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

"What a shame it is that the cadets can't ride! I mean can't ride —that way," she explained, with suggestive nod of her curly head towards the pair just trotting out upon the road around the Plain. "They ride – lots of them – better than most of the officers."

"Mr. Stanley for instance," suggests a mischievous little minx with hazel eyes and laughter-loving mouth.

"Yes, Mr. Stanley, or Mr. Pennock, or Mr. Burton, or a dozen others I could name, not excepting my brother," answers Miss Nan, stoutly, although those readily flushing cheeks of hers promptly throw out their signals of perturbation. "Fancy Mr. Lee vaulting over his horse at the gallop as they do."

"And yet Mr. Lee has taught them so much more than other instructors. Several cadets have told me so. He always does, first, everything he requires them to do; so he must be able to make that vault."

"Will doesn't say so by any means," retorts Nannie, with something very like a pout; and as Will is a prime favorite with the entire party and the centre of a wide circle of interest, sympathy, and anxiety in those girlish hearts, their loyalty is proof against opinions that may not coincide with his. "Miss Mischief" reads temporary defeat in the circle of bright faces and is stung to new effort, —

"Well! there are cadets whose opinions you value quite as much as you do your brother's, Nannie, and they have told me."

"Who?" challenges Miss Nan, yet with averted face. Thrice of late she has disagreed with Mr. Stanley about Willy's troubles; has said things to him which she wishes she had left unsaid; and for two days now he has not sought her side as heretofore, though she knows he has been at the hotel to see his sister, and a little bird has told her he had a long talk with this same hazel-eyed girl. She wants to know more about it, – yet does not want to ask.

"Phil Stanley, for one," is the not unexpected answer.

Somebody who appears to know all about it has written that when a girl is beginning to feel deep interest in a man she will say things decidedly detrimental to his character solely for the purpose of having them denied and for the pleasure of hearing him defended. Is it this that prompts Miss McKay to retort? —

"Mr. Stanley cares too little what his classmates think, and too much of what Mr. Lee may say or do."

"Mr. Stanley isn't the only one who thinks a deal of Lieutenant Lee," is the spirited answer. "Mr. Burton says he is the most popular tactical officer here, and many a cadet – good friends of your brother's, Nannie – has said the same thing. You don't like him because Will doesn't."

"I wouldn't like or respect any officer who reports cadets on suspicion," is the stout reply. "If he did that to any one else I would despise it as much as I do because Willy is the victim."

The discussion is waxing hot. "Miss Mischief's" blood is up. She likes Phil Stanley; she likes Mr. Lee; she has hosts of friends in the corps, and she is just as loyal and quite as pronounced in her views as her little adversary. They are fond of each other, too, and were great chums all through the previous summer; but there is danger of a quarrel to-day.

"I don't think you are just in that matter at all, Nannie. I have heard cadets say that if they had been in Mr. Lee's place or on officer-of-the-day duty they would have had to give Will that report you take so much to heart. Everybody knows his voice. Half the corps heard him call out to Mr. Pennock."

"I don't believe a single cadet who's a friend of Will's would say such a thing," bursts in Miss Nan, her eyes blazing.

"He is a friend, and a warm friend, too."

"You said there were several, Kitty, and I don't believe it possible."

"Well. There were two or three. If you don't believe it, you can ask Mr. Stanley. He said it, and the others agreed."

Fancy the mood in which she meets him this particular evening, when his card was brought to her door. Twice has "Miss Mischief" essayed to enter the room and "make up." Conscience has been telling her savagely that in the impulse and sting of the moment she has given an unfair coloring to the whole matter. Mr. Stanley had volunteered no such remark as that she so vehemently quoted. Asked point blank whether he considered as given "on suspicion" the report which Mrs. McKay and Nannie so resented, he replied that he did not; and, when further pressed, he said that Will alone was blamable in the matter: Mr. Lee had no alternative, if it was Mr. Lee who gave the report, and any other officer would have been compelled to do the same. All this "Miss Mischief" would gladly have explained to Nannie could she have gained admission, but the latter "had a splitting headache," and begged to be excused.

