At last as though he felt that something must be said rather than that he knew what was appropriate to say, the presiding officer addressed the member who had cleared his throat.

"You were about to say something, major?"

"I--er--should like to ask the accused whether--his wife is informed of his--er--predicament?"

And Nevins, slowly turning, answered, "I wrote last week confessing everything. It will be a relief to her that I am no longer in the army.

She said she could never look an officer in the face." There was another pause, then Nevins spoke again. "I hope I have not imposed too much on the judge advocate. I have asked because he is the only gentleman here who is not entirely a stranger to my wife."

Then all eyes were on Loring as he slowly dropped his hand and looked with undisguised astonishment at the accused. Blake, a spectator, suddenly drew his long legs under him and straightened up in his seat.

It was needless for Loring to speak. His eyes questioned.

"I do not mean that Mr. Loring knows my wife, but--she has heard of him from her sister. They hoped to find him in Frisco."

Loring had picked up a pencil as he turned. Its point was resting on the pine-topped table. He never spoke. His eyes, still steadily fixed upon the twitching face of Nevins, questioned further, and every man present strained his ears for the next word.

"I should explain--her sister is Miss Geraldine Allyn."

And with a snap that was heard all over the a.s.semblage the lead of Loring's pencil broke short off. He sat staring at Nevins, white and stunned.

CHAPTER V.

The sutler's "shack" at Camp Cooke was crowded with officers that evening and the episode of Nevins' address was the talk of all tongues.

Certain civilians were there, too, frequenters of Sancho's place, but they were silent, observant and unusually abstemious. To say that Nevins had astonished everybody by an exhibition of feeling and an access of conscience would be putting it mildly. But the fact was indisputable. He himself, after adjournment, exhibited to the interrogative major two long letters, recently received from San Francisco, in graceful feminine hand, and signed "Your sad but devoted wife, Naomi." One of these referred to Lieutenant Loring, "whom Geraldine met at West Point and saw frequently the summer and fall that followed his graduation."

There were members of the court who sought to hear what Loring had to say on the subject, but he proved unapproachable. All men noted the amaze--indeed, the shock--that resulted from Nevins' public and somewhat abrupt mention of the sister's name. The judge advocate sat for a moment as though stricken dumb, his eyes fixed and staring, his face pallid, the muscles of his compressed lips twitching perceptibly, his hand clinched and bearing hard upon the table. There were few army women at Camp Cooke in those days, only two or three veteran campaigners and one misguided bride, but had the post been full of them there could hardly have been curiosity more lively than was exhibited by most of the court all that long afternoon and evening. Conjecture, comment, suggestion pa.s.sed from, lip to lip. One or two men even went so far as to drop in at the tent a.s.signed to the lonely accused and after expressing interest and sympathy and a desire to see that he got "fair play and a fresh start," they ventured to inquire if Nevins knew why Mr. Loring had been so much astonished, if not overcome, by the mention of the name of Nevins' sister-in-law. Nevins didn't know, but at that moment he would have given his hopes of mercy to find out. He was writing to his wife when his visitors came, and demanding explanation. He could think of several possibilities, any one of which in his unenlightened mind might give him a claim, even a hold on the hitherto intractable West Pointer.

Why, why had he not heard or dreamed before this long trial came to its dramatic close that there was some strong and mysterious connection between him and Loring, between prosecutor and accused? The one plausible theory was that Loring and Geraldine were or had been affianced. From all his wife had told him in their few days of moderate content and apparent bliss, he knew Geraldine to be beautiful, gifted and attractive to any man, despite her poverty. That she had been petted and spoiled, that she was selfish to the core, grasping and ambitious, he had never heard, yet might have inferred from Naomi's faltering pleas on her sister's behalf early in the days of their wedded life. In his eagerness to learn something of the truth he sent a messenger during the afternoon, after the final adjournment, and begged that Mr. Loring should come to see him. The reply was that Mr. Loring would do so later.

