baird issued from 
 the eastern gate and started swiftly on her three- 
 mile walk to town. The corporal saw her go, so 
 did the hospital steward and the man-of-all-work, 
 sweeping out the stove, and so did the lone sentry, 
 pacing his post along the row of storehouses, and such 
 a thing had never before been heard of at Russell. 
 Maloney, it seems, had ridden out on a borrowed 
 horse, and had hastened back with his answer the 
 moment the bewildered non-commissioned officer let 
 him go. What no one of these men could under- 
 stand was, how it happened that one so fair and 
 delicate as Miss Baird should have to take that 
 lonely walk instead of being sent in by some one of 
 the several vehicles owned among the officers' 
 families. What they did not dream was that of all 
 the women in the crowded garrison not one of their 
 number at that moment felt so friendless, so utterly 
 alone in the world, as Nathalie Baird. 
 
 At eight o'clock Mrs. Stannard had received a brief 
 line by the hands of Mrs. Barry's maid. It merely 
 eaid, " Come to me for a moment as soon as you 
 can," and Mrs. Stannard lost no time. 
 
 She found her invalid friend and neighbor pallid, 
 distressed and alone. Her eyes must have asked for
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 117 
 
 Nathalie, for Mrs. Barry, without a word, handed 
 her a little note, and opening, Mrs. Stannard read : 
 
 " I am called away by a summons that cannot be 
 ignored. He is desperately ill, perhaps dying, and 
 has sent for me. After this you know why I ought 
 never to return to your roof. The shame of it all 
 overpowers me, and yet I cannot do less for him 
 than I am doing, and I cannot must not tell you 
 why. To-night to-morrow you shall hear from, 
 me, and then let me go home and let me be for- 
 gotten. Your heartbroken 
 
 " NATHALIE." 
 
 "What can we do?" was Mrs. Stannard's ex- 
 clamation after the momentary stupefaction seemed 
 to have passed. " May I not get the doctor and 
 drive after her with him ?" 
 
 " Could you ? Will you ?" asked Mrs. Barry, al- 
 most weeping. " Ah, I knew you would. Send 
 first for him, and then I'll tell you all I know." 
 
 But as luck would have it the little doctor had 
 his hands full this fateful morning. The only prac- 
 titioner left at the post, it was but natural that half 
 the laundresses' children should be down with vari- 
 ous infantile maladies, and that officers' row should 
 find itself in urgent need of his services. Meantime 
 there had come many a caller to the Barrys' door 
 women like Mrs. Hay and Mrs. Freeman, full of 
 sympathy and sorrow; others, like Mrs. Turner and
 
 118 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 Mrs. Raymond, inspired by a rage of curiosity 
 veiled beneath the conventionalities of " kind in- 
 quiries." Mrs. Barry could see no one at first, but 
 yielded to Mrs. Freeman's importunities, and she 
 too, with Mrs. Ray, was taken into confidence. It 
 was nearly half-past ten when at last the doctor drove 
 up with the post surgeon's team and double-seated 
 carriage, and, just as Mrs. Stannard was being 
 handed in, and numbers of interested spectators were 
 looking on up and down the row, there cantered into 
 garrison on a scrub of a pony a youngster who used 
 to earn a precarious livelihood in those days carry- 
 ing travelers' hand luggage, running errands, arid 
 doing odd jobs around the few hotels and many bar- 
 rooms, and he had a note for Mrs. Barry, addressed 
 in Nathalie's small and tremulous hand. They 
 took it in to her at once and she opened it. 
 
 It was a brief, piteous, yet almost imperative de- 
 mand for twenty-five dollars to be sent to her by 
 the bearer. 
 
 The doctor shook his head. Mrs. Stannard 
 looked grave, but Mrs. Barry never hesitated. " It's 
 the last thing she would ever have done had it not 
 been vitally necessary." The bills were placed in 
 an envelope with a few lines begging her to be 
 ready to see Mrs. Stannard and the doctor and re- 
 turn with them without fail if by that time she had
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 119 
 
 finished what had to be done, and the ragged 
 Mercury trotted away with the message clutched in 
 a dingy hand all Eussell wondering the while. 
 
 Half an hour later, the doctor, leaving Mrs. Stan- 
 nard with the carriage at the post office, strolled 
 quietly around to the Empire and asked to see the 
 proprietor. He wasn't in. Maloney then. He'd 
 just gone out and wouldn't bo back. Then could 
 they tell him where he could find Maloney ? No, 
 they'd no idea where he'd gone. Evidently infor- 
 mation was lacking at the Empire, but a happy 
 thought occurred to the doctor. Hannifin's was 
 just across the way, and to Hannifin's he went, feel- 
 ing well assured that the rivalry between the estab- 
 lishments would prompt some one at the latter to 
 tell what might be detrimental of the other, and he 
 was right. " There had been a drunken row at the 
 Empire late last night," said Hannifin, " between 
 toughs that wouldn't be allowed in a respectable 
 saloon like this, for instance.'' Two fellows were 
 badly cut, and others were wanted by the city 
 marshal, but Hannifin could only tell that a man 
 called Boston was mixed up in it, and had been 
 slashed by somebody else, and that it was claimed 
 that the whole gang were strangers in Cheyenne, 
 only two of them having been seen there before 
 last night. Then the doctor asked if any of Bostoa'a
 
 120 ^ GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 people had been seen, and they hadn't. So far as 
 Hannifin knew, Boston had no friends or relatives, 
 nor could he tell where he was now in hiding ; even 
 the police, what there was of them, didn't know 
 that. So the doctor reluctantly turned away, and 
 after reporting his ill success to Mrs. Stannard it 
 was proposed that they should find Rackets, the boy 
 messenger, and question him again; and find him 
 they did, at noon, but not before, and his story was 
 straight as a string. The man who gave him the 
 job at the railway platform was there to wait for 
 him when he got back. He took the package, paid 
 the dollar bargained for, and walked rapidly away 
 up into town. Where he'd gone Rackets didn't 
 know. "Who he was Rackets didn't know, neither 
 did anybody at the depot. " Him and two other 
 fellers" had reached Cheyenne by the Denver train 
 the day before. 
 
 Troubled and perplexed, these] would-be rescuers 
 turned their horses' heads and drove back into 
 town, hardly knowing what to do. The one police 
 official the doctor had an acquaintance with was at 
 the Railroad House, and had there declared that 
 no one of their force of five or six " occasionals " 
 had seen anything of the young lady or knew any- 
 thing of the men, but they were straining every 
 nerve to know. "What we do know is that there
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 121 
 
 was a knife fight at the Empire between these 
 strangers and this fellow Boston, who's been knock- 
 ing about here for some ten days, but what has be- 
 come of him is more than we can find out. The 
 town is full of strangers getting ready for the Hills, 
 and we're just as apt to run in the wrong man as 
 the right one. What we hope is to corral them on 
 the night train. But where they carried Boston to 
 after he was knifed is what gets me." 
 
 To think of having to return to Mrs. Barry with a 
 report so meager as this ! Mrs. Stannard could not 
 bear it, but return was imperative, for the doctor 
 had patients who needed his attention, and he had 
 not seen Maynard at all that day. Reluctantly they 
 abandoned the investigation after a few more words 
 with the police and a promise to return that after- 
 noon if nothing were heard of the young lady in 
 the meantime. Then the horses were headed for 
 the open prairie, which they reached at a spanking 
 trot, and there, far out across the breezy level, was 
 trundling briskly toward the post the little team of 
 grays and the covered spring-wagon owned by an 
 old retired soldier who had a ranch near by f and 
 before the surgeon's well-matched bays had covered 
 half the distance the leading equipage disappeared 
 within the gate, and ten minutes later when Mrs. 
 Stannard sadly stepped from the carriage at Mrs.
 
 122 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 Barry's door she was accosted by Mrs. Turner, who 
 came tripping from Miss Maynard's side to meet 
 her and to say with eager dilation of the eye and 
 parsings of the mouth : 
 
 " She's back sJie's just got here. "Where on 
 earth can she have been ?" 
 
 And turning, unsatisfying, from her questioner, 
 Mrs. Stannard rang at the Barrys' door and entered 
 and found Nathalie sobbing her heart out as she 
 knelt by Mrs. Barry's side, encircled by that lady's 
 loving arms. 
 
 "I declare," said Mrs. Turner that afternoon, 
 " there's just ten times as much mystery and misery 
 about this old post when the men are away as 
 when they're here !" for that night the doctor had 
 a patient at Barrys' who needed all his care 
 Nathalie's strength had given way and she was very 
 ill indeed. 
 
 And then came stirring, thrilling news next day 
 from the front. Both battalions of the th, diving 
 after the Cheyennes into the sand hills, had sud- 
 denly been brought to bay. Yellow Wolf and his 
 desperate band, finding themselves confronted, so 
 said the young men sent far out in advance, by 
 strong forces of cavalry and infantry from the 
 northern agencies, had recoiled to certain well- 
 known old fastnesses in the deep breaks to the south
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 123 
 
 of the Niobrara, and in recoiling had stumbled 
 against Stannard's advance, thereby bringing on a 
 sharp and rattling fight that had warmed the cockles 
 of the old campaigner's heart and shown even his 
 recruits to be fellows of excellent mettle. All the 
 same, Yellow Wolf was in no mood for a general 
 melee, or he could have made it hot for Stannard 
 that crisp April morning, for he had only four 
 troops, Barry being some miles away to the south- 
 east. The two battalions were converging as they 
 hastened northward, and had Yellow Wolf been a 
 strategist he had excellent opportunity to beat his 
 opponents in detail. The Indians, however, really 
 wished to avoid conflict with the cavalry. Every 
 life was precious in the long-badgered and fast- 
 diminishing tribe, and there was something almost 
 pathetic in the efforts of the old chief and leader of 
 the Cheyennes to get his people, warriors, women 
 and children, safely in touch with their kindred of 
 the northern tribe, the very thing which the Inte- 
 rior Department was most anxious to prevent. 
 
 For an hour his young men had kept up their 
 dashing, long range fight with Stannard's skirmish 
 line, striving to kill and wound as many of the sol- 
 diers as possible, so as to hamper their subsequent 
 movements. Others, at the same time, far to the 
 north, kept watch over the slow advance of the
 
 124 ^ GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 force from the agencies, while other braves still, 
 safely escorted the village the old men, women and 
 children far in among the fastnesses of the sand 
 hills to the west. There, as among the Bad Lands 
 along the Dakota border, were natural fortifications, 
 and tortuous, intricate trails, along which only in 
 single file could pursuers march, and twenty braves 
 could hold the passage against a regiment of sol- 
 diers. So perfectly was this masked from the sight 
 of the cavalry, cautiously advancing from the north, 
 but still nearly a dozen miles away, and from Stan- 
 nard's view, thanks to the intervening ridges at 
 which his men were impetuously dashing, that 
 when, after a long morning of skirmishing with not 
 a little loss to officers, men and mounts, the major 
 ordered the recall and assembly sounded and proper 
 disposition made for the care of the wounded, noth- 
 ing whatever had been seen of the flank movement 
 of the village. An hour later, just about one 
 o'clock, when the warriors themselves seemed to 
 have drawn away from his widely dispersed skir- 
 mishers now formed in a big circle about the pack 
 train and wounded, the veteran soldier sent an offi- 
 cer and a dozen men to see what could be seen from 
 the summit of a butte barely a mile distant, and 
 almost instantly these began signaling, and pres- 
 ently a trooper came tearing back at a gallop.
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 125 
 
 "The cavalry from White River, sir, the lieutenant 
 says. You can see 'em plain not, more than six or 
 eight miles off to the north." 
 
 "Damn the cavalry from "White River!" said 
 Stannard explosively. " Where are the Indians ?" 
 
 " None in sight, sir, anywhere." 
 
 "Well, then, they've got to their holes in the 
 sand hills, and we'll have hell to pay rooting 'em 
 out," was the old dragoon's disgusted outbreak. 
 
 And Stannard was a true prophet. The news 
 that reached Russell by telegraph that fine April 
 evening was that Colonel Atherton himself had 
 hastened from the railway Lorthward to the field, 
 that Barry was ordered to close in on Stannard, 
 that the Indians had gotten into the strongest of 
 their strongholds, and that war to the knife was the 
 least that could be expected. Still, with Atherton 
 in general command, with two strong battalions 
 such as were led by Barry and Stannard, with the 
 strong force from White River, all in the field in 
 front of him, perhaps old Yellow Wolf might think 
 it best to surrender, sure as he was of kind treat- 
 ment and this was the flattering unction laid to the 
 souls of most of the wives and mothers at Russell 
 that anxious evening when the list of casualties 
 came in by wire, and this was what their infantry 
 friends preached and propheised and what they all
 
 126 ^ GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 tried to believe all but poor Maynard who felt 
 sure there would be a sharp fight all because he 
 wasn't there to win his spurs. From more causes 
 than one he was profoundly unhappy, feverish and 
 intractable, and the doctor had to chide him ear- 
 nestly when he called later to see him. 
 
 " This won't do, sir," was the medico's rebuke. 
 " By good rights you ought now to be nearly well 
 enough to mount and ride, but you've been chafing, 
 fretting and retarding your recovery. I'm not so 
 deficient in the matter of patients as not to be able 
 to spare a few, and you ought to be helping, not 
 hampering me. I suppose you know Miss Baird is 
 quite ill." 
 
 " Miss Baird," stammered Maynard, his face fill- 
 ing instantly with anxiety, his fine young eyes 
 clouding. Not a word had Grace said to him upon 
 the subject. 
 
 " Yes. You knew she went to town to-day?" 
 
 " I heard her say that she would go," faltered 
 the lieutenant. 
 
 " Well," continued the doctor, " God only knows 
 what that poor child has been going through, but 
 she's all unstrung, all broken up ; and though she has 
 youth and strength and elasticity in her favor, and 
 will probably recover in a short time, she is utterly 
 prostrated to-night. Now if you were only able to 
 be about -^
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 127 
 
 " I !" interrupted Maynard. " What then ? You 
 know well enough that I am fit for many kinds 
 of work even now." 
 
 u Not for trailing the gang of sharps that we've 
 searched in vain for to-day," said the doctor. " Even 
 the police could not locate them. Yet, some one 
 of their number has some hold on that poor girl 
 the big, burly tough they call Boston, I fancy ; and 
 after getting every cent of her earnings he gets into 
 a knife scrape last night, has been stabbed, sends 
 for her and asks her to raise twenty-five dollars 
 more for him, and then sends her tottering home, 
 more dead than alive. I suppose the money is 
 needed to buy him out of some trouble, and start 
 him away from here, but that's only my theory. 
 She will not tell anything about him, which con- 
 firms my belief that he's a jail bird. Now what can 
 a girl like her be doing with a man like that ?" 
 
 Maynard winced as though the doctor had used 
 an actual instead of a verbal probe. 
 
 " You never heard her speak of any such ?" asked 
 his visitor, eying him searchingly. 
 
 "No," was the short answer, and Maynard's face 
 looked white and drawn. He arose from his easy 
 chair and limped to the window and gazed miserably 
 out upon the starlit heavens and the flickering 
 lamps across the dim parade. He wished the doctor
 
 128 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 in Jericho, and that practitioner was not slow to 
 see it. 
 
 ""Well, I'll leave you, youngster," said he patron- 
 izingly. " What you've got to do to pull out of 
 this is to quit fret and worry, if you want to get 
 after the field column. So 'long." And then he 
 went trotting down the stairs where feminine voices 
 had been heard for some little time in conversation. 
 Mrs. Stannard was away with Mrs. Barry. It must 
 then be Grace Maynard and her now inseparable 
 friend, Mrs. Turner. The latter pounced upon the 
 doctor with cooing inquiry for " poor Miss Baird," 
 and was briefly told that the trouble seemed to be 
 nervous prostration more than anything else. 
 " What your brother needs is freedom from worry," 
 he began at once. " He is fretting himself into 
 another fever," and the doctor turned abruptly to 
 Miss Maynard he couldn't bear Mrs. Turner. 
 "Now I'm going to send over a sedative that he is 
 to take, for he's very nervous and fretful to-night." 
 
 With that, and blandly unconscious of the fact 
 that much of the nervousness was due to his own 
 ministrations, the little man departed. 
 
 " Then I'll go too," said Mrs. Turner, in her drawl 
 of sisterly sympathy. " I know you must be long- 
 ing to be with him, but I'll come first thing in the 
 morning. Isn't it dreadful?" She paused as the
 
 A GARlilSOtf TANGLE. 129 
 
 door was opened for her and glanced out inio outer 
 darkness with a shudder. " Isn't it dreadful to have 
 no one to walk home with ? no man, I mean,-' she 
 hastily added, as Miss Maynard took down the 
 major's cape, which she had fallen quite into the 
 way of wearing 1 . 
 
 A little later brother and sister were alone to- 
 gether. He had been reading over a letter and 
 stowed it in the pocket of his dressing-gown as she 
 entered. 
 
 ' I missed the orderly with the mail to-day, Ron 
 aid. Did you hear from father ?" she asked. 
 
 He shook his head, but made no other reply. 
 
 " Well, wasn't that a letter ?" she asked, with a 
 glance at the gaping pocket. 
 
 " Yes, but not from him, Grace. And I must tell 
 you again, I am so troubled about him. You ought 
 to be there, not here. There is no excuse whatever 
 for your remaining a burden on Mrs. Stannard " 
 
 " How can you say so, Ronald ? Who could nurse 
 you were I not here ?" 
 
 " I could do very well. There is no further dan- 
 ger. The doctor says I can be out in a very few 
 days. Father has no one but Aunt Willett to care 
 for him there ' 
 
 " He has Gertrude, who is sweetness and devotion 
 itself, whom he loves as he would his own daughter,
 
 130 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 as he hoped as I hoped, yes, and expected, Ronald 
 she would and should be, or that at least she should 
 and we should, have your assurance by this time 
 that that was your intention. You know it has 
 long been the dearest wish of your fathers heart." 
 
 " I do not know it, Grace, nor do I believe it. He 
 never so much at hinted at such a thing. You 
 alone," said Maynard, his cheeks flushing and withan 
 angry light in his eyes as he rose from his chair, 
 "you alone persist in this scheme I don't know 
 -what else to call it and I don't think Gertrude 
 would thank you in the least." 
 
 " Gertrude had every right short of a positive en- 
 gagement to consider herself pledged to you and 
 you to her, Ronald, and not until you met this 
 stranger, of whom you know nothing that is not 
 most unsatisfactory, to say the least " 
 
 "Grace!" 
 
 " Oh, I know how infatuated a boy can be, and 
 that is why I stand here, as I have time and again 
 in your past, a shield between you and harm or pun- 
 ishment. Ronald ! Ronald ! for the sake of all those 
 years," she cried, softening and tearful now, as she 
 clasped her thin hands and bent yearningly toward 
 him. " Listen to me, my brother. Don't make me 
 say harsh things about an unfortunate girl. Don't 
 force from me what I know. But do you not un-
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 131 
 
 derstand why I cannot leave you now ? It is dread, 
 Ronald, dread lest you become utterly entangled in 
 that in that girl's toils, and bring shame and ruin 
 to us all." 
 
 " Not another word, Grace, not another word 1" 
 he exclaimed, angrily drawing away from her. In 
 her pleading she had caught up the cord and tassel 
 of his flowered gown her own manufacture, her 
 own gift and he fairly snatched them from her 
 hands. " I will believe no ill of her. I know every- 
 thing that has taken place to-day. I know of her 
 going to town to see that fellow. He is some blood 
 relation, some luckless, reckless outcast from home, 
 and I'll swear to it." 
 
 " Eeckless and outcast he may be, Ronald, but he 
 is that girl's lover and I know it."
 
 132 A GARRISON TANGLE 
 
 'CHAPTER X. 
 
 As HAS been said before, the time that some women 
 indeed some old women of both sexes select to 
 tell a fellow the news that is bound to hurt and 
 sting and worry him most, is when he is already 
 nearly knocked out, and therefore cannot get from 
 under. In the excitement of the moment, in her 
 righteous indignation, and in the serene conscious- 
 ness of the justice of her sacred cause, Miss Maynard 
 had quite forgotten, or at least ignored, the doctor's 
 parting admonition, and the fatal words were said. 
 She knew now that she must prove her words or lose 
 her case. It was no longer a question of how much 
 Ronald might be fretting or how great might be his 
 excitement. He had heard just so much that noth- 
 ing would satisfy him but the truth and the whole 
 truth as known to her. She must face the music 
 and give her authority for the statement or her last 
 hold on her brother's trust was gone. 
 
 There he stood grasping the back of the chair, 
 swaying a little from weakness and shock, staring 
 ft her with his fine, bright eyes, now so full of
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 133 
 
 misery and incredulity and challenge. His face was 
 almost ashen. He choked as at last he spoke : 
 
 " He may have been an admirer any man 
 might ; but you you say, her lover. That, too, he 
 may have been before his break-down. That is no 
 disgrace to her. She is helping him for what he 
 was not for what he is." And still he gazed im- 
 ploringly. So many years he had hung upon that 
 sister's words and never doubted her. " You can- 
 not mean there is anything between them that 
 that " 
 
 "I mean that she would follow him to-morrow, if 
 it were not to jail, and that she loves him yet." 
 
 For a moment all was silence, except that he was 
 breathing hard. " You have your proofs, of course," 
 he said. " Go on." 
 
 "Not to-night, Eonald," she pleaded. "The 
 doctor said " 
 
 " Never mind what the doctor said ! that I was 
 not to be agitated, I suppose, as though I were some 
 hysterical woman. Go on, I say. You can't 
 agitate me any more than you have, and I want to 
 get to the bottom of this at once. Who is your 
 authority ? Don't quote Mrs. Turner that would 
 be too ridiculous." 
 
 But fortune came to her aid. There was a sudden 
 ring at the gong bell on the hall door below. The
 
 134 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 servant had retired. Mrs. Stannard was still at the 
 Barry's, next door. Miss Maynard had to go down 
 and answer the summons. It was the orderly from 
 headquarters. 
 
 " Dispatches still coming 1 in, miss," he said, " and 
 here's one for Mrs. Stannard " 
 
 " She's next door Oh, but wait !" said Miss 
 Maynard, a sudden thought occurring- to her. " It 
 may disturb Miss Baird if you go there and ring. 
 Have you anything- for Mrs. Barry. I can take 
 both." 
 
 " Yes, mum," was the answer, as the young soldier 
 searched through the packet of brown envelopes in 
 his hand. 
 
 " I'll be back in a moment, Ronald," she called up 
 the stairs. Then leaving- him alone angering-, in- 
 credulous, yet miserable, Miss Maynard took the 
 dispatches and, tapping lightly at the door of the 
 neighboring quarters, noiselessly let herself in. 
 Mrs. Stannard met her in the parlor. 
 
 " I took these from the orderly," whispered Miss 
 Maynard. " It seemed better that I should come 
 in with them than that he should ring." 
 
 But with brief apology, Mrs. Stannard had 
 already torn open the envelope and was reading her 
 dispatch. It was from the major, of course, pen- 
 ciled after the long morning of excitement, and
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 135 
 
 sent in to the railway by a courier, galloping back 
 with dispatches. It contained merely a few re- 
 assuring words. " All well, barring a few casualties 
 already reported. We will be strongly reinforced 
 to-morrow." 
 
 Then the major's wife glanced up at her guest. 
 " Mrs. Barry had just dropped off into a doze," she 
 whispered. " I feel sure her message is to the same 
 purport as mine, and that I ought not to rouse her. 
 She can read it by and by. How is Mr. Maynard 
 to-night 2" 
 
 " He is very nervous and excited," was her reply. 
 " All these rumors from the front make him eager 
 to join his comrades, and I cannot keep him quiet 
 or content. And your other patient?" she con- 
 tinued, with an upward glance. 
 
 " Poor child ! She is badly shaken. Mrs. Free- 
 man is sitting with her and striving to soothe her, 
 but she was wide awake awhile ago and very nerv- 
 ous and wretched. I fear she will have little or no 
 sleep this night. Now do not sit up for me, Miss 
 Maynard. Leave the door on the latch, and I'll 
 come in quietly by and by. I shall stay here until 
 after midnight. Mrs. Freeman must go home pres- 
 ently. She cannot stay away from her children all 
 night, 3 T ou know." 
 
 " Oh, I should be most glad if I could be of serv-
 
 136 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 ice either with Mrs. Barry or with with Miss 
 Baird," faltered Miss Maynard presently. " Konald 
 really doesn't need me at all." 
 
 " It is very kind of you," was the courteous an- 
 swer, "but everybody realizes your first duty is to 
 your brother. Is there anything he fancies to- 
 night? You know where to find everything we 
 have, so I can depend on you not to wait to ask. 
 Just help yourself." 
 
 And then Mrs. Stannard stood as though she 
 wished to bring the conversation to an end and re- 
 turn to her sleeping patient, but Miss Maynard still 
 faltered. She was fencing for time. She did not 
 wish to go home yet. She would have to face 
 Ronald and answer his questions. 
 
 And in the midst of the awkward pause a light 
 footfall was heard on the stairs. It was Mrs. 
 Freeman. 
 
 " I'm sure dispatches have come," she murmured 
 as she joined them. " What is the news ?" 
 
 Silently Mrs. Stannard handed her the open paper, 
 which Mrs. Freeman eagerly read. 
 
