His Honor

TWILIGHT was eclipsing the vivid glories of a prairie sunset as Dick Norman’s solitary ride came to an end, and he overtook Wyatt’s column during the cheery bustle of its supper-getting.

Wyatt, a tall, well-built man, whose dark beauty rendered picturesque even the undress to which stress of July weather had reduced all ranks, met him with evident misgiving.

“By Jove, Dick. I’m not glad to see you ! he cried. “ I’m afraid of any one from headquarters ! ”

Dick slipped lightly out of the saddle, throwing the bridle to a waiting soldier.

“ It is as you fear, Don,” he began, in a hesitating voice, which grew firmer as he continued, after an unorthodox exclamation from Wyatt. “ There is no nse growling. The colonel is almost as disappointed as you are.”

“ The colonel is an old woman, who ought to be in charge of a kindergarten instead of commanding a regiment,” Wyatt muttered, and a light that did not mean yielding flashed into his handsome eyes.

“Suppose you hear what I have to tell before you call names ? ”

“Go ahead,” Don agreed, dropping down on the sunburned grass at a little distance from the various groups of troopers, while Dick proceeded to deliver the tidings which were nearly as bitter to his utterance as to the other’s listening.

Donald Wyatt had distinguished himself a couple of years before in the conduct of several expeditions, entrusted to him by a more audacious chief than his present colonel, and he had been deeply galled during this campaign by two recalls when he believed the achievement confided to him to be on the verge of success. Therefore great had his rejoicing been when, on the previous day, he was sent out with a command of sixty men to cut off Bald Eagle, a much redoubted warrior, who, with a scanty escort, was reported to be trying to join the main body of Indians. Within twenty-four hours, however, the colonel had received news that Bald Eagle was, with the allied tribes, in sufficient force to annihilate Wyatt should he attempt an attack ; and old “ Slow-and-Sure,” as the regiment called him, had chosen Dick to carry the order of recall, believing that Wyatt’s disappointment would be less keen from the lips of his closest comrade than from the usual written instructions sent by a scout, — a bit of soldierly sympathy from his somewhat formal colonel which had converted Dick’s unwillingness to bear this humiliation to Don into an urgent desire to convince him both of its necessity and its kindness, He spoke with clearness and positiveness, but Don’s dark brows drew together obstinately.

“ Is that all ? ” he asked when Dick ended.

“ Wore than enough, I should say.”

“ I say differently. Hold on ! ” he interjected, with a vigorous grasp on the nearest of Dick’s impatiently shrugged shoulders. “ It is a case of one scout’s testimony against another’s. Long Jim, who has often done us good service, swears to me that Bald Eagle will camp to-night with only thirty or forty braves among those hills, where we can wipe him out or take him prisoner as circumstances may direct. It is the kind of safe thing old Slow-and-Sure would bless, if he knew the truth about it. Too easy for my liking or for yours, if he hadn’t frightened you blue.”

“ Your commanding officer ” — Dick exclaimed hotly, but Wyatt interrupted.

”I am in command here, and I shall use my own judgment to limit my obedience to a superior whom I know to be misinformed as to the facts upon which his change of plans is based.”

And to this ultimatum he adhered, in spite of such energetic remonstrance or fiery reproach as Dick’s anxiety could urge, until, at length, the latter sprang angrily to his feet; yet, even as he did so, there swept between his eyes and the darkening prairie a vision of pretty “ quarters ” at Fort Wallace, and of two beloved women who waited for news of them.

“ Think of your wife, Don ! ” cried Dick. "If you will not consider your reputation or the safety of these men, remember that her happiness ” —

Don laughed, — a laugh through whose defiance thrilled a proud tenderness.

“ Esther would not thank you for ranking her happiness as dearer to me than my honor,” he said, adding, as Dick turned away, “ I’m sorry that you are vexed, old fellow, but this thing must he done to-night, and the chief will understand that I could not wait to send him Long Jim’s report.”

Dick was more uneasy than vexed while he ate his supper and watched Wyatt arranging the details of the night’s work with a couple of young Second lieutenants, who were the only other officers, and Long Jim, the half-breed scout. He was uneasy both as to the result of the raid and as to the colonel’s acquiescence in the verdict of a possible victory ; though with regard to his own course, having no orders on that point, he resolved to ride with Don.

