A Trooper Galahad

At their feet was the deep, grassy valley, hemmed by precipitous bluffs. The greensward at the base of the barrier ridge was soft and velvety. A richer soil nourished the roots of the bunch-grass, and all men knew that more than once in bygone days the sudden swelling of the brawling waters that came foaming and swirling down the ravine from the depths of the crested heights within had turned that beautiful little sheltered nook into a deep lake that slowly emptied itself through the narrow, twisting, rocky gorge that ended at the White Gate. On the level turf the dancers were merrily footing it even now to the music of an inspiring quadrille, the pretty gowns of the women, the uniforms of the men, adding brightness to the picture. Below the camp the mules and horses were placidly grazing close by the inner opening of the gorge, the white covers of the wagons and the snowy canvas of the two or three tents adding to the picturesqueness of the scene. All at the feet of the watching group was life, laughter, and careless joy; all beyond that merry scene a black and ominous heaven, frowning down on gloomy pine and rocky hill-side. The ceaseless clamor of the seething waters, as they turned whirling into the tortuous gorge, rose steadily above the throb and thrill of the dance-music, and aloft those relentless clouds sailed sternly eastward over the sky.

Still the smoke from the camp-fires settled back and shrank about the earth, as though dreading the encounter with the sleeping forces of the air. Then, as the watchful eyes of the elders turned once more up the mountain side, there came a cry from Brooks. "By God! it's coming! There isn't a second to lose!"

Frazier, following the direction of that pointing finger, looked upward, saw the crestward firs and pines and cedars bending, quivering before a blast as yet unfelt below, saw sheets of ashen vapor come sailing over the hill-tops and sweeping down the rocky sides, saw the whole mountain face turn black as in a single minute, as though hiding from the storm that came roaring down the slope, then lighting up the next instant in dazzling, purplish glare, as a zigzag bolt of lightning ripped the storm-cloud in twain, and in the instant, with crash and roar as of a thousand cannon rolled into one, let loose the deluge sleeping in its depths. As though Niagara were suddenly turned upon the hill-side, a vast volume of water swept downward, hissing, foaming, rolling over the rocks, and the leaping spray dashed high in air, as the black wealth of waters came surging down into the ravine.

"A cloud-burst, by all that's holy!" screamed Brooks, as he sprang down the grassy side of the bluff. "Up with you, up the hill-side, for your lives!" The dancers, faltering through the sudden flutter of the band, for the first time looked upward, and saw the peril. Then, men and women, bandsmen and "strikers," the camp made a wild rush up the eastward hill-side. Another blinding flash, another thunderous roar that seemed to shake and loosen the rocks about them, and in that second of brilliant, dazzling glare the watchers could see the white wall of the Blanca come spray-tossing, seething, whirling huge logs and trees on its outermost wave, tumbling them end over end, now deep-engulfed, now high in air, – one immense, furious moving mountain of raging water, sweeping towards them from the depths of the chasm. Then, rolling and frothing over its puny banks in the valley below, a chocolate flood, foam-crested, spread right and left through the deserted camp, licking up the cookfires, sweeping camp-chairs and tables off their legs, bodily lifting wagons and ambulances and sending them waltzing to the wild music of the storm over the flats where twinkled dainty-slippered feet the moment before, then bore them away towards the inner mouth of the gorge just in time to mix them up with such frantically struggling mules as through native obstinacy had resisted the impulse to scamper to higher ground while yet there was time. Worst sight of all, right there in the midst of the logs, chairs, wagon-beds, that came swirling beneath them, was a despairing woman's struggling form, revealed by a woman's white dress.

"Merciful God!" shrieked Mrs. Faulkner; "it's Laura Winn. She went up towards the falls not ten minutes ago."