Only two men succeeded in seeing Loring that afternoon and evening, the post commander, Major Stark, at whose quarters he was housed, and the veteran president of the court. On the plea of being very busy writing the record of the week's session, he had excused himself to everybody else. There had been something of a scene before the adjournment that morning. The court was ordered to try "such other prisoners as might properly be brought before it," and it was understood that two deserters, captured at Tucson, had announced their intention of pleading guilty and throwing themselves on the mercy of the court. Higgins had been sent to Fort Yuma. It would take long weeks to get the evidence in his case from New Orleans, but the two victims at Cooke knew well that their case was clear. There was no use in fighting. The sooner they were tried the shorter term would they serve as prisoners. Nevins finished at ten o'clock. Loring's brief stupefaction was conquered not without evident effort. Vouchsafing no response to the plea of the accused for mercy, he announced that he submitted the case without remark, and the president nodded to Nevins the intimation that he might retire. Nevins slowly gained his feet, took a long look about the silent array, hesitated, and then with his eyes on Loring said:

"I should like to be a.s.sured that the judge advocate accepts the trust.

It will be two or three months before the orders in my case can get back from Washington, meantime my pay is stopped and has been for three months back. My wife must have means to live on, and that's all I have to offer. There is no other way of getting it to her that I consider safe."

Loring's white hand was trembling visibly, but his head was bowed as though in painful thought. The president had to speak. "I presume you will not refuse, Mr. Loring?"

For another moment there was silence. At last, slowly, the judge advocate looked up, turned to the accused and said, "Write Mrs. Nevins'

address on that," holding forth as he did so a heavy official envelope.

Wrapping the pin and ring together in note paper he stowed them in a smaller envelope, moistened the gummed flap, closed it and slid it within the heavier one which Nevins, after addressing, laid before him.

Then turning to the president, Loring calmly bowed and said, "I will accept, sir."

Five minutes later, cleared of all persons except the members and the judge advocate, who in those days did not withdraw during the deliberations of the court, this open-air temple of military justice was given over to the discussion on the findings and the determination of the sentence. In low, grave tones those members who had opinions to express gave utterance to their views. The votes on each specification and to the various charges were recorded, and finally the sentence was arrived at. By 11:30 the case of Brevet-Captain Nevins was practically concluded and the president, eager as were his a.s.sociates to finish their work after their long detention at this hot, barren, yet not inhospitable post, looked briskly up at the silent, somber young officer at the opposite end of the long table.

"Shall we take ten minutes' recess and have a stretch before you go on with the next case, Mr. Judge Advocate? I understand both victims plead guilty and we can do 'em up in thirty minutes."

Nevins' watch was going the rounds of the court at the moment, its beautiful and costly case and workmanship exciting general admiration.

Again the judge advocate was slow and hesitant in his reply, utterly unlike the prompt, alert official whose conduct of the trial had won golden opinions from every man, old or young, in the service. It was nearly half a minute before he spoke, and then only after the president reminded him that several officers wished to start that afternoon for the Gila so as to meet the eastward stage at Sancho's two days later.

"Give me an hour, sir. I cannot go on sooner."

Out under the canvas shelter at the adjutant's office stood the two prisoners with their guards. For an hour or more they had been waiting their turn. A shade of disappointment stole over one or two faces, but the president's answer was prompt.

"Certainly, Mr. Loring. The court owes it to you," and the recess was declared accordingly. The post quartermaster was one of the junior members and Loring detained him. Bidding the orderly remain in charge of the premises he turned to this official.

"You have a safe at your office. Will you permit me to place these in it?--and come with me until I do so?"

"Certainly. Come right along. It's but a step."

Wrapped in a silken handkerchief Nevin's watch, with the envelope containing the diamonds, was stored in a little drawer within the safe and securely locked. "You need a drink," said the quartermaster to the engineer, noting again his pallid face.

"None, I thank you," said Loring briefly, and without another word he took himself straightway to Major Starke's. At 12:30 when court reconvened the judge advocate went swiftly and methodically through his work, read the orders, propounded the usual questions, swore the court, took his own oath, read the charges and recorded the pleas without loss of a second of time or use of a superfluous word. At 1:15 the court stood adjourned _sine die_, leaving the president and judge advocate to finish and sign the record. By 3 P. M. five of its members, in the one "four-mule" road wagon belonging at Cooke, were speeding southward, hoping to catch the stage to take them to their posts lying far to the east. By midnight the record was well-nigh complete, and Loring, locking up the papers, stepped softly out into the starlight.

Over across the contracted parade a lamp was burning dimly at the guard tents and several others flared at the brush and canvas shack of the sutler. Everywhere else about Camp Cooke there was silence and slumber.

