Betty at Fort Blizzard.

by Molly Elliot Seawell.

CHAPTER I

"MISS BETTY" IN A NEW RoLE

Colonel John Hope Fortescue, commanding the fine new cavalry post of Fort Blizzard, in the far Northwest, sat in his comfortable office and gazed through the big window at the plaza with its tall flagstaff, from which the splendid regimental flag floated in the crystal cold air of December. Afar off was a broad plateau for drills, an aviation field, and beyond all, a still, snow-bound world, walled in by jagged peaks of ice. It seemed to Colonel Fortescue, who was an idealist and at the same time a crack cavalry officer, that the great flag on the giant flagstaff dominated the frozen world around it, and its stars were a part of the firmament. When the sun rose and the flag was run up, then indeed it was sunrise. And when the sun descended in majesty, so the flag descended in glory.

As the last pale gleam of splendor touched the flag, the sunset gun cracked out suddenly. Colonel Fortescue and his right-hand man for twenty years, Sergeant Patrick McGillicuddy, rose to their feet and stood at "attention," as the flag fell slowly. Then it was reverently furled, and the color sergeant, with the guard, started toward the Colonel's quarters, all whom they pa.s.sed making way for them and saluting the furled colors.

Colonel Fortescue continued to look out of the window, while Sergeant McGillicuddy, getting some belated mail together, pa.s.sed out of the office entrance of the fine new commandant's quarters. Two horsewomen--Mrs. Fortescue, she who had been Betty Beverley, and her seventeen-year-old Anita--followed by a trooper as escort, were coming through the main entrance. Colonel Fortescue's eyes softened as he watched his wife and daughter, Mrs. Fortescue as slim as when she was Betty Beverley of old in Virginia, and riding as lightly and gracefully as a bird on the wing.

There were two other watchers besides the Colonel. These two stood at the drawing-room window. One was tall and black and kind-eyed, with the unquenchable kindness of the colored race. His official name was Solomon Ezekiel Pickup, but ever since Mrs. Fortescue, as Betty Beverley, had taken him, a little waif, forlorn and homeless and friendless, he had been simply Kettle, being as black as a kettle. He had watched and adored the baby days of "Ma.r.s.e Beverley," the straight young stripling now training to be a soldier at West Point, and Anita, the violet-eyed daughter, the adored of her father's heart, but Kettle had not come into his own until the two-year-old baby, John Hope Fortescue II, had arrived in a world which did not expect him, but welcomed him the more rapturously on that account. The new baby had taken everybody by surprise, and immediately acquired the name of the After-Clap. He coolly approved of his father and mother, and thought Anita an entertaining person when she got down on the floor to play with him. Naturally he was indifferent to his twenty-year-old brother, whom he had never seen, but Kettle--his own Kettle--was the beloved of the After-Clap's heart. Next to Kettle in his affections was Mrs.

McGillicuddy, the six-foot-two wife of Sergeant McGillicuddy, who had eight children, of a.s.sorted sizes, and still found time to do a great deal for the After-Clap.

Mrs. Fortescue, riding briskly across the plaza, and seeing Kettle, so black, holding in his arms the laughing baby, so white, smiled and waved her hand at them. Then, catching sight of the Commanding Officer, standing at the window of his office, she smiled at him. But Colonel Fortescue was not smiling; on the contrary, he was frowning as his eyes fell upon Mrs. Fortescue's mount, Birdseye, a light built black mare, with a shifty eye and a propensity to make free with her hind feet. More than once Colonel Fortescue had reminded Mrs.

Fortescue that it was somewhat beneath the dignity of a Commanding Officer's wife to ride a kicking horse. But Mrs. Fortescue had a sneaking affection for Birdseye and much preferred her to Pretty Maid, the brown mare Anita rode, and who was considered as demure as Anita, and Anita was very demure, and very, very pretty. At least, so thought Lieutenant Victor Broussard, watching her out of the tail of his eye, as he pa.s.sed some distance away. It was not so far away, however, that Anita could not see the handsome turn of his close-cropped black head, and his eyes full of laughter and courage and impudence. As some things go by contraries, the glimpse of Broussard made Anita dismount quickly from Pretty Maid and flit within doors to avoid the sight of him. Once indoors, Anita ran where she could catch a last look of Broussard's young figure, his cavalry cape thrown back, before he turned the corner and was gone.