 " Well, then there must be one for me," she whis- 
 pered. " Would you mind going up and sitting 
 with Nathalie a moment ?" she asked of Mrs. Stan- 
 nard. " I will just hurry home and get what may 
 have come and a peep at the children, and return 
 in five minutes.
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 187 
 
 And then from the inner room Mrs. Barry's 
 voice, low and gentle, was heard, demanding news, 
 and Mrs. Stannard hastened to her side. 
 
 " Fll go to Miss Baird, Mrs. Freeman," whispered 
 Grace Maynard. " Go home by all means, and do 
 not come back if you do not feel like it. I should 
 be glad to sit up with the poor girl. I'm thoroughly 
 accustomed to nursing." 
 
 Mrs. Freeman looked troubled and perplexed a 
 moment, listened for sounds from aloft, said vaguely 
 "You're very kind. I I think the doctor's 
 medicines are taking effect and that she is dozing 
 off. I shan't be any time at all." So saying the 
 little matron let herself out at the front door and 
 hastened down the row. Grace, after listening a 
 moment, slowly and softly ascended the stairs, and 
 noiselessly entered the sick-room. 
 
 There in her little white bed lay the patient, her 
 wan face turned away from the dim night-light, 
 nervously tapping the counterpane with her slender 
 hand. She did not turn, she did not speak as the 
 newcomer entered. Only by the restless movement 
 of the hand and an occasional impatient toss and, 
 sigh did she show that she was awake and tor- 
 mented by her thoughts. 
 
 It had been Miss Maynard's intention to speak 
 and explain the situation. The words were on her
 
 138 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 lips as she entered the room, but, seeing that no 
 apparent notice was taken of her coming, she hesi- 
 tated, then decided not to explain or to speak at all 
 until somebody or something should show that 
 Nathalie had discovered it was not Mrs. Freeman. 
 It might be embarrassing, to .say the least. The 
 strange girl had never liked her. had always avoided 
 and even shrunk from her. It might only add 
 to her agitation and distress to find a stranger seated 
 by her bedside. Indeed Miss Maynard could 
 think of a dozen reasons for silence, and so, quietly 
 seating herself in the chair left vacant by Mrs. 
 Freeman, she glanced over the little array of vials, 
 glasses, etc., left by the doctor, noted that the shade 
 of the kerosene lamp was carefully adjusted so as 
 to protect the invalid's eyes from the light, and then 
 began a quiet study of the little room and its simple 
 furnishings. 
 
 It was very like the one she herself occupied at 
 the Stannards, next door. The two majors were 
 quartered in one big frame house with a party wall, 
 the hallways being on the outer side, and the house 
 itself differing from those in which the captains and 
 lieutenants were quartered in that it had a little 
 extra room on each side under a "lean-to" outside the 
 hall, and that the bedroom on the ground floor was 
 made large and commodious, extending from
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 the end of the lean-to crosswise to the dining-room. 
 Both Barrys and Stannards preferred their ground 
 floor bedroom because the stairs were steep and 
 narrow, and Mrs. Barry would have chosen it any- 
 way, she being too much of an invalid to climb. 
 When the Barrys moved from Fort Fred Winthrop 
 to Russell, and into their quarters adjoining the 
 Stannards, Nathalie had gratefully accepted the 
 second floor front as her bower, and had fitted it up 
 very prettily and lived there for awhile, as we 
 know, very happily. Then came the episode of the 
 pebble throwing and the bulky, burly stranger who 
 joined her on the prairie walk, and then Nathalie 
 had shown an unlooked-for timidity. She asked 
 Mrs. Barry if she might move into the rear room, 
 whose dormer windows looked out over the prairie, 
 and Mrs. Barry promptly acquiesced, though point- 
 ing out to her that, if she had been annoyed or 
 alarmed by anything taking place in front it was 
 even easier for some one to approach the rear than 
 the front window. But Nathalie said that wasn't 
 the reason. It might only be a whim. At all 
 events she could not there, in the back room, hear 
 the band when it played wicked waltz music on 
 Sunday, suggested Mrs. Barry, with a smile. 
 Nathalie thanked her in her heart of hearts 
 for asking no questions, and had told her no lies.
 
 140 A GfARRItiOtf TANGLE. 
 
 For nearly a week now she had been occupying 
 this rftar room looking out over the unlovely land- 
 scape of backyard, broken fence, barren prai- 
 rie and hospital grounds. Yet so wakeful had she 
 become, so troubled her sleep, that she had almost 
 instantly heard the Milesian mouthings of the Em- 
 pire's bouncer that fateful morning, and hurrying 
 into wrapper and slippers and almost any loose gar- 
 ments, had hastened down to still his clamor and 
 protect her protector from the possibility of a scene. 
 When Maynard was brought back to the post 
 from his room at the hotel, Major Stannard had 
 promptly placed the front room of his quarters at 
 his disposal as being the one best suited to an in- 
 valid, and had hospitably bidden the sister to occupy 
 the one in the rear. She thanked her entertainers 
 very properly, indeed very gratefully, and told them 
 then that just as soon as Ronald was well enough 
 for her to leave him she must hasten back to resume 
 the care of her father. Ronald had now been well 
 enough for her to leave for several days, but Miss 
 Maynard had not begun to pack her trunks, nor was 
 there anything in Mrs. Stannard's manner, even 
 after the intimacy with Mrs. Turner began to glow 
 at white heat, to indicate that she was wearying of 
 her guest. Mrs. Turner, of course, fluttered in and 
 out as though conferring blessings on the rooftree.
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 141 
 
 It could never by any human possibility occur to 
 her that she would be unwelcome anywhere, and it 
 was she who silenced the faint scruples which Miss 
 Maynard confessed to, and bade her rest assured 
 that the Stannards were only too glad to have her 
 stay and take care of Mr. Maynard, as otherwise 
 they would have to do it themselves. 
 
 It was very late nearly half-past eleven when 
 Miss Maynard took her seat by Nathalie's bedside 
 and began her survey of the dimly lighted room 
 A bureau with mirror and toilet-stand was againsf 
 the wall next the entrance door. A little couch 
 extended across the north end of the room under 
 some bookshelves. The dormer window, daintily 
 ch-aped, was almost at the foot of the couch. The 
 washstand and a little mirror stood near the foot of 
 the bed. Nathalie's trunk, covered with a Navajo 
 blanket, was against the wall beyond the washstand, 
 and quite a tall, wardrobe-like arrangement for 
 skirts and gowns was built against the partition be- 
 tween the front and rear rooms. Everything looked 
 dim and indistinct in the faint light near the bed- 
 side, and before seating herself Miss Maynard had 
 moved the chair so that instead of facing the silent 
 patient she had the little table between her and the 
 bed, and here, her hands crossed idly in her lap, she 
 sat some time, glancing about the room, thinking
 
 143 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 over with fluttering heart her exciting and troublous 
 interview with Ronald, listening for any sound from 
 the invalid to indicate that her services were needed, 
 thinking of the strange array of circumstances that 
 had brought her to the bedside of this dangerous 
 girl, this unknown maiden who had stolen her 
 brother's heart and lured him from what the sister 
 chose to consider the path of love, honor and duty ; 
 and all the time vaguely wondering whether it 
 might not be providential if it might indeed not 
 have been planned that she should thus be thrown 
 into intimate relations with the invader and de- 
 stroyer of all her most cherished plans if in truth it 
 might not have been one of the mysterious dispensa- 
 tions of Divine Providence that she should now be 
 here given full opportunity to strike a blow for right 
 and justice for gentle Gertrude, patient and un- 
 complaining, yet suffering at home for Ralph, her 
 hero lover, silent in the grave ay, even for her 
 beloved brother's sake, bewitched and blinded as he 
 might be now, would he not later bless and thank 
 her for whatever she now might do to break his 
 chains ? 
 
 And pondering with rapidly beating heart over 
 all these things, Grace Maynard noted that full half 
 an hour had gone by, and Mrs. Freeman had not 
 returned. It was fate.
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 143 
 
 Away over at the guardhouse the sentry was 
 calling the midnight hour. There was a stir on the 
 lower floor, and Mrs. Stannard's footsteps were 
 heard as she swept through the parlor into the hall; 
 then, low and cautious, her voice was heard : 
 
 " Miss Maynard !" 
 
 The young woman quickly arose and hastened to 
 the landing at the head of the stairs. 
 
 " Yes, Mrs. Stannard. What is it ?" 
 
 "I fear something has detained Mrs. Freeman. 
 It is time for Nathalie to take the medicine the 
 doctor left for her one teaspoonf ul in a little water 
 from the vial that stands in the saucer. Is she 
 awake ?" 
 
 " I think so. I will give it to her." 
 
 " Thank you ever so much. "We are so fortunate 
 in having you here. I will go back to Mrs. Barry 
 then. Don't you sit up after she goes to sleep." 
 
 " Oh, I do not mind it in the least, Mrs. Stannard. 
 You know I've been somebody's nurse for years." 
 
 With that she returned to the bedside, and now, 
 in her white nightdress, wide-eyed, startled, ques- 
 tioning, Nathalie was leaning on her elbow staring 
 at her. 
 
 " Mrs. Freeman had to run home a few minutes 
 ago and left me to give you your medicine, Miss 
 Baird," said Grace promptly, and in soothing tone,
 
 144 ^ GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 her deft fingers the while pouring out and mixing 
 the draught. "I hope you are feeling better." 
 
 She approached and would have passed an arm 
 about the girl's slim shoulders to support her, but 
 Nathalie seemed to draw away, 
 
 "I thank you very much," was the nervous, 
 faltering reply, " but indeed, indeed I need no one 
 no one, and surely you oh, you must not let me 
 keep you from your brother, Miss Maynard ! He 
 needs you far more than I do." She sipped the 
 liquid handed her, and sank back upon the pillow, 
 but her eyes again sought the face of her nurse. 
 "You ought not to be away from him. I heard 
 they told me he was not so well." 
 
 " I fear he is not doing as we could wish. He 
 seems The trouble is he's fretting and un- 
 happy." 
 
 " Mrs. Stannard told me," interposed the girl, her 
 eyes taking on a sudden light, her cheeks faintly 
 coloring, her heart beating quickly. " He is longing 
 to go with his regiment, I know, and it chafes him 
 to be held here." 
 
 Miss Maynard turned and looked at the wan, 
 wistful little face, so haggard through care and 
 suffering, a sight to move a woman's heart to pity, 
 but for those fatal signs the sudden color in the 
 soft cheeks, the almost eager light in the kindling
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 145 
 
 eyes, the nervous, slender fingers clutching at the 
 front of her snow-white gown, hardly whiter than 
 the delicately rounded throat it encircled. Miss 
 Maynard seated herself deliberately at the foot of 
 the bed. " Yes," she said, fixing her eyes on the 
 dim night light, " and there are other things, poor 
 boy." 
 
 The other white hand stole to the girl's forehead 
 and covered her eyes, but she remained silent. 
 Presently Miss Maynard continued, speaking in the 
 conventional phraseology she had learned in young 
 lady days. " You see, it is very hard for a young 
 man like him to know that the object of his affec- 
 tions is lying ill, at home, and all through anxiety 
 on his account." 
 
 The white hand at the throat had ceased its rest- 
 Jess toying, but the heart beneath that snowy bosom 
 was beating tumultuously. 
 
 "Indeed, I suppose," said Miss Maynard diffi- 
 dently, " I ought not to speak of it to a compara- 
 tive stranger, but everybody here has been so kind 
 to him, perhaps they think him ungrateful for all 
 their goodness, but it isn't that. Duty with his 
 regiment draws him one way, but all the time he is 
 longing to get back, with me, to Gertrude Bonner. 
 She's such 3 lovely girl, I don't wonder."
 
 H6 -* GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 I 
 
 A WEEK rolled by, uneventful enough at Russell } 
 
 but full of mischief in the field. Hemmed in among 
 the sand hills, and feeling the toils closing about 
 him with fatal pressure by the second day, Yellow- 
 Wolf had had recourse to diplomacy, and the 
 aborigine is a past master of the art a man to 
 whom Metternich and Talleyrand might have bowed 
 in envious contemplation. Sending a squaw to the 
 nearest picket post of the enemy, which happened 
 to be on the north side, the Indian chief asked for 
 a talk, and later that day, in solemn dignity and all 
 the panoply of war paint and feathers, he appeared 
 with a retinue of sub-chiefs, and, gravely dismount- 
 ing in the circle of officers and soldiers drawn up 
 to meet him, he strode forward, erect and proud and 
 powerful still, a splendid specimen of the plains- 
 bred warrior, then halted in front of the command- 
 ing officer, as though bidding him step forward and 
 come the rest of the way. Atherton was not there. 
 He, with his two battalions, Barry and Stannard, 
 was carefully, closely watching the Indian position
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 147 
 
 from the south and east. It might all only be a 
 trick, a blind, under cover of which the wily chief 
 would attempt to run off his village through the 
 mazes of the sand hills, and, favored by the rapidly 
 descending wings of night, slip away around the 
 right flank of the cavalry and infantry from the 
 White River agencies, and be off and away to join 
 the. Northern Cheyennes. If he could make his 
 quarrel theirs, with their united warriors they could 
 laugh at the combined forces in the field. 
 
 But out there on the rolling slopes to the north, 
 with the broad valley of the Niobrara stretching 
 miles away toward the horizon, the scene was 
 picturesque and even barbaric. Dismounted from 
 their gayly caparisoned ponies, Yellow "Wolf and 
 his principal warriors, fearless, and bearing them- 
 selves even now as conquerors, towered in a 
 feathered, painted, brilliant group, the center of a 
 somber ring of soldiery. The chief himself stood a 
 few paces advanced from his followers, and his 
 glance, haughty and almost defiant, was fixed on, 
 the gray-haired, mottle-faced officer whom long 
 years of rather inconspicuous service had lifted to 
 the command. The colonel knew little of Indians 
 or of Indian character. Fate had found him at the 
 agencies when the order was telegraphed to " hustle 
 out " every available officer and man and head off
 
 148 A OAERI80N TANGLE. 
 
 those Southern Cheyennes. He was surrounded 
 by his subordinates, most of whom had spent long 
 years among the Indians and were far better 
 calculated to deal with them, and to one of these, a 
 keen-featured captain of infantry, he turned and 
 whispered. 
 
 " "What's the old rip waiting for ?" 
 
 " You must step forward meet him halfway- 
 shake hands," was the whispered answer. Rather 
 sheepishly, a marked contrast to the savage chief 
 in bearing and demeanor, the colonel, with his 
 thumbs stuck in his waist belt, lounged forward, 
 and, assuming an affable grin, stopped when he 
 neared Yellow Wolf and, slowly withdrawing the 
 right hand from his belt, shifted his quid of tobacco 
 to the other cheek, blushed as though he knew he 
 were making a mess of it, and held forth his hand. 
 
 "Wolf glanced first at the extended hand and then 
 at the soldier's perturbed face, something almost 
 contemptuous shooting across his own swarthy 
 features. Then slowly raising his right hand he as 
 coolly brought the fingers of the left close to the 
 finger tips of the other, and began in excellent 
 pantomime the motion of pulling off a glove and 
 casting it aside. The whole action was significant. 
 Turning redder yet, the colonel hastily jerked his 
 gauntlet from his knotty digits, and again held
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 149 
 
 forth his hand. This time the warrior con- 
 descended. Striding forward, erect and dignified 
 as ever, he seized the colonel's paw and gave it a 
 wrench that made the veteran wince, whereat some 
 of the younger Indians nearly laughed aloud, and 
 there was an audible titter among the soldiers. 
 This formality concluded the colonel proceeded 
 to shake hands with each of the warriors in the 
 suite of Yellow Wolf, saying, as he had heard 
 brother officers greet the Ogallala braves at the 
 fort, "How, Colah," which wasn't Cheyenne at all, 
 but Sioux, or a colloquial modification thereof. 
 However, it seemed to pass muster among the 
 visitors, with whom certain others of the officers 
 shook hands and exchanged cordial greetings. 
 They were old acquaintances. 
 
 And then at a word from Yellow Wolf his follow- 
 ers seated themselves in the arc of a circle, all save 
 one, an Indian as thoroughbred-looking as the chief, 
 who remained close to the latter's side, who bent 
 attentive ear to the words spoken in low voice by 
 his leader, and then addressed himself in excellent 
 English to the colonel: 
 
 "Yellow Wolf has come to talk with the com- 
 mander of the white soldiers. But we have no 
 meat. We are poor and hungry. Our children cry 
 for food."
 
 150 A GARRISON TAN OLE. 
 
 " Order dinner for the dozen, colonel," whispered 
 the captain, coming to his side. " There can be no 
 talk till you do." And over an hour was consumed 
 while the chief and his friends were being fed and 
 comforted, a proceeding that took three times the 
 amount of bacon and hard-tack, coffee and suga? 
 that would have satisfied the stomachs of many i 
 hungry white man. Meantime the sun was sinking 
 toward the horizon, and old Stannard, with Athei 
 ton's permission, came spurring up from the soutl 
 east to inquire, as he did in terse language, what 
 the devil was the matter, and why in the devil's 
 abiding place they were wasting so much valuable 
 time. Being informed that Yellow Wolf had de- 
 clared himself poor and hungry, and had uegged for 
 food as preliminary to the council, Stannard ripped 
 out an explosive protest. " The old scoundrel is 
 only playing you !" said he to the colonel. " He's 
 sparring for wind and time, don't you see? He 
 knows we're right in on top of him now, by dint of 
 two days' siege work, and that we could attack now 
 with every prospect of giving them a thrashing. 
 He's just standing you off until sunset, colonel. 
 For God's sake, send him. to the right about. Tell 
 him the talk is over, and that we mean to attack at 
 once. If you don't, he'll slip out somewhere to- 
 night, sure 1"
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 151 
 
 But the colonel felt his honor involved. He 
 couldn't in good faith send them back now. He'd 
 hear what the chief had to propose and, if it wasn't 
 satisfactory, send him back to his sand holes and 
 pitch in. 
 
 " You can't," said Stannard again. He had had 
 years of dealings with the red men and knew their 
 tricks and their manners. " Next thing you know 
 he'll stipulate for a peace smoke ; can't talk until 
 after smoke, and he'll smoke half an hour before 
 he'll say a word." Stannard glared disgustedly 
 around at the silent officers as much as to say, " You 
 know this as well as I do, gentlemen. "Why don't 
 you warn the colonel ? "Why didn't you do it ?" 
 But they were silent or turned away in visible em- 
 barrassment. Some of them had warned the colonel 
 and even argued with him. The old fellow looked 
 vexed and badgered in good earnest now. He 
 seemed to have known Stannard many a year, as 
 was indeed the case, and so would listen to far more 
 from him than he would from his own people. 
 
 All the time this excited talk was going on, soma 
 little distance to one side the baker's dozen of 
 Indians were squatted on the ground busily plying 
 fingers and spoons, only occasionally casting furtive 
 glances at the group. Around them, in bigger, 
 broader semicircle, nearly three hundred troops
 
 152 A GAEEI80N TANGLE. 
 
 infantry and cavalry stood resting on their arms, 
 watching the scene and occasionally indulging in 
 rough frontier chat and chaff. But the interpreter 
 knew Stannard of old, marked every word that he 
 said, and in low tone warned his chief, who glanced 
 at Stannard's sturdy figure and snapping eyes with 
 no little concern in his face, then helped himself to 
 more of the bacon. 
 
 Just as Stannard prophesied, more than an hour 
 was taken up by the feast. By that time every 
 scrap was eaten, and Yellow Wolf bade his inter- 
 preter petition for more, and again he began, " We 
 are poor and hungry," and pleaded for renewed sup- 
 plies, but this time the colonel bade the infantry 
 captain speak for him, and speak he did in no un- 
 certain tone. Not another mouthful until the talk 
 was over, then they'd see about it. Another con- 
 ference followed between Wolf and his interpreter, 
 conducted with vast gesticulation, for, like the Ara- 
 pahoe, the Cheyenne language is one so guttural 
 and uncouth that it is said two Indians of the same 
 tribe cannot understand each other in the dark. 
 They must have recourse to gestures. 
 
 And then, just as Stannard said, the wily old 
 fencer for time came up with a proposition for a 
 smoke. No conference could be held without one. 
 But again : " We are poor and hungry. We have 
 no tobacco."
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 153 
 
 They had their pipes, however, and these \vere 
 speedily filled, lighted, and with deep guttural 
 " ughs " and sighs of contentment the squatting 
 warriors drew deep clouds of the fragrant vapor 
 into the lungs, apparently, and exhaled the smoke 
 in long blue jets, Yellow Wolf insisting on a far 
 greater ceremony, and passing his beautifully orna- 
 mented pipe from lip to lip of those nearest him. 
 Half an hour was consumed in this way, and the sun 
 was growing redder and sinking lower, and the old 
 colonel was waxing wroth and fidgeting here and 
 there ; and then, and not till then, when the groat 
 orb was barely half an hour high, did Yellow Wolf 
 motion the throng to fall back and give him room ; 
 and not until the soldiers returned to their places 
 and the warriors squatted at a respectful distance 
 from their chief, and the colonel and his officers took 
 their stand facing the Indian leader, did that savage 
 dignitary advance a step or two and begin. He 
 dropped his blanket from his shoulders with a superb 
 gesture, and then, clad only in breechclout, mocca- 
 sins, paint and barbaric necklace, armlets, leglets, 
 and magnificent war bonnet of eagles' feathers, 
 proudly swaying both arms in the wild grace of his 
 savage oratory, Yellow Wolf began. Every forty 
 or fifty words he would pause, and the interpreter 
 would do his best.
 
 154 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 " Long years ago." said "Wolf, " this beautiful land 
 teemed with buffalo, elk, and deer, and their fathers 
 led them (the Indians) to the chase. The white man 
 was unknown. Their young- men were brave, their 
 maidens pure and beautiful, their people strong and 
 prosperous and happy. Their foemen trembled be- 
 fore them and fled at their coming. They were 
 lords of the soil, and knew no master but the Great 
 Spirit. Then came the white man, tempting them 
 with gifts, drugging them with fire-water, stealing 
 away their maidens, slaying their young men. We 
 could have slayed the despoiler, but we would not, 
 for we had welcomed the white man and loved him 
 as a brother. Then came lying paper chiefs not 
 warriors who told us to sign papers and we would 
 have cattle and horses, wagons and meat and flour 
 and coffee and sugar like the white man ; and then 
 they told us we had sold our lands and must go. Go 
 where ? They led us far away from the wild hills 
 and haunts of our fathers. They drove us down 
 among the buffalo soldiers the Negro Indians the 
 no-warrior nations of the South, where our young 
 men sickened and died, where our maidens were 
 poisoned, where the great father's agent starved 
 and cheated us, and when we appealed to him, put 
 our chiefs in prison and threatened our young men, 
 At last he brought soldiers to shoot and kill ; and
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 155 
 
 then we sought the plains, poor and starving as we 
 W ere sought our kindred here at the north, at the 
 old, old hunting grounds ; and we are trailed and fol- 
 lowed and fought. Our young men are shot again, 
 and our old men are dying of weakness and famine. 
 "We are helpless, we are wronged. Look at me," he 
 said, with magnificent gesture, "I am poor and 
 naked. Why are these soldiers here ? Why are we 
 threatened and fought and killed, we who have done 
 no wrong ?" And Wolf looked grandly about him. 
 " I have done," he said, and his followers gutturally 
 grunted their applause, and all eyes reverted to tha 
 colonel, just as the red rim of the sun reached the 
 horizon and turned his mottled face to fire as he 
 confronted it. 
 
 " Yellow Wolf," said he, " your ideas of right and 
 wrong and ours don't agree. I don't know any- 
 thing about your row with the agent. I do know 
 that when you broke away your people killed him 
 and half a dozen white men at the reservation, and 
 stabbed and killed the schoolmistress who had 
 never been anything but kind to your children. 
 Then you started on your raid, and you've made a 
 trail of blood every inch of the way from the terri- 
 tory to the sand hills. Now we've got you and our 
 orders are to take you back to the Indian Territory, 
 and we're going to do it. My advice to you is,
 
 156 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 surrender your arms and ponies and go back peace- 
 fully. If you don't we'll lick hell out of you, and 
 that's all there is about it. Now go get your guns 
 and horses and hand them over. That's all I've 
 got to say." 
 
 In point of oratory there was no question which, 
 the red man or the white, had the better of it. In 
 point of logic, it depends upon the point of view. 
 
 Slowly the chief arose, and striding forward once 
 more essayed to speak, but the old colonel, waving 
 him back as he turned impatiently away, said, " I'll 
 listen to no more. I've said my say," and this the 
 interpreter did not have to explain. But Yellow 
 Wolf was not lightly to be shaken off. " It is too 
 late to-night," he pleaded. " See, the sun has dip- 
 ped below the mountains. The night draws over 
 the earth." (It was as though he was spreading a 
 blanket over the prairie sod.) " We are poor. We 
 have no lights. To-morrow to-morrow when the 
 sun is one hour high we will come forth with our 
 guns and horses all we have, and lay them at the 
 feet of the great father. Let me go back and bid 
 our women cease their trembling, our children hush 
 their cries, for the white chief promises that his 
 soldiers shall not harm them this night. Yellow 
 Wolf and his warriors will go where the white 
 chief may say. We will fight no more.
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 157 
 
 This, too, was promptly interpreted, and the 
 colonel wavered. He looked to Captain Lee, his 
 trusted adviser, and Lee shook his head. " It's tak- 
 ing chances," said he. The colonel glanced about 
 
 n / cj 
 
 the circle of grave faces in the gathering twilight. 
 The little cook fires on the slopes burned redder. 
 Some faces were doubtful, some appealing. At 
 least it meant no attack on a desperate band in a 
 strong position. At least it meant that there would 
 be no ghastly list of killed and wounded to send by 
 courier to the station. This seemed to weigh with 
 the old soldier, so heavy had been the losses of the 
 troops within the two years gone by, and at last he 
 whirled about. 
 