The muttered word of command as the half-past-twelve relief formed at the guard tent, the clink of gla.s.ses and murmur of voices, sometimes accentuated by laughter, came drifting on the night from the open clubroom. Beyond the guard tents the dim walls of the corral loomed darkly against the dry, cloudless, star-dotted sky that bordered the eastern horizon. The sentry, slowly pacing his beaten path along the _acequia_ that conducted the cool waters of the Yavapai, from the northward hills to the troughs in the corral, moved noiseless, dim and ghostly, and Loring, listening for a moment to the faint sounds of revelry at the shack, turned away to the north, pa.s.sed the rude shelters which had been built by the labor of troops for the accommodation of the officers and the few families there abiding, and found himself presently on the open plain full a hundred yards out from the buildings and beyond the post of the sentry on that flank, who, far over at the west end of his long beat at the moment, was dreaming of the revels he'd have when his discharge came, and neither heard nor saw the solitary officer whose one desire was to get away by himself to some point where he could calmly think. He needed to be alone. Even Blake, whom he had grown to like and whom he believed to be still at the camp, would have been in the way.

A strange fellow was Loring, a man grown, so far as judgment and experience were concerned, when at the age of twenty he entered West Point, and from the very start became one of the leaders of his cla.s.s in scholarship, and later one of the prominent officers of the battalion of cadets. In scientific and mathematical studies, indeed, he had no superior among his comrades, but languages and drawing, as taught in those days at the academy, threw him out of the head of the cla.s.s, but could not prevent his landing a close second to the leader in general standing. Never a popular man in the corps, he commanded, nevertheless, the respect and esteem of the entire battalion, and little by little won a deeper regard from his immediate a.s.sociates. He was a man of marked gravity of demeanor. He rarely laughed. His smile was only a trifle more frequent. He was taciturnity personified and for two years at least was held to be morose. Of his antecedents little was known, for he never spoke of them and seldom of himself. He was methodical in the last degree, exercising just so long in the gymnasium every morning during the barrack days and putting on the gloves for fifteen minutes every evening with the best middleweight in the corps. There were times in his early cadet days when he was suspected of having an ugly temper, and perhaps with reason. Exasperated at some prank played at his expense by a little "yearling" toward the close of his first--the "plebe"--encampment, Loring actually kicked the offender out of his tent. The boy was no match for the older, heavier man, but flew at him like a wildcat then and there, and Loring suddenly found himself in a fierce and spirited battle. The little fellow had pluck, science and training, and Loring's eyes and nose were objects to behold in less than a minute. For that moment, shame-stricken, he fought on the defensive, then, stung by the taunts of the swift-gathering third cla.s.smen, he rushed like a bull, and two heavy blows sent the yearling to gra.s.s and that fight was ended. But challenges rained on him from "men of his size and weight," and the very next evening he went out to Fort Clinton with one of the champions of the upper cla.s.s and in fifteen minutes was carried away to a hospital a total wreck. It was ten days before he was reported fit for duty. Then camp was over and barrack life begun. Not a word would he or did he say about his severe defeat, but systematically he went to work to master "the n.o.ble art of self-defense," and two years from that time the corps was treated to a sensation. Loring, back from cadet furlough, had been made first sergeant of Company "D," in which as a private and first cla.s.sman was the very cadet who had so soundly thrashed him. Loring proved strict. Certain "first-cla.s.s privates"

undertook to rebel against his authority, his former antagonist being the ringleader. Matters came to a crisis when Loring entered the names of three of the seniors on the delinquency book for "slow taking place in ranks at formation for dinner." It was declared an affront. His old antagonist demanded satisfaction in the name of the aggrieved ones, and that fight was the talk of the corps for six months. Loring named the old battle-ground at Fort Clinton as the place, and in ten minutes utterly reversed the issue of his plebe effort, and the first cla.s.sman was the worst whipped victim seen in years, for he fought until fairly knocked senseless. That was Loring's last affair of the kind. He went about his duties next day as seriously and methodically as ever, without the faintest show of triumph, and when the vanquished cadet finally returned from hospital, treated him with scrupulous courtesy that, before the winter wore away, warmed even to kindliness, and when the springtime came the two were cordial friends. The summer of his graduation Loring was ordered on temporary duty as an instructor during the encampment of cadets. He did not dance. He cared little for society, but one evening at Cozzens' he was thrilled by the sweetness of a woman's song, and gazing in at her as she sang to an applauding audience in the great parlor, Loring saw a face as sweet as the voice. Several evenings he spent on the broad veranda, for every night she sang and ere long noticed him; so did prominent society women and read his unspoken admiration. "Let me present you to her, Mr. Loring," said one of the latter. "She is a lovely girl, and so lonely, you know. She is engaged as companion, it seems, to Miss Haight--a dragon of an old maid who is a good deal of an invalid and seldom out of her room. That is why you never see the girl at the 'hops' at the Point, yet I know she'd love to go."