It has been such a lovely afternoon. The halls were filled with cadets "on permit," when she came out from the dining-room, but nothing but ill-luck seemed to attend her. The young gentleman who had invited her to walk to Fort Putnam, most provokingly twisted an ankle at cavalry drill that very morning, and was sent to hospital. Now, if Mr. Stanley were all devotion, he would promptly tender his services as substitute. Then she could take him to task and punish him for his disloyalty to Will. But Mr. Stanley was not to be seen: "Gone off with another girl," was the announcement made to her by Mr. Werrick, a youth who dearly loved a joke, and who saw no need of explaining that the other girl was his own sister. Sorely disappointed, yet hardly knowing why, she accepted her mother's invitation to go with her to the barracks where Will was promenading the area on what Mr. Werrick called "one of his perennial punishment tours." She went, of course; but the distant sight of poor Will, duly equipped as a sentry, dismally tramping up and down the asphalt, added fuel to the inward fire that consumed her. The mother's heart, too, yearned over her boy, – a victim to cruel regulations and crueler task-masters. "What was the use of the government's enticing young men away from their comfortable homes," Mrs. McKay had once indignantly written, "unless it could make them happy?" It was a question the "tactical department" could not answer, but it thought volumes.

But now evening had come, and with it Mr. Stanley's card. Nan's heart gave a bound, but she went down-stairs with due deliberation. She had his card in her hand as she reached the hall, and was twisting it in her fingers. Yes. There he stood on the north piazza, Pennock with him, and one or two others of the graduating class. They were chatting laughingly with Miss Stanley, "Miss Mischief," a bevy of girls, and a matron or two, but she knew well his eyes would be on watch for her. They were. He saw her instantly; bowed, smiled, but, to her surprise, continued his conversation with a lady seated near the door. What could it mean? Irresolute she stood there a moment, waiting for him to come forward; but though she saw that twice his eyes sought hers, he was still bending courteously and listening to the voluble words of the somewhat elderly dame who claimed his attention. Nan began to rebel against that woman from the bottom of her heart. What was she to do? Here was his card. In response she had come down to receive him. She meant to be very cool from the first moment; to provoke him to inquiry as to the cause of such unusual conduct, and then to upbraid him for his disloyalty to her brother. She certainly meant that he should feel the weight of her displeasure; but then – then – after he had been made to suffer, if he was properly contrite, and said so, and looked it, and begged to be forgiven, why then, perhaps she might be brought to condone it in a measure and be good friends again. It was clearly his duty, however, to come and greet her, not hers to go to the laughing group. The old lady was the only one among them whom she did not know, – a new arrival. Just then Miss Stanley looked round, saw her, and signalled smilingly to her to come and join them. Slowly she walked towards the little party, still twirling the card in her taper fingers.

"Looking for anybody, Nan?" blithely hails "Miss Mischief." "Who is it? I see you have his card."

For once Nannie's voice fails her, and she knows not what to say. Before she can frame an answer there is a rustle of skirts and a light foot-fall behind her, and she hears the voice of a girl whom she never has liked one bit.

"Oh! You're here, are you, Mr. Stanley! Why, I've been waiting at least a quarter of an hour. Did you send up your card?"

"I did; full ten minutes ago. Was it not brought to your room?"

"No, indeed! I've been sitting there writing, and only came down because I had promised Mr. Fearn that he should have ten minutes, and it is nearly his time now. Where do you suppose they could have sent it?"

Poor little Nan! It has been a hard day for her, but this is just too much. She turns quickly, and, hardly knowing whither she goes, dodges past the party of cadets and girls now blocking the stairway and preventing flight to her room, hurries out the south door and around to the west piazza, and there, leaning against a pillar, is striving to hide her blazing cheeks, – all in less than a minute.

Stanley sees through the entire situation with the quick intuition of a lover. She has not treated him kindly of late. She has been capricious and unjust on several occasions, but there is no time to think of that now. She is in distress, and that is more than enough for him.

"Here comes Mr. Fearn himself to claim his walk, so I will go and find out about the card," he says, and blesses that little rat of a bell-boy as he hastens away.