 " All right. So be it," he said. To-morrow, 
 then, when the sun is one hour high all arms and 
 ponies. Meantime, Yellow Wolf, you and your 
 people are to stay just where you are." 
 
 " Will the great chief give us food for our peo- 
 ple ?" asked the interpreter, in accents that were 
 almost Hibernian in their flattery. The colonel 
 hesitated. He was a merciful man, but Lee spoke 
 promptly. " Tell him they shall have abundance 
 a feast for all hands to-morrow morning, colonel, 
 but not a morsel to-night. They're not suffering 
 any of them." 
 
 And at this, without another word, with slow ;
 
 158 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 cumbrous dignity, Yellow Wolf mounted and, fol- 
 lowed by his sub chiefs, rode slowly and solemnly 
 away. Long before they had reached the little 
 butte from whose shelter they had emerged more 
 than two hours before, only as dim, shadowy, 
 specter-like forms did they appear against the 
 southward slopes of the rolling earth waves. 
 
 That night Atherton was ordered to extend his 
 lines as far to the west as possible and have patrols 
 scouring the country west of the Indian position, 
 while the cavalry from the north threw out similar 
 parties from their right flank. But long before ten 
 o'clock word came in that the country was all cut 
 up by deep ravines or gulches, with precipitous 
 sides. It was dark and moonless. They couldn't 
 communicate. Yenturesome troopers, who dis- 
 mounted and slid into those apparently bottomless 
 depths, reported that the opposite wall was just as 
 steep. Even if they got down into them there was 
 no getting out on the opposite side, and no telling 
 how many more there were just like them. Both 
 commands felt out toward the west as far as they 
 could and strove to close the nearly mile-wide gap 
 on that side, but to very little purpose. One daring 
 young corporal, striving to find a way in the black- 
 ness of the night, was suddenly plunged forward by 
 the misstep of his snorting horse, and he and that
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 159 
 
 luckless charger rolled over the edge of the cliff 
 and were found by comrades who ventured down 
 afoot with lights, crushed to death on the rocks bo- 
 low. Not until long after midnight did Atherton 
 and Stannard turn in, and then it was with a shake 
 of the head that augured ill for the success of the 
 plan. 
 
 The night went by in silence, broken only by the 
 yelping of the coyotes far out on the prairie, and 
 the occasional snorting of horses and braying of 
 pack mules. The dawn came, slow and chill, and 
 at the first flush of day the troopers were huddling 
 about the cook fires, eager for their mug of coffee. 
 Brighter grew the skies. One by one the stars to 
 the west faded from view and, just before the sun 
 came peeping over the low, distant hillocks at the 
 east, old Sergeant Donnelly came riding up to 
 Colonel Atherton's tent with gloom in his eyes. 
 
 " What is it, sergeant ?" asked Atherton, as the 
 veteran trooper dismounted. 
 
 "Nothing sir, but that I've just come in from the 
 extreme left, and it's my belief the whole outfit 
 sneaked away through one of them damned ruts 
 last night, and is halfway to the Niobrara by thia 
 time.'* 
 
 And th's proved to be true. When the sun was 
 an hour high the White River command was in full
 
 160 A UAHR180N TANGLE- 
 
 chase, northwestward, for the arms and ponies that 
 were not delivered at that hour, while philosophic 
 Barry and hard-swearing Stannard were riding 
 along with their silent chief, following the general 
 movement. 
 
 And this was the news that reached Russell the 
 fifth day of the week referred to, followed next day 
 by the tidings that General Crook had corraled 
 Yellow Wolf at the northern reservation, that 
 Atherton, Barry and Stannard were marching 
 homeward, and all would be there within another 
 seven days; and that was why Mr. Maynard, al- 
 though he was now almost able to take the field, 
 did not do so ; but, having secured his sister's home- 
 ward-bound ticket, had planned to escort her to the 
 station on the following day, despite Mrs. Turner's 
 plea that she might wait just a few days longer 
 until the troops came home ; and Mrs. Turner needed 
 friends and allies now, for war had been declared 
 by Mrs. Gregg. " Somebody," said Mrs. Turner, 
 " has been mean enough to tell her something." 
 
 But Miss Maynard was to have started on Thurs- 
 day, and all preparations had been made ; but when 
 Thursday morning came there was dismay and con- 
 sternation on every face along officers' row. Three 
 sets of quarters had been robbed some time between 
 midnight and reveille, and there was not a clue to 
 the perpetratontf*
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 161 
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 
 OPPORTUNITIES for theft in garrison are or were 
 illimitable. People never thought of bolting their 
 doors by day, and, as to money, silver \vare, jewelry, 
 and the like, women who possessed such property 
 rarely placed it under lock and key. Once in a 
 long while some servant was caught peculating and 
 was escorted beyond the limits of the military 
 reservation and forbidden to return. But never be- 
 fore in the history of the cavalry had the officers* 
 quarters been entered by professional burglars, and 
 there was no question that professionals only could 
 have done the deed with the neatness and dispatch 
 evident in this case. 
 
 Yet what was there to prevent it ? The garrison 
 proper was far afield. One attenuated company of 
 infantry was all that was left to do duty at Russell. 
 Oriiy two sentries were posted on each relief. 
 Seven privates constituted the daily guard, and 
 even then the men were growling because they 
 " only had three and sometimes two nights abed." 
 One of these sentries was stationed at the guard-
 
 A QARHISON TANQLK. 
 
 house where quite a number of prisoners were con- 
 fined. The other paced the long east front of the 
 post, trying to keep an eye on the coal piles, the 
 ordnance, quartermaster's and commissary store- 
 houses, the post generally, which he couldn't see, and 
 the front gate. All the north side of the post, back of 
 the hospital and surgeon's quarters and all the north- 
 west and southwest sides of the lozenge-shaped 
 enclosure lay open to marauders, for there were not 
 two back gates along officers' row that would readily 
 close,or that, being closed, could not read ily be forced, 
 "tt was perfectly practicable for any parties intent 
 on pillage to drive out from town, and, keeping well 
 away over the level prairie, to make a wide circuit 
 and approach the post from the north or northwest. 
 They could then be beyond sight or hearing of any 
 sentry, could run their wagons back of the quarters 
 to be entered, load up with their booty, and be off 
 again with no fear of capture and little of inter- 
 ruption. Even should some of the women or chil- 
 dren be aroused, there were not five houses where 
 men servants or " strikers " slept, and they knew, 
 did these shrewd professionals, how to manage sud- 
 denly awakened women. 
 
 But how did they know just what houses to rob, 
 and just where to find the valuables in each case ? 
 The tracks showed that a two-horse wagon had been
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 163 
 
 used, and that two men beside the driver were 
 engaged in the work. Everybody in town was 
 aware of the fact that the well-to-do or fairly 
 wealthy officers at Russell were Colonel Atherton, 
 Major Barry, Captains Freeman, Gregg, Truscott 
 and Ray, the latter having married an heiress. But 
 the marauders never disturbed the colonel's house. 
 All the silver had gone to the bank in town and 
 her ladyship to Chicago, and there, besides, Mrs. 
 Atherton's coachman and two other servants slept; 
 and furthermore the band quarters were but a short 
 pistol-shot away. They steered clear of Truscott's 
 where baby Jack was teething and keeping his 
 anxious and devoted mother awake long hours each 
 night, and where by her bedside hung a crafty little 
 Smith & Wesson she knew well how to use. They 
 steered clear of her devoted friends and next door 
 neighbors, the Rays, for there slept a doughty ex- 
 trooper, Hogan by name, now their coachman and 
 man-of-all-work, in his little arsenal of a room back 
 of the kitchen. But they had dared to enter, 
 through a rear window apparently, the quarters of 
 Major Barry, where a night light burned dimly all 
 through the hours of darkness, and had carried 
 away the basket of household silver secreted under 
 Mrs. Barry's bed, and the jewelry from her toilet 
 tand. They must have looked with covetous yei
 
 164 -4 GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 on the beautiful rings that adorned her slender 
 fingers, but thought best not to attempt that or 
 did they even dare make that essay ? Mrs. Barry 
 was aroused from unusually deep slumber by the 
 sensation that some one had lifted her hand from 
 the counterpane, found herself in darkness, her 
 night lamp smoking as though recently extinguished, 
 heard the boards creaking in the parlor or hall, 
 and had asked, " Is that you, Nathalie ?" and re- 
 ceiving no response believed it all imagination; and 
 wondering what made her so drowsy, had slept 
 heavily until aroused by the servant in the morning, 
 with the startling announcement that the silver and 
 her jewelry were gone. Then Nathalie came rush- 
 ing down the stairs, wide-eyed, and deathly white, 
 had glanced almost in horror at the empty basket 
 which the cook had brought in from the backyard, 
 and had then thrown herself upon her knees at the 
 foot of the bed and burst into an agony of tears. 
 
 And before visiting the Barrys' the professionals 
 had called at Gregg's and Freeman's, carrying off a 
 watch, some silver and many trinkets from each, 
 and never even disturbing the healthful slumbers of 
 the occupants. Captain Gregg's desk was forced 
 and about one hundred dollars in treasury notes had 
 disappeared, but most of Mrs. Freeman's silver and 
 money were safe in the bank. She never " enter-
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 165 
 
 tafned " when her lord was in the field, and this 
 proved her salvation. But the gentle little woman 
 was sorely grieved over the loss of her beautiful 
 watch, which always lay at night on the little stand 
 by the head of her bed. As for Mrs. Gregg, her 
 grief was almost tragic. Two young ladies from 
 town were her guests at the time. They were 
 sleeping together in the room adjoining hers. 
 Nothing of theirs was disturbed, while her watch, 
 rings, bracelets, locket, pins, and heaven knows how 
 much frumpery, together with every ounce of the 
 household silver, had been spirited off. The foolish 
 matron had not thought of such a possibility as 
 this. She loved display, and even their recent re- 
 verses had taught no lesson of permanent value. 
 
 Hardly had Mrs. Barry been told of her loss she 
 was still in a half bewildered state, passing her hand 
 over her heavy eyelids and striving to rouse herself 
 from the stupor that seemed to overcome her when 
 there came a violent bang at the front door and 
 Mrs. Turner bounced into the hall. Catching sight 
 of Nathalie at the foot of the bed, she plunged \\\\- 
 petuously into the room. "Mrs. Barry, Mrs. 
 Barry ! Have you heard the news ?" she cried. 
 " Mrs. Gregg and Mrs. Freeman have been robbed 
 of every earthly thing they own. Why ! what's 
 the matter you too ? And Miss Baird ? Oh,
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 I'm so sorry. And you heard nothing you suspect 
 nobody ?" And, under cover of the volley of ques- 
 tions addressed to the lady of the house by her 
 excited visitor, Nathalie stole, sobbing, from the 
 room. When Mrs. Turner would have questioned 
 her the girl was gone. 
 
 Even in the excitement and shock consequent 
 upon the discovery of her own losses, Mrs. Barry 
 had noticed Nathalie's extreme agitation and her 
 escape from the room. When, therefore, Mrs. 
 Turner's eyes dilated with eager curiosity and she 
 began rapid queries as to the cause of Nathalie's 
 sudden exit, the lady was quite prepared to parry. 
 " Nathalie has only been able to leave her bed with- 
 in the last two days, Mrs. Turner. You know she's 
 been wretchedly ill, and she is still so weak and 
 nervous that Bridget's sudden and exciting an 
 Bouncement shocked her greatly." 
 
 " The poor child !" cried Mrs. Turner. " Do let 
 me go up to her and see if 1 cannot do something 
 for her." 
 
 " Better not," answered Mrs. Barry. " I've found 
 Nathalie always more rapidly recover when left 
 to herself. You can do something for me though," 
 she hurried on, anxious to silence further question- 
 ing- and to rid herself of an importunate guest who 
 was very much in the way. " Will you ask Captain
 
 A GARRISON TANOLB. 167 
 
 Walters to come to see me this morning, and Mrs. 
 Stannard to join me as soon as she can ?" 
 
 " Why, of course, Mrs. Barry. Anything you 
 wish; but I haven't begun to tell you about the rob- 
 bery yet. Just think of it. All Mrs. Gregg's silver 
 is gone, as well as all her lovely rings and things. 
 It seems like a judgment on her for being so care- 
 less. I'm sure Captain Gregg has warned her a 
 dozen times not to leave her valuables about. Don't 
 you think so ?*' 
 
 " That it was a judgment on her, Mrs. Turner ? 
 Well, if upon her, why not upon me ?" 
 
 " Oh, but you didn't lose half what she did be- 
 sides, you're very different. What did they take 
 from you ? Not those heavenly sapphires, I'm glad 
 to see," and Mrs. Turner's pretty, empty head was 
 twisting in every direction in her eagerness to ap- 
 praise the loss. 
 
 " No, not my rings, but a basket of silver that we 
 valued for old time's sake, and some loose trinkets 
 from the bureau. I fear it's gone for good," said 
 the kind-hearted woman, with a sigh, "yet how 
 much greater is Mrs. Gregg's loss. I'm so sorry for 
 her." 
 
 " Oh, so am I, and not a man here of our regiment 
 to help in any way except Mr. Maynard, and he's 
 half-invalid yet and a mere boy." Disparagement
 
 168 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 of Maynard in Mrs. Turner's liquid drawl had fol- 
 lowed speedily upon his defection. Finally, finding 
 that Nathalie wouldn't come down so long as she 
 remained, and that Mrs. Barry would not encourage 
 her to go up, Mrs. Turner hastened away in hopes 
 of breaking the news elsewhere. She looked wist- 
 fully into Mrs. Gregg's open doorway as she has- 
 tened down the row, and longed to enter and to 
 ascertain what was really the extent of her loss, and 
 whether she had heard anybody, and had any sus- 
 picions. One of the young lady visitors was at the 
 door at the moment, chatting with Mr. Maynard, 
 who, leaning on a stout cane, and looking rather 
 white and solemn, had evidently just come out from 
 a conference. To him Mrs. Turner bowed coquet- 
 tishly, and gave a forgiving glance at the girl, but 
 the latter returned only an embarrassed nod and did 
 not speak. Everybody knew that there had been a 
 dreadful row between the ladies within the week 
 gone by. They had met at the Raymonds' where 
 Mrs. Gregg flushed angrily at sight of her former 
 friend and rival, and refused the outstretched hand. 
 Mrs. Turner had demanded, with a world of injured 
 innocence in her tones, instant explanation of such 
 unsisterly, not to say rude and unjustifiable con- 
 duct, and, nothing loath, Mrs. Gregg gave it to her. 
 She had heard from excellent authority that Mrs.
 
 A OARRI80N TANGLB. 1G9 
 
 Turner had said that she, Mrs. Gregg, was living 
 most extra/oagantly^ and far beyond her husband's 
 means that all manner of tradesmen were bom- 
 barding her with bills, bills, bills, and nothing but 
 Colonel Athertou's interposition had saved her 
 husband, Captain Gregg, from being ordered before 
 a court for non-payment of debts that Mrs. Gregg 
 had contracted. 
 
 Fanny Turner was promptly, properly and virtu- 
 ously indignant in her denial of the story. Never 
 had she said to a living soul what she was repre- 
 sented as having said. She had never presumed to 
 criticise Mrs. Gregg. All she said was that she 
 heard that Mrs. Gregg's means were greatly 
 straightened since the failure of their bank, and she 
 wondered that people should be so inconsiderate as 
 to send in their bills at such a time, when, if they 
 would only wait, Captain Gregg would see that they 
 were all settled. Everybody knew he was as honest 
 as he could be, and all she ever said about court- 
 inartial was, that there had been cases where officers 
 were brought to trial for not paying their bills, and 
 she knew how dreadfully Mrs. Gregg would feel, 
 etc., etc. It was all very glib and plausible, and the 
 moistened eyes and flushed cheeks of the fair speaker 
 might have pleaded for her too, but, unluckily, she 
 and Mrs. Gregg had had their little day of devoted
 
 170 * GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 intimacy and unbounded confidences in the past ; 
 Mrs. Gregg knew how she could talk ; had heard 
 from one of her lady friends of Mrs. Turner's theories 
 and statements regarding the receipted bills, and 
 had been referred to others who also had heard, 
 whereat, bristling with indignation, Mrs. Gregg in- 
 vestigated and dragged the truth to light. Over 
 the scene of upbraiding, denials, recriminations and 
 counter accusations that occurred at Mrs. Raymond's 
 that afternoon, let us draw a veil. All poor Turner's 
 forebodings were amply justified. The ladies parted 
 with the determination of never speaking to each 
 other again, and, what really was serious, Mrs. 
 Gregg wrote a long, long letter to her husband, 
 setting forth all the hateful, abominable things Fanny 
 Turner had said ; and, just as Turner had predicted, 
 another old comrade and friend with whom he had 
 campaigned all over the country, marched and 
 scouted, skirmished and starved, shared his last 
 drop or crust or blanket many and many a time, 
 now coldty avoided him, and Turner's sad, sallow 
 face grew sadder still as the two battalions came 
 jogging homeward. There was no need to ask what 
 was the matter, no use in trying to explain or con- 
 done. " It is all my fault," was the burden of his 
 song. " I should have corrected that tendency long 
 years ago. It is too late now."
 
 A GARRISON T ANGLE. 171 
 
 Accustomed as she was to spats of this character, 
 however, Mrs. Turner still sorely missed the close 
 companionship of some garrison friend and intimate 
 this electric day. Even Mrs. Raj-mond, slighted 
 and snubbed for the new-found friend, no\v refused 
 to be cajoled back to a semblance of the old rela- 
 tions. She was almost as ?cy as Mrs. Gregg had 
 been volcanic. There was no longer for Mrs. Turner 
 the rapture of the first bloom of her fellowship with 
 Miss Maynard. That Mohawk maiden had failed 
 to warmly champion her cause when she fled to her 
 in tears after the battle at the Raymonds and told 
 her side of the story. Mrs. Turner had sobbed out 
 something to the effect that, being so much younger 
 and less experienced than Mrs. Gregg, she had in- 
 cautiously confided certain statements to Mrs. Ray- 
 mond and one or two ladies whom she supposed 
 trustworthy, and they had betrayed her. Miss May* 
 nard innocently remarked that she had always sup- 
 posed Mrs. Turner was older than Mrs. Gregg, 
 which stopped the flow of Mrs. Turner's tears and 
 turned on a flood of rebuke, which'Miss Maynard 
 interrupted by saying : " You are surely as old as I 
 am, Mrs. Turner ; if not, you must have been mar- 
 ried before 'you were twelve." Miss Maynard, it 
 must be remembered, was herself engaged to be 
 married in the war days, and could not be fooled on 
 chronology.
 
 172 A GARRISON TAKOLE. 
 
 Take it altogether, Fanny Turner had been having 
 hard lines for a whole week. She was really glad 
 to hear Miss Maynard was going home. There had 
 sprung up a coolness, due partially to the difference 
 as to their respective ages, but due even more to the 
 consciousness that, between them, another deep 
 wrong had been done in that garrison, and each 
 wished to lay the blame upon the other, even while 
 conscience dinned " Thou art the woman " into her 
 own unwilling ears. 
 
 In leading Nathalie Baird to believe that May- 
 nard was virtually bound to Gertrude Bonner, Grace 
 Maynard felt few qualms of conscience. She was a 
 religious woman. She believed herself to be a model 
 of truth and propriety and justice. She had per- 
 suaded herself that in course of time Ronald's eyes 
 would be open to Gertrude's rural graces and do- 
 mestic virtues, and that then he would see his duty 
 clear and propose marriage forthwith. She had 
 always intended that they should marry, and that 
 being her intention, she had readily persuaded her- 
 self that it was also theirs ; if not, it ought to be. 
 Gertrude certainly would think of no other man. 
 Poor child ! she had never seen anything of the 
 world outside of her native count} 7 , and Ronald was 
 to her the most delectable young man she ever 
 dreamed of; but Ronald had seen many and many a
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 173 
 
 girl far prettier and brighter, more attractive in 
 every way than Gertrude, and his liking for her was 
 due to that least complimentary of sentiments, where 
 woman is concerned old acquaintance sake. This 
 he had flatly told his sister when it was settled that 
 she should return to her distant home and resume 
 the care of their invalid father, and still her heart 
 was set and determined. She had told Nathalie 
 Baird in so many words that her brother was 
 engaged to or in love with Gertrude Bonner, and 
 she believed that in maintaining this statement, and 
 using every means in her power to bring that match 
 about, and wean her brother from the fascinations 
 of this pink-cheeked New England girl, she was 
 doing a praiseworthy and proper thing. 
 
 But, on the contrary, she was tormented by the 
 thought that in speaking of Nathalie to her brother 
 she had asserted that which she did not know and 
 did not believe to be a fact that the ruffianly 
 stranger, who had given them all so much trouble 
 before finally vanishing, was actually Nathalie 
 Baird's lover. She strove to stifle the still small 
 voice by saying to herself that Mrs. Turner believed 
 as she did, but Mrs. Turner did not believe it or 
 think of it until Miss Maynard told her of the 
 mysterious meetings on the prairie and down at the 
 end of the row, and of Maloney's clamorous call
 
 174 A GAER180N TANGLE. 
 
 at reveille. These had Mrs. Turner lost no time in 
 peddling about the garrison, so that poor Nathalie, 
 with her big, pleading eyes and pathetic white face, 
 was just beginning to move around again after her 
 illness only to find herself shunned by more than 
 half the women at Russell. She had almost deter- 
 mined to ask that Mrs. Stannard should advocate 
 her being sent home, when the burglary took place 
 and drove her almost frantic, with fear and grief 
 find shame, back to her room again. 
 
 There she was, two days later, kneeling by her 
 little white bed, deaf to earthly sound, dumb with 
 speechless misery, when Mrs. Stannard herself 
 climbed the stairs and knelt and took her in her 
 arms. 
 
 " Nathalie, child," she murmured, " you must not 
 give way to such dread. I know whom you suspect 
 oi having had a hand in the robberies. Even if it 
 were so, dear, you would be blameless " 
 
 "Mrs. Stannard Mrs. Stannard!" wailed the 
 girl, as she threw herself upon her bosom. " What 
 else can I believe ? And to think that I should 
 bring such incessant trouble to those who have been 
 so good to me !" 
 
 " Hush, Nathalie," was the loving answer, as the 
 girl's sobbing broke forth afresh. " Mrs. Barry 
 needs you sadly this morning. She knows the
 
 A OARHISON TANGLE. 176 
 
 cause of your distress, and she begs you to oome to 
 her. Let me help you dress now, and thea you 
 must try to eat something. Let me tell you: 
 Hogan, Mrs. Ray's coachman, followed the trail 
 into town, that same morning, and saw the marshal 
 there, or somebody. Captain "Walters drives in 
 again right after guard mounting to-day, and the 
 police feel sure they can recapture the silver, even if 
 they do not get the thieves and the jewelry. Two 
 strange men were at the Railroad House that morn- 
 ing, and neither of them was the one they call 
 Boston." 
 
 But the girl seemed past comfort. Passively she 
 allowed herself to be aided to dress, bathing her 
 swollen eyelids and doing what she could to banish 
 the signs of her excessive grief. Humbly she waited 
 upon her loving friend, as the latter lay upon the 
 couch, sipping her tea and nibbling at the dainty 
 breakfast prepared for her; and this was her occupa- 
 tion when Captain Walters, the infantry officer 
 temporarily in command of the fort, was announced 
 and was shown into the little parlor. 
 
 He was a man of some fifty years, grizzled, worn, 
 and somewhat soured in service. He had seen 
 younger men plucking the plums of promotion over 
 his head, and he could not forgive it in fate that he 
 should still be only a captain, with every prospect of
 
 176 A QARUI80N '1 ANGLE. 
 
 there remaining for ten years longer, when men 
 years his junior were his superior officers. His one 
 lieutenant, they said, led a dog's life of it. His wife 
 was, happily for her, translated to realms where 
 promotion cometh not from the east nor from the 
 west, nor is supposed to be a matter of consequence 
 to any one. Captain Walters had been aroused be- 
 fore sick call on the eventful morning by the news 
 of the robberies, and was properly scandalized at 
 such things occurring under his command. He had 
 held brief consultation with the non-commissioned 
 officers of his guard, with the doctor and others, 
 especially his adjutant, Mr. Warner, had inspected 
 the wagon tracks and footprints, had called on 
 Mesdames Gregg and Freeman, had heard Hogan's 
 statement, had questioned Mr. Maynard about the 
 burly " tough " whom he had unseated and tumbled 
 the day in town, and had finally, on the second 
 morning after the robberies, been closeted with the 
 local chief of police. What happened in that con- 
 versation can best be judged by what followed. 
 Leaving him at the office, Captain Walters stumped 
 down the line, knocked at Mrs. Turner's door, and 
 disturbed that innocent matron at breakfast, but 
 begged a few words none the less. Then be 
 tramped back and asked for Miss Maynard at Stan- 
 nard's door, and both Maynard and his sister came
 
 A GARRISON TAN OLE. 177 
 
 forth, and \vith some embarrassment the captain 
 managed to say it was Miss Maynard with whom 
 he desired a word in private. It was a white, 
 scared face with which she confronted her brother 
 when the brief interview was over, but, vouchsafing 
 no explanation, ran hurriedly up the stairs. 
 
