Saturday Evening Mail, Volume 25, Number 17, Terre Haute, Vigo County, 20 October 1894 — Page 3

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CAFf.' Ktwfe, HS»A.

CHAPTER EH.

The winter went out In storm tod bluster. The springtide set in with reluctant flow. The prairie wastes, •wept clean by furious gales in March, rerobed in glistening white in April, peeped for,th through ragged rents in their fleecy mantle at the soft touch of the south wind, then, lulled by the plash of warm summer shower, went to sleep one evening late in May, still thinly veiled in white, and when the rosy breath of wakening dawn stole faintly over the grassy billows, lol all in a night the face of nature had changed, and the foot-hills met the sunshine clothed in fairest, freshest green. Who can welcome spring as could the exiles of the old days on the frontier? How those fair women, those restless little ones, seemed to glow and gladden after the long, long months of seclusion when, snow-bound, they were penned within the stockade or limited to the sentry lines of some straggling prairie post. Now swarming forth like bees they came to greet the sunshine, the softening air, the tiny, shrinking little flowers trembling in the breeze along the southward slopes, and one exquisite morning late in May, perched on the very verge of the steep bluff overlooking the stream, Constance Morgan hod flung to the winds her rippling mane of auburn hair and stood stretching forth a pair of long, slender arms, encased in very shabby and shining serge, as though welcoming the first sight of the distant lowlands—the broad, beautiful valley of the Mini Ska. All the long winter she had 'borne on her white shoulders the cares of an army home, and that a home without a mother. Loving hearts and hands, it is true, were there to aid her. Morgan's devotion to his invalid wife during her two years of martyrdom and his grief over her loss were matters that had won deep sympathy even In a crowded garrison bent on getting all the enjoyment possible out of their few months of home life. All the previous summer, spring and fall officers and men of the cavalry, at least, had spent in exciting campaign, and no man could tell how soon the order would come returning them once more to the field, leaving the wives and little ones to watch and pray. "Make hay while the sun shines" seemed to be the social axiom of the cavalry in those days. Enjoy the too brief days as best ye may, for soon the summer will come, when all men must work at their appointed trade and seven months out of twelve And sometimes more it meant separation from the loved ones within

"you sriAtx HAVE IT, OF COURSE."

the guarded limits of the forts, a separation that, in too many cases, proved but the entrance upon that which on earth, at least, is final. There were music and dancing, play acting and feasting, therefore, through the winter at Ransom, and frequent exchange of jovial hospitality with the big--hearted townsfolk over and away at the transcontinental road, but there wasn't a day when somebody, from Tintop down, wasn't sure to drop in and have a chat or a game of checkers, or in the evening a hand at whist, with Morgan, who sat up in an easyohair and was made as comfortable as willing hearts and hands could devise, and Mrs. Vinton not only taught Xiot and Billy as she taught her own, "bnfc time and again sent them home in garments newly fashioned, but with pardonable mendacity represented to be something she had that didn't fit her daughter or that her little Jim had outgrown.

Connie's clear eyes saw

'through the stratagem, and her soft red lips quivered as she kissed the fair round cheek of the loving woman who so well knew how to bless and comfort, yet rob the act of every hint of charity.

And strangely, too, Connie's scant supply of commissary was eked out by many a dainty sent to Morgan's door from somewhere along the line. No one ever gave a dinner or luncheon, or supper party, that long winter, without a remembrance of some kind for those motherless kids, often times in* eluding some comforting beverage for old Morgan himself. Even the sutler, whom the men damned for a skinflint, found means to "chip in" unknown to Morgan, who didn't at all like him, and the surreptitious dozens of stone bottles of stout, glass dittoes of Bass and Budwelser, that had been smuggled in by the back gate during the last year of Mrs. Morgan's illness, never found their way on the bill. He had sent Connie at CnrHt.rnns a dress of soft black rsdbinere over which the child's womanly eyes had glistened, and which, impulsively, she bad taken to h*r father's room, opened it before him aud saying: "Isn't it lovely? Wasn't It just lovely of him?" And then she was brought to sudden real ization of this rancor towards the

o.iW

trader by the flush that overspread Morgan's face and the heavy frown between his eyes. "Connie, child, you shall tiave It, course you need it but we can't take presents from Curran. lie must put on the bill," he said.

But neither on Connie's slender back nor Curran's bulky bill did those dressgoods ever appear. She sent him a misspelled, grateful little note, saying how it touched them all that he should have so kindly remembered her, but papa was so "inflexible" in his views about accepting "presants" from friends they might never be able to repay, and honest Curran—honest at least in his desire to do a kindness to the tall slip of a girl with the big brown eyes and auburn hair that made him think, he sometimes said, of a colleen he'd lost long years before—honest Curran mistook her meaning entirely thought her words Morgan's, and mindful of some caustic comments, the big lieutenant had made anent sutlers' checks he sought to collect at the paytable several years before, had all his Irish aroused and was made fighting mad. "I'll sind him a resated bill, bedad, and cut his acqueentance intirelee," said Curran that night, in relating the incident to some of the boys in the club-room, whereupon that ne'er-do-well scapegrace Briggs promptly besought him to take like cognizance of the first thing he, Lieut. Briggs, might say, as he despairedjotherwise of, ever squaring his account.