Out on the piazza he finds her alone, yet with half a dozen people hovering nigh. The hush of twilight is over the beautiful old Point. The moist breath of the coming night, cool and sweet, floats down upon them from the deep gorges on the rugged flank of Cro' Nest, and rises from the thickly lacing branches of the cedars on the river-bank below. A flawless mirror in its grand and reflected framework of cliff and crag and beetling precipice, the Hudson stretches away northward unruffled by the faintest cat's-paw of a breeze. Far beyond the huge black battlements of Storm King and the purpled scaur of Breakneck the night lights of the distant city are twinkling through the gathering darkness, and tiny dots of silvery flame down in the cool depths beneath them reflect the faint glimmer from the cloudless heaven where —

"The sentinel stars set their watch in the sky."

The hush of the sacred hour has fallen on every lip save those of the merry party in the hall, where laugh and chatter and flaring gas-light bid defiance to influences such as hold their sway over souls brought face to face with Nature in this, her loveliest haunt on earth.

Phil Stanley's heart is throbbing as he steps quickly to her side. Well, indeed, she knows his foot-fall; knows he is coming; almost knows why he comes. She is burning with a sense of humiliation, wounded pride, maidenly wrath, and displeasure. All day long everything has gone agley. Could she but flee to her room and hide her flaming cheeks and cry her heart out, it would be relief inexpressible, but her retreat is cut off. She cannot escape. She cannot face those keen-eyed watchers in the hall-ways. Oh! it is almost maddening that she should have been so – so fooled! Every one must know she came down to meet Phil Stanley when his card was meant for another girl, – that girl of all others! All aflame with indignation as she is, she yet means to freeze him if she can only control herself.

"Miss Nannie," he murmurs, quick and low, "I see that a blunder has been made, but I don't believe the others saw it. Give me just a few minutes. Come down the walk with me. I cannot talk with you here – now, and there is so much I want to say." He bends over her pleadingly, but her eyes are fixed far away up the dark wooded valley beyond the white shafts of the cemetery, gleaming in the first beams of the rising moon. She makes no reply for a moment. She does not withdraw them when finally she answers, impressively, —

"Thank you, Mr. Stanley, but I must be excused from interfering with your engagements."

"There is no engagement now," he promptly replies; "and I greatly want to speak with you. Have you been quite kind to me of late? Have I not a right to know what has brought about the change?"

"You do not seem to have sought opportunity to inquire," – very cool and dignified now.

"Pardon me. Three times this week I have asked for a walk, and you have had previous engagements."

She has torn to bits and thrown away the card that was in her hand. Now she is tugging at the bunch of bell buttons, each graven with the monogram of some cadet friend, that hangs as usual by its tiny golden chain. She wants to say that he has found speedy consolation in the society of "that other girl" of whom Mr. Werrick spoke, but not for the world would she seem jealous.

"You could have seen me this afternoon, had there been any matters you wished explained," she says. "I presume you were more agreeably occupied."

"I find no delight in formal visits," he answers, quietly; "but my sister wished to return calls and asked me to show her about the post."

Then it was his sister. Not "that other girl!" Still she must not let him see it makes her glad. She needs a pretext for her wrath. She must make him feel it in some way. This is not at all in accordance with the mental private rehearsals she has been having. There is still that direful matter of Will's report for "shouting from window of barracks," and "Miss Mischief's" equally direful report of Mr. Stanley's remarks thereon.

"I thought you were a loyal friend of Willy's," she says, turning suddenly upon him.

"I was – and am," he answers simply.

"And yet I'm told you said it was all his own fault, and that you yourself would have given him the report that so nearly 'found him on demerit.' A report on suspicion, too," she adds, with scorn in her tone.

Mr. Stanley is silent a moment.

"You have heard a very unfair account of my words," he says at last. "I have volunteered no opinions on the subject. In answer to direct question I have said that it was not justifiable to call that a report on suspicion."

"But you said you would have given it yourself."

"I said that, as officer of the day, I would have been compelled to do so. I could not have signed my certificate otherwise."

She turns away in speechless indignation. What makes it all well-nigh intolerable is that he is by no means on the defensive. He is patient, gentle, but decidedly superior. Not at all what she wanted. Not at all eager to explain, argue, or implore. Not at all the tearful penitent she has pictured in her plans. She must bring him to a realizing sense of the enormity of his conduct. Disloyalty to Will is treason to her.