 Then the captain rang at Bands' and was shown 
 into the pretty parlor where Mrs. Barry reclined, 
 with Mrs. Stannard and Miss Baird hovering about 
 her, and here his embarrassment became something 
 painful. He answered their polite greetings in most 
 awkward fashion, and refused the chair that was 
 tendered him. At last he blurted forth what he 
 had to say, and, almost at his first words, Mrs. 
 Stannard threw her arm around Nathalie's waist 
 and drew her tight to her side. 
 
 " Mrs. Barry, I have a most painful duty to per- 
 form, but I cannot shirk it. The police have posi- 
 tive proof of what they say, and they tell me that 
 there is one person here at the post who not only 
 can tell who the robbers are, but where they are, 
 and that is this unfortunate young lady Miss a 
 Miss Baird."
 
 178 4 GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE east-bound train that day left without one 
 of its promised passengers Miss Maynard. She 
 was needed, said the civil authorities, as a possible 
 witness in the robbery case. Wild, stirring-, marvel- 
 ous was the rumor that went from house to house be- 
 fore eleven o'clock, that Mrs. Barry's companion and 
 protegee, the lovely New England girl, had been ac- 
 cused by the police of guilty knowledge of, if not 
 complicity in, the burglaries, and that, though not 
 arrested and taken to town, she was under surveil- 
 lance and confined to the house. One man when 
 he heard it boiled over with wrath and misery. 
 That was Konald Maynard. Scorning his sister's 
 arguments and entreaties, he had limped across the 
 piazza, rung at the Barrys' door and begged to be 
 admitted. He found Mrs. Stannard tearful, but 
 calm and collected, Mrs. Barry reclining on her 
 couch, her white hands gently toying with the 
 glossy, wavy blonde masses of hair that rippled all 
 down over poor Nathalie's back and shoulders, as 
 she knelt there, her face buried in Mrs. Barry's
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 179 
 
 bosom, abandoned to her grief. She did not even 
 hear or heed the bell, did not know who had come, 
 or that any one had come, until she heard these 
 words : 
 
 "Mrs. Stannard Mrs. Barry I've heard this 
 most cruel accusation, and I've come to say I don't 
 believe a word of it, and I won't rest until I've got 
 at the truth." 
 
 The servant, after admitting him, still stood at 
 the parlor door, looking doubtfully after the young 
 officer and glancing inquiringly at Mrs. Stannard as 
 though to ask if she had done right or wrong. Mrs. 
 Barry, without turning or disturbing Nathalie, held 
 out her thin white hand, a smile of welcome and 
 pleasure on her face, and as Maynard stepped for- 
 ward and eagerly clasped the proffered hand, he 
 bowed low over it, and over the beautiful, rippling 
 tresses of the girl's humbled head. His eyes, clouded 
 with distress and sympathy, gazed one moment 
 into those of the invalid, and then sought the kneel- 
 ing form. No woman that ever lived, unbereft of 
 the faculties God has given her, could have failed 
 to read the infinite yearning in the brave young 
 face, the love and tenderness and longing that 
 shone in his fine, truthful eyes. Mrs. Barry read 
 and saw unerringly, and her heart went out to him 
 as she drew the sobbing girl closer to her side.
 
 J80 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 Nathalie, too, seemed conscious of his nearer pres- 
 ence. She was striving to check the violence of 
 her emotion and had instinctively moved a little, as 
 though to make room for him, or possibly to draw 
 a trifle away. His knee was almost at her shoul- 
 der. 
 
 Mrs. Stannard half turned. "It is all right," she 
 said in a low tone to the still lingering servant. 
 " You may go ;" and slowly and almost reluctantly 
 the maid withdrew. They heard her voice the next 
 moment in the dining-room, as though answering a 
 question. " Lieutenant Maynard," she said, " to 
 see Mrs. Barry," whereat Mrs. Stannard looked in 
 some surprise into the room beyond, but no one 
 was then in sight. 
 
 "It was the cook, I fancy," said Mrs. Isarry. 
 " She usually comes to me about this time each day 
 to get her orders, and being a very particular, not 
 to say superior person, she did not wish, in her 
 kitchen attire, to come into the presence of gentle- 
 men. Bridget is quite a swell when she goes to 
 town. Do sit down awhile, Mr. Maynard. We are 
 all glad to see you," and again her arm seemed 
 more closely to encircle Nathalie. " It is good to 
 hear your voice again, especially when you say such 
 good words." Only too willingly Maynard found a 
 chair and drew it toward the couch. Nathalie
 
 A GAKRISON TANGLE. 181 
 
 made an effort to rise, but Mrs. Barry held her 
 firmly, murmuring some encouraging words in her 
 ear. Then Mrs. Stannard came forward again. 
 
 "I think I will go over home awhile now and 
 look after matters there. Then I'll come to you 
 again, Mrs. Barry. Mr. Maynard will have a 
 chance to talk with you while I'm gone." 
 
 Again Mrs. Barry held out her hand. " You have 
 been ever so good to us, and we'll be glad indeed 
 when you can come back, both of us. "Would you 
 mind telling cook to make a little tea now for 
 Nathalie." The kneeling girl shook her head in 
 protest, but unavailingly. Mrs. Stannard disap- 
 peared through the dining-room door and went to 
 the kitchen just beyond. She returned in a mo- 
 ment. 
 
 " Bridget isn't there, but I told Mary. She thinks 
 Bridget may have gone upstairs a moment. She 
 left her in the dining-room. Mary will make the 
 tea." 
 
 "I didn't hear her go up," said Mrs. Barry, 
 ;< but it may be. She's the quietest creature I ever 
 had about the house, despite her apparent weight. 
 Thank you ever so much, Mrs. Stannard. I sup- 
 pose there is no use in our writing to our respective 
 majors again. They reach Laramie to-day, do thejr 
 not, Mr. Maynard ?"
 
 182 A GARRISON TANOLR. 
 
 " I think so," was the answer. " Isn't there a 
 map of Nebraska in the major's den ? I can show 
 you just how they are marching in. The doctor 
 and I figured it out on his map this morning before 
 before we heard of this," and again he glanced at 
 Nathalie's bowed head. 
 
 " It's hanging there on the east wall, between the 
 windows," said Mrs. Barry, and rising and stepping 
 quickly across the hall, Maynard entered the nar- 
 row apartment in the "lean-to" which Barry used 
 as his study, office, library and general loafing place. 
 It opened into Mrs. Barry's bedroom, as did also 
 the little hall. A pair of heavy Xavajo blankets 
 hung in the connecting doorway ; the floor was 
 covered with a thick carpet, underneath which were 
 several thicknesses of newspaper the universal ex- 
 pedient of the old frontier days for keeping out the 
 Wyoming gales. The windows still wore their 
 winter battens of cotton, and the narrow den was 
 as snug and secure from draughts as any house at 
 Russell could be made, and yet something had oc- 
 curred to disturb those Navajo curtains within five 
 seconds, for one of them was swinging back as 
 though it had just been blown in by a puff of wind. 
 Maynard looked at it in some surprise, but the 
 heavy folds quickly settled to rest. He did not 
 consider it his province to search for the cause in
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 183 
 
 Mrs. Barry's room. The rear window might be 
 open, or the kitchen door which stood beyond the 
 arched entrance to the dining-room. Lifting the 
 map from its hook he turned to retrace his steps, 
 and right at the foot of the stairs met Nathalie. 
 With bowed head and averted eyes she brushed by 
 him and hastened up to her room. 
 
 "She was so agitated and distressed, Mr. May- 
 nard," explained his hostess, as the young fellow 
 returned to the parlor, " that I had to let her go to 
 bathe her face. She'll be down again before 
 long." 
 
 But this proved delusive. Mrs. Stannard re- 
 mained a few moments to look over the map while 
 Maynard pointed out where the battalion had been 
 engaged with the Cheyennes, the line of flight of 
 the latter to the northern agencies, and the prob- 
 able homeward course of the regiment, and then 
 she took her departure. Mary, the maid, presently 
 came in with tea and was tola to take it up to Miss 
 Baird, which she did, and on her return was asked 
 if Bridget was upstairs as had been reported, and 
 Mary, with a puzzled face, said no, neither was she 
 in her own room back of the kitchen. But a minute 
 later, after the maid had retired, Bridget's voice 
 was heard in the kitchen, and speedily she, herself, 
 approached the parlor door, but stood respectfully
 
 184 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 and modestly back in the dining-room and inquired 
 with great deference of manner, was Mrs. Barry 
 needing anything ? 
 
 " Not now, Bridget," was the answer. " I needed 
 you a few moments ago to make some tea for Miss 
 Baird." 
 
 " I'm so sorry, mum," said the invisible domestic ; 
 "I had just stepped over to Mrs. Gregg's a moment, 
 after coming in to see if anything was wanted. 
 Isn't there something I can do now, ma'am ?" 
 
 " Nothing, thank you, Bridget, unless you'll step 
 up to Miss Baird and see if you cannot suggest 
 something to coax her appetite ;" whereupon Brid- 
 get's footsteps were heard passing through the bed- 
 room into the hall and so on up the stairs, the 
 goddess of the kitchen thereby coyly defeating the 
 possibility of being seen in the garb of her servi- 
 tude, as well as avoiding the parlor as a thorough- 
 fare not so easy a matter to teach to frontier 
 "help." 
 
 " A most excellent, faithful creature," said Mrs. 
 Barry to her visitor, " and so good tempered. She's 
 worth six of her predecessors." 
 
 " I hope she will prevail on Miss Baird to eat 
 something," said Maynard anxiously. " She seems 
 to have been so ill for days and weeks." 
 
 " Poor child, yes," was the answer. " And she
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 185 
 
 has had enough to drive a girl distracted, Of 
 course, Mr. Maynard, you must have heard some- 
 thing of her singular adventures of late." 
 
 "I have both seen and heard something, Mrs. 
 Barry," was the prompt reply, " and I'll stake my 
 all it's it's to her credit, not to her discredit, if 
 anything. Surely that man must be some kin of 
 her people. It cannot be anything else." 
 
 He was glad of a chance to champion her cause, 
 glad to show Mrs. Barry the depth of his faith and 
 trust in her, and yet there was that in his tone 
 which told her he had been harshly tried, and that 
 he longed for the support of her opinion. 
 
 " That is my conviction, too, Mr. Maynard," she 
 said, " but the poor girl will not even admit that. 
 There is some tie or obligation, but what I cannot 
 imagine. It is all-powerful. She seems to have 
 pledged her word to silence about him. I'm pray- 
 ing for the major's return, for then I shall have 
 some one to advise us both. Oh ! What did Miss 
 Baird say, Bridget?" 
 
 And from the hall came the reply of the still in- 
 visible messenger. " Miss Baird thinks she would 
 rather not try to eat anything just now. She is 
 lying down, ma'am, but by and by she will, I feel 
 sure. I'll just broil her some chicken, ma'am." 
 
 And then abruptly Bridget broke off, for a quick,
 
 186 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 soldierly step was heard on the creaking boards 
 without, and Bridget hastened through the hall be- 
 fore the clang of the door bell resounded. " That's 
 one thing Bridget will not do," explained Mrs. 
 Barry, with a quiet smile. " She insists that Mary 
 must attend door. She'd walk the length of the 
 backyards of the garrison to find her rather than 
 'tend door herself. There goes Mary." 
 
 It was the orderly, with the commanding officer's 
 compliments, and he desired to see Lieutenant May- 
 nard at once, and in sore disappointment Maynard 
 had to rise and go. " Kemember what I say, Mrs. 
 Barry," he repeated as he again bowed over her ex- 
 tended hand. " I shan't rest until I find out the 
 truth about this robbery business and clear her 
 utterly. It can be done and it shall bo done." 
 
 " I hope so," came the answer, with a sigh. " I 
 hope so, yet everything seems so dark for her just 
 now, and how can we get at the truth ?" 
 
 No wonder she asked herself as Maynard limped 
 away how it was possible a raw, inexperienced 
 subaltern could discover anything when the police 
 officials had done their best and failed. They had 
 searched and ransacked every doubtful resort, 
 every suspected house, shop or saloon in town, and 
 not a vestige had been found of the stolen property, 
 nor a trace of the perpetrators beyond the wagon
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 187 
 
 tracks, lost all too soon in the general rut of traffic 
 in the busy frontier town. 
 
 It was but a short distance to the adjutant's 
 office, and there Maynard found Captain Walters 
 pacing impatiently the floor of the long room in the 
 old headquarters building. He turned sharply as 
 the young officer's halting step was heard, and spoke 
 impetuously : 
 
 " Mr. Maynard, I'm told you have had some 
 knowledge of this man they call Boston besides the 
 affair in town the day you tumbled him off your 
 horse." 
 
 Maynard on entering had instinctively assumed 
 the position of a soldier, and stood there in the 
 presence of the temporary post commander, erect, 
 and holding his cane and forage-cap in his hand. 
 The instant the captain began to speak, the faint 
 color faded from Maynard's face. In a moment he 
 was pale as death. Looking straight at his com- 
 mander, he uttered not a word 
 
 "Why don't you answer?" snapped "Walters, 
 glancing irritably at the subaltern. " I've had 
 enough worry over this matter to drive a man dis- 
 tracted. Either you have or you haven't. Now 
 which is it?" 
 
 And still for another moment there was silence, 
 and then Maynard spoke.
 
 188 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 " I do not know, sir." 
 
 " You don't know ! Why, that's rot, Mr. May- 
 nard ! You must know whether you have ever 
 encountered that man before. Men of his strength 
 and size are not easily mistaken." 
 
 Again a pause before the answer came : " And yet, 
 captain, I cannot say. I am telling you just as I 
 would have to answer before a court. The only 
 time I ever saw his face was that day in town the 
 day he headed the gang that took our horses." 
 
 The commanding officer sharply turned and 
 struck the bell on his table, and almost instantly a 
 young lieutenant of infantry appeared at the room. 
 It was Warner, the temporary adjutant of the post. 
 
 "Mr. Warner, bring Mr. Cook in here," said 
 Walters sharply, " and you come too." 
 
 The lieutenant beckoned to some one who was 
 evidently in readiness for the summons. A power- 
 fully built, gray-eyed, impassive sort of man in a 
 loose-fitting business suit appeared at the doorway 
 and silently awaited the captain's words. 
 
 " I've called you in here, Mr. Cook, and you, Mr. 
 Warner, to hear what explanation this officer can 
 give of the matter that has been brought to my 
 ears. You persist in saying, Mr. Maynard, that 
 you never saw this fellow 'Boston' except that day 
 in town 8"
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 189 
 
 "I have never made that statement, captain," 
 answered Maynard, flushing painfully now, for the 
 position in which he was placed was awkward 
 enough without any misrepresentation of his words. 
 At a nod from the captain, Mr. Warner and the 
 stranger had taken chairs, but Maynard, the invalid, 
 was still kept standing attention. Warner was 
 several years his senior, but the young fellow had 
 " taken to him," as the army expression went, from 
 the day Warner first called to see him as he lay 
 fretting at the Stannards. Even now the latter 
 could not resist the impulse that prompted him to 
 look to Warner for strength and sympathy, and the 
 brown eyes answered the mute appeal, and said, if 
 ever eyes could speak, " Stand fast ! I'm with 
 you." 
 
 Walters slowly lowered himself into his chair, 
 glaring the while impressively at the troubled 
 face of the young soldier. It had again turned 
 white. 
 
 " Why, Mr. Maynard, not three minutes ago you 
 said right here you never saw him except that day 
 in town " 
 
 " Pardon me, captain. I said the only time lever 
 saw his face was that day in town." 
 
 " Then you admit having seen his form if not his 
 face admit having seen him all the same."
 
 190 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 "No, sir, I do not even admit that. Once or 
 twice I saw a form that resembled his very strongly. 
 That's all I can say." 
 
 "Where was it?" 
 
 Another painful pause. Maynard was young and 
 inexperienced ; he did not know how far he might 
 be justified in declining to answer a cross examina- 
 tion that must drag from him the whole truth that 
 he had so religiously kept to himself rather than 
 reveal what he had seen and heard and suffered, 
 and thereby probably surround her dear name with 
 renewed shame and suspicion. From the spirit and 
 letter of the truth he could not deviate a hair's 
 breadth. Neither on the night of that strange ad' 
 venture in front of Barry's quarters, nor the miser- 
 able afternoon when he saw the huge bulk of this 
 objectionable stranger bending over that slender 
 form away down the row, had he seen a single 
 feature of the stranger's face. Now it seemed as 
 though the commanding officer was bent on drag- 
 ging from him everything he knew, and vaguely he 
 felt that this was not that officer's prerogative, and 
 that so long as he held such sublime faith in 
 Nathalie Baird's innocence of all complicity in or 
 knowledge of the recent robbery, it was not only a 
 right, but a duty, to refuse to reveal anything that 
 might involve her in deeper trouble.
 
 A (JAllRIXON TANGLE. 191 
 
 Whether right or wrong in this belief, Maynard 
 had made up his mind. Captain Walters should 
 find out nothing ne\v at her expense if a stubborn 
 stand on his part could prevent it. Of the meeting 
 between her and the big stranger down by the end 
 set of quarters, known as No. 1, everybody at the 
 post, apparently, was informed. But so far as he 
 knew, not a soul in the garrison but himself had any 
 knowledge of his meeting with that burly and mus- 
 cular prowler under Nathalie's window the night of 
 the hop. All this flashed through his mind and de- 
 termined his action before he finally answered : 
 
 " I saw a man of that general description one 
 afternoon down by No. 1, but I was sitting on Major 
 Stannard's piazza away at this end of the row." 
 
 " Yes, sir, we know all about that. A dozen peo- 
 ple saw him talking with Miss Baird. And he re- 
 sembled the man called * Boston,' did he ?" 
 
 "In figure and in general build, yes, sir." 
 
 "And now the other occasion, when, as reported 
 to me, you met him face to face. How abo;.t that '"' 
 
 Silence again for a moment, and again Maynard 
 glanced at Warner for support, and again the deep 
 brown eyes seemed to say : " Stand your ground." 
 
 " Captain Walters, I beg you not to press that 
 question," said Maynard, respectfully but eagerly. 
 " Colonel Atherton and my brother officers will be
 
 192 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 horns in a very few days. I will answer to him 
 to my colonel. But there are reasons why I ought 
 not to speak further on this subject until I can con- 
 sult him. and Major Barry." 
 
 " You may just as well answer, Mr. Maynard," 
 interrupted the post commander coldly. " Your 
 refusal or hesitation is quite enough to stamp you 
 as guilty of what I have been reluctantly forced to 
 believe of wilfully concealing most important evi- 
 dence in connection with this most important case. 
 I could not have believed it of you without the vir- 
 tual admission on your part, notwithstanding all I 
 had heard. This, sir, is Mr. Cook, of the Eocky 
 Mountain detective force, from Denver, and he will 
 tell you what you should long since have told me. 
 Go ahead, Mr. Cook." 
 
 Painfully now Maynard was leaning on his cane. 
 He half turned to face the detective. Cook seemed 
 perturbed. He evidently liked the young fellow 
 better than he did his job. 
 
 v " It's just this," he said. " We know that fellow 
 Boston very well down our way, and he has been in 
 one scrape after another, and he was drunk one 
 night in a saloon here in town, and some of the 
 crowd were twitting him about the way you pitched 
 him out of his saddle, and he answered that it didn't 
 compare with the knock-out he'd given you right
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 193 
 
 here in the fort and right in front of officers' quar- 
 ters the night of a hop. The barkeeper gave it all 
 to us later after they had scattered. It was the 
 night he got out there at the Empire. He bragged 
 that he was out here to meet a lady at the fort, and 
 that you had interfered and got knocked down as a 
 result." 
 
 Maynard's face was still and cold and white. 
 Without flinching he gazed straight into the detect- 
 ive's eyes and made no reply. 
 
 " Well, sir," said Captain Walters impatiently. 
 " Now, what have you to say ?" 
 
 " Nothing, sir." 
 
 " You refuse to confirm or deny the statement ?" 
 
 *' I decline to say anything until my colonel 
 conies." 
 
 Captain Walters flushed angrily, but kept his 
 temper well. 
 
 " You still occupy a room at Major Stannard's, I 
 believe ?" 
 
 " Yes, sir. Mrs. Stannard asked that my sister 
 and I should remain under her roof until the regi- 
 ment returned." 
 
 " Yery good, Mr. Maynard. You may now re- 
 turn to your room and consider yourself in close 
 arrest." 
 
 Without a word, the young officer faced about 
 and walked slowly and painfully home.
 
 194 A GAUR180N TAXGLE. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 MBS. TURNER forgot even that Mrs. Gregg and 
 she were not on speaking terms that afternoon, 
 She was calling at the Barrys' ostensibly to bless 
 the inmates with her sympathy, but actually in the 
 hope of seeing Nathalie and being able to tell how 
 she looked and what she said. In tnis, however, 
 she was disappointed, for Nathalie kept her room, 
 and when Mrs. Turner would have gone aloft to 
 visit her there, Mrs. Barry, far from assenting, de- 
 clared she believed it best for Nathalie not to see 
 any one until she had slept. But while the luxury 
 of a personal interview with the suspected girl was 
 denied her, and the hoped-for sensation was lost, 
 Mrs. Turner was treated to one even greater and 
 most unexpected. 
 
 Mrs. Stannard had hastily entered without either- 
 knocking or ringing, as had become her custom of 
 late, and at sight of Mrs. Turner had as suddenly 
 retired, closing the door behind her, and hastening 
 back along the piazza. Only a half second's glance
 
 A GAMUSOS TANGLE. 195 
 
 had Mrs. Turner of her face, but she could swear 
 that Mrs. Stannard had been crying. 
 
 Then Mrs. Turner was suddenly reminded that 
 she had not seen Grace Maynard for at least two 
 hours, and she lost no time in hastening in Mrs. 
 Stannard's footsteps. Miss Maynard herself opened 
 the Stannards' door and let her in, and Grace's face 
 was the picture of woe and consternation. 
 
 " Something dreadful has happened, I feel sure of 
 it," said Mrs. Turner, the moment she caught sight 
 of her friend. " Oh, what is it ?" 
 
 It was no time to think of recent differences. 
 " My brother has been arrested," said Miss Maynard, 
 in solemn tones, and knowing no distinction between 
 that method of expression and the conventional 
 form in use in the army. 
 
 "Who why I can't understand. You don't 
 mean he's suspected of the robbery ? "Who arrested 
 him ? Where is he gone ?" 
 
 " He hasn't gone. He's here io his room," said 
 Miss Maynard, with breaking voice. " It's Captain 
 Walters who did it." 
 
 u Oh," said Mrs. Turner, disappointed in spite of 
 her better nature, " been placed under arrest, you 
 mean. Oh, that's so different, but what for why ?" 
 and the eagerness in the fair lady's face and tone 
 was unmistakable,
 
 196 A GARKISON TAN OLE. 
 
 " He will not tell," answered Miss Maynard," and 
 that is why I'm certain it is on that girl's account. 
 She has led him from one trouble into another. Do 
 come in awhile. I'm so so miserable I don't know 
 what to do, and Eonald acts like a crazy man. He 
 doesn't want even me in his room." 
 
 But Mrs. Turner's ministrations were all too brief 
 and uncomforting. They consisted in a sharp and 
 rapid fire of cross questions which evoked none of 
 the looked-for information as to cause, or even as to 
 the allegations, and Mrs. Turner lost her accustomed 
 equipoise in finding she was losing time. Nothing 
 more sensational had occurred at Russell for nearly 
 two years, and the bliss of being the first to break 
 the news to half a dozen households might be lost 
 to her entirely if she did not act at once. She 
 longed for Mrs. Stannard's reappeat ance, but her 
 room door remained obstinately closed. When it 
 became apparent that Miss Maynard really knew 
 nothing about the matter, and that it was useless to 
 question further, the energetic and now thoroughly 
 aroused lady decided that she must go and go at 
 once. So, despite her cherished fri.nd's remon- 
 strances, she bade her adieu, declaring she had 
 faithfully promised to be at Mrs. Ray's twenty 
 minutes ago, and so hastened to the door, only to be 
 there confronted by a sight that made her pause.
 
 A OARHISON TANGLE. 197 
 
 Mr. Warner, the acting adjutant, accompanied by a 
 stout party in gray business suit, had just entered 
 the gate and met her face to face. 
 
 Warner politely raised his cap and smilingly asked 
 if they could see Mrs. Stannard a moment. Mrs. 
 Turner didn't know, but would inquire. So she 
 returned and asked Miss Maynard, and Miss May- 
 nard went into the dining-room and tapped at Mrs. 
 Stannard's door. No answer. She peeped in. No 
 one was there. An appeal to the servant resulted 
 in the information that Mrs. Stannard had stepped 
 out through the kitchen and gone around to Mrs. 
 Barry's, thereby; as was at once apparent, dodging 
 Mrs. Turner and her inevitable questionings and a 
 flush that extended beyond the customary limits was 
 on that injured lady's face as she communicated to 
 Mr. Warner the information that they would prob- 
 ably find Mrs. Stannard at Mrs. Barry's, next 
 door. Should she go and call her ? Warner said 
 no, thanks, they had also to see Mr. Maynard, and 
 they would go right up to his room; and go they did, 
 leaving her and Miss Maynard gazing after them 
 up the narrow stairway, and listening for the 
 colloquy that would follow the knock at the young 
 officer's door. They heard him say almost heartily, 
 " Oh, come right in, Warner. I'm so glad you're 
 here," and then, with certain coldness and hesit*
 
 i9g A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 tion, "Why, certainly, if you say so. Come in, 
 Mr. Cook." Then the door closed and the sound of 
 voices became an inaudible murmur. 
 
