Foes in Ambush Part 21

Police officials ride now with the captain temporarily in command: a carriage has whisked the colonel over to head-quarters, but haste!

haste! is the word. On they go, silent, grim, with the alkali dust of the North Platte crossing still coating their rusty garb. A great swing bridge looms ahead: a dozen police deploy on either side and check the attending crowd. Over they go at route step, and then, turning to the right, tramp on down a roughly-paved street, growing dim and dimmer every minute with stifling smoke. Presently they are crossing snake-like lines of hose, gashed and useless; pa.s.sing fire apparatus standing unhitched and neglected; pa.s.sing firemen exhausted and listless. Then occasional squads of scowling men give way before their steady tramp and are driven down alley-ways and around street-corners by reviving police. Then the head of column turns to the left and comes full upon a scene of tumult,--a great building in flames, a great mob surging about it defying police interference and bent apparently on gutting the structure from roof to cellar and pillaging the neighboring stores. Now, men of the ----th, here's work cut out for you! Drive that mob! bloodlessly if you can, bloodletting if you must!

The colonel is again at the head. All are on foot. "Left front into line, double time;" the first company throws its long double rank from curb to curb, Drummond, its commander, striding at its front; Wing, his subaltern, anxiously watching him from among the file-closers.

Already they have reached the rearmost of the rioting groups and, with warning cries and imprecations, these are scurrying to either side and falling into the hands of the accompanying police. Thicker, denser grows the smoke; thicker, denser the mob.

"Clear this street! Out of the way!" are the orders, and for a half-block or so clear it is. Then comes the first opposition. On a pile of lumber a tall, stalwart man in grizzled beard and slouching hatevidently a leader of mark among the mob--is shouting orders and encouragement. What he says cannot be heard, but now, tightly wedged between the rows of buildings, the mob is at bay, and, yelling mad response to the frantic appeals and gesticulations of their leader, at least two thousand reckless and infuriated men have faced the little battalion surging steadily up the narrow street.

"You may have to fire, Drummond," says the colonel, coolly. "Get in rear of your company." Obedient, the tall lieutenant turns and follows his chief along the front of his advancing line so as to pa.s.s around the flank. He is not fifty paces from the pile on which the mob leader, with half a dozen half-drunken satellites, is shouting his exhortations. Just as the lieutenant's arm is grazing grim old Feeny's elbow as he pa.s.ses the first sergeant's station a brick comes hurtling through the air, strikes full upon the back of the officer's unprotected head, and sends him, face forward, into the muddy street.

In the yell of triumph that follows, Wing's voice for an instant is unheard. Obedient to its principle, "Never load until about to fire,"

the battalion's carbines are still empty, but all on a sudden "C"

troop halts. "With ball cartridges _load_!" is Wing's hoa.r.s.e, stern order. "Now aim low when I give the word. _Fire by company._ _Company_, READY!" and, like one, the hammers click. But no command "Aim" follows. "Look out! Look out!--For G.o.d's sake don't fire! Out of the way!" are the frantic yells from the throats of the mob. Away they go. Scattering down side streets, alley-ways, behind lumber-piles, everywhere--anywhere. Many even throw themselves flat on their faces to escape the expected tempest of lead. "Don't fire," says the colonel, mercifully. "Forward, double time, and give them the b.u.t.t. We'll support you." Down from the lumber-piles come the erstwhile truculent leaders. "Draw cartridge, men," orders Wing in wrath and disappointment. "Now, b.u.t.ts to the front, and give them h.e.l.l. _Forward!_" And out he leaps to take the lead, das.h.i.+ng straight into the thick of the scattering mob, his men after him. There is a minute of wild yelling, cursing, of resounding blows and trampling feet, and in the midst of it all a single shot, and when Wing, breathless, is finally halted two squares farther on, only a dozen broken-headed wretches remain along the street to represent the furious mob that confronted them a few minutes before. Only these few and one writhing, bleeding form, around which half a dozen policemen are curiously gathered, and at whose side the battalion surgeon has just knelt.

"He's shot through and through," is his verdict, presently. "No power can save him. Who is he?"

"About the worst and most dangerous ringleader of riot this town has known, sir," is the answer of one of the police officials. "No one knew where he came from either--or his real name."

And then in his dying agony the fallen demagogue turns, and the other side of his twitching face comes uppermost. Even through the thin, grizzly beard there is plainly seen an ugly, jagged scar stretching from ear to chin.

"This isn't his first row by any manner of means, if it is his last,"

says a sergeant of police. "Look at that! Who shot him, anyhow?"

"I did," is the cool, prompt answer, and Sergeant Feeny raises his hand to his carried carbine and stands attention as he sees the surgeon kneeling there. "I did, and just in the nick of time. He had drawn a bead on our lieutenant; but even if he hadn't I'd have downed him, and so would any man in that company yonder." And Feeny points to where "C" troop stands resting after its charge.

"You knew him, then?"