The start was fixed for moonset, and in the mean time two hours’ sleep was imposed upon the column. But sleep will not come by command, and crowding memories kept Dick long awake, — memories which, beginning at his first meeting with Don in their “ plebe ” days at. West Point, speedily journeyed to Wallace, and which, welded together by ancient comradeship, were glorified by the brightness of laughing eyes, sweet eyes of a girl who had arrived at the post last spring, in anticipation of the lonely suspense the summer’s campaign must prove to her sister, Don’s wife.

This gay Theo, however, was not like her sister. Esther’s strong, serene nature possessed no quicksands, while Theo perpetually engulfed the unwary in dangerous, delightful pitfalls.

“ So it is to be sink or swim together ? ” Don was saying, with his caressing smile, when Dick woke after what seemed a few moments slumber. “This is going to he a splendid thing, and you will thank your lucky star that you were with us,” he added, as they clasped each other’s hands.

The moon was almost gone as they mounted, but there remained enough light to guide the rapid half-hour ride of the command toward the foothills among which lay the ravine where Long Jim asserted that Bald Eagle had camped. The entrance was a dismal-looking place when they reached it, just after the moon had dropped softly beyond the far edge of the prairie horizon, and there the troopers dismounted, leaving their horses under a strong guard.

Very cheery and alert was Wyatt, with a glance for everything and a word for every one ; the kind of officer, his men said then — ay and afterward — whom they would follow blindfold wherever he chose to lead them.

A dry channel, worn by spring torrents, made their path along the rocky bottom of the ravine, whose rough sides towered to gloomier heights with every step as they advanced. The sky, which had seemed dark from the moon’s setting when they entered, grew bright in comparison with the Cimmerian depths through which they plunged, as Dick looked over his shoulder to judge of their progress by the gradual narrowing of that glimpse of starry blue. Silence had been enjoined, and was unbroken except for the occasional stumble of a careless foot upon a loose stone, and the soldiers, though necessarily scattered by the increasing steepness, kept as much as possible to the double file in which they had started, until, from somewhere over the middle of the column, a boulder thundered down, and those beside whom it fell sprang out of the way with involuntary exclamations. Then the darkness and stillness above and about them palpitated with a hundred flashes of flame and a hundred sharp reports, broken into as many more by the bewildering echo, — a sudden storm of sound, through which Dick yet heard the selfaccusing anguish in a voice beside him.

“God forgive me!” Donald Wyatt cried. “ I’ve brought them into a trap ! ”

It was not confusion that followed, though their enemies swarmed around them, forbidding any regular formation. It was the undismayed obedience of brave men to the clear orders which rang sternly out over the fire and counter fire and the hideous yelling of the savages, — orders whose object, from the first moment of attack, was the withdrawal of the command to the entrance of the ravine, and which was gained in a mêlée incredible to soldiers who know only civilized warfare ; the troopers face to face, hand to hand, with supple, sinewy foes, who arose in uncounted numbers, like a flight of bats, from the dark depths that were familiar to them.

Already the guard left with the horses had been surrounded, but in the comparative liberty of space and light the men made a determined rally, and succeeded — some of them — in reaching and mounting their horses, — some of them! Then it was that Dick realized that he should not be one of them ! He had scarcely felt his wound until he stumbled blindly, the pistol slipped from his fingers, and he knew that to gain the nearest horse had become as impossible as to defend himself against the howling Indian springing toward him. Out of swaying shadows a strong arm upheld him, and a pistol cracked sharply close beside bis sinking head.

“ There is an end of that devil! ” Don’s voice cried dauntlessly. “ Your foot in my stirrup—so ! Hold on here before me, while I See our chaps well off ! ”

Through feverish hauntlngs of a dim despair, Dick Norman faltered back to consciousness.

“ It’s no use, Don!” he murmured. “ Let me be ! Save yourself ! ”

Instead of the fearless assurance which had last reached his failing senses, and for which he vaguely listened, he heard a hoarse sob, a sternly whispered “ Hush ! ”

Then followed a silence, in which he suffered bodily from the jolting of wheels, and mentally from a torture of bewilderment. Slowly lie opened his eyes, and looked up, not into the fierce tenderness of Wyatt’s face, but into the grave countenance of the post surgeon.

“You were not with us! Where is Don ? ” he gasped.