 But Mrs. Turner forgot that engagement with 
 Mrs. Kay for full ten minutes more, and then the 
 visitors came clattering down, and Warner bowed 
 most courteously to the lady as he passed the parlor 
 door, and asked Mrs. Turner if she would be so 
 very kind as to see if Mrs. Barry would receive him 
 with a gentleman from Denver, for just five minutes. 
 This Mrs. Barry proved not only willing but glad to 
 do, but poor Mrs. Turner had to return to wonder 
 with Miss Maynard full five minutes more what it 
 all could possibly mean before she again bethought 
 herself of lost opportunties, and so finally hastened 
 away to spread the stirring tidings. It was force 
 of habit that led her straight to Mrs. Gregg's and 
 launched her, impetuous and unannounced, into 
 that astonished and indignant presence. 
 
 The fine feminine scorn in the visage of her old- 
 time friend and crony recalled Mrs. Turner to her- 
 self. 
 
 " Oh, I forgot, 1 ' she exclaimed ; " but now that I 
 am here I might just as well ask you if you've 
 heard the news," and even in her haste and per- 
 turbation Mrs. Turner showed the soul of the 
 diplomatist. Had she simply burst out with the
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 199 
 
 announcement, Mrs. Gregg could then have crush- 
 ingly asked, as she had on a former occasion, " And 
 did you consider that an acceptable excuse for this 
 intrusion?" Now wifel} 7 anxiety and womanly 
 curiosity overmastered pride and resentment. She 
 had to gasp, "No. What?" for her husband and 
 the regiment were her first thoughts, and so having 
 spoken, the veil was lifted, the ice was broken. She 
 heard the announcement of Maynard's arrest and 
 the presence of " such strange looking men, sheriff's 
 officers, probably/' without much emotion. She 
 had meant to cut Mrs. Turner dead and never speak 
 to her again, but now she was trapped. At least it 
 opened the door for her to pitch in to her neighbor 
 and give her the piece of her mind for which her 
 soul had been longing for days, but Mrs. Turner 
 sniffed the coming battle, and was up and away 
 triumphant. 
 
 " I can't stop. I've got an engagement at Mrs. 
 Kay's, but I was so excited by what has happened 
 that I just had to drop in the first house I came to." 
 Then away she went, and Mrs. Gregg had not so 
 much as a chance for a crushing word. Verily Mrs. 
 Turner was a tactician. 
 
 It was not long, of course, before the garrison 
 had the news. The band came out to play ; so did 
 the children ; while their mothers gathered on the
 
 200 -4 GARRISON TA1TGLB 
 
 front piazzas and engaged in earnest talk, even 
 while keeping an eye out for Warner and the 
 stranger from Denver. They had remained at the 
 Barrys nearly twenty minutes, and had gone again 
 next door, presumably upstairs to Maynard's room. 
 Then, leaving Mr. Cook thereat Stannards', Warner 
 had gone briskly over to the office. When he was 
 finally seen returning, many fair faces, some of them 
 sad and sweet, and full of painful interest, others 
 eager with curiosity, were turned toward him, and 
 had he been many another fellow, Warner might 
 have had his head turned by such display of interest. 
 He understood and correctly estimated it all, how- 
 ever. It wasn't the first time, poor fellow, he had 
 had to visit an officer of the th, and a regimental 
 favorite, too, when in arrest, and now, though many 
 of the number were women whom he could trust 
 and to whom he would be glad to tell how blameless 
 he considered Maynard, he feared that it would be 
 difficult to discriminate where so many were evi- 
 dently on the alert. He darted into Stannard's, 
 therefore, and when he reappeared and walked 
 gravely down the long line, his civilian friend slowly 
 pacing at his side and listening with evident enjoy- 
 ment to the music of the band, the young adjutant 
 raised his cap as he passed group after group, but 
 made no stop whatever. At the old east gate a
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 201 
 
 buggy was waiting, and into this he assisted Mr. 
 Cook, saw him started back to Cheyenne, and then, 
 to the scandal of many an expectant and impatient 
 fair one, marched back across the open parade, 
 entirely out of range, spoke a word to the band- 
 leader to cover his otherwise unaccountable devia- 
 tion from the path of rectitude and officers' row, 
 then dove into his office and disappeared. 
 
 " Well, I never knew," said Mrs. Turner, " that 
 Mr. Warner could be no mean." 
 
 It had been blowing fitfully during the early 
 afternoon, but by five o'clock the wind was strong 
 from the northwest, and instead of the customary 
 lull at sundown, there came a steady gale. Women 
 gathered their children to roost at an earlier hour 
 than usual, and there was no frolicsome band chas- 
 ing and shouting about the parade in the long 
 spring twilight. There was less visiting to and fro, 
 and only near neighbors dropped in to chat about 
 the latest phase in the garrison sensation, and to 
 wish it wouldn't blow so hard at Russell. Many 
 
 
 
 would have liked to spend an hour at Mrs. Barry's, 
 but were deterred from attempting it because it 
 \\'as early given out that she was much fatigued and 
 depressed by the events of the last few days. Mrs. 
 Stannard was with her, and Marion Ray and Mrs. 
 Freeman for a time had been admitted. Others
 
 202 4 GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 called with polite inquiries for both the ladies, and 
 Mary, the housemaid, had her answer pat. Mrs. 
 Barry was not very well and begged to be excused, 
 and Miss Baird was lying down. It was Bridget's 
 evening out, for even on the far frontier did our 
 domestic tyrants hold their employers to the weekly 
 allowance of social freedom. It had been that 
 cheery and good-natured goddess' practice to drive 
 to town in a carry-all, owned by the old retired sol- 
 dier hitherto mentioned, who ran a sort of 'bus line 
 for the benefit, avowedly, ^of the men on pass, and 
 the domestics on pleasure bent, but quite as much 
 for that of his own plethoric old pocketbook. He 
 was forbidden the road within the post because of 
 certain contraband traffic in his past. But all that 
 was necessary to secure his services was, as he an- 
 nounced, for the ladies and gentlemen of the post 
 to leave their order at the band quarters, and sharp 
 at seven he would begin the rounds of the back 
 gates, and with a crowded vehicle go spinning away 
 to town. 
 
 Mrs. Barry had imagined that Bridget would 
 forego her visit on account of the gale, but Mrs. 
 Barry was mistaken. In gala attire, her valued 
 cook appeared to ask, as she always did, could she 
 do anything for Mrs. Barry in town, and that lady 
 thanked her, said no, but expressed some anxiety 
 as to Bridget's going.
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 203 
 
 " Oh, we'll get there all right, mum," said she, 
 briskly. " The wind's with us every inch of the 
 way ; but would Mrs. Barry mind very much if I 
 stayed with friends in town and came out to-morrow 
 if it blows harder ? It's the coming back that'll try 
 the old man's horses." 
 
 " "Well, how can you get out in the morning ?" 
 was the question. " The stage doesn't come until 
 nearly noon." 
 
 " Oh, I'll get my I have friends who can bring 
 me out, ma'am," was Bridget's confident answer. 
 So the requisite permission was given and the cook 
 departed in peace. When the carry-all came a few 
 minutes later she was ready at the gate, a big 
 satchel in her hand. 
 
 That night when " taps " was sounded few people 
 heard it at all because of the gale. Nathalie had 
 itolen downstairs, white and wan, and was kneeling 
 by Mrs. Barry's couch, while Mrs. Stannard read 
 aloud. Xot a whisper had been permitted to reach 
 the gill of Maynard's arrest. She knew of the 
 visit of "Warner and the man from Denver, and was 
 told that they had come for an accurate description 
 of the missing property, and so they had, despite 
 the fact that Mr. Cook already knew almost all 
 that could be told. He had not, however, called on 
 Mrs. Gregg or Mrs. Freeman. He was greatly in-
 
 $504 A GARRISON TANGLh. 
 
 terested in Mrs. Barry's case in closely studying 
 the window through which the professionals had 
 entered the house, and in her description of the 
 symptoms by which she had been assailed the un- 
 canny stupor and drowsiness that oppressed her so 
 long. Mrs. Barry answered all questions fully, yet 
 wondered at their tenor. He had even asked if he 
 might look about the kitchen and servants' rooms, 
 and Mrs. Barry assured him that their rooms had 
 been searched by Captain Walters' order, and noth- 
 ing been found. That so far from resenting it, 
 Bridget was the first to urge that it might be done 
 so that she and Mary could be cleared of all suspi- 
 cion of complicity. They were both such faithful 
 and devoted creatures. Mary had been with her 
 for years and Bridget came with the best of recom- 
 mendations from her former employers. Mr. Cook 
 protested that his purpose was not to search for 
 anything but traces of the burglars, yet he glanced 
 more than once at Mary and looked about as though 
 in search of Bridget, who had just stepped over to 
 a neighbor's a moment, so Mary told her mistress. 
 Then he went back and again closely examined the 
 rear window of the dining-room, the one which the 
 burglars had so thoughtlessly left open on their de- 
 parture. The iron snap catch which held the lower 
 sash down had been forced off and was found the
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 205 
 
 morning of t he-disco very of the robbery lying on the 
 floor under the window. Mr. Cook had raised the 
 sash, studying it within and without, all the time 
 whistling softly and saying nothing, and his pro- 
 ceedings had affected Mary to the extent of having 
 to declare to Mrs. Stannard at tea time, she was that 
 nervous she didn't know how to stand. 
 
 And with Bridget now gone and the gale growing 
 and no one to talk to after ten o'clock Mary had 
 become more and more nervous. Mrs. Stannard 
 found her sitting in the kitchen a little later, looking 
 white and miserable, and asked her why she didn't 
 go to bed, whereat the poor girl began to weep. 
 She couldn't explain it, she said, but she felt all 
 creepy and queer. She was afraid to stay alone. 
 She was sure something was going to happen, and 
 Mrs. Barry, always kind and sympathetic, bade the 
 girl make a bed for herself on the couch. She 
 would be glad to have her near her this night any 
 way, in case she desired to communicate with 
 Nathalie. 
 
 It must have been after eleven o'clock when Mrs. 
 Barry succeeded in sending Nathalie to her room. 
 By that time she was comfortably stowed away for 
 the night in her own white bed. She had Mary 
 close at hand and needed no further attention. Mrs. 
 Stannard had been stationed at Russell long before,
 
 208 -4 GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 and was well accustomed to the violence of the 
 Wyoming gales, and to the rocking and creaking of 
 the old wooden quarters, but it seemed to her as 
 though the spite and fury of the wind had quickened 
 at the sound of the ten o'clock bugle, and before 
 leaving her friend for the night she took a look into 
 the kitchen to see that all was safe and snug. The 
 fire had been carefully banked over with ashes in 
 the big cooking stove. The bracket lamp was ex- 
 tinguished, but the door leading into the girls' room 
 swung uneasily on its hinges and banged against its 
 frame, driven by the draught that would leak in 
 through invisible chink or cranny. Setting her own 
 band lamp on the table, she firmly closed the door 
 to prevent its further slamming, and then, leaving 
 the kitchen in total darkness, except for a dull red 
 glimmer through a crack in the stove, she returned 
 to the front of the house, bade her friend an affec- 
 tionate good-night, and buffeted by the storm, scur- 
 ried along the front piazza and let herself in at her 
 own door. A light was burning on the landing 
 above, and Miss Maynard had evidently gone aloft, 
 for the parlor lamps were turned low. Yes, her 
 voice was audible. She was in her brother's room. 
 Carefully, as she had done next door, Mrs. Stannard 
 inspected her own kitchen, and finding everything 
 afe there, called aloft to know if Mr. or Miss May-
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 20? 
 
 nard needed anything, and then bade them a cheery 
 good-night. 
 
 " Don't mind the wind. It is swinging round 
 now and blowing from the northeast a most un- 
 usual thing, and I can't help thinking it will stop 
 before morning." 
 
 But she fancied from Miss Maynard's somewhat 
 choky tone that she had been crying, and thinking 
 over this and other matters, it was quite a while be- 
 fore Mrs. Stannard got fairly asleep. 
 
 Midnight had long gone by. Old Fritz and his 
 ghostly team and carry-all had returned and been 
 safely housed, and still one light, and only one, 
 seemed to burn brightly along officers' row. It 
 shone through the shade of the dormer window of 
 the front room in the Stannards' half of the big 
 double house assigned to the two majors, the room 
 now occupied by Mr. Maynard. The sentry on No. 
 1 noted it as he called off at half-past twelve. The 
 corporal of the guard noted it as he made his lonely 
 round, for since the robbery old Walters had his guard 
 patrol the post. But that light and those at the 
 guardhouse were all the corporal could see until 
 just about half-past one, when a woman's awful 
 scream was borne upon the gale, and a sudden glare 
 burst from the rear of the Barrys' quarters. A 
 sheet of flame leaped from the annex, and tore
 
 208 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 under the eaves, and lapped and lashed about the 
 dormer window at the north, the snapping and 
 crackling of glass and shingles instantly responding. 
 Bang went the sentry's piece, as he yelled the alarm 
 of fire. Rush went the corporal across the parade^ 
 reaching the roadway in time to meet Lieutenant 
 Maynard staggering out through blinding smoke 
 with Mrs. Barry in his arras, and then diving in 
 again the instant he had laid her down, to be lost to 
 view an entire minute, then to reappear, followed 
 by a broad sheet of flame, scorched, blistered, 
 blinded and half suffocated, to come stumbling 1 into 
 the narrow yard in front, and to fall headlong over 
 the blanket-swathed burden he bore clasped to his 
 breast.
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 209 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE wild excitement and dread 
 night lived long in the memory of every family at 
 the post. But for the most unusual, though for- 
 tunate, change in the direction of the blast, all 
 officers' row on the northeast front must have been 
 swept away, as, on another well-remembered night, 
 the quarters of the infantry all of officers' row on 
 the northwest side had melted away in a flood of 
 flame some years before. With the garrison gone 
 there was no fire department, and even had there 
 been one of metropolitan proportions, it could have 
 accomplished next to nothing. The big tinder-box 
 jointly occupied by Majors Barry and Stannard 
 was swept away as though in the twinkling of an 
 eye. In less than ten minutes of the alarm a broad 
 sheet of fire swept across the roadway and far out 
 upon the parade, licking up the fence like a row of 
 matches and blistering the hopeful young cotton- 
 woods, just budding along the bordering acequia, 
 while in less than twenty only a mass of glowing 
 embers lay glaring in the fiercely fanning gale, and
 
 210 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 every vestige of the goods and chattels had gone to 
 feed the flames. The marvel was that the inmates 
 got out at all. 
 
 First to discover the fire was Mrs. Barry, aroused 
 by dense and suffocating smoke, and a sound of 
 snapping and crackling in the kitchen. She called 
 Mary, who sprang from her couch, rushed to the 
 kitchen door, and, with an awful shriek, recoiled 
 before the instant rush of the flames into the dining- 
 room. Maynard, still writing in his room, heard, 
 flew down the stairs, stumbled over her on the 
 front piazza, then bending low, broke through the 
 dense smoke now pouring through the little hall, 
 found Mrs. Barry feebly striving to reach the door- 
 way, and bore her, half suffocated, into the open 
 air. Then, facing flame now as well as deadening 
 smoke, had dashed up the stairs and burst into 
 Nathalie's blazing room. The girl had managed to 
 reach the wardrobe and to throw about her the 
 very wrap she wore the morning she answered 
 Maloney's impudent summons, and then had fallen, 
 helpless and half stifled, unable to open her door. 
 Reckless of himself, Maynard dragged the blanket 
 from the bed, wrapped it about the slender and be- 
 loved form, lifted her like a child in his strong 
 arms, and, followed by the seething tongues of 
 flame, singeing his hair, eyebrows and mustache,
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 and scorching the skin of his face and hands, and 
 neck and ears, had gone bounding down the row of 
 blazing balusters and out into the open air before 
 he fell, blinded, burned and almost suffocated, but 
 triumphant. The guard was there in two minutes, 
 the bandsmen and " doughboys" soon came rushing 
 from their quarters. "Women and children poured, 
 shrieking, from the houses nearest, while others, less 
 alarmed, hurried from those farther down the row. 
 "Warner was at the spot as quick as the guard, and, 
 under his cool-headed direction, tho rescued ladies 
 were carried or led to Mrs. Ray's, and then they 
 sent to the hospital for a stretcher for poor May- 
 nard, writhing in terrible pain, while his sister, 
 swaying to and fro, from side to side, knelt with 
 clasped hands, moaning and sobbing and imploring 
 people to do something for him, deaf to his stern 
 admonition of silence, and only ceasing when he 
 sought to stagger to his feet and leave her. Over 
 him, presently, bent "Walters, shocked and sore dis- 
 tressed. To him soon came the little doctor, and 
 through a lane of weeping women and children 
 they bore him to the captain's quarters down the 
 row Walters would admit of nothing less and 
 there with soft cotton and sweet oil and soothing 
 lotions, with tender hands and words of boundleti 
 praise and sympathy, they did their utmost to om-
 
 212 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 fort and to soothe. When the fire, swept by the 
 gale away from the rest of the row, had burned it- 
 self out and Walters could hasten to the bedside of 
 the brave young fellow, he almost sobbed aloud 
 when he strove to answer Maynard's half apolo- 
 getic 
 
 " Broke my arrest, sir^-but couldn't help it." 
 Meantime, though suffering shock and partial 
 suffocation, Mrs. Barry and Miss Baird were pro- 
 nounced uninjured, and were being devotedly at- 
 tended at Mrs. Eay's. Mary, the housemaid, was 
 still in a semi-hysterical state and required more 
 waiting on than all the other fire sufferers com- 
 bined. Mrs. Stannard and Miss Maynard, aroused 
 by her shrieks and Maynard's dash downstairs, had 
 instantly donned their wrappers and slippers and 
 made their way to the open air, where, forgetful of 
 everything else, they had devoted themselves to 
 their next-door neighbors. Mrs. Stannard's serv- 
 ants, sleeping in the annex beyond the point where 
 the flames started in the Barrys' quarters, had 
 escaped without trouble, saving most of their 
 belongings. Mary, but for her utter collapse, might 
 have done as well, for the smoke and flame blew 
 through the house and away from the rear of the 
 annex, but, as it was, every stitch she owned, other 
 than what she had on, went up in smoke, and what
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 318 
 
 was presumably of much greater consequence, Brid- 
 get's finery was reduced to ashes, and, as a sympa- 
 thizing sister cook remarked, " She not even there 
 to see." 
 
 And then when the fire was all over and had 
 fairly burned itself out, and the pale dawn came 
 creeping iato the eastern sky, Walters, Warner and 
 the doctor were still poking about the ruins, won- 
 dering how on earth the thing could have started. 
 There was not a suggestion of a clue. All was safe 
 and suu when Mrs. Stannard visited the kitchen ; 
 
 O ' 
 
 all was dark and quiet, but for the wind, when the 
 corporal made his rounds ; all was dark and quiet, 
 said old Fritz, when he drove by the back gate 
 toward midnight. No, Miss O'JVIeara which was 
 garrison for Bridget had not returned with him. 
 " Mrs. Atherton's ladies," however, had done so, 
 and so had two prominent instrumentalists the 
 bass drummer and piccolo of the band, who had 
 escorted those domestics to a show in town ; and 
 this quartette backed Fritz in his statements. 
 There wasn't a sign of fire, nor were any of his 
 passengers smoking as they passed along back of 
 
 the row. 
 
 But Warner kept up his investigations nfter his 
 commander had gone and the day had ceme, and, 
 despite the fact that many soldiers' feet had
 
 214 A GARRISON TANGLB. 
 
 trampled the ground, there, in the dust of the old 
 roadway beyond the rear fence, he found overlying 
 the well-known trail of Fritz's team and wagon, the 
 unmistakable print of a horse's hoofs and a buggy's 
 wheels. Even before arousing his weary captain 
 with this important information, he had dispatched 
 a mounted messenger to town with a note to Cook. 
 
 "Majors Stannard and Barry's quarters de- 
 stroyed by fire about one thirty A. M." he wrote. 
 " Inmates safe everything else consumed. Bridget 
 O'M. went to town at seven p. M. and is still absent, 
 but a single buggy stopped at Barry's rear gate, 
 and there turned and drove back. It must have 
 been between twelve and one-thirty. Better come 
 out, quick as possible." 
 
 And within the hour Cook was on his way. 
 
 Meanwhile the gale had worn itself out, as had 
 the fire, and comparative calm settled down on the 
 post. The little doctor looked well-nigh used up 
 when he overhauled his few patients at the hospital 
 at sick call, but he had still much to do and could 
 not give up. Telegrams had been sent to Laramie 
 notifying the two majors of the destruction of their 
 quarters and the safety of the occupants, and in a 
 marvelously short time their answer was received. 
 The two battalion commanders were coming by the 
 first stage, while Atherton and the regiment re-
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 215 
 
 turned by the usual easy marches. The majors 
 should reach Russell with the morrow's sun. To 
 Barry the loss was far heavier in books and bric-a- 
 brac and furniture than to his brother campaigner. 
 Stannard and his devoted wife had long made it 
 their practice to live in the simplest way, and 3 r ears 
 in Arizona had taught them how comfortable they 
 could be with very little in the line of household 
 goods. What they had lost Mrs. Stannard's gowns 
 and laces being the only very valuable items was 
 fully covered by insurance, and Barry had taken 
 similar precautions. But he was a lover of books 
 and pictures and little objects of art gathered in 
 their foreign travel, and no mcney could repay him 
 the loss of such treasures. All this was fruit for the 
 breakfast-table chat about the post, and of greater 
 consequence, apparently, than the shock to Mrs. 
 Barry, the almost desperately heroic rescue of Miss 
 Baird, and the now painful plight of her rescuer. 
 Nursed by his sister and an attendant from the 
 hospital, Maynard lay under "Walters' roof, ban- 
 daged, blinded, and suffering torment from the burns 
 on his hands and head, yet thinking less of this than 
 of the fact that his enforced confinement came at a 
 time when every faculty he possessed should hare 
 been brought to bear ; for Maynard believed he had 
 found the clue to the burglary, and a means of
 
 216 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 sweeping away the cloud that hung- over tho rmf 
 of Nathalie Baird, and he begged the doctor and 
 Warner to let him have a few words with Mr. Cook 
 as soon as possible. 
 
 It was barely eight when that official drove into 
 the garrison and joined Mr. Warner. It was not 
 half an hour later when another buggy arrived and 
 deposited Miss O'Meara and her big bag at the 
 back gate opening on Mrs. Gregg's quarters, into 
 the kitchen of which she instantty disappeared. 
 The buggy, almost as quickly, began to turn about, 
 but stentorian shouts from up the row assailed the 
 driver's ears, and he reined in his horse and waited. 
 The shouters were Warner and Mr. Cook, who 
 issued from the rear gate opening on the still smok- 
 ing ruins, and came running down to the much-sur- 
 prised occupant of the " rig." Cook's face took on 
 a shade of disappointment at sight of him. 
 
 " Oh, it's you, is it, Jimmy," he said, in almost 
 aggrieved tone, for he recognized in the man an 
 employee at the very stable at which he hired his 
 own " outfit." " What brings you here so early ?" 
 
 " Orders," said Jimmy briefly, he being a dis 
 charged soldier. " Boss told me to hitch up Billy 
 and drive that lady out to the fort. She said 
 there'd been a fire and she was afraid her property 
 was destroyed."
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 317 
 
 " Well, how'd she know ? The paper has no 
 mention of it." 
 
 "I dunno. First I heard of it was what she 
 told." 
 
 " Well, why didn't you drive on up to where the 
 fire was, then ?" 
 
 " She told me where to stop. Said she wanted to 
 see some friends first thing. She settled with the 
 boss for the rig, so I had nothing: to say. Boss 
 
 O' / 
 
 said to get back quick as I could. What was the 
 fire?" 
 
 " Oh, a couple of houses upper end of the row. 
 But you just hold on where you are, or drive down 
 and hitch at the store. I'll be responsible to the 
 proprietor. I may want your buggy, and Jimmy, 
 no talk." In so saying Mr. Cook was impressive. 
 Then he turned to Warner, who had stood a silent 
 listener. " Where'd she go to ?" 
 
 " Into Mrs. Gregg's, I fancy. This is Gregg's 
 house in here. She'll want to see Mrs. Barry, I 
 suppose, first thing." 
 
 But to this remark Mr. Cook merely replied by 
 the double question, " Who's her friend in here and 
 what time does that big stage go in ?" He referred 
 to an old red stagecoach that had somehow become 
 the property of the United States " for which the 
 quartermaster at Fort Russell was accountable," and
 
 218 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 which, behind a spanking four-horse team, was 
 driven in those days to town every morning with 
 the mail and the market baskets and orders of the 
 various households of the garrison. In addition it 
 carried such enlisted men or domestics as might 
 have permission to go to town in the morning. 
 
 " Don't know who her friend is the cook, prob- 
 ably. As for the stage, that gets away about ten 
 or half-past ten," said Warner. " Why ?" 
 
 " Well, I want to know if Miss O'Meara attempts 
 to go with it ;" and Mr. Cook spoke as though the 
 name of the lady was sweet to his tongue. " Now, 
 let's go back to the shed." 
 