Vain fool! What could have been her object? Barclay, never dancing, had been looking smilingly on. Both the Frazier girls had been led, not too willing, away by partners. Four sets had been formed, and Mrs. Winn, pleading fatigue, had asked to be excused, had sauntered past Barclay's seat, and, before his eyes, had turned up the narrow, winding, sheltered pathway by the Blanca. Had she dreamed it possible that he would follow? Follow her he did not. Was it – a far more charitable thought – in search of Harry she had gone? Sombre and absent-minded, he had earlier slipped away among the trees, avoiding even Brayton. But now Barclay was seen on the near side of the torrent, limping up and along the steep slope, in imminent danger of slipping in, swinging in his hand a long lariat that he had drawn from the nearest wagon when the wild up-hill fight began. They remembered later that he was the last man out of the hollow. Already Brooks, Brayton, De Lancy, and half a dozen men were hurrying along the hill-side to aid, but Brayton reached him first and seized his arm just as another cry went up from the hill-top, – just as from the opposite side of the seething torrent the tall figure of Harry Winn came bounding through the stunted trees, and, hatless, wild-eyed, he seemed searching the tossing mass of wreckage on the bosom of the waters. Another instant still a white hand was waved aloft in their midst; then a white arm encircling a log, a terror-stricken white face, all showed dimly one moment before again borne underneath, hidden by the yellow body of a whirling ambulance, and in that one instant, far leaping, Winn plunged into the torrent and struck out savagely to reach his wife.

Vain, hopeless effort! Eddying in huge circle at the rocky shoulder just above the entrance to the gorge, the wild waters near the eastward shore bore their burden, jarring and crushing, close under the heights on which were clustered the panic-stricken revellers from Fort Worth. But on the farther side, as it narrowed towards the entrance, the hissing torrent tore like a mill-horse on its way. Into this heaving flood leaped Winn, and, before the eyes of screaming women and helpless, horror-stricken men, was sucked into the rush and whirl of foaming waves sweeping resistless through the rocky cañon, away towards the fair White Gate, away out and beyond the lovely foot-hills, tossed and battered and crushed by whirling logs, dragged under by the branches of uprooted trees, borne away at last, rolling, gasping, still feebly, faintly struggling, until on the broad lowlands the torrent spent the fury of its concentrated spite, and, swiftly still, but no longer raging as when curbed and held by the barrier gate, the Blanca foamed away to strew the tokens of the fearful storm right and left for miles along its banks, and to land all that was mortal of Harry Winn, bruised, battered, yet so placid in death that strong men's voices broke when telling how they found him, resting with weary head upon his arm on the sandy flat that lay just beneath the little summer-house on the overhanging bluffs, – just where Laura had looked down over the misty shallows from that very height the morning her soldier husband had reached his home at reveille and found her – wanting.

They bore her wailing home that night, widowed and crying, Woe is me! yet with what wild thoughts throbbing through her brain! Who was it that came leaping to her aid as she felt herself again dragged under in that swirling eddy? Whose voice was it that rang upon her drowning ears? Whose strong arms had clasped and sustained her and held her head above water, while other strong hands, hauling at the lariat made fast about his waist, drew them steadily to shore? Then angels came and ministered to her, – the women, – while the men clustered about her dripping hero, Galahad. Only for a moment, though, for there was mounting bareback in hot haste and thundering away at mad gallop, despite the drenching rain, for he who had saved the wife implored those who could ride to haste and save the husband.

All Fort Worth again went into mourning with the setting of that woful sun. It had borne its fill and more of battle and of sudden death.

And people resurrected Hodge's stories later on, though Hodge himself was readily excused. They recalled how Channing's widow and little ones were cared for after that officer's untimely death in the shadows of old Laramie Peak. They recalled Porter's ailing wife and the sea-side sojourn, and the old ordnance sergeant's family burned out at Sanders. It wasn't many days before the lovely, drooping widow of poor Harry Winn was quite well enough to be sent the long journey to the North; yet some weeks elapsed before she would consent, she said, to be torn from her beloved's grave. When, gently as possible, she was told in July that the quarters she still occupied were needed for her husband's successor, she proposed to spend a few weeks with Mr. and Mrs. Faulkner, but they were forced to limit that visit to a few days. There was no reason why she could not have started in June, for that devoted mother, Mrs. Waite, had dropped temporarily the pursuit of Senators and Representatives in Congress assembled, and wired that she would meet her daughter in New Orleans, and the commanding general at San Antonio notified her that abundant means for all her homeward journeying for self and nurse and baby were in his hands. She thought she ought to stay until all poor Harry's affairs were straightened out; and Frazier had to say that that, too, was all attended to. Yet all the while she seemed to think that she could not sufficiently thank the heroic Captain Barclay, and begged to see him for that purpose, also to consult him, day after day, until – was there collusion? – he suddenly received orders to proceed to San Antonio on court-martial duty, and was on his way before she knew it, – before, said the Fraziers, she could get ready to go with him. Nor was he there when she passed through, under Fuller's escort, to the Gulf, nor did she see him once again in Texas. Letters, fervently grateful letters, came to him from Washington, whither she had flitted, and where, it is reported, she was to have a clerkship. But when people spoke of her to Barclay he smiled gravely and had nothing to say. All her late husband's accounts were declared settled and closed within a very few months, and all men knew by that time whose hand it was that had lifted the burden; yet Laura Waite had lost the last vestige of her power where Galbraith Barclay was concerned.