Loring felt that he blushed with eagerness and pleasure, though he merely said "please," and so Miss Geraldine Allyn met Lieutenant Loring of the engineers, and within the fortnight he knew, though he strove to hide it, that he was madly in love with her. Such beauty, such a voice, such appealing loneliness were too much for him. Six long weeks, though he became her shadow, Loring struggled against his pa.s.sion. He had planned that for years he should remain single until he had saved a modest nestegg; then, when he had rank and experience, had moved in the world and had ample opportunity to study women, he would select for himself and deliberately lay siege to the girl he thought to make his wife.

But when his duties were completed with the twenty-eighth of August and he should have gone to his home, Loring remained at the Point fascinated, for Miss Haight and her musical companion stayed at Cozzens through September. In October they were to go to Lenox, and before the parting Loring's ring was on that little finger. She had promised to be his wife. Home then he hurried in response to the pleading of his sister, but the moment the Lenox visit was over and Miss Haight returned to New York thither went Loring to find his _fiancee_ at the piano, with a middle-aged, somewhat portly civilian bending eagerly over her and so engrossed that he never saw or heard the intruder. This was November fourth. The engagement was barely six weeks old, but Loring's ring was not on her finger as she rose in confusion to greet him. More than that, she wrote a piteous letter to him, begging for her release.

She "really had not known her own mind." Loring gave it without a word to or without other sight of her, packed his trunk, and left New York on the morning train. There was a sensation at the Point when it was announced that Miss Allyn was to marry Mr. Forbes Crosby, a wealthy "board-of-trade man" of forty. Loring reappeared no more. He got his orders for San Francisco and sailed late in the fall, and barely had he gone than the story spread from lip to lip that Mr. Crosby had broken the engagement, that Miss Haight had decided to go abroad and would not require a companion what was more, that Forbes Crosby had been making very judicious investments for Miss Haight herself, and people really wouldn't be surprised if--and then Geraldine Allyn, too, disappeared from New York and was next heard of living very quietly with a married sister, herself an invalid, a Mrs. Nevins, whose husband was said to be somewhere in the army.

And so that girl whom Loring had so deeply loved was sister to the wife of this military castaway, this unprincipled gambler, swindler and thief, and he, Loring, had charged himself with a commission that might bring him once more face to face with her who had duped him.

Circling the camp at wide distance, he had crossed the _acequia_ and reached the Gila road. To the north now lay the camp, and the twinkling lights of the sutler's bar, and between him and these twinkling lights two dark objects bobbed into view some thirty yards distant, and, as plain as he could hear his own heart beat, Loring heard a voice say: "Then I'll count on you not to let him out of your sight," and the voice was that of Nevins--Nevins who was supposed to confine himself, day and night in arrest, to the limits of the garrison.

CHAPTER VI.

The members of the court had scattered to their posts, all save the veteran president and Colonel Turnbull, the department inspector.

Lieutenant Blake, to his disgust, had been sent scouting up the Ha.s.sayampa where the Apaches had been seen some days before, but couldn't be found now--it being the practice of those nimble warriors to get far from the scene of their deviltries without needless delay, and the rule of the powers that were, until General Crook taught them wiser methods, to promptly order cavalry to the spot where the Indians had been, instead of where they had presumably gone. A buckboard _en route_ to Date Creek, with two of the array that had sat in judgment on Nevins, had been "held up" at night by a gang of half a dozen desperadoes and the three pa.s.sengers relieved of their valuables, consisting of one gold watch and two of silver, one seal ring, three revolvers, three extra-sized canteens, a two-gallon demijohn, and in the aggregate three gallons of whisky. The victims had submitted to the inevitable so far as their gold and silver were concerned, but pathetically pointed out to the robber chief the hardship of being bereft at one fell swoop of the expensive and only consolation the country afforded, and despite his wrath and disappointment at finding that the gentlemen had already been robbed, two of them having spent four nights hand-running at the post poker-room--the leader was not so dest.i.tute of fellow-feeling as to condemn the hapless trio to the loss of even the necessaries of life, and mercifully handed back half a gallon.