 The shed referred to was the rear portion of the 
 annex, which, thanks partially to the efforts of the 
 soldiers in one direction, but mainly to those of 
 the wind in another, still stood, charred, blackened, 
 but only partially consumed. The fire seemed to 
 have broken out in the kitchen, possibly about the 
 stove. The interior of this tinder-box was a mass 
 of flame when Mary opened the dining-room door, 
 and a way for the flames to flash in and lay hold of 
 everything inflammable there. Already they seemed 
 to have eaten their way through the roof to the 
 eaves of the main building, and had attacked the 
 projecting "dormer" of Nathalie's room. Then, 
 driven by the fury of the gale, they had poured
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 219 
 
 through the house, destroying all before them, but 
 leaving this melancholy wreck behind. Only the 
 inner end of it, that which adjoined the kitchen, had 
 been burned, but against that partition hung the 
 wardrobes of the two domestics. Under the gowns 
 and garments stood their boxes Mary's, a modest, 
 old-fashioned little trunk ; Bridget's a brace of Sara- 
 togas ; and of these was left little beyond charred 
 and water-soaked fragments. 
 
 And yet, so valuable did Mr. Cook consider these 
 relics, that one of the first things he did was to ask 
 that a sentry be posted there with orders to permit 
 no one to disturb anything about what was left of 
 the premises, and it was done forthwith. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mrs. Barry, kind soul, though very 
 weary and distressed, had been informed by Mrs. 
 Kay that Bridget was in the kitchen and begging to 
 be allowed to see her mistress. And it wasn't to 
 weep over her own losses that Bridget came, but to 
 deplore the dreadful danger and shock to which 
 " Mrs. Barry, mum, and Miss Baird, too, mum," had 
 been subjected. All three ladies were greatly im 
 pressed with Miss O'Meara's expressions of sorrow 
 and sympathy. " She never seemed to think of her 
 own losses," said Mrs. Kay later. 
 
 " She was sure she had banked the fire and taken 
 every precaution before starting for town," added 
 Nathalie.
 
 220 ^ GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 " She could go down on her knees to Mr. May* 
 nard," smiled Mrs. Barry, " for the brave, big, splen- 
 did young man that he is, and wasn't it God's mercy 
 he was there ? And was he so awfully burned as 
 they said in town ?" 
 
 At this recital Nathalie smiled not at all. She 
 listened with trembling hands and averted face. 
 Then the news had got to town, said Mrs. Ray, after 
 the faithful cook had been led away for a mouthful 
 of breakfast in the kitchen. Why, surely, yes 1 
 Mrs. Kay forgot the telegraph office at the post ; 
 and the fact that the glare of the fire could have 
 been seen from Cheyenne, and that the hose and 
 truck companies from the great quartermaster's 
 depot at Camp Carlin, halfwa} T to the town, had 
 started with their heavy apparatus, only to see the 
 flames die away before they had made the first half- 
 mile over the gale-swept prairie. 
 
 And then by ten o'clock the ladies of the post 
 began flocking to the Rays' to inquire after Mrs. 
 Barry, and of course Miss Baird could not be omit- 
 ted then ; and, after the first few clangs on the bell 
 had made her patient start through nervousness, 
 Mrs. Ray had posted a bulletin on the door. 
 " Please do not ring. Mrs. Barry and Miss Baird 
 are doing very well and trying to sleep." The lit- 
 tle doctor was striving to get Maynard into a doze.
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE 221 
 
 but with no result. Anodyne seemed to have no 
 effect. He insisted upon seeing Cook immediately, 
 or Warner at least, and at last they were sent for, 
 came, Miss Maynard retired below stairs with 
 jealous pangs gnawing at her heart, and there was 
 a five-minute conference, from which Warner issued 
 all of a sudden with visible excitement in his face, 
 Cook following, imperturbable as usual, and both 
 went directly back to the ruins ; and there, reinforced 
 by two oily-tongued associates from kitchens down 
 the row, was Bridget vainly pleading with the 
 sentry for permission to drag out what was left 
 of one of her trunks, and she seemed desperately 
 in earnest, so much so that not until Cook and 
 Warner were actually at the spot did she discover 
 their coming. Then she suddenly ceased and would 
 have dropped away, but Cook most politely bade 
 her remain. 
 
 " It's all right that this lady should be allowed to 
 touch her own property, Mr. Warner," said he. 
 " What I asked of the sentry was, that no one else 
 should disturb her things. Pray don't attempt to 
 pull that box out yourself, Mrs. I mean Miss 
 O'Meara. You'll ruin your fine gloves. Let some 
 of the men, or let me. I'm used to rough work 
 even to dirty work sometimes." 
 
 He laid firm hold of the strap handle nearest him.
 
 223 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 but carefully inspected the remains of the trunk to 
 assure himself that the bottom and the iron bands 
 were sound. But when he pulled, though ever so 
 gently, the sides seemed ready to come away. 
 
 " It's no use, Miss O'Meara," he said. " What 
 you should have done was to take all your valuables 
 when you drove out last night. You had plenty of 
 room in the buggy for the trays of both trunks in 
 your laps and you only took the one. It's too 
 bad." 
 
 The woman stood staring at him with dilated 
 eyes. Her face turned sickly gray. The two with 
 her gazed first at her, then in stupefaction at the 
 detective. 
 
 " What does the man mane ?" asked one of them, 
 suddenly finding voice. " Sure you towld us you'd 
 never come back last night, Bridget." It was Mrs. 
 Gregg's Kate who spoke, the widow of an old 
 trooper who had served and died in the regiment, 
 and left her as a legacy to his captain's family. 
 ** Sure, Mr. Warner, the gentleman's joking ?" 
 
 " Ask Miss O'Meara," said Mr. Cook blandly. 
 
 "Jokin'," she stammered. "It's lyin' foul- 
 mouthed lyin'. Sure I never came near the post till 
 this blessed day." 
 
 " The gale blew away your memory, with some 
 of your hair, Miss O'Meara," said Cook, blandly as
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 393 
 
 ever, producing- from a coat pocket a coil of auburn 
 tress, that oddly resembled those which tossed 
 about her brow. " Let me refresh it by calling- to 
 mind a portion of your conversation with Michael 
 after you found Mary wasn't in your room and you 
 shrewdly guessed that she was sleeping on the couch 
 in Mrs. Barry's. Therefore there was no reason 
 why he shouldn't come and carry these things out 
 for you. Oh, it was excellently planned, Bridget. 
 If vou had found Mary there you could still have 
 lifted the tray out and put it in the kitchen. She 
 was so sound a sleeper she would be sure to doze 
 right off again as soon as she saw you were safely 
 home. Then Michael could have come and carried 
 it out and you could have crept into your bed ; but, 
 as she wasn't there, there was nothing to prevent 
 your going back to Mike's and having a fine time 
 with your friends the rest of the night. That's 
 why you went out and had him come into the 
 kitchen and gave him that refreshing swig from the 
 bottle in the pantry. Even that didn't involve you, 
 Bridget. But you shouldn't have trusted to the 
 gale to drown everything you said. The greatest 
 mistake you made, Bridget, was in saying to Mike, 
 ' If I'd known this it's the two-horse rig we'd a 
 fetched with us, Mike. It's them that drove tha 
 best load that ever rolled away from this post. ' '
 
 224 * GARRISON 2ANGLB. 
 
 But there was no need to say more. Bridget 
 O'Meara, with horror in her eyes, was staring into 
 his face, gasping, clutching at her throat, and then 
 blindly reaching for support. So stupefied were 
 her friends that she might have fallen for lack of 
 aid, but Cook and Warner seized each an arm and 
 held her. When Jimmy drove back to town at ten- 
 forty, informed he was no longer needed, he was 
 surprised on overhauling the big red stage to see 
 seated therein the lady he drove to the post at eight. 
 She had a deputy sheriff on either side of her and 
 massive bracelets on her wrists.
 
 A QAER1SON TANGLE. 225 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 FIVE days later all the th were home again, and 
 great was the rejoicing at Russell. Atherton had 
 directed Stannard to move in and take possession of 
 the best guest room under his roof. Barry had ap- 
 plied for a long leave of absence. "Walters, with his 
 little company, was relieved from duty at the post, 
 and on its way back to Fort Steele, and the last 
 thing Warner did before going was to help carry 
 May n arc! over to the other guest chamber under 
 Atherton's roof, where the colonel declared the gal- 
 lant young fellow should stay until perfectly re- 
 stored. The arrest never appeared on paper, never 
 became a matter of record, for Walters had sup- 
 pressed all further mention of it within twenty-four 
 hours of his ill-judged order. Miss O'Meara, lan- 
 guishing in the county jail, had been subjected to 
 the process known as "the sweat-box," an inter- 
 rogatory torture that is supposed to compel the sus- 
 pected malefactor to unwittingly betray the secrets 
 of the gang to which he may be attached, and 
 Bridget had broken down under the pressure.
 
 226 A GARRISON TANGLS. 
 
 As a result of her revelation Cook had rushed for 
 Kansas, and was heard of no more for several days, 
 and meantime there wasn'ta woman at Russell who 
 did not rejoice in the fact that she, at least, had 
 never for an instant believed that Miss Baird had 
 anything to do with the persons guilty of the 
 burglary. Some of the ladies repeatedly said as 
 much, notably Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Raymond. 
 Walters had also had to call, poor fellow, and tell 
 Mrs. Barry and Miss Baird how unhappy he was 
 over having ever believed that story of the latter's 
 knowledge of the burglary, but in justice to himself 
 he must say that not only did the sheriff admonish 
 him that such was his duty, but there were even 
 two ladies at the post who similarly advised him. 
 Neither Mrs. Barry nor Miss Baird would ask the 
 question, but Major Barry did, and demanded an an- 
 swer, and then "Walters named Mrs. Turner and 
 Miss Maynard, both of whom, as it subsequently 
 transpired, had been actuated only by the purest 
 and best of motives and with no thought of malice. 
 All they said was that they feared she was being 
 terrorized by some scoundrel who had a hold on 
 her, and all they hoped was to relieve her from such 
 a horror. Of course, if she had dreamed the captain 
 would e^er quote her or take such steps as he had 
 done, nothing, said Mrs. Turner, could ever have in- 
 duced her to open her lips.
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 227 
 
 As for Miss Maynard, she was in a state bordering 
 on nervous prostration, yet she would allow no one 
 else to take her place at Ronald's side. She and she 
 alone should nurse and care for him, and there were 
 indeed several days in which his sufferings were 
 such he was allowed to see no visitor. Then he 
 began to mend, and Barry had come and bent over 
 him, with a world of gratitude and affection in his 
 speaking eyes, and Barry said that he expected to 
 got away within the week, but that his wife declared 
 that she would not go until she and Nathalie could 
 see and thank him in person, and Grace Maynard 
 had to listen to it all. 
 
 But two days later, the Barrys' drove to the sta- 
 tion, all the officers and more than half the women 
 accompanying them to the train and seeing them 
 off with every manifestation of affection. The 
 doctors had said that it was necessary for Mrs. 
 Barry's health, that she should be taken away from 
 Russell as soon as possible. It was interesting to 
 watch the different women in their good-by to Miss 
 Baird, without whom Mrs. Barry went nowhere 
 now. Mrs. Freeman clung to her, kissed her on 
 both cheeks, almost cried over her. So did Mrs. 
 Ray. Mrs. Truscott, too, was demonstrative. Mrs. 
 Stannard was the last to leave her, and the eyes of 
 both were brimming as at last she had to hurry
 
 228 -4 GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 from the car. All the other women, young and old, 
 were gentle and sympathetic in manner to her. 
 Miss Maynard, of course, was still at her brother's 
 bedside. Mrs. Turner, who rarely missed an occa- 
 sion of the kind, had a splitting headache this day 
 of days, and therefore was unable to come at all 
 It was the Barrys' plan to go to the South for com- 
 plete change and rest, both for Mrs. Barry and Ka< 
 thalie, and then to spend July and August at the 
 seashore. The insurance adjusters had come and 
 gone ; the fire losses were being settled. Fort Rus- 
 sell had found out to its entire satisfaction that the 
 burglaries were fixed on a gang, of which Miss Baird 
 could have had no knowledge whatever, despite the 
 accepted fact that she had some suspicious acquaint- 
 ance. One reason, indeed, that the Barrys hurried 
 was her continued ill health. When Doctor Pease 
 heard all that Mrs. Barry had to tell him on his re- 
 turn, and had felt Nathalie's pulse and looked into 
 her sad eyes, he hummed and hawed and blinked, 
 and made some inquiries of Mrs. Stannard, and 
 finally told both Major and Mrs. Barry, that they 
 could not too soon get the girl away from Russell, 
 She was simply dying by inches there and needed 
 immediate change. Most affectionate and gratoful 
 was the letter Mrs. Barry penned to the young 
 officer, still lying half blind and more than half
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 229 
 
 bandaged up at the colonel's. Most grateful and 
 timid and shy was the little note penned by Nathalie 
 to the same recumbent warrior. She would always 
 pray for his happiness and never forget the heroism 
 to which she owed her life, but it took her hours to 
 get that letter into semi-satisfactory shape, and who 
 knows how fast and hard the tears fell as she wrote ? 
 They were entrusted both the notes to Mrs. 
 Stannard's care, that she herself, said Mrs. Barry, 
 might read them to him, and not Miss Maynard ; 
 for against that Spartan sister Mrs. Barry's heart 
 was set. The proposed visit to Eonald's bedside 
 had to be abandoned. Mrs. Barry could not well be 
 carried up the stairs for a formal call, and Nathalie 
 could not well go without her. " But remember," 
 Mrs. Barry had written, " we shall be at Sea Girt 
 for July and August ; shall have our own cottage 
 there, and you are to have two months' leave, and 
 you're to spend every possible week of it with us." 
 Not until well on their way to Chicago the first 
 objective point, because both ladies had to renew 
 their wardrobes was Mrs. Barry informed that 
 there might be difficulty as to that part of the plan. 
 She was holding Nathalie's hand and saying how 
 lovely it would be to have their brave, big boy 
 there to be nursed and petted until all trace of his 
 burns was swept away, and Nathalie falteringljr 
 said:
 
 230 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 " But there is somebody else who is awaiting his 
 coming and expecting to do all this";" whereat Mrs. 
 Barry turned with prompt, even indignant, denial 
 in her eyes and said : 
 
 " He never told you so/' 
 
 "No, but his sister did. It it is quite an old 
 affair." 
 
 " What did his sister tell you ? Who is it ?" 
 
 " That he was in love with engaged to a Miss 
 Gertrude Bonner, at their home." 
 
 "Nathalie, that woman has told another lie!" 
 exclaimed Mrs. Barry ; and the major, coming in 
 from the smoking compartment at the moment, 
 marveled at the sudden fire in the soft eyes of his 
 beloved wife and at the flush of color in her usually 
 pallid face. Only deep conviction and wrath as 
 deep could prompt her to the use of language so 
 forcible. 
 
 They were in Chicago an entire week, joined at 
 once by Mrs. Atherton and piloted by that expe- 
 rienced and accomplished shopper, and then came a 
 deluge of letters from Russell, and news, such news. 
 Two men had been run down and arrested in Kan- 
 sas City, had been brought back to Cheyenne and 
 promptly recognized as the " toughs " engaged in 
 the cutting affray at the Empire wherein " Boston" 
 was placed on the invalid list ; were also recognized
 
 A GARRISON TANOLK. 231 
 
 as the two who were seen at the Railroad House 
 early on the morning following the robbery. Miss 
 O'Meara's cousin, Michael Dungan, who kept a 
 saloon frequented ordinarily by laborers and 
 machine-shop men employed in the railway yards, 
 had likewise been gathered in by the police, but 
 only a little of the stolen property had been recov- 
 ered. Cook and Maynard were dividing the honors 
 of the capture. " Cook, of course," said the major 
 at once, " but why Maynard ?" And not until he 
 came to Mrs. Stannard's letter was all explained. 
 Cook had had certain undefined suspicions, but 
 could do nothing prove nothing until the brief in- 
 terview with Maynard. 
 
 This was Maj r nard's part of it. He sat up late 
 that blustering night writing long letters to his 
 father explaining his conduct in refusing to betray 
 Nathalie Baird, telling him of his deep love for her, 
 his faith in her innocence, and all that had come of 
 it. lie hoped for his father's approval of his con- 
 duct, despite the stigma of arrest, and he begged 
 him not to be prejudiced against the girl whom he 
 so devotedly loved, by anything Grace might say. 
 All that could be explained. lie wrote to Atherton 
 and to his captain, and by that time it was one 
 o'clock, and he felt weary and hungry. He had 
 eaten hardly a mouthful since his arrest and was
 
 232 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 suffering the consequence. He had of late availed 
 himself of Mrs. Stannard's repeated invitation to 
 help himself, and had gone down to get a glass of 
 milk or a crust of bread, and so, taking his candle, 
 he softly descended the stairs, his slippered feet 
 making no noise ; let himself out into the draughty 
 kitchen and attacked the refrigerator, setting his 
 candle, meantime, well back upon the kitchen table. 
 His appetite soon satisfied, he was about to retire, 
 when through the thin board partition separating 
 Mrs. Stannard's kitchen from Mrs. Barry's, he heard 
 the sound of a key rasping in a rusty lock, and sud- 
 denly there came a rush of wind through every 
 crack and knothole. His candle was instantly ex- 
 tinguished, and some one seemed almost blown into 
 that neighboring room. He heard Bridget's voice, 
 low and cautious, but objurgatory. He was grop- 
 ing for his candle, intending to retrace his steps, 
 when a moment later that door was closed ; the 
 rush of the wind ceased, and Bridget struck a light, 
 tiptoed to her bedroom, and almost instantly 
 hastened back, reopened the door, called " Mike " 
 in cautious tone, admitted some masculine stranger, 
 and said, " What luck ! She's sleeping wid the 
 missus. We can load the things right in now, and 
 I'll go back wid ye. Shure, they'll never dream I 
 was here."
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 233 
 
 And then it all flashed over him. The disappear- 
 ance of Bridget the day of his visit to the Barrys', 
 the swinging portiere, the apparent determination 
 of the domestic in question to avoid his sight, the 
 probable attempt on her part to lurk in hiding in 
 Barry's den and listen to his plan or suspicions, if 
 any plan he had. And now her coming in after 
 one at night, with a strange man, and talking of 
 loading the things right in and going back with 
 him and no one dreaming of her being there. His 
 heart hammered violently. Three hours before he 
 had cudgeled his brains in vain for a clue to the 
 robbery, and here it came, all at once, unlocked for, 
 unbidden. 
 
 At first he thought stolen property was meant 
 when she spoke of loading up the things, but then 
 he remembered how thorough a search was made 
 in that room, and it seemed improbable. He peered 
 through a knothole and got a glimpse of the 
 stranger's face, but it was one he had never seen 
 before. She lugged the tray of a trunk to the 
 kitchen table and loaded it with finery. She gave 
 her friend a comforting dram from the bottle in the 
 closet and did not disdain a sip on her own account. 
 She rejoiced that they could go back together and 
 finish the frolic of the night, as she said, just as 
 Cook later confounded her by quoting " If I'd
 
 234 -4 GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 known this it's the two-horse rig we'd have fetched 
 wid us, Mike. It's them that drew the best load 
 that was ever rolled away from this post." She was 
 for loading up another tray. She excitedly argued 
 with Mike on the subject. The young lieutenant 
 suspicioned somebody, she said. She'd heard him 
 say so, and it wasn't Boston, bad scran to him, much 
 as she wished they could make it so appear. She 
 wished to get her valuables under Mike's roof be- 
 fore anything was discovered, in case she had to 
 skip. But Mike said they had all they could 
 possibly carry in that gale ; to come along now and 
 he'd take the next load when he brought her back 
 in the morning. And so Mike lighted his cigar and 
 hurled away the match, and the precious pair went 
 forth into the night, leaving Maynard to plan what 
 should be their reception on their return. The entire 
 visit occupied not more than ten or fifteen minutes. 
 By a quarter-past one Maynard was back in his 
 room, trembling a bit with excitement and joy, and, 
 reseating himself at his desk, he was making a mem- 
 orandum of Bridget's words and the stranger's 
 appearance, when startled by Mary's awful cry on 
 the lower floor of the house adjoining. 
 
 Maynard's discoveries had been supplemented by 
 those of Cook. The burglars had been admitted 
 into the house, doubtless by Bridget, and by way of
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 335 
 
 the kitchen. The window was left open and the 
 latch had been snapped off to give the other im- 
 pression, but Cook's keen eyes had detected the 
 fraud. No chisel, no implement had been inserted 
 from without, for the cotton stuffing showed no 
 signs of it whatever, as it infallibly would have 
 done had the window been forced. Bridget had 
 unquestionably brought about the heavy, stupor-like 
 sleep of her mistress. When Mary came that even- 
 ing for the glass of fresh spring water which Mrs. 
 Barry always had at her bedside, as well as to renew 
 the water in which her medicines were dissolved, 
 Bridget, as she well remembered, had the pitcher 
 ready. It was easy for the latter to have slipped 
 in one of the glasses a tablet or two of colorless 
 morphia. Its faintly bitter taste was neutralized by 
 that of the medicine itself, but that could not 
 destroy the effect. Indeed, among the unconsumed 
 effects at the bottom of one of Bridget's Saratogas, 
 was found a little vial containing some half a 
 dozen cube-like tablets which Dr. Pease promptly 
 declared to be morphia. 
 
 Mrs. Stannard had still more to tell. Captain 
 Gregg had gone to Kansas City to see some pre- 
 sumably stolen property that had been captured 
 there by the police, and was believed to be part of 
 the Fort Russell plunder, and from there he tele-
 
 236 A GARRISON TANGLE 
 
 graphed that the first thing shown him was Mrs. 
 Freeman's watch, injured. Mrs. Gregg's was found 
 at another pawn-shop, but the rings, pins and other 
 costly jimcracks were Ftill missing. Dungan's place 
 in town had been ransacked, but to no purpose. 
 The silver had probably been broken up before this. 
 Mr. Cook had come to talk with her major about 
 the business. Cook believed those two close- 
 mouthed parties whom he had arrested were mem- 
 bers of some gang of professionals who had been 
 compelled to leave their favorite fields of operation 
 in the distant East, and were merely keeping their 
 hand in here on the far frontier. Their only hold 
 on Bridget was through her putative cousin, Mike, 
 a bad character at best, though not a " cracksman." 
 Her letters from good families in St. Louis, which 
 she had so confidently exhibited to Mrs. Barry in 
 response to the advertisement for a cook, proved to 
 be forgeries, but also pointed to the probability of 
 her being familiar with names, localities, etc., in 
 that city. So that was where the police were now 
 working. Meanwhile Bridget, Mike, and the silent 
 pair brought back from the border land of Missouri, 
 were languishing behind the bars. Further proof 
 was needed. 
 
 But nothing yet had been seen or heard of " Bos- 
 ton." If they could find him, Mr. Cook said, they
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 237 
 
 stood a big chance of learning who the others were. 
 They were doubtless wanted in more places than 
 one, and a goodly reward might possibly be paid. 
 Mrs. Barry did not show this part of the letter to 
 Nathalie, nor did she read it. The girl shrank at 
 any mention of the fellow, and yet had assured her 
 friend that she had no idea whatever whither he 
 had fled, or where he was now in hiding, and that 
 was enough for Mrs. Barry. 
 
 But there was a part of the long, long letter Mrs. 
 Barry did read, and her gentle eyes more than once 
 glanced up from the page and sought the flushing 
 face beside her. 
 
 " Mr. Maynard improves rapidly now and picks 
 up every day. The doctors say his eyesight will be 
 restored all right, and that he will soon be quite 
 well again, but he was badly and painfully burned 
 for all that, and has suffered as keenly as he has 
 uncomplainingly. Miss Maynard is still on guard 
 over him, and some people are inconsiderate enough 
 to say that they think that the way she watches 
 every word and motion of his callers, and strives to 
 forestall his replies, is getting decidedly tiresome. 
 They wish they didn't have to see Mr. Maynard 
 through his sister. Colonel Atherton has been 
 called to department headquarters for consultation, 
 and will doubtless go thence to Chicago to join
 
 238 -4 GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 Mrs. Atherton, so you will probably see him before 
 you go South. Major Stannard is in command 
 meanwhile, and, as we are now under the same 
 roof, we see more of the Maynards than anybody 
 else, and Luce (her major) says he believes Maynard 
 would be all right in a few days if ' that old maid 
 sister of his would only clear out and go home,' but 
 Luce always has something hateful to say of old 
 maids." 
 
 " She is always downstairs when the orderly 
 comes with the letters. She always reads over the 
 address of those for her brother, and only through 
 her do his letters reach him. Luce snorts angrily 
 and * says things', more than I like to tell you. He 
 thinks she would even assume control of her 
 brother's correspondence, and that she doesn't at all 
 like it now that he is permitted to read his own 
 letters. This morning Mr. Maynard said to me : 
 * The doctor tells me that to-morrow I may use my 
 hand a little, and the first thing I do will be to 
 write Mrs. Barry to thank her and Miss Baird for 
 the lovely letters they wrote me,' whereupon Miss 
 Maynard instantly spoke up. ' Why, Konald, I'd 
 be only too glad to write for you any time,' but he 
 as promptly said these were matters that he pre- 
 ferred not to delegate, and I could easily see that 
 she was much nettled. So you will be getting 
 loiters in a dayjpr two "
 
 A GARRISON T ANGLE. 339 
 
 And they did. Mrs. Barry's was a short, pain- 
 fully written, three-page missive, but it delighted 
 her greatly, and she wished to read it at once to 
 Nathalie, but the girl had vanished. " Gone to 
 read her own letter in her own room," said Mrs. 
 Barry, with a smile that spoke volumes of hope and 
 sympathy and interest, and she would allow no dis- 
 turbance of the supposed maiden meditation for full 
 two hours. Then as Nathalie returned not, Mrs. 
 Barry became anxious, and tapped at the communi- 
 cating door. 
 