"Knew him instantly, as a deserter, thafe, highway-man, and murderer,--knew him as Private Bland in Arizona, and would know him anywhere by that scar."

A policeman bends and wrenches a loaded revolver from the clutching, quivering fingers just as Wing comes striding back and shoulders a way into the group.

"Is he badly hurt, doctor? That was an awful whack."

"It isn't the lieutenant, sir," says Feeny, respectfully, but with strange significance in his tone as he draws a policeman aside.

"Look!"

And Wing, bending over, gives one glance into the dying face, then covers his eyes with his hands and turns blindly, dizzily, away.

That evening a host of citizens are gathered about the bivouac of the battalion at the water-works while the trumpets are sounding tattoo. A few squares away the familiar notes come floating in through the open windows of a room where Jim Drummond is lying on a most comfortable sofa, which has been rolled close to the cas.e.m.e.nt, where every whiff of the cool lake breeze can fan his face, and where, glancing languidly around, he contrasts the luxury of these surroundings with the rude simplicity of the life he has lived and loved so many years.

Gray-haired George Harvey, kindly Mrs. Stone, his sister, blissful, beautiful f.a.n.n.y Wing with burly baby Harvey in her arms and her proud, soldierly husband by her side, and a tall, lovely, silent girl have all been there to minister to his needs and bid him thrice welcome and make him feel that here, if anywhere on earth, he is at home. And here the battalion surgeon and the family physician unite in declaring he must remain until released by their order, and here for three days and nights he is nursed and petted and made so much of that he is unable to recognize himself, and here sister Puss comes to cry over and kiss and bless him and, in her turn, to be made much of and forbidden to leave, and then, after her big brother's return to duty with the battalion, now being fed and _feted_ by all the North Side, he must needs come over every evening to see her; and, now that presentable uniforms have arrived and the rough beards have been shaved and the men of the old regiment look less like "toughs," but no more like American soldiers as our soldiers look in the field of their sternest service, her sisterly pride in her big brother is beautiful to see,--so is her self-abnegation, for, somehow or other, though he comes to see her he stays to look at Ruth Harvey, shy, silent, and beautiful, and soon, as though by common consent, that corner of the big parlor is given up to those two, the tall, stalwart trooper and the slender, willowy girl. And one evening he comes earlier than usual in manifest discomposure, and soon it transpires that important orders have reached him. f.a.n.n.y turns pale. "Are you--all--ordered back?" she cries, and is for an instant radiant at his a.s.surance that the order involves only himself. He is called to department head-quarters to report in person to the general commanding, who is about to make a tour through the mountains in Northwestern Wyoming and wants Drummond with the escort. She is radiant only until she catches sight of her sister's face. It is not so very warm an evening, yet she marshals the household out on the steps, out on the back veranda,--anywhere out of that parlor, where, just as the faint notes of the trumpets are heard, sounding their martial "tattoo," and just as Lieutenant Wing, returning from a tiptoed visit to his sleeping boy and escaped for the moment from the vigilance of his wife, now happens to go blundering in,--there is heard from the dimly-lighted corner near the piano the sound of subdued sobbing, the sound of a deep, manly voice, low, soothing, wondrously happy, the sound--a sound--indescribable in appropriate English, yet never misunderstood,--a sound at which Wing halts short, pauses one instant irresolute; then faces about and goes tip-toeing out into the brilliant sheen of the vestibule lamps,--into the brilliant gleam of his fond wife's questioning, reproachful eyes.

And for all answer, it being perhaps too public a spot for other demonstration, Wing simply hugs himself.

That night, under the arching roof of the great railway station, the comrades, so long united by the ties of such respect and affection as are engendered only by years of danger and hards.h.i.+p borne in common, and now so happily united by a closer tie, are pacing the platform absorbed in parting words.

"Jim, think what a load I've had to carry all these five years and forbidden by my good angel to breathe a word of it to you."

"I can't realize my own happiness, old man. I never dreamed that, after she got out into the world and saw for herself, that she would remember her girlish fancy or have another thought for me."

"I know you didn't. Yet Fan says that ever since the voyage in the 'Newbern' little Ruth has never had a thought for anybody else."

There is a moment's silence, then Wing speaks again:

"There has not been time for mother's letter to reach me. I had to write, of course, and tell her of the fate that at last befell him. Do you know I feel as though after all it was my hand that did it."

"How so?"

"Feeny says he knew him the instant that side of his face was turned towards him,--the side my knife laid open years ago. That was a fatal scar."

THE END.

NOVELS BY CAPT. KING.

CAPTAIN BLAKE. Ill.u.s.trated.

THE COLONEL'S DAUGHTER. Ill.u.s.trated.

THE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS DINNER

MARION'S FAITH. Ill.u.s.trated

STARLIGHT RANCH

KITTY'S CONQUEST

LARAMIE

THE DESERTER, AND FROM THE RANKS

TWO SOLDIERS, AND DUNRAVEN RANCH

A SOLDIER'S SECRET, AND AN ARMY PORTIA