“ Hush ! ” the surgeon repeated, taking with a cool, firm clasp Dick’s free hand, — the other was a helplessly bound prisoner. “ We came up after the fight ” —

“ Long Jim betrayed us! We tried to reach the horses, and Don ” — Dick panted. Good God ! with what a ghastly throng memory was returning ! “ Where is Don ? ”

“ He is well,” the surgeon began gently.

But Dick struggled to his elbow among the pillows of the ambulance cot.

“ He took me up before him — he waited for the others. Tell me the truth ! I shall know if you don’t ! ”

“ He is dead,” the surgeon said hurriedly. “ He rallied his command in the little wood where we found them, but he dropped out of the saddle when they took you from his arms, and died before we — Help me here, orderly ; the lieutenant has fainted.”

A month later the campaign was ended, — a campaign which had been uneventful except in that disastrous night when Wyatt’s column was so nearly cut to pieces. Conferences, not fighting, had characterized it, and such success as crowned it had been won by promises, not swords. The Indians, sullenly submissive, were again within their Reservations. and the—Cavalry was once more at Wallace, in a mood of deep discontent that the lives ensnared by Long Jim were unavenged, and that the blot of a disobedience, or of a mistake, must stain the escutcheon of a regiment hitherto equally renowned for its victories and its discipline.

A court-martial had been summoned to meet so soon as Dick Norman should be sufficiently recovered from his wound to stand his trial, and the quota of officers were daily expected to arrive from neighboring posts. Little else was discussed in barracks or in mess-room, for Donald Wyatt bad been adored by his men, admired as much as liked by his comrades, and considered by his superiors the most brilliant young cavalry officer in the service. According to rumor, Dick Norman blamed himself for that night’s catastrophe ; declaring that he had given the colonel’s message to Wyatt as a warning, not as a command, and that Wyatt, betrayed by his scout’s false reports, bad felt justified in disregarding the warning and in following his seemingly well-arranged plan for the capture of Bald Eagle. This rumor was corroborated among Dick’s special set by their remembrance of his keen sympathy with Wyatt’s previous disappointments, and of his vexation when he had been chosen by the colonel to carry that third recall to his friend ; so that, though in their intimate assemblings much compassion was expressed for him, there was no doubt of his responsibility, nor of the verdict of the court-martial, except — exception which would have astonished nobody more than Dick — in the mind of the colonel. Very vivid to the recollection of old “ Slow-andSure ” was the gratitude shining in the young fellow’s eyes when he understood the kindness intended by the trust confided to him. Very profound was his conviction that there had been no paltering with the delivery of that trust.

“ Bald and stout as I am, I can yet feel how impossible that boy finds the public accusation of the comrade who died in saving his life ! ” he had told himself, staring rather dimly at Dick’s sword, when the adjutant had brought it to him, on the day that Dick was ordered under arrest in his quarters. “ If he were in a state to hear reason, I should see him at once ; but whichever way the fault lies, there must be a courtmartial. And I’m not afraid that the judge advocate will fail to discover so inexperienced a liar as young Norman with half a dozen questions ! ”

By the surgeon’s commands, Dick’s convalescence was spent in a solitude upon which neither sympathy nor blame intruded, and August had dragged itself out before a day was appointed for the meeting of the court. But on a radiant morning in early September, the adjutant appeared in Dick’s little sitting-room with two announcements: the court-martial would begin on the morrow, and on the following day Mrs. Wyatt, with her sister and child, would leave Wallace for the East, — a departure in accordance with “ army regulations,” which thrust the bustle of packing and planning upon the first stupor of bereavement. The adjutant further informed Dick that Mrs. Wyatt’s going away necessitated immediate opening of a military chest which Dick and Wyatt had shared during an expedition of the early spring, when they had been detailed to escort supplies from the nearest river town to Wallace. The schedule of these supplies had never been demanded, because the outbreak of Indian hostilities had since then engrossed the attention of headquarters, and the chest which contained these papers still remained in Don Wyatt’s “ den,” where Dick was now desired to search for them.

Mechanically Dick marched along the parade beside the adjutant, who was much more conscious than he of the various greetings, kindly or curious, bestowed upon this first public appearance of the subject of to-morrow’s trial. They were going away: Esther, whose friendship he had ranked next to her husband’s, and Then! Oddly enough their enforced departure had not before added itself to his miseries. Yet, he reflected bitterly, the distance of half the world could not increase the estrangement which their utter silence during his illness had already proved to him, and which it was only natural that the widow and sister should feel toward the man whose presumptuous disobedience was held responsible for Don’s death!