Long before the fall set in, Barclay returned to his post of duty, eagerly welcomed by officers and men, except the Faugh-a-Ballaghs. Somebody had sent from San Antonio a marble headstone for Winn's lonely grave in the little cemetery. Somebody had secured for his widow that clerkship in the Treasury Department, which within another year she left to wed a veteran admirer of her mother, to the unappeasable wrath of that well-preserved matron and the secret joy of 'Manda Frazier, who thought that now perhaps the eyes of Galahad would open to her own many charms of mind and person. Yet they did not. Somebody in a childish, sprawling hand was writing letters every week to the doughboy trooper, who by that time had the best drilled company at Worth, owing, said the Faugh-a-Ballaghs, when forced to admit the fact, to Brayton's abilities and to an Irish sergeant. Barclay's weekly mail was bigger than that of anybody else except the commanding officer, whose missives, however, were mainly official, and the number of letters penned in feminine or childish hands seemed, like Galahad's godchildren, ever on the increase. Mrs. Blythe came back from leave, bonnier than ever, and blissful beyond compare in the possession of secrets she could not share with even her oldest cronies, yet that leaked out in ways no man could hope to stop. Ned Lawrence's children were well, happy, thriving, – little Jim at Barclay's home with other godsons, two or three, where a widowed sister cared for them as for her own, so said Mrs. Blythe when fairly cornered, while Ada was at a famous old Connecticut school not far from the Barclay homestead.

"Good heavens!" said Blythe, one day in late October, "these women have powers of divination that would be priceless at police head-quarters. Why, they've got hold of facts I thought only Mrs. Blythe and I knew, – facts that Barclay would have kept concealed from every one, but that we simply can't deny."

And so, little by little, the details of some, at least, of Galahad's benefactions became known, though no man knew how many more were held in reserve. For three long years he lived his simple, studious, dutiful life at Worth, a man the soldiers and their wives and children learned to love and look up to as their model of all that was kind and humane (they well-nigh worshipped him at Christmas times), – a man his brother officers of the better class honored as friend and comrade, worth their whole trust and esteem, and from the armor of whose reserve and tolerance the shafts of the envious and malicious glanced harmless into empty air.

There were women, old and young, who thought him lacking in more ways than one. The Fraziers said not much, but looked unutterable things when they went North on leave and people asked for Galahad. It was a family tradition that he had treated 'Manda very badly; that is, mamma said as much, but the elder sister had views of her own not entirely in harmony with those of her beloved parent. 'Manda herself found consolation by marrying in the army not two years later, and her husband thinks to this very day that Barclay, with all his wealth, secretly envies him his treasure, though admitting, in those lucid intervals to which so many lords are subject, that perhaps Barclay wasn't so confoundedly unlucky after all. It was at their quarters some years later still, at a far-distant post, that in the course of an evening's call, in company with his host, Lieutenant-Colonel Brooks, the chronicler of a portion, at least, of this episode of old-time army life was favored with the most important facts of all.

"What do you think!" said the stout possessor of Mrs. 'Manda's matured and rounded charms, as he came bustling in with the Army and Navy in his hand, "Galahad Barclay's married at last. Here it is: To Ada, only daughter of the late Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Lawrence, – th U. S. Cavalry."

"Ada Lawrence! That child!" screamed madame, with eyes and drawl expansive. "Well, of all – "

But others, who have seen her in her happy wifehood, declare that Ada Lawrence grew up to be one of the loveliest of the lovely girls that married in the army, – and they are legion.

THE END