 They were to start for the South that very night. 
 The trunks had been packed, and many prepara- 
 tions made in the morning, but much remained to 
 be done, yet there sat Nathalie at her open window, 
 gazing afar out over the dancing, sparkling waters 
 of the lake, her eyes brimming with tears. 
 
 "Mayn't I know what he had to say to my 
 Nathalie ?" asked Mrs. Barry, her tones full of fond 
 interest, her fragile white hand placed caressingly 
 on the bonny head. 
 
 For answer the girl took the hand in both her 
 own and buried her face upon it. It was some little 
 time before she could trust herself to speak, but 
 first she made her friend take "an easy-chair, while 
 she herself once more knelt in the old confiding 
 way, buried her head in Mrs. Barry's lap, and then
 
 240 4 GARRISON TANGLE 
 
 placed in her hand the little letter with the well- 
 known Cheyenne postmark. 
 
 " Am I to read it, Nathalie ?" was the question. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Slowly Mrs. Barry opened the carefully written 
 pages. Every word and line seemed eloquent of 
 the pain and difficulty with which it was penned ; 
 but there was no halting, no stumbling, no hesitat- 
 ing in what he had to say. A more outspoken, 
 manly, straightforward appeal Mrs. Barry had 
 never read. 
 
 " MY DEAR Miss BAIRD : I thank you for all you say 
 in your letter. It was a sad disappointment to me 
 that I could not see you and dear Mrs. Barry be- 
 fore you left, but the doctor says I might not have 
 been able to see even could you have come. 
 
 "Nor could I have said perhaps what I must say 
 now that 1 love you with all my heart and soul, 
 and that I long to hear from you that I may hope 
 very soon you will be my wife. 
 
 " Nathalie, in these precious lines you write me 
 you speak of honor and gratitude, and tell me you 
 will always pray for my happiness. I pray for 
 more. I do not want your gratitude. I beg you in 
 your answer to forget that night and never again 
 to speak of me as the savior of your life. I prize 
 your honor, but I crave your love. And as for 
 nappiness, you and you alone can give it. They 
 tell me you go South within a very few days. Be- 
 fore you start may I not have the answer I hope for 
 pray for long for ? 
 
 " Devotedly yours, 
 
 MAYNAKE."
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 241 
 
 Twice did Airs. Barry read this over, one hand 
 straying as she did so over the beautiful bowed 
 head. Then, laying the letter on the dressing table, 
 she bent low over the little pink ear that peeped 
 through the rippling strands of bright golden hair. 
 
 "And the answer, Nathalie?" she whispered. 
 " I am sure there can be only one." 
 
 No reply. 
 
 " You have answered, haven't you ? You know 
 we go so soon." 
 
 " I had to yes." 
 
 " And it was yes? Nathalie, I'm so glad " 
 
 " Mrs. Barry Mrs. Barry ! " was the reply, as 
 the girl burst into a passion of tears. " How could 
 it be yes? Have you forgotten her his sweet- 
 heart? his promised wife at home? Have you 
 forgotten my shame and misery ? Have you 
 forgotten him ? No !" she cried, springing to her 
 feet, her arms uplifted, her head thrown wildly 
 back. " Xo ! With that horror hanging over me I 
 am fit to be no man's wife, and my answer was JVof" 
 Then face forward she threw herself upon the bed, 
 sobbing in utter desolation of spirit. 
 
 Two days later that answer was in his hands, and 
 when, in bitter disappointment, stunned and sorrow- 
 ing, he would have turned to Grace as though for 
 explanation, she had left the house. She, too, had 
 received a letter that filled her with dismay.
 
 242 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 CHAPTER' XVII. 
 
 CONTRARY to explanation, Ronald Maynard did 
 not apply for leave of absence when once more fully 
 able to move about. Miss Maynard had gone at 
 last, a peremptory summons from her father being 
 given as the cause, he needing her services and re- 
 ceiving benefit from them far more than did his son. 
 Colonel and Mrs. Atherton were home from Chi- 
 cago, and regimental work went briskly on. Four 
 troops had been warned for duty in the Big- Horn 
 country and were packing for the start. Major and 
 Mrs. Stannard were still the guests of the Athertons, 
 but, insurance matters being settled, Mrs. Stannard 
 was soon to depart for the East to replenish her 
 wardrobe. Everybody in the th, from colonel 
 down to the children, was making very much of 
 Maynard, or would have done so but for the pro- 
 found sadness and melancholy that seemed to op- 
 press him. He was able to ride every day. He 
 went about his drills and duties, but he could not be 
 coaxed to the hops and dances and concerts. His 
 father was very ill, he said, and failing so fast that
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 243 
 
 he, Ronald, could take no part in garrison gayeties. 
 He went to Dana, whose troop was to go to the 
 field, and offered to exchange with him, but Dana 
 loved field duty and would none of it. The Barrys, 
 with Miss Baird, had journeyed down the Mississippi 
 and over to Havana, and were now resting among 
 the pines of Southern Alabama, and, except by Mrs. 
 Gregg, the famous night of burglaries was rarely 
 mentioned in the press of other topics of more re- 
 cent interest, when one evening new impetus was 
 given to the whole matter by the tidings that a 
 famous thief catcher had come out from the East 
 armed with requisitions for the silent pair of pro- 
 fessionals in jail, whom he recognized, by the descrip- 
 tions sent to the police of the big cities, as promi- 
 nent members of a gang that despoiled a great 
 metropolitan bank two years before. If discharged 
 for lack of evidence in Wyoming, they would be 
 instantly rearrested on this other charge. 
 
 But Bridget, said the great man, was not one of 
 the original gang. She was a "Western product, an 
 exile from St. Louis, whither Dungan's trail had 
 been followed back and his police record thoroughly 
 examined. Mike and his cousin, however, proved 
 game too small for a hunter of the New York man's 
 caliber. They were merely the catspaws. The case 
 was to come up for trial within the week, but with
 
 244 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 the morrow's sun there was excitement in good 
 earnest in the prairie city. With the ease of long 
 habit the experts had sawed their selfish way out of 
 jail, leaving Mike and Bridget to rage at their de- 
 fection, and to bear alone the odium of their crime. 
 To the wrath of the Eastern official and the stupe- 
 faction of the sheriff, the birds had flown, and left 
 no trace behind. 
 
 But now Bridget began to give tongue, and a 
 sharp one it proved to be. Hitherto some fear or 
 favor had made her dumb as to the antecedents of 
 the pair and the circumstances that drew them to- 
 gether. Now, it seems, that having considerable 
 negotiable booty stored away, the two had pledged 
 their knightly word to Bridget that they would de- 
 fray all expenses of her defense and Mike's if they 
 would but stoutly deny all previous knowledge of 
 them, and this they had done, claiming to know 
 them only as gentlemen who visited Mike's saloon 
 and were most liberal with their money. Then, it 
 transpired that one of them had paid Miss O'Meara 
 flattering attentions attentions that turned her 
 head and brought her thrice in one week in town, 
 decked in finery that had seen better days, and 
 wearers, in St. Louis. To him, in answer to ques- 
 tion, she told all she knew concerning the valuables 
 of the garrison. The officers and men were all
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 245 
 
 away. Why should not the cracksmen turn an. 
 honest penny at their old craft instead of ruotiug 
 here while the big cities were being searched for 
 them ? Bridget made a clean breast of it, now that 
 she had found her own case hopeless ; while the 
 prime movers, the tempters, the only ones who had 
 profited a penny's worth by the robberies, had got 
 off scot free. " 'Twas them that persuaded her, 
 through false promises and flattery, to ' dope ' both 
 Mrs. JBany and Mary," to let them in at the kitchen 
 door, and to profess utter ignorance of the crime. 
 They were then to share alike after the sale of the 
 booty, but all she and Mike had got as their share 
 was the jail, with the penitentiary ahead. 
 
 Again did Cook and the sheriff eagerly ask the 
 same question, "But how about Boston ?" And this 
 was something she could not answer, nor could 
 Mike. All either could say was that, after the row 
 at the Empire, Boston was brought in a hack to 
 Mike's place, where he had been a frequent visitor 
 for some little time previous, and Mike hid him away 
 in the back room of a wing of his house, and there, 
 too, under his roof, were temporarily secreted these 
 same fellows who later were so silent about them- 
 selves, but so dangerous meantime to Boston, to 
 Mike and to Bridget. 'Twas Mike got Maloney to go 
 out to the fort for the young lady of whom Boston
 
 046 A GARRISON TANQLE. 
 
 bragged he could get money for somebody had to 
 come in and pay for his lodging and keep and the 
 poor girl had indeed come and had raised the money 
 for him, and if Mike hadn't taken care of it for Bos- 
 ton the others would have got it, for Bridget heard 
 them u abusing him fearful." The moment he was 
 well enough to move, Boston had slipped away, and 
 that was the last seen of him. But meantime the 
 burglary had taken place, and then the fire, and 
 Bridget's downfall was complete. 
 
 All this, of course, was duly carried to Atherton, 
 who was an interested listener, and all this did May- 
 nard learn direct from Cook, for the question of the 
 identity of Boston and his relation to Nathalie 
 Baird had become vital in Maynard's eyes. Through 
 him in great measure had the girl he loved been 
 cleared of all suspicion of complicity in or knowl- 
 edge of the burglaries. Through him, God willing 
 and helping, she should be shown to the men and 
 women of that garrison, especially the women, and 
 more especially Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Raymond, as 
 one so pure and good and noble that no one of their 
 number could ever again think ill of her, and to do 
 this he must solve the problem of her strange rela- 
 tionship to that unprepossessing stranger. 
 
 For Nathalie's letter had well nigh made him 
 desperate. It was brevity itself. It was almost
 
 A GARRISON TAN OLE. 247 
 
 bitter in its hopelessness. " Even had you no ties 
 of your own," she wrote, " I have been and for all 
 I know may still be so bound that the cruelest 
 suspicions have attached to me, and, though you are 
 generous, magnanimous, and make no allusion to 
 this, I know you know it, and I can be wife to no 
 man." 
 
 What she meant by ties of his own, other than 
 those that drew him to the father and sister at home, 
 he did not understand. Never for a moment did he 
 dream that Grace had gone so far as to make 
 Nathalie believe that there was a Jove affair an 
 engagement with some girl whom he had known 
 long before his meeting with her. "What must be 
 done was to find that man Boston if alive, or the 
 proofs of it if he were dead, and on this matter he 
 talked long and eagerly with Cook, who could give 
 little encouragement. 
 
 " If Miss Baird has no idea what has become of 
 him I'm sure I haven't," said the man from Denver, 
 with cold-blooded, matter-of-fact and professional 
 bluntness. "You dropped on to a mighty good 
 piece of evidence by a streak of very good luck, 
 Mr. Maynard. Perhaps your luck will hold out 
 still longer. I hope it may." 
 
 All the same he thought it wouldn't, and was 
 willing to bet; for Cook had his weaknesses as well
 
 248 ^ GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 as other men. If he couldn't find Boston how 
 would a stripling lieutenant be able to ? 
 
 June came and with it a summons that Maynard 
 could not but have expected, yet that grieved him 
 sorely. " Come at once. Failing fast," were the 
 brief words of his sister's dispatch, and Atherton 
 kindly laid his hand upon the young officer's 
 shoulder. 
 
 " I hate to think of this sorrow coming to you 
 after all you've been through, Maynard," he said, 
 " and I would say I hope you may find your father 
 better, but that I fear more than I can hope. At 
 least he has lived to know how worthily you have 
 borne the name and how proud we all are of you." 
 
 Ah, if the father could but hear those words, 
 thought poor Maynard, as the train swiftly bore 
 him eastward, with what love and pride would he 
 not welcome him now, his only boy. 
 
 But hours before the still swifter trains of the 
 Eastern railways whirled him along past Erie's 
 wave and the mirror-like reaches of the familiar 
 old canal, the father's ears were deaf to all earthly 
 music, and Grace was weeping over the wasted 
 hand still clasped in hers. Together, side by side, 
 as chief mourners, walked the brother and sister 
 behind the flag-draped coffin when they neared the 
 grave. Convulsively she clung to Ronald, sobbing
 
 A QARRISON TANGLE. 249 
 
 and unnerved, as the comrades of the Grand Army 
 fired their volleys over the veteran's bier. Plain- 
 tively she hovered about him during the days he 
 remained there, settling the affairs of his father's 
 humble estate, and then he told her that personal 
 business would compel him to leave for awhile, but 
 she would have her aunt, and Gertrude By the 
 way, where was Gertrude ? She had not been to 
 the house, he had not seen her since the day of the 
 funeral, and then only for a minute. Grace merely 
 "didn't know." "She came much less frequently 
 of late," and Eon aid vaguely felt that it was better 
 so, yet wondered at the cause. 
 
 And now at last the sister asked no question, in- 
 terposed no objection to his going. Well she knew 
 that the deep sorrow in his brave young face 
 was there before their father's death, and that 
 much of it was her doing. Well she knew that 
 she had that to answer for which he never yet 
 suspected. Well she knew that, should he learn 
 that in her overweening sense of her duty in the 
 case, she had blackened the good name of Nathalie 
 JBaird in her revelation to Captain Walters, her 
 brother's love would go as had the old faith and 
 trust. He was master now. What would he say 
 when the whole truth came to light ? 
 
 Two days later Maynard was at the store of a
 
 250 ^ GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 Mr. "Williams in a charming little New England 
 village, and had sent in to the office, with his card, 
 a letter of introduction from Major Barry. The 
 face that greeted him was that of a man bowed 
 with care and sorrow, but it lighted with frank 
 kindliness as it glanced up from the letter, and with 
 a cordial hand-clasp "Williams bade him welcome. 
 
 An hour later, the day's work done, the bowed 
 form of the broken country merchant and the erect, 
 athletic figure of the young officer strolled away 
 together in the twilight to a grove " where Nath- 
 alie used to walk," and here Maynard told his 
 story. Before it was half finished his one auditor 
 had covered his grave face with his hands, and, 
 bowed almost double, was shedding silent tears. 
 
 " "When first Nathalie came to Kussell she was 
 the picture of health and happiness," said Maynard. 
 " One night, however, after she had been there 
 about a month I saw a prowler under her window, 
 a tall, heavily built stranger in civilian dress. He 
 threw pebbles at the window and hoarsely called 
 to her * Nathalie.' She was frightened and fled. 
 She had been leaning out of the window when he 
 first appeared. I challenged and grabbed him, and 
 he knocked me flat as though I were a boy. Only 
 a day or two later, a man strongly resembling this 
 was at the head of a gang of street loafers that took
 
 A OAHR1SON TANGLE. 251 
 
 the horses of a patrol of which I was in command, 
 and dashed out on the street. We halted them and 
 I hurled the ringleader, who had evidently been 
 drinking, out of his saddle. He was stunned and 
 carried into a doctor's office. Xo one knew him 
 except as ' Boston,' and all agreed that he had been 
 there in Cheyenne but a short time, and had gam- 
 bled away what money he had. He was still sense- 
 less, and as the doctor opened his shirt a silk bag 
 was lying on his breast, swung around his neck by 
 a silken string. On it, in monogram, were worked 
 two letters, as I could painly see, an H. and "W. A 
 few days later this same man waylaid Miss Baird 
 away out on the prairie. She came home looking 
 badly unnerved ; yet that very night, late, stole out 
 of the house and met him, and probably gave him 
 money. Again they met, though she would no 
 longer venture out on the prairie. He dared to 
 come into the post after the garrison had taken the 
 field. Again he demanded money and got it all 
 she had left. Mrs. Barry told me that Miss Baird 
 had so confessed to her. All this had been seen by 
 ladies, officers and soldiers, and people declared this 
 rough-looking man to be her lover, and her good 
 name suffered. Shortly afterward, early one morn- 
 ing, an Irish saloon employee came out to the post, 
 shouting aloud that he had a letter for the young
 
 252 A GARRISON" TANGLE. 
 
 lady at Major Barry's, and she came down to him, 
 and a little later walked three miles to town where 
 the writer of the letter was lying, wounded in some 
 fight the night before, and he again demanded 
 money of her, and she sent a way out to the post for 
 twenty-five dollars, and then they let her go. Her 
 health had suffered seriously, as had her good name. 
 The Barrys begged her to reveal the name and 
 whereabouts of this stranger that they might put 
 an end to his blackmailing, but she implored them 
 to do nothing, ask for nothing. She had given her 
 word not to betray him. But, Mr. Williams, she 
 implored Mrs. Barry to send her home, here, because 
 this was the one place that fellow dare not follow 
 her. There can be but one explanation. He has 
 committed here or hereabouts some crime. He is 
 a fugitive from justice, and that brave, devoted 
 girl, for old time's sake and the love she bears those 
 who were good to her in by-gone days, is shielding 
 him to this day to the detriment of her own peace, 
 happiness and reputation. Mr. "Williams, will you 
 Ifft the burden from her life and tell me who this 
 man is or was ?" 
 
 ''God forgive him! God pity him!" was the 
 heart-broken answer. " It is my poor wife's favorite 
 Nathalie's own cousin my handsome, reckless 
 boy, Harry," and the poor father buried his face in
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 253 
 
 his arms as though, in his pain and misery, he 
 longed to hide it from the world. It was some time 
 before he could speak with sufficient self control, 
 and then he told his story. 
 
 " Hal used to vow when he was a big, stalwart 
 young fellow and she a shy little schoolgirl in sun- 
 bonnet and short dresses, that Nathalie and he were 
 to be married some day. He was always fond of 
 her, but he was wild as a hawk and invariably in 
 some kind of trouble. He went to Boston to work, 
 and I can't tell you the whole story drink, 
 gambling, appeals to me for money more drink, 
 more gambling, more appeals for money, more 
 trouble through pool buying, and God knows what 
 all. Then one night he came back here unex- 
 pectedly, hunted and fearsome. He had some talk 
 with Nathalie, for she came in crying. Next day 
 he was gone. Then came the detectives. He had 
 forged my name and his employer's, too. He was 
 caught, tried, sentenced to prison, and after a year 
 escaped. That was the last of him until now. 
 Long: ago we used to sav Nathalie was the only one 
 
 * ? 
 
 who could ever influence him, and long ago she 
 promised his poor mother ever to be a friend to 
 him, and now, even to her, my son has been a curse, 
 and through thick and thin she has striven to pro- 
 tect him. My God, but it's hard it's hard !' ?
 
 354 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 So Maynard was right in his theory, after all. 
 All the homeward way he pondered over what he 
 had learned, striving to settle on the plan by which, 
 without bringing further misery to the stricken 
 father, Nathalie's name might be cleared at Rus- 
 sell her real relation to this outcast and scapegrace 
 established. If it were only possible to trace the 
 fellow, and bring him to book. There would be 
 comfort in that, he thought, for his heart was hot 
 against the scoundrel who could bring such shame 
 to the loving ones at home, such shame and torment 
 and peril to an innocent and almost defenseless girl. 
 Of his own will, the father had given Maynard a 
 written statement of the case to place in Barry's 
 hands, and already Maynard had despatched it to 
 him, while taking a copy to be used with Atherton 
 at Russell. 
 
 Once more he alighted at the familiar old station 
 and made his way to the cottage that was now 
 Grace's home. All the brother's share in his father's 
 little estate he had deeded to her. It was after sun- 
 set, and the soft hush of twilight had fallen on the 
 beautiful valley. Even the drowsy hum of insects 
 had died away, and only by the mellow tolling of 
 the distant church bell, and the soothing plash of 
 the river, sweeping over its rocky bed, was the 
 silence broken. The townsfolk seemed mainly
 
 A GARJU8OJT TANGLE. 255 
 
 gathered at the depot across the rapid stream, for 
 the broad, shaded streets, soft and dusty, lay un- 
 wheeled, untrodden before him. Over on the 
 playground a knot of children had gathered in 
 absorbed attention about some elder, for the glad 
 young voices were hushed. The long, shady walk 
 before him was deserted. The silver shield of the 
 growing moon was already gleaming high aloft. 
 The stars began to twinkle in the eastward heaven. 
 The low rumble of some far-away freight train was 
 borne for a moment on the breathless air, then all 
 again was peace and silence. "Wrapped in thought, 
 Maynard walked slowly toward the outskirts of the 
 village, seeing no one whom he knew since crossing 
 the old bridge at the Mohawk ; turned mechanically 
 to the west as he reached a cross street as deeply 
 shaded as that by which he came, and there some- 
 thing sprang up in his heart that gave him a sudden 
 feeling of hesitation, if not embarrassment. This 
 was the street on which stood Gertrude Bonner's 
 home. Bowered among rose and lilac bushes, ami 
 pretty trees, it lay only a few rods beyond that 
 little rise in front of him. That light, twinkling 
 even now through the foliage, must be in an upper 
 window close under the roof tree. For an instant 
 be wished he had taken the other side of the street, 
 then scorned the thought as utterly unworthy. 
 Why should he shrink from meeting her 2
 
 256 -^ GARRIUON TANGLE. 
 
 Briskly now he strode on, his head erect. If, as 
 often in the old furlough and graduation leave days, 
 she should be at the gate, or, seated on the piazza, 
 watching for his coming, he would greet her cordi- 
 ally, kindly as ever. He reached the crest of the 
 little rise. He could now see the dim reach of the 
 path down along the westward slope, bordered by 
 shade trees and shrubbery, and there, right at the 
 gate, still some hundred feet away, yet distinctly 
 visible there was the same pretty, slender form he 
 remembered so well, clad in its simple white gown. 
 Doubtless there would be the same little knot of 
 ribbon at the throat, the same bright color in the 
 rounded cheeks, the same joyous smile about the 
 rosy lips and shining eyes, the same frank welcome 
 of the plump little hand. He had wired Grace of 
 his coming, so, just as of old, here was Gertrude on 
 the lookout. Yet, although his quick, elastic foot- 
 steps brought him every instant nearer, and by this 
 time should be audible, she did not stir, she did not 
 look toward him. She was not on watch for him 
 at all, for her head was drooping v her eyes down- 
 cast, her back was toward him, and all her thoughts 
 were riveted on another man. 
 
 Yes, there at the gate on which as children they 
 had swung together, Ronald and Gertrude ; there, 
 talking in low, rapturous tones was a youth, whom
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 257 
 
 Maynard had never seen before, yet recognized at 
 once as the new young man, who in March had 
 come to teach the village school, to whose humble 
 salary he had already pledged himself to subscribe, 
 and that the master had been teaching to good 
 effect, and something far more sweet and thrilling 
 than grammar and rhetoric was apparent at a 
 glance. A black coat sleeve slid about the slender 
 white waist, when Maynard was not ten yards away, 
 and then, all blushes and confusion, the pair started 
 at his cheery salutation. 
 
 " Why, Gertrude, I'm just in time to tender con- 
 gratulations which I do with all my heart, Mr. 
 Crowe," said he, cordially extending his hand. 
 
 It was taken somewhat gingerly. The happy 
 man could not at once frame his reply. Gertrude 
 rose to the occasion. 
 
 " Well, we've been wondering when you would 
 condescend, Ronald, and I " 
 
 " Condescend, Gertie ? Why, this is the first I 
 knew of it." 
 
 " It is ? Why, I wrote to Grace weeks ago, 
 while she was with you, and told her to tell you 
 first thing." 
 
 And Grace had got that letter, for he saw the en- 
 velope and knew the superscription, and remembered 
 how suddenly and precipitately she had left the
 
 358 A GARRISON TANGLR. 
 
 room. Grace had got that letter and never yet had 
 told him. What could have been her object ? Why 
 skould she have been silent? She kne\v his whole 
 heart was wrapped up in Nathalie Baird, and that, 
 except in a kind and friendly way, Gertrude was 
 nothing to him. Why should she have concealed 
 this? 
 
 And' then, all on a sudden, Nathalie's words 
 flashed across his memory. 
 
 " Even had you no ties of your own." 
 His steps were slower, his face sadder now by 
 far, but from no chagrin at thought of how readily 
 the sweetheart of his schoolboy days had listened 
 to the first pleadings of another love. It was not 
 that he had lost her. It was that the old, fond 
 faith in the sister he had so long loved and almost 
 as long revered and served, was shattered once and 
 for all. And she who stood to welcome him once 
 more to the little home that had been his } saw it 
 ere be spoke a single word.
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 359 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 ONCE more was the old post of Fort Russell left 
 to the care of an infantry guard. Once more were 
 the troopers all afield and rejoicing in the vigorous, 
 open-air life they led among the billowing foothills, 
 the beautiful, sheltered valleys and the sparkling 
 streams of the Big Horn. A summer camp had 
 been established, and with this as the rendezvous 
 and rallying point, Atherton was keeping his stal- 
 wart horsemen scouting far and near, from the 
 Platte at Fetterman to the Yellowstone away to 
 the north. But Indians were seldom to be found. 
 Sitting Bull and his starving followers were beyond 
 the British line, closely watched by the frontier 
 police. Crazy Horse was dead, bayoneted in wild 
 effort to escape from his guard. Gall, Rain-in-the- 
 Face, and other notables of the Sioux nation, had fed 
 fat their ancient grudge against the white soldier 
 when Custer's hapless column withered away before 
 the fierce blaze of their encircling fire. It was a 
 holiday summer for the th, a veritable picnic in 
 the heart of the glorious country over which for
 
 260 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 two years previous they rode only with strong bat- 
 talions, with scouts thrown out in front, in rear, on 
 every side, looking any instant for attack in force. 
 Some of the ladies had actually broken up house- 
 keeping at the fort and gone those rough hundreds 
 of miles in army ambulances to join their lords in 
 the tented field, and life at Russell was inane and 
 stupid. 
 