"We hope to catch some of you gentlemen when you haven't been playing poker," said he, striving to stifle his chagrin. "Who got it all, anyhow?" he asked, with an eye to future business. "Ah, yes--might have known it," he continued in response to the rueful admission of one of the party. "Wonderfully smart outfit that at Cooke, wonderfully--most as smart as some of our people at Sancho's. Well, so long, gentlemen. 'F any of your friends are coming this way recommend our place, won't you?

We've treated you as well as we knew how. Drive on, Johnny. n.o.body else will stop you this side of Date. They know we got here first."

Arizona was an interesting region in those days of development that followed close on the heels of the war. Hundreds of experienced hands had been thrown out of employment by the return of peace, and the territories overflowed with outlaws, red and white, male and female. It was taking one's life in one's hands to venture pistol shot beyond the confines of a military post. It was impossible for paymasters to carry funds without a strong escort of cavalry. The only currency in the territory was that put in circulation by the troops or paid to contractors through the quartermaster's department. Even Wells-Fargo, pioneer expressmen of the Pacific slope, sent their messengers and agents no further then than the Colorado River, and Uncle Sam's mail stage was robbed so often that a registered package had grown to be considered only an advertis.e.m.e.nt to the covetous of the fact that its contents might be of value.

And so when the record of the court was duly signed and sealed in huge official envelope, and Lieutenant Loring, even more grave and taciturn than usual, went the rounds of the rude quarters to leave his card or pay his ceremonious parting call on the officers who knew enough to call on him--which in those crude days of the army many did not--he was asked by more than one experienced soldier whether he had requested an escort in view of the fact that he was burdened with valuables that, though small in bulk, were convertible into cash that was anything but small in amount. To such queries Mr. Loring, who had an odd aversion to answering questions as to what he was going to do, merely bowed a.s.sent and changed the subject. Lieutenant Gleason, an officer who had recently joined the infantry and was one of Nevins' victims, a man of unusual a.s.surance despite his few months of service, had persisted in his queries to the extent of demanding from what quarter Loring expected to get an escort, Blake being away at the Ha.s.sayampa, and no other cavalry being within sixty miles; and Gleason felt resentful, though he deftly hid the fact, because the engineer ignored the question until it had been thrice repeated, and then he said, somewhat tartly: "That is my affair, Mr.

Gleason." Everybody thought that Loring was decidedly unsociable, and some went so far as to call him supercilious and haughty.

"Too d.a.m.ned big to mingle with men who fought all through the war while he was a schoolboy at the Point," said Gleason, who had never seen a skirmish.

This latter gentleman took it much amiss that Loring had won the shoulder-straps of a first lieutenant the day he first donned his uniform (many vacancies then existing in the Corps of Engineers), while Gleason and others, with what he called war records, were still second lieutenants. Officers of the caliber of Turnbull and Starke saw much to respect in the grave, silent, thoughtful young officer, but the juniors--the captains and lieutenants--though they had marked the ease and ability with which Loring handled what was probably his first case as judge advocate, nevertheless agreed that he was "offish" toward the general run of "the line," held himself aloof as though he considered himself of superior clay, didn't drink, smoke, swear, or play cards, and was therefore dest.i.tute of most elements of soldier companionship as then and there defined. It was resented, too, by almost everybody that Loring would not say when and how he expected to leave Camp Cooke. He had come on Sancho's famous roan, but had returned that animal by special courier without delay. Starke and Turnbull were informed, but at Loring's request saw fit to hold their tongues. No one should know, he had said to them, if he was to be responsible for those valuables. It might leak out, and the veteran officers saw the point. The juniors could not well ask them, the veterans, but they could and did ask Loring, and held it up against him in days to come that he declined to be confidential.