Here was the door he had always hitherto entered with a gay welcome from lips that would nevermore he gay ! Here was Don’s den, whose walls were eloquent with the echo of his laugh, and the boyish mischief which he had never outgrown !

Dick was so white and spent as he dropped down on one of the packing cases — there were packing cases everywhere— that the adjutant glanced nervously at him.

“ Perhaps this is too much for you ? ” be exclaimed. “ We might have the chest sent to your quarters ? ” “ No, no ! ” Dick stammered. “ I’m all right. We had duplicate keys. Here are mine.”

Very heterogeneous were the contents of that chest, which had been packed by Wyatt’s hands, always more vigorous than orderly ! His properties and Dick’s mingled as thoroughly, and in as homely a fashion, as their affection.

The adjutant found a package of accounts, and hurriedly looked over them to make sure of their completeness, while Dick gave himself entirely to a listening, which until now had divided his attention with the search. The sound of a light step, the tones of a soft voice — God ! was it only three months since he used to lie in wait here to intercept Theo on her way to some garrison merrymaking ?

The half-open door was pushed wider. Could all that blackness be Theo, — Theo, who was wont to he as brilliant in color as a cactus flower ?

Dick did not move, though the adjutant sprang to his feet.

“ I should like to speak to Mr. Norman for a moment, alone.”

Vaguely Dick heard the words, and was aware of the adjutant’s hasty retreat. Then a trembling hand touched his, and a wistful little face, which had once been gay with dimples, bent over him.

“ Did you mean to let us go without a word ? ” she asked.

“ I thought that you must hate me ! ” he muttered.

“ Hate you? Poor Dick! Don’t I know that you have broken your own heart almost as utterly as Esther’s ! ”

“How is she ? ”

“ As though she had gone part of the way with Don ! The surgeon says she will come back. She may, perhaps, because of baby! Put sometimes I feel as if I had lost her, too — besides Don — and you ” —

“ And me ? ” he murmured, “ Have you wanted me ? ” Theo had suffered much and bravely within six weeks — grief for Wyatt, sympathy, which knew itself helpless before her sister’s trance of desolation ; a longing, made of everything tenderest in her nature, to reach and comfort Dick, whom she believed she could console. Now, while each glance of Dick’s eyes, each tone of his voice, assured her power, its limitations yet more than its extent overwhelmed her. Even her touch could never heal the blasted future, which stretched away miserably through the years that look so long to youth ! With a sudden storm of tears, she sank down on the packing case from which he had risen.

He stepped toward her. hut drew back instantly. How dared he claim her sweet compassion, and that sweeter something to which his pulses thrilled, — he whom the certain sentence of to-morrow’s courtmartial must estrange from all Donald Wyatt’s kin forever!

Army quarters are not constructed for living to one’s self. Small sounds penetrate contract-built partitions, and Theo’s revolt against the bitterness of life and the cruelty of death reached and roused the stunned sympathies of her sister.

Esther Wyatt stood in the doorway, turning her gray eyes, with their dazed look as of one coming out of blindness to sight, from Theo’s bowed figure to Dick rigid with silence. And upon her remembrance, dulled to all but her husband, there flashed the love story that Don and she had watched together. How vexed he had been with Theo’s gay caprices ! How eager to trust Esther’s superior feminine intuition, which was confident that Dick’s wooing would end well! Ah, dearer yet to her awakening memory came somebody’s account of Don’s dying determination to save his friend. She held out her hand to Dick.

“ This poor little girl is tired out,” she said softly. “ She lias thought and planned and packed for both of us. But you will help her, now that you are so nearly well again ? ” He could only touch that fragile hand speechlessly, and turn away.

“ Say that you don’t blame him, Esther ! ” Theo sobbed.

“ I blame Dick ? Why should I ? ”

“ Because — dear Don — the courtmartial to-morrow ” —

“ A court-martial for whom ? Dick is not to blame ! Don wrote me that night.”

Dick lifted his face, wet with-suddenly forgotten tears.