 But when the Indians drew away and sought the 
 shelter of the agencies, the " hustler " and the horse- 
 thief began to infest the land. One night a dozen 
 of Gregg's best horses all of Sergeant Donnelly's 
 patrol were spirited away from the bivouac at the 
 headwaters of the Mini Pusa, and driven, as the 
 trail showed, away toward the Sweet water, and 
 there it was all split up and lost among the breaks 
 and ranges of the cattle kings toward Rawlins and 
 Rock Springs. Gregg boiled over with wrath 
 when three days later, nearly worn out, his little 
 squad of troopers reached the main camp afoot. 
 Ray's troop was ordered out at once and bidden to 
 raid the country far and wide until he found out 
 where those horses were gone, and Atherton chose 
 Ray because stockmen, cattle men, scouts and 
 Indians all knew him, and malefactor* feared him, 
 and with Ray's troop went Maynard, detached at 
 his own earnest request, and allowed t fill a 
 temporary vaoaney.
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 " It will do you good, Maynard," said the colonel 
 kindly, "and give you some valuable experience. 
 Yes. I'm glad to have you go." 
 
 It was mid-July. The summer heat was fierce, 
 and the scorching wind blew pitilessly over the 
 desolate sagebrush deserts beyond the Devil's Gate, 
 and Ray and his fifty loj^al blue jackets had ridden 
 long marches from the time they left the cool 
 shades of the Piney and the Clear Fork. But little 
 cared they, those Arizona-seasoned soldiers, for 
 blistering suns or stifling alkali dust. They were 
 bent on the recovery of those horses, no matter 
 though the thieves had three days and nearly a 
 hundred miles the start. They had marched 
 through the Sweetwater valley the previous year, 
 and had seen many a hard-looking character who 
 longingly eyed their clean-limbed bays. Ko man. 
 yet had ever ventured to " lift " a horse from Billy 
 Ray's picket, and it tickled the vanity of his troop^ 
 ers that they and not Gregg's should be sent to re- 
 cover Gregg's horses. The trail, though nearly five 
 days old when found, was still distinct, and Maynard 
 was getting many an hour of valuable lessons, for 
 Ray had taken more than a liking to the quiet, sad- 
 faced young fellow, and had no difficulty at all in 
 deeply interesting him in the work. Everybody in 
 the regiment seemed to know by this time that he
 
 362 ^ GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 had returned to them wearing the willow for 
 Nathalie Baird. There had been some days of woe- 
 ful, wordy battling at Russell, for the feud between 
 Mrs. Gregg and Mrs. Turner had involved others 
 besides their lords, and Atherton was glad of the 
 order that sent his whole command into the 
 mountains and foothills, and far away from the 
 snarls and tangles that seemed to have taken root 
 at the fort. Turner's grim, sad, sallow face grew 
 longer than ever, and even more than ever did he 
 seem to withdraw from the society of his fellows. 
 He, too, was thankful to get away from the post and 
 into the field. Up to the time the last of the regi- 
 ment marched from Russell, no trace had been found 
 of the runaway burglars, but their duped accomplices, 
 Michael and Bridget, had had their trial, been found 
 guilty of complicity at least, and were " doing time " 
 at Laramie. All doubt as to how the fire started 
 was at an end. The generally accepted theory was 
 that when Mike threw away the match with which 
 he lighted his cigar, it dropped, still glowing, in the 
 dust close to the basket in which Bridget kept her 
 kindling; the fierce draught through cracks and 
 crevices fanned its feeble glow into a blaze as the 
 precious pair left the premises; the blaze had 
 reached the tinder ; the basket of chips was soon 
 afire ; the flames leaped to the table, the dry, rough-
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 263 
 
 boarded partition, and then the bracket lamp of 
 brittle glass, filled with forbidden kerosene ; and 
 that, bursting, deluged the wood \vork with liquid 
 fire. This was the explanation accepted by the 
 duly organized board of survey. Everything con- 
 nected with the excitement of the springtide, there 
 fore, had been practically settled, except the 
 perennial squabbles in which Mrs. Turner was a 
 factor, and the question of Nathalie Baird's relation- 
 ship to the lamented " Boston," who had disappeared 
 as though from the face of the earth. 
 
 They were talking of that very fellow, were Ray 
 and Maynard, the day they forded the Sweet water 
 and struck out for the southward hills. Maynard 
 couldn't understand, he said, how men dared run off 
 with cavalry horses, because the U. S. brand on 
 the shoulder would stamp them at once as stolen 
 property. 
 
 "Why, bless your heart, Maynard," said Ray, 
 " that's no bar. Stealing Government property is 
 no crime in Wyoming, or anywhere else on the fron- 
 tier. Besides, all they've got to do is to touch up 
 that brand a little, and the II S becomes O 8, or a 
 toadstool, or some other equally transparent device. 
 But no jury ever convicts a citizen of stealing from 
 Uncle Sara, out in these parts at least. Why, it's 
 a feather in the cap of those fellows to run off our
 
 264 A GARRISON TANGLK 
 
 stock, and the gang that did this trick were no nov- 
 ices, nor were they few in number." 
 
 And that night proved the truth of Kay's con- 
 jecture. 
 
 Just before sunset, away in among the jagged 
 hills and ravines that hem the Sweet water valley on 
 the south, the dust-begrimed troop halted and dis- 
 mounted, while Kay .held brief converse with the 
 owners of a little "shack," one. of whom the captain 
 knew. He had served his time in the old regiment, 
 and, in common with all the other " old hands," 
 would do almost anything for Ray ; but now his 
 tongue was tied. Oh, he had seen nothing, heard 
 nothing. No horse thieves had been thereabouts. 
 His partner was sure of all these points also, and 
 even if they had seen or heard, it would be signing 
 their own death warrants to tell. No, neither man 
 could give any information. 
 
 But Ray's dark eyes never left the ex-soldier's 
 face. He read a secret there, and was watching his 
 opportunity. It came quickly, and while the part- 
 ner was taking a long, long pull at Ray's proffered 
 flask. 
 
 " There's a camp of 'em right in on the Rawlins 
 trail, somewhere about five miles ahead. Seven or 
 eight men and about a dozen horses some of yours,
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 265 
 
 sure," whispered the veteran, and the captain nodded 
 expressively. 
 
 At nine o'clock, despite the long day's march, 
 Kay's men swung readily into saddle again, and 
 away they went, every trooper guessing that the 
 quarry was somewhere among those heights to the 
 south, and wondering were they like their old-time 
 foemen, the Indians die-hards to a man. The moon 
 came floating into the starry sky from behind the 
 screen of old Laramie peak, and the wooded range 
 that tumbled across the eastward horizon. The 
 night wind went whispering over the hills and sift- 
 ing the dust-cloud that hovered above the column, 
 over the stunted sagebrush, and the jack-rabbits 
 trembled and shuddered in their burrows at the 
 dull, muffled tread of those two hundred hoofs. 
 Two miles away from the "shack" the trail grew 
 steep and tortuous, and Kay bade Maynard follow 
 slowly with the command, while he, with a chosen 
 sergeant, pushed ahead in the dim, fairy light, and 
 was speedily lost to view. 
 
 Another mile was passed without event. They 
 were riding up beside and along the bed of a stream 
 that the melting snows of the spring would send 
 tumbling in muddy torrent to the valley, but now 
 the channel was dry as the bordering bluffs. Not 
 a sound had been heard from the advance, yet May-
 
 266 
 
 nard knew they must be nearing the alleged camp, 
 and he wondered how his captain would settle mat- 
 ters with its desperado occupants. Silent as so 
 many specters, his men came filing along in his 
 tracks. There were no scabbards to rattle, no jing- 
 ling bit and chain, no clank of carbine against 
 canteen. Long years of Indian scouting had taught 
 these veterans what to carry and how to carry it, 
 so as to give least warning of their movements. 
 Only the muffled thud of horse hoofs told oacasion- 
 ally of the onward passage of a force of cavalry. 
 At steady walk they pressed along until Maynard's 
 watch said it was a quarter-past ten, and they had 
 traversed nearly five miles, and then a shadowy 
 form, horse and man, loomed up under the shoulder 
 of bluff in front, and a warning hand was raised. 
 
 "We're onto them, sir," whispered Sergeant 
 Burke, as Maynard reined up beside him and sig- 
 naled to the column to halt. " They're having a 
 regular jamboree right ahead about four hundred 
 yards. The captain says to come forward slowly, 
 and still as possible." 
 
 The word was whispered down the dusty column. 
 Again the weary horses started and the noiseless 
 march began. Presently there came from the dis 
 tant front "a sound of revelry by night " indeed, at 
 which the sergeant grinned sympathetically. 8ome
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 20? 
 
 where ahead there was a jovial gathering, a flicker 
 ing light, as though from a campfire, a bacchanalian 
 chorus, punctuated by occasional yells, and when 
 the foremost troopers reached and peered around 
 an elbow in tLe winding ravine, they saw a sight 
 that made their mouths water. Singing, smoking, 
 rollicking about a blazing fire, filling their cups at 
 a little keg, and tossing their contents, undiluted, 
 down their seasoned gullets, a full score of stalwart 
 fellows were having a carouse such as many of 
 Kay's devoted followers would have given a month's 
 pay to join for even a minute. Two white topped 
 wagons were halted in a little glade ; mules and 
 horses were tethered all around, and so absorbed 
 was the entire camp in its merriment that even the 
 dogs had not yet sniffed the coming foe. 
 
 " Box Elder Spring," whispered Sergeant Burke 
 to the young lieutenant, " and they must have ren- 
 dezvoused here from all over "West Wyoming." 
 
 And then, riding cautiously to them, an amused 
 grin on his handsome face, his white teeth gleaming 
 in the moonlight, came Captain Ray. 
 
 " Maynard, old boy, we're in big luck. If all the 
 horsethieves from Laramie to Lander, from Rawlins 
 to Rawhide Butte, ain't right here in caucus as- 
 sembled, may I never straddle a Kentucky-bred 
 horse again as long as I live. Gregg's quadruped*
 
 268 A GARRISON' 
 
 are all on t'other side of camp. We'll corral them 
 first, then you and I'll pay these gentlemen a social 
 call. We can't do anything to them, you know, 
 because military interference isn't tolerated in the 
 territories except in case of Indians. Like as not 
 we'd stir up some sheriff among these fellows and 
 he'd spring the law on us. We're no posse comitatus, 
 but vender's our horses all the same. Just dis- 
 mount, you men, till the moon gets behind that 
 cloud," he continued ; at which the foremost troopers 
 noiselessly slipped out of saddle, and all the long 
 column followed suit. 
 
 Ten minutes later, as noiselessly and circling well 
 away from the boisterous camp, the troop stole 
 away from the shadowy canon and, favored by the 
 darkening clouds, rode easily around to the southern 
 side. Here a dozen men dismounted and, following 
 Ray and Maynard, crept softly forward, and, speak- 
 ing in low, reassuring tones to the nearest horses of 
 the little herd, went swiftly from one to the other. 
 Each one recognized as a government "mount," 
 was quickly secured by a lariat loosely knotted 
 about the neck, and the transfer of what the captain 
 called the " stawk " back to the care of their old 
 masters was well nigh complete when out peeped 
 the moon again. A mule set up an unearthly bray, 
 a dog barked furiously, and some straggler from
 
 A GARRISON TANQLB. 262 
 
 the band of revelers gave one wild yell of warning, 
 instantly followed by a cry, " Cavalry, by God 1 
 Look out, fellers !" 
 
 There was a rush for the horses, a volley of oaths 
 and execrations, a scramble for saddles, and a show 
 of six-shooters, but above all the uproar one voice, 
 furious and merciless, rose dominant. 
 
 " Curse your traitor hide ! This is your doing, 
 Boston." Then followed a shot, a shriek for help, 
 another shot, and then, pistol in hand, Ray dashed 
 forward into the thick of the throng. 
 
 " Stop this !" he commanded. " Stop, or by God, 
 we'll take a hand. Bring up the troop, Maynard. 
 Grab that lunatic, some of you." 
 
 But with a spring like a cat the " lunatic," hia 
 pistol still smoking, threw himself astride a wiry 
 cow pony, and dashed away into the darkness. 
 Some of his gang ran for their horses and followed 
 suit. Others, stupefied, stood gazing up at Ray. 
 Others still were bending over a groaning, pros- 
 trate form. The firelight fell on the pallid, dis- 
 torted face, and Maynard knew it at a glance. 
 Here at last was Nathalie's tormentor. Here, shot 
 to death, lay " Boston." 
 
 A word from Ray had sent a dozen troopers in 
 pursuit of the murderer. Another word, and those 
 who remained, stunned and half sobered, were sur-
 
 270 4 GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 rounded and held by another squad of blue-shirted 
 troopers. Rough, yet tender hands bore the sink- 
 ing man closer to the fire and gave him stimulant. 
 He gazed miserably up one moment, searching 
 their faces as though in hope of some word of en- 
 couragement, and his eyes met Maynard's. He 
 knew him instantly, and his face, beading now 
 with the sweat of agony, took on an imploring 
 look. He strove to speak, and one of his fellows 
 turned and said : 
 
 "He want's to say something to you gentle- 
 men." 
 
 Then, dismounting, Ray and Maynard knelt be- 
 side the dying man. 
 
 " They've killed me," he almost sobbed. " They 
 knifed me at Cheyenne, months ago, because I swore 
 I'd have no part in that robbery. I've been a curse 
 to all of my people, but I wasn't that mean. I was 
 mean enough though to borrow every cent that 
 poor girl had at Russell. She was my cousin. 
 She did all she could to save me to make a man of 
 me She even borrowed money to lend to me, 
 but I've saved over a hundred I'd have paid it all 
 if God had let me live. It's all in that silk bag 
 round my neck. Lieutenant, you're a square man 
 I'm sorry I ever hurt you, but I had to, or get 
 caught under her window. I wouldn't bring harm
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 371 
 
 to her for the world. Shake hands on it, lieu- 
 tenant, and promise me you'll give it to her that 
 money It's all I've got. Shake." 
 
 And with his twitching hand in the firm grasp of 
 the young soldier, Boston died. 
 
 Another week, and with their recaptured horses 
 Ray and Maynard were again on duty with the 
 regiment and under orders for home, but before 
 the move began there came tidings that involved a 
 change in the personnel of the old regiment, and 
 one it could not welcome. Barry received his pro- 
 motion to a lieutenant-colonelcy, and a new number 
 gleamed in silver over the crossed sabers of his 
 forage-cap. It was hard to lose this true-hearted, 
 courteous soldier and gentleman from the th. 
 It was hard to think that Mrs. Barry would not 
 again return to them, for, one and all, men and 
 women both, they knew her influence for good, and 
 deplored their loss. There were quite a number, 
 therefore, who received the further news that came 
 with something akin to gratification : the other 
 regiment would not get the Barrys after all, for 
 Mrs. Barry's health would not admit of her going 
 to the extreme north, and knowing this, and need- 
 ing a new inspector-general just then, a dis- 
 tinguished division commander asked that the 
 recently promoted lieutenant-colonel be assigned
 
 272 ^ GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 to him for staff duty, and the war secretary was 
 pleased to say "Aye." The summer at Sea Girt 
 had been of benefit to both Mrs. Barry and Na- 
 thalie, especially the latter, who was beginning to 
 look wondrously well again, wrote Mrs. Barry, and 
 shyly, sweetly happy. " You must come and see 
 for yourself, Mr. Ronald Maynard," she wrote, and 
 that was something the bronzed and wiry warrior 
 meant to do the moment the summer's work was 
 done, and he could get the longed-for leave of 
 absence. 
 
 Very sad and touching, but grateful, were the 
 letters that came to him from the sorrowing house- 
 hold Henry Williams' kindred, in the placid New 
 England village ; yet even those letters breathed 
 something like relief from along-threatened shame. 
 It was as though the final taking off of that reck- 
 less, sin-stained wanderer had lifted from their 
 hearts a load of anxiety and dread. 
 
 Then there were Grace's letters, so changed from 
 all the old possessive, advisory, not to say manda- 
 tory, missives that used to come to him. Grace felt 
 her fall from grace far more keenly than her stub- 
 born pride would ever let her show. Grace main- 
 tained, to herself at least, that her course was justi- 
 fied by the circumstances, and would ultimately 
 have been justified in Ronald's eyes, but for
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 273 
 
 Gertrude's utterly unlocked for and incom- 
 prehensible defection. Had she but remained 
 faithful to her schoolgirl fondness for Eonald, 
 he would have been in honor bound, and, over 
 the resultant dovecote would Grace have hovered, 
 its self-appointed, self-sufficient guardian angel. 
 But with Gertrude the first to bolt there was an 
 end to any semblance of obligation on Ronald's 
 part. 
 
 She had faced him unflinchingly when at last 
 brought to bay and told that she had concealed from 
 him the fact of Gertrude's engagement. She admit- 
 ted it and declared that it was her wrath at Gertrude 
 that prompted it. She felt that, purely out of pique 
 because of Ronald's indifference, the girl had tempo- 
 rarily taken up with another admirer, but that it was 
 nothing more than a fancy from which Grace could 
 wean her when one again she resumed her sway at 
 home. But Grace had been away too long. The 
 young man had come to stay, and another of her 
 former vassals had declared independence. 
 
 And so, with both her former subjects in revolt, 
 Grace's home life seemed grown even narrower, 
 sadder than ever. With her loved father gone, she 
 had little to do but brood over the past and bewail 
 the present. People, good, church-going neighbors, 
 began to speak of her as embittered and morbid,
 
 274 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 and to upbraid her, in all kindliness of spirit, because 
 she became lax in attendance at prayer meetings 
 and the like, and?all the time the poor woman was ask- 
 ing herself what would Ronald say if he ever learned 
 that she had actually joined forces with that empty- 
 headed, frivolous creature at Fort Russell in war 
 against the good name of Nathalie Baird. Anger 
 blazed in his eyes when he wrung from her the ad- 
 mission that she had told Nathalie Baird that he 
 was virtually engaged to Gertrude Bonner, but it 
 was anger too deep for words. He would have no 
 scene under the roof that so long and until so recent 
 ly had sheltered his father's patient spirit, but he 
 turned from her in a silence that told her far more 
 thin any outburst of reproaches how utterly in hig 
 estimation she had fallen. 
 
 He never even wrote to her the particulars of 
 Williams' death. He bundled a newspaper into a 
 wrapper, and sent it without comment of any kind, 
 and she read it, little caring what confession he had 
 made to Ray and Maynard. She heard Gertrude's 
 clear young voice carroling like the lark in the joy 
 of her love, day after day, and the contrast of her 
 own gloom and desolation weighed more and more 
 heavily upon her. As the summer waned and the 
 boughs of the fruit trees began to droop with the 
 weight of their ripening load, she retired more and
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 275 
 
 more from public view, rarely appearing as of old 
 on the village street, or speaking masterfully at the 
 church societies. She was aging fast and growing 
 ill, and at last it was her aunt who wrote and bade 
 Ronald not to be slow in coming to them. 
 
 He showed the letter to Atherton, with an awed 
 look in his grave young face. Sister Grace had 
 ever seemed so strong, so far removed from human 
 ills or frailties, but there could be no mistaking the 
 nature of the summons. 
 
 " Better take a small escort and ride for Rock 
 Springs, Maynard ; wiring from Fetterman for your 
 leave," said the colonel, and Maynard did so. In 
 ten days he was home, shocked to see how aged and 
 ill his sister looked, and feeling now a sense of keen 
 sorrow and remorse that he had shown such deep 
 offense at her errors. After all, had she not devoted 
 years and years to him ? had she not been a loving 
 and faithful sister ? He knelt by her with sorrow- 
 ing heart and shining eyes, yet when he would have 
 told her of his regret, she checked him. 
 
 " Ronald," she whispered, " I want to see her. I 
 have a reason. I want her forgiveness." 
 
 " For what, Grace ?" 
 
 " For something I want you never to know until 
 time and Nathalie have taught you to forgive me 
 anything."
 
 27(J A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 Late one lovely October afternoon Mrs. Barry 
 reclined on her couch before the cheery blaze of a 
 bright wood-fire in their cozy flat, and near her sat 
 Ronald Maynard, older, sterner, graver looking than 
 in the stormy times at Russell, yet wonderfully im- 
 proved by the vigorous life in the sun and the wind 
 of the wide northwest. His brave young eyes were 
 shining with new hope and eagerness, however. 
 His heart was throbbing in his breast, for what Mrs. 
 Barry had to say thrilled him. 
 
 " She would never have said no, then, Ronald, 
 had she not believed you were in honor bound to 
 another girl even though you might have ceased 
 to love her ; and now that she knows the truth, and 
 now that people at Russell have written so fondly 
 and sweetly to her since they learned of Williams' 
 death, and all he said to you and to Captain Ray, 
 she's another girl. All her old joyous manner has 
 returned. Just wait till you Mercy ! There she 
 comes now, and it isn't time for an hour yet. Quick ! 
 Go into the dinning-room. Then, after she has 
 come in, let yourself into the hall andfgo straight 
 through into the parlor, and wait there till I call 
 you. It wouldn't be fair to surprise her this way. 
 She thinks you still in "Wyoming." 
 
 Promptly he obeyed. The portiere was still 
 slowly waving behind him when her quick, light
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. $77 
 
 footstep was heard as she hurriedly entered. He 
 could not resist stopping one instant to hear the 
 sweet tones of the voice he loved, but Mrs. Barry 
 spoke first. 
 
 " Why, Priscilla mine, what brings you back so 
 soon ? I thought you were to go " 
 
 " Oh, I was, but just down the avenue I met our 
 postman, and he smiled and said he had letters 
 and I opened mine It said It was from Mrs. 
 Freeman It told me Oh, let me light your lamp 
 and then you read it." 
 
 " But I'd rather hear it at once, Nat. It must 
 have been something important to bring you back 
 so soon." 
 
 " It said It's about " But even now she could 
 not trust herself to speak his name. Her eyes 
 were dilating, her soft cheeks flushed. " Mrs. 
 Barry," she impulsively asked, "is it so? Did 
 you know his sister was very ill and he'd been 
 sent for ?'* 
 
 " Not until very lately, Nat." 
 
 Without ever throwing off her hat and gloves, 
 the girl was again on her knees, and gazing seareh- 
 ingly into the gentle face on the pillow. 
 
 " Who wrote 2" she asked. 
 
 * He did to Major Barry. I can't call him 
 colonel yet. You know he had written to you b-
 
 378 -A- GARRISON TANQLB. 
 
 fore, and your turn, by your own directions, only 
 comes " 
 
 " He only wrote when he sent poor Harry's old 
 silk bag with aunty's picture and that hateful 
 money. Where did he write from ?" 
 
 " From her home. She is very ill." 
 
 " Then he won't be coming here ?" And the blue 
 eyes were glancing pleadingly one minute, then 
 hiding behind their snowy lids the next. 
 
 " I don't see how he can be coming, Nat." 
 
 The bright color faded from the rounded cheeks 
 and left them piteously white. 
 
 " He has been lovel\ r to you, Nathalie," murmured 
 her friend, caressing now the restless little hand as 
 it found its way into hers. " If he should want 
 you to do something for him who risked his life 
 to save yours who never rested until he had res- 
 cued your good name, too would you do it?" 
 
 But here the portiere began violent and unac- 
 countable undulations. Nathalie's head was bowed 
 and she couldn't see. Mrs. Barry's eyes were 
 blinded and she wouldn't see. 
 
 "What could he ask of me now after " 
 faltered the girl. 
 
 " After you refused him ?" said Mrs. Barry, a 
 teasing little smile playing about her lips. " It
 
 A GARRISON TANGLE. 379 
 
 isn't much provided I go too It's to go to see 
 his sister." 
 
 Nathalie sprang to her feet. " I don't believe " 
 she began indignantly. " You never were unkind 
 to me before Mrs. Barry." The words came in a 
 big sob. The tears came raining from her bright 
 blue eyes. Mrs. Barry's arms were outstretched 
 her heart was filled with dismay and compassion in 
 aa instant. 
 
 l * Nathalie, Nathalie, 1 shouldn't have teased ! I 
 ictfsuukind. I never knew it meant so much. For- 
 give ma, dear one. There, there, don't cry. Run 
 into the parlor. You'll iind the letter there some- 
 where or something that'll tell you all you want 
 to know." 
 
 And as the girl, half sobbing still, hastened from 
 the room, in came Maynard, all dismay. 
 
 " The door was locked ! I couldn't get through ! 
 I had to stay. I had to hear. "Why, didn't you see 
 the portibre shaking?" 
 
 " Never mind," smiled Mrs. Barry. " She's past 
 ray comforting. Go quickly and help her find that 
 letter or that something." 
 
 Nathalie had searched the desk and mantel. She 
 was fumbling for the button of the electric light as 
 he reached the arched doorway. The heavy curtains 
 fell behind him as the bright, sudden glare responded
 
 280 A GARRISON TANGLE. 
 
 to her touch, and when she turned to renew the 
 hurried search she saw him, barely arm's length 
 away no ! it could not have been that far, for 
 despite her struggles, her furious blushes, her 
 fluttering heart and panting breath, the little cry 
 half fright, half joy, with which she greeted him 
 died on her lips and his. 
 
 THE END.
 
 A 000129542 7