But the incident bore its weight of woe to Connie, despite the merriment it gave the b^ys. Acting under the advice of his colonel and his friends, Morgan was diligently turning over to the adjutant fifty dollars, a month of his scanty pay in order that critics and creditors alike might know he was doI ing all a poor devil of a broken-down lieutenant could do to pay his debts without absolutely starving his household. The balance went to Connie, and with this she was expected to feed, clothe and comfort the family, pay the cook, laundress and striker.

Morgan had no life-insuranoe, and in those days could get none. Curran was one of his heaviest creditors, and Curran had been perfectly willing not only to wait, but to open his storehouse or purse-strings still wider for the struggling fellow's benefit. Only so many dollars a month could be parcelled out for the butcher and baker, the grocer and the commissary, and Connie kept her books, and, aided by her lady friends, kept her accounts. But over and above all these necessary expenses were certain dainties and luxuries which Curran had authorized black mammy to draw for at the store whenever the supply was getting low, and Morgan, insisting now on auditing the accounts, could find no such items on the bills rendered, and the truth came out. Curran went off east to buy goods just then, and Morgan did not write the letter his heart was pouring out when he learned how in secret the rough fellow had been so long his benefactor, but he forbade all such traffic in future, and Lot and Billy howled for oranges and raisins in vain. Christmas found their little stockings filled. Many an army mother, planning for her own brood, had remembered the motherless in the humble quarters down the row. But no one could tell whose hand had sent the rocking horse and the big wax doll that were found by Penner at the door when he opened the house on Christmas morning. Suspicion attached to several heads, including Tintop's, whose head, by the way, had been cracked by a shell during the war, and a portion of whose skull, so rumor had it, had been replaced by a silver plate, which led to his wearing a nickname and a wig. But one and all the accused established what Mrs. Whaling once pronounced an alibi, "because they had sent something else." Then they thought of Trooper Schramm, now a fine-looking dragoon, consummately at home in his business but Schramm hadn't been near the house for two weeks. A paymaster's escort was needed to convoy that official to distant winter cantonments, and Schramm had prom ply asked to be allowed to go. This time he didn't say "mit dem fellers" as he had in the field the autumn before, neither did he add "once" or "alretty." Schramm was "studying book English," said the first sergeant. The paymaster got home to his Christmas all right—he needed no escort when his money was gone—but Schramm and his squad trotted in two days later, after the turkey and cranberry sauce were all devoured, so Schramm could have had nothing whafever to do with the gifts sent out from town. So long as they had them, Lot and Billy didn't care who was'the donor. They believed all the more In Santa Clans. It was Connie who thought and wondered it was Connie, alas! who hoped and dreamed.

Among the daily visitors to the house Perry Thornton, second lieutenant of Manning's troop, had been prominent all winter, and there wasn't a handsomer, blither boy in all the regiment when he joined. He was barely twentytwo, with a face almost womanly fair, and a form as slender and graceful as a boy'B could be. He rode and danced and sang welL He didn't drink he wouldn't gamble. He was a soldier's son, an enthusiastic youngster who had seen some years of schooling and travel in Europe, and who had much to tell of soldiers who had won the V. CL or the Iron Cross. "Now in Europe,"said he, "the gffiosr is held as a hero who.

if the risk of his life, bore off a wounied oomrade to whom it meant death if abandoned." The cross for valor, pinned on his breast by royal hands, waa the last

look. Joining the regiment just at the end of the autumn work, and reading of the narrow escape of Lieut. Morgan on the way, Thornton's first longing was to make the acquaintance of the gallant subaltern who had so bravely stood by the humble reeruit and got his wound in saving him. Down went his ideal to dust when a grizzled, careworn, sad-faced veteran was borne from the ambulance into the homely quarters, and somebody said "The old man's about petered." Thornton oould not understand it. "In England or in Germany officers and men would have been lining the way and standing at salute," said he, "for a fellow who did what Mr. Morgan did." "O-h, up there when he went deerhunting, do you me.an? Oh, yes, I re member—helping Schramm out when ho got hit. Ye-es, that was ail right, said one of the young gentlemen of the regiment, and in so saying conveyed the idea to the new-comer that there was nothing in that sort of thing to excite remark. It was the rule, not the exception, in the American cavalry "We'd all do just as much"—as, indeed, very probably they would. But Thorn ton determined he would cultivate Morgan, decorated or not, and so it had happened that it was the "plebe," the newest comer to the regiment, who spent an horn: almost every afternoon before stables playing checkers with the invalid veteran, rarely noticing silent, busy Connie, who came and went, or sat beside them with her needlework, darning the youngsters' stockings or sewing on buttons by the dozen, yet saying never a word. Perry had no end of interest In his new profession, but none whatever in children. It was the proper thing for him to be devoted to the senior subaltern, who, in other armies, perhaps, would nave won such distinction, and he wrote with both pride and complacency to his friends at home of his daily intercourse with a fellow who did what Beresford was V. C.'d for at Ulundi. "But nobody out here seems to think it worth mentioning," he added. He was immensely proud of being second lieutenant in a troop whose cap tain had won three brevets with the regulars, and whose first lieutenant had done as much with the volunteers, both in the great civil