Colonel Fortescue, at the office window, returned a salute, without a smile, to Mrs. Fortescue's greeting from afar. His teeth came together with a snap.

"It's the last time," he said aloud--meaning that Mrs. Fortescue would have to submit to his judgment in horses and let Birdseye alone.

What happened next turned the Colonel's resolution to adamant. A trooper was leading Pretty Maid away and another trooper was about to do the same for Birdseye when the black mare suddenly threw her head down and her heels up. Mrs. Fortescue kept her seat, while the mare, backing, and kicking as she backed, knocked over a couple of the pa.s.sing color guard, and only by adroitness the color sergeant saved the flag from being dropped to the ground. Meanwhile, the two troopers, falling backward, collided with the chaplain, a small, meek man, as brave as a lion, who stopped to look and was ignominiously bowled over. Sergeant McGillicuddy, just coming out of the office entrance, made a dash forward and grabbed Birdseye by the bridle. The mare, still unable to unseat Mrs. Fortescue or to break away from the wiry little Sergeant, yet managed to scatter all the official mail in the Sergeant's hand on the snow. Kettle, who could not have remained away from "Miss Betty" under such circ.u.mstances to save his life, dropped the baby on the drawing-room floor and rushed out. This the After-Clap resented, shrieking wildly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The black mare suddenly threw her head down and her heels up.]

The combination of the kicking mare, the fallen troopers, the prostrate chaplain, and the screaming baby at once determined Colonel Fortescue to remain in his office; what he had to say to Mrs. Fortescue would not sound well in public. Unlike Kettle, Colonel Fortescue had no fear whatever for Mrs. Fortescue, and watched calmly from the window as Sergeant McGillicuddy brought Birdseye to her four feet. Mrs.

Fortescue sprang to the ground and apologized gracefully to the chaplain, a.s.suring him that Birdseye was the best disposed horse in the world, except when she was in a temper and her temper was merely bashfulness and stage fright.

"Whatever it is," answered Chaplain Brown, smiling while he rubbed a bruised shin, "it hurts. It hurts pretty badly, too."

Next, Mrs. Fortescue apologized profusely to the troopers who had been knocked down by the bashful Birdseye. After their kind, they preferred a kicker to a non-kicker, and accepted, with delighted grins, Mrs.

Fortescue's sweet words. But it was another thing when Mrs. Fortescue had to face a frowning husband.

Mrs. Fortescue tripped into the Colonel's office, and going up to Colonel Fortescue gave him two soft kisses and a lovely smile, and this is what she got in return, in the Colonel's parade-ground voice:

"I supposed I had made myself perfectly clear, Elizabeth, in regard to your riding that kicking mare."

"But, darling," replied Mrs. Fortescue, "I thought you wouldn't mind.

And please don't call me Elizabeth. It breaks my heart."

"I must ask--in fact, insist--that you shall not ride that mare again,"

answered the Colonel sternly, without taking any notice of Mrs.

Fortescue's breaking heart.

"And her name is Birdseye," plaintively responded Mrs. Fortescue.

"Don't you remember, the first horse you ever put me on was your first Birdseye."

Mrs. Fortescue accompanied this information with a little pinch of the Colonel's ear. The Colonel remained coldly unresponsive; he had steeled his heart; the kisses and the pinch were hard to resist, but hardest of all the look of wide-eyed innocence in the dark eyes uplifted to his. Mrs. Fortescue would never see forty again, and her rich hair had a wide streak of silver running from her right temple; but she was the same Betty Beverley of twenty years before. The Betty Beverleys of this world are dowered with immortal youth and change but little, even under strange stars.

