safety in numbers among the Indians, cowboys, and troopers in the exchange, he was in time to see Cahill enter it from the other store, wrapping up a bottle of pain-killer for Mrs. Stickney's cook. But Clancey was not deceived. He observed with satisfaction that the soles and the heels of Cahill's boots were wet with the black mud of the corral.
The next morning, when the exchange was empty, the post-trader turned from arranging cans of condensed milk upon an upper shelf to face the sergeant's revolver. He threw up his hands to the level of his ears as though expressing sharp unbelief, and waited in silence. The sergeant advanced until the gun rested on the counter, Its muzzle pointing at the pit of Cahill's stomach. “You or me has got to leave this post,” said the sergeant, “and I can't desert, so I guess it's up to you.”
“What did you talk for?” asked Cahill. His attitude was still that of shocked disbelief, but his tone expressed a full acceptance of the situation and a desire to temporize.
“At first I thought it might be that new 'cruity' in F Troop,” explained the sergeant “You came near making me kill the wrong man. What harm did I do you by saying you kept bar for McTurk? What's there in that to get hot about?”
“You said I run with the Whyos.”
“What the h—l do I care what you've done!” roared the sergeant. “I don't kmow nothing about you, but I don't mean you should shoot me in the back. I'm going to tell this to my bunky, an' if I get shot up, the Troop'll know who done it, and you'll hang for it. Now, what are you going to do?”
Cahill did not tell what he would do; for, from the other store, the low voice of Mary Cahill called, “Father! Oh, father!”
The two men dodged, and eyed each other guiltily. The sergeant gazed at the buffalo-robe portieres with wide-opened eyes. Cahill's hands dropped from the region of his ears, and fell flat upon the counter.
When Miss Mary Cahill pushed aside the portieres Sergeant Clancey, of G Troop, was showing her father the mechanism of the new regulation-revolver. He apparently was having some difficulty with the cylinder, for his face was red. Her father was eying the gun with the critical approval of an expert.
“Father,” said Miss Cahill petulantly, “why didn't you answer? Where is the blue stationery—the sort Major Ogden always buys? He's waiting.”
The eyes of the post-trader did not wander from the gun before him. “Next to the blank books, Mame,” he said. “On the second shelf.”
Miss Cahill flashed a dazzling smile at the big sergeant, and whispered, so that the officer in the room behind her might not overhear, “Is he trying to sell you Government property, dad? Don't you touch it. Sergeant, I'm surprised at you tempting my poor father.” She pulled the two buffalo-robes close around her neck so that her face only showed between them. It was a sweet, lovely face, with frank, boyish eyes.
“When the major's gone, sergeant,” she whispered, “bring your gun around my side of the store and I'll buy it from you.”
The sergeant nodded in violent assent, laughing noiselessly and slapping his knee in a perfect ecstasy of delight.
The curtains dropped and the face disappeared.
The sergeant fingered the gun and Cahill folded his arms defiantly.
“Well?” he said.
“Well?” asked the sergeant.
“I should think you could see how it is,” said Cahill, “without my having to tell you.”
“You mean you don't want she should know?”
“My God, no! Not even that I kept a bar.”
“Well, I don't know nothing. I don't mean to tell nothing, anyway, so if you'll promise to be good I'll call this off.”
For the first time in the history of Fort Crockett, Cahill was seen to smile. “May I reach under the counter NOW?” he asked.
The sergeant grinned appreciatively, and shifted his gun. “Yes, but I'll keep this out until I'm sure it's a bottle,” he said, and laughed boisterously.
For an instant, under the cover of the counter, Cahill's hand touched longingly upon the gun that lay there, and then passed on to the bottle beside it. He drew it forth, and there was the clink of glasses.
In the other room Mary Cahill winked at the major, but that officer pretended to be both deaf to the clink of the glasses and blind to the wink. And so the incident was closed. Had it not been for the folly of Lieutenant Ranson it would have remained closed.
A week before this happened a fire had started in the Willow Bottoms among the tepees of some Kiowas, and the prairie, as far as one could see, was bruised and black. From the post it looked as though the sky had been raining ink. At the time all of the regiment but G and H Troops was out on a practice-march, experimenting with a new-fangled tabloid-ration. As soon as it turned the buttes it saw from where the light in the heavens came and the practice-march became a race.
At the post the men had doubled out under Lieutenant Ranson with wet horse-blankets, and while he led G Troop to fight the flames, H Troop, under old Major Stickney, burned a space around the post, across which the men of G Troop retreated, stumbling, with their ears and shoulders wrapped in the smoking blankets. The sparks beat upon them and the flames followed so fast that, as they ran, the blazing grass burned their lacings, and they kicked their gaiters ahead of them.
When the regiment arrived it found everybody at Fort Crockett talking enthusiastically of Ranson's conduct and resentfully of the fact that he had regarded the fire as one which had been started for his especial amusement.
“I assure you,” said Mrs. Bolland to the colonel, “if it hadn't been for young Ranson we would have been burned in our beds; but he was most aggravating. He treated it as though it were Fourth of July fireworks. It is the only entertainment we have been able to offer him since he joined in which he has shown the slightest interest.” Nevertheless, it was generally admitted that Ranson had saved the post. He had been ubiquitous. He had been seen galloping into the advancing flames like a stampeded colt, he had reappeared like a wraith in columns of black, whirling smoke, at the same moment his voice issued orders from twenty places. One instant he was visible beating back the fire with a wet blanket, waving it above him jubilantly, like a substitute at the Army-Navy game when his side scores, and the next staggering from out of the furnace dragging an asphyxiated trooper by the collar, and shrieking, “Hospital-steward, hospital-steward! here's a man on fire. Put him out, and send him back to me, quick!”
Those who met him in the whirlwind of smoke and billowing flame related that he chuckled continuously. “Isn't this fun?” he yelled at them. “Say, isn't this the best ever? I wouldn't have missed this for a trip to New York!”
When the colonel, having visited the hospital and spoken cheering words to those who were sans hair, sans eyebrows and with bandaged hands, complimented Lieutenant Ranson on the parade-ground before the assembled regiment, Ranson ran to his hut muttering strange and fearful oaths.
That night at mess he appealed to Mary Cahill for sympathy. “Goodness, mighty me!” he cried, “did you hear him? Wasn't it awful? If I'd thought he was going to hand me that I'd have deserted. What's the use of spoiling the only fun we've had that way? Why, if I'd known you could get that much excitement out of this rank prairie I'd have put a match to it myself three months ago.