HE WAS PULLING MORGAN OUTfOF HIM-

war but he hadn't been long enough in the service to find out that brevets followed on the heels of the great rebellion like rain on the boom of a battle, deluging everybody who happened to be around. He found Morgan loved to hear of life in foreign armies, while no one else had time to listen. He loved to talk and so he came. He loved to hear of cavalry campaigns during the war, and soon got Morgan to telling and explaining, and so, little by little, he came to be looked upon as the sunshine of their day. He was "pulling Morgan out of himself," and when the spring camn on the "old man" was surely better, able to sun himself on the southern porch and watch the drills on the broad parade. Connie was but a child. Who could have a thought for her? And so here she stood this exquisite May morning, just bordering on womanhood, as the sweet spring buds were bursting into bloom and with yearning, outstretched arms, with a deeper, fonder glow in the big, brown eyes than mortal had yet seen, gazing longingly away down the distant valley, down along the silver windings of the stream, fringed by the fresh green of the cottonwoods, away from the dull brown buildings of the old frontier post, away from barracks, quarters and coral, away from its bustling life and care and sorrows, away from that picketed inclosure far out over the prairie where now the loved mother had been resting l6ng months beyond the twelve, away from aging father, from laughing girl and romping boy, Connie Morgan's heart, shining through her steadfast eyes, was following the fast-fading dusteloud that told where the squadrons were marching sturdily away to drive the Indians from their old haunts down the wild wastes of the Mini Ska, and Perry Thornton riding on his first campaign.

CHAPTER IV.

The cavalry battalion had been gone only two days. Some few of the officers' families, well assured that it would be Thanksgiving in earnest before they could hope to see the campaigners again, had taken wing to the east and were domiciled with friends or relatives far from scenes which so constantly brought to mind the image of the absent husband and father. In most cases, however, the little house* holds remained at the post, assured by department headquarters that they should be undisturbed in the tenure of their army homes. Morgan, whose health and spirits had slowly revived as the sun came northward over the line, had striven to convince Old Tintop and the surgeon that it would do him good to go, but was flatly denied the luxury he craved and bidden to remain at the post. The department commander came out to look over the field in early May, and told Morgan that he meant to keep htat on duty at the post all summer in the hope that the autumn would find him promoted to his captaincy. Then tie fnight b& &&le to get

TERRE HAUTE SATURDAY BYBNINQ MAIL, OCTOBER 20,1894.

reward to which he oould

an order togo before a retiring board and go home to the old state and old friends he had not seen for years. Morgan thanked the kind-hearted chief for all his help and consideration, but his tired eyes wandered away over the prairie to the lonely grave he often managed to visit now. If it were only possible to retire for good and all, how willingly would he go and be laid away| there by Carrie's side, were there only tome provision for Constance and the babies! It appalled him to realize that they were dependent absolutely upon 60 slender a thread as his life that he must struggle on, must exist, must suffer, and try, at least, to be strong that they might not starve. If only those debts were paid, if only he could retire and take the children to some quiet eastern home, however humble, where they might be sent to school and where Connie might receive the education thus far so utterly neglected, then Morgan might live on, grateful and almost contentgJEIe could surely get some clerkship, some desk work that would enable him to add a few hundred dollars yearly to the allowance of a retired dragoon. He did not begin to know, poor fellow, how universal was the theory among business men that old soldiers were unfit for business of any kind. He wrote to Carrie's brothers again, saying nothing, of course, of how often and how much he had helped them in the past,"and begged them to find some opening that would warrant his retiring. No answer came. He wrote again. Then §ob sent a few curt line "Yours reo'd, contents noted. Tho't Wm. had anB'd or wld have done so. Business very slack. Times bard. No opening of any kind. H'd to disohg two elks last month. Better hang on to your present situation awhile longer. If anything turns up will let you know. "Yr bro. afl'y."

Morgan read human nature well enough to see just how much that meant. He would "hang on to the situation" as a matter of course, despite the fact that the doctor said the rheumatism would hang on to him as loner as he remained in that climate. Both Gen. and the colonel had again interested themselves in his behalf, and the railway managers said they oould place him in their office in town when he got ready to retire. The salary was very small, but would help. The work was exacting, however, and the doctor said he simply could not do it in that climate. "Never mind, old friend, we'll fix it somebow," said Tintop, cheerily, as he came to say good-by, looking very much the younger of the two as Morran leaned heavily on his

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