Mrs. Fortescue had never in her life been at the end of her resources for placating men. She withdrew her arms from about her husband's neck, and running lightly into the drawing-room took the After-Clap from Kettle's arms, and, throwing him pick-a-back on her shoulders, tripped with her beautiful man-child into the Colonel's office. Mrs.

Fortescue and the baby were the only persons who ever took liberties with Colonel Fortescue.

The baby, charmed with his father's uniform, seized a shoulder strap with one hand and grabbed the Colonel's carefully trimmed mustache with the other, and lifted a pair of laughing eyes, wonderfully like his mother's, into his father's face. Mrs. Fortescue, at first as demure as any C. O.'s wife in the world, suddenly smiled the radiant smile that began with her eyes and ended with her lips. The woman's cunning was too much for the man's strength. Colonel Fortescue put his arm around his wife, as she laid the baby's rose-leaf face against his father's bronzed cheek. Husband and wife looked into each other's eyes and smiled. With this baby their lost youth was restored to them.

Once more the Colonel was a slim young lieutenant, and Mrs. Fortescue was holding in her arms another dark-eyed, rose-leafed baby, now a young soldier in the gray uniform of a military cadet. They, themselves, could scarcely realize the flitting of the years. This new baby was a glorious surprise in their later married life. The baby's little hand had led them backward to the splendid sunrise of their married happiness.

"It is because I love you so that I can't--I won't let you ride that black devil, Betty dear," said the Colonel.

"How ridiculous!" replied Mrs. Fortescue. "You know I can ride as well as you can--can't I, After-Clap?"

"Goo-goo-goo-goo!" replied the baby, positively.

"And I never could understand why you should take the trouble to get angry with me," Mrs. Fortescue kept on, "when you can't stay angry with me to save your life."

Colonel Fortescue made a last stand.

"But if I didn't get angry with you sometimes, Betty----"

"'Betty' sounds cheerful," interrupted Mrs. Fortescue, and then there was peace between them.

Mrs. Fortescue and the Colonel went up-stairs to dress for dinner, and Kettle, on watch in the hall, took charge of the After-Clap, who commanded to be taken back into the office. Kettle, as always, promptly obeyed, and putting the baby on Sergeant McGillicuddy's desk, allowed the After-Clap to wreck everything in sight.

It had not been originally designed that Kettle should be the After-Clap's nurse. The colored mammy who had nursed Beverley and Anita with tender devotions having gone to her well-earned rest, Mrs.

Fortescue had determined to be very modern with the After-Clap. A smart young trained nurse, in a ravishing cap, was his first nurse.

But the baby showed such marked preference for Kettle, and Kettle d.o.g.g.i.ng the baby by day and night and thrusting superfluous services and advice upon the nurse, she decided she would not stand being "bossed by a n.i.g.g.e.r," and took a train for the East. Then, Mrs.

Fortescue determined to return to first principles and imported from Virginia, at great cost and trouble, a colored mammy, most capable and experienced. But the complications with Kettle grew more acute, and the mammy, in a blaze of indignation, took even stronger ground than the trained nurse, and declared she "warn't goin' to be bossed by no black n.i.g.g.e.r." When she had shaken the snow of Fort Blizzard from her feet, there was nothing left but to hand the baby over to Kettle and Mrs. McGillicuddy, as coadjutor. After tending her own brood and keeping a sharp eye on Anna Maria McGillicuddy, her eldest daughter, who had reached the stage of beaux, and cooking the best meals for the Sergeant that any sergeant could ask, Mrs. McGillicuddy still had time to lend a helping hand with the After-Clap.

Kettle and Mrs. McGillicuddy had been good friends ever since the time, nineteen years before, when she had become the little Sergeant's two-hundred-pound bride. But in the twenty years, during which Kettle had never left "Miss Betty" and Sergeant McGillicuddy had been Colonel Fortescue's factotum, there had been a continual guerilla warfare between Kettle and the Sergeant. The Sergeant alluded scornfully to Kettle as "the naygur," while with Kettle the Sergeant was always "ole McGillicuddy." Mrs. McGillicuddy was invariably on Kettle's side, and one blast upon her bugle horn was worth ten thousand men in what Kettle called his "collusