was not in sight. He was busy with the affairs of the Canteen.
"What is it, Will?" asked Marion anxiously, her gloved hand trembling a bit upon his arm.
"Of all things – queer," said Ray. "Dwight gets my squadron, and —she's coming with him."
Then unaccountably Private Blenke's forage-cap, always worn well forward, tilted off and fell at his feet.
CHAPTER V
PREMONITORY SYMPTOMS
Colonel Ray was no coward, but it must be owned that he was glad to be well away from Minneconjou before the coming of the Dwights. What troubled him most was, not how Sandy, his eldest boy, but how Marion, his beloved wife, might suffer. Never to either father or mother had the young officer spoken the name of the second Mrs. Dwight. Never since his coming to Minneconjou had he referred to his infatuation of the previous year, nor had he even remotely mentioned the meeting at Naples. They knew of it, of course. There were so many aboard the transport who had heard all there was to hear about it, and some of these many could not be expected to keep it to themselves. Sandy, indeed, reached the post only a day or two in advance of this interesting piece of news. Marion heard it before her husband and refrained from telling him, in hopes that Sandy himself would open his heart and tell her all there was to be told; but presently it dawned upon her that the boy shrank from the very mention of "that woman's" name – then that Will, too, had heard the story, and not from Sandy, and then that each feared to tell the other. Then as of old, she nestled into her husband's arms, and there, in her refuge, said:
"After all, Will, isn't it better he should have seen her and – had done with it?"
"If only he has done with it," thought the colonel, as he watched the young soldier going doggedly about his duties. "If only he has done with it!" he thought again, when he saw the red burning on the young fellow's cheek that told he knew at last of the impending arrival. But the boy had shown splendid nerve and grit in that vital matter of the gradual repayment of the moneys lost through his neglect at the Presidio in '98. He had shown such manliness in abjuring wine after that one almost excusable lapse so long ago. A boy who could keep himself so thoroughly in hand, said the colonel, in two cardinal points, can be counted on to keep his head even when he may have lost his heart. No. Ray had trusted Sandy thoroughly in the past, and Sandy had thoroughly justified it. Ray meant as thoroughly to trust now to the manfulness and honor of his son. Pride, too, would help the lad even were "that woman" to seek to lure him again.
But it was hard to leave Marion to meet the Dwights. In all her army life, with the possible exception of Grace Truscott, never had Marion met a woman for whom she felt such depth of affection and regard as for Margaret Dwight. The two, as has been said, were devoted friends, and when Margaret died, leaving her husband, crushed and heartbroken, and that idol of her heart, little Jim, it is doubtful if among her own people she was mourned as utterly as she was by Mrs. Ray. In the years that followed Marion was forever planning for the little fellow's future, and pouring forth a perfect flood of sympathy for that bereaved soldier, his father. It came as a shock inexpressible that Oswald Dwight, after six years' brooding, had married again, and had given Margaret's place to – what? – a girl, young, beautiful, obscure, unprincipled – the girl whom her own Sandy had rapturously, loved and implicitly believed in. And now Marion was called upon to meet this woman in "the fierce white light that beats upon" garrison life – see her daily, hourly, possibly as a next-door neighbor, and no husband's arm or counsel to lean upon.
Nor was this all. It had been arranged that the families of officers ordered on foreign service should retain quarters at the station from which said officers took their departure, provided the quarters were not actually needed by the garrison. Three out of five the big army posts had been left with but a detachment to guard them. Minneconjou was an exception. Hither had come Stone, with two battalions of Foot. Headquarters, staff, band and one squadron of the cavalry had been there, but band and headquarters were now shifted to Niobrara. How Marion wished the squadron could have gone, too! But that was not to be. There were still the four troops at the station, and the Rays were still quartered in the big, roomy house to the right of the post commander's – Marion, her sons, her niece and their two servants. There was even abundant space for her niece's diminishing Advancement Association – the secretary's desk and the mournful-eyed young secretary being much in evidence at the basement window on the north side. Three sets, the colonel's and the flanking field officers', had been built with high piazzas and well-lighted basements beneath; all the others were squat on the hard prairie ground. Stone had two majors with him, both junior to Ray and the post surgeon, so they had taken root in the lines and, for army men, were quite content. All on a sudden one day the new major, Dwight, drove out from the railway station in town, reported with soldierly precision to Colonel Stone, and accepted the promptly tendered invitation to be the colonel's guest until ready to occupy his own quarters. Dwight came earlier than had been expected; explained that he "came ahead to select quarters," would send Mrs. Dwight the measurements of the rooms, then ask for a week's leave to return and fetch her with their goods, carpets and variegated chattels from Chicago. Had any letters or dispatches been received for him? None? Dwight looked queer and grave. Indeed, Stone, who had heard much of him and had met him once or twice in by-gone days, confessed to his wife that Dwight must have "gone off" not a little in more ways than one. Was it the old sorrow or – the new wife – or, mayhap, the sunstroke in the Pampangas?
That afternoon Marion Ray, seated on the vine-shaded piazza, writing to her husband, looked up suddenly at sound of a footstep and, startled and for a moment speechless, gazed into the once familiar features of Margaret Dwight's once devoted husband. She was slow to rise and hold forth her hand, so strange was the expression in his tired eyes. When she could speak it was to say, though her heart fluttered, "Welcome again, Major Dwight, but I'm so sorry Will is not here, too! It is barely a week since he started."
"I have hurried," was the answer, as he took her hand. "I am so tired of leave, of dawdling, of – almost everything. I'm wild to get to work – to work again, Mrs. Ray! That's what a man must have."
All the old strength and repose of manner had gone. She was shocked and troubled at the change, and hurried on in her words lest he should see it.
"And how is my boy – our little Jim? And – I hope Mrs. Dwight is well, and – we're to see her soon," she ventured.
"Mrs. Dwight is looking remarkably well, though she and I are anxious about her mother. Indeed, I had hoped to find dispatches – or something – here from Major Farrell," and surely Dwight's face betrayed rather more than his words. "Jimmy's in fine trim," he hurried on. "They got to be fast friends voyaging. They were up on deck all the homeward way, whereas I'm a very poor sailor. I could hardly, hold up my head from the time we left Gibraltar."
"I'm glad of that – friendship," said Marion gravely, guardedly, for already, in the friendship Minneconjou had been hearing of, little Jim was not included. The Hohenzollern, after a stop-over at Algiers, had been boarded at Gibraltar by two crestfallen gentlemen in khaki and a quandary. The transport had preceded the liner into the shadow of the sleeping lion just thirty hours, and, steaming on to sea before the latter was signaled, found some hours out that Foster and Gibson had been unaccountably left behind. At their own expense, their soldier wardrobe and toilet replenished by a score of jovial Britons who had also contributed to their detention, these two warriors completed their voyage, and Gibson said he was practically alone, for, from morn till nearly midnight, from off Cadiz until held up at quarantine, Foster had been dancing attendance on the lovely Mrs. Dwight, the captain being much of the time down with mal de mer.
Now, Sandy had merely referred to "two fellows left at 'Gib,'" without going into particulars. Sandy, of course, could not be expected to know what might have transpired on the Hohenzollern. Sandy had said nothing about the Dwights at Naples. Sandy had not mentioned even Jimmy, and so long as he shrank from the subject the mother wisely would