“ He wrote you that night ? ”

“ Only part of a letter. He said — could he have said that you and he had quarreled ? ” Esther hesitated, with a half recollection of words whose one meaning, when she read them, had been that the hand which had written them would never write again. “ Surely you made it up before ” —

“ Yes ! yes ! ” Dick exclaimed vehemently. “ Has nobody told you how he saved me ? ”

But Esther could not listen now to the story even of her husband’s last exploit. Dick was trying to avoid the subject of that quarrel. Could some doubt of Don’s forgiveness stab the grief which she knew was next her own ? Yet Don had blamed himself.

“ Here is his letter ” — she began.

“ Don’t read it! ” Dick interrupted nervously. “I — I cannot bear it I ”

“ Just a line or two, to show you ” — She broke off abruptly, and for one long moment stood motionless, staring down at the boldly written page. Then she stepped toward Dick, lifting her shining eyes, — eyes whose lovelit gaze pierced beyond the harriers of tender human building, and beheld, as her soldier’s freed soul might behold, the Truth beautiful exceedingly !

“Forgive me!” she panted. “All this terrible time I have only understood that he is gone. Nothing else, — not even what he wrote me ! The fault that night was his. and you have suffered the blame, to spare him ! ” “ He was betrayed. He got the troop out of it again magnificently!” Dick stammered eagerly.

An orderly knocked at the half-open door.

“The commanding officer’s compliments, and he is waiting to know whether Mrs. Wyatt can see him,” he announced.

The color rushed over Esther’s pale face, and vanished as quickly, while Dick sprang to his feet.

“ Sit down ! ” she exclaimed, touching his shoulder. “ Brown, ask the colonel to come in here.”

“ Wait ! Think ! ” Dick implored. “ His honor ” —

“ Is mine,” she answered, with soft vehemence. “ Oh, Dick, remember our generous, fearless Don ! Never would he permit another to bear blame for his mistake, and neither can I.”

Erect and gorgeous with the full panoply of war, to do deference to this farewell visit to the widow of an officer killed upon the field of battle, the colonel entered the room. But something deeper than his esteem for the forms of his profession stirred his heart as he glanced from Dick’s bent head and Theo’s startled eyes to the transfigured woman who came to meet him.

“Colonel,” she said steadfastly, “in my selfish grief I have allowed you to go very near the doing of a great injustice.”

An inarticulate ejaculation was all he could achieve as she paused.

“ Before my husband went into that fight he wrote me. Will you hear what he said ? ”

“ Let me spare you the reading,” the colonel muttered.

Esther looked down at the big sheet of headquarters official paper which held her soldier’s last “ love-making,” and a smile that was more tender than tears flickered over her drooping face.

“ Unless it is necessary for you to see the letter I would rather read it,” she said, faltered an instant, and began : — . . . “ ‘ The chief has another chill of prudence, and Dick lias just brought me an order of recall, — an order which I have, however, decided to disregard, as my scout’s report of Bald Eagle’s position makes his capture a certainty. “ Obedience is the first duty of a soldier,” yet a soldier who is also a commanding officer must act according to his own judgment, under circumstances which he knows will justify him to his superior when they can be communicated; and old “Slowand-Sure ” is too successful in his career to grudge me another feather in my cap, even though I shall win it rather irregularly. But Dick is furious. He has exhausted eloquence in trying to convince me that I shall ride straight to ruin, breaking every rule in the army regulations on the way.’ ”

The low voice, wondrously steadied to its task, ceased, and there was silence,— silence in which there floated, through an open window, the clear tones of an officer’s commands to a newly joined squad at drill upon the parade, and the tiny, chuckling laugh of Don’s child in his cradle on the veranda,

“Madam ” — the colonel commenced, with dignity, hesitated, then bent until his gray mustache swept Esther’s fingers. "God bless you,” he ended abruptly.

Swiftly she turned from him to Dick, leaning his head against his folded arms on the chimney ledge.

“ Truest friend ! bravest friend ! ” she cried. “You have acted as his friend should. But I am his wife. I must act as himself.”

There was no court-martial on the morrow, because its function had been anticipated by an informal meeting of officers at the colonel’s quarters, — a meeting where a brilliant young soldier’s fault was tenderly condoned, and where every man enshrined in his memory an ideal of a soldier’s wife.

And the colonel brought Dick’s sword back to him.

Ellen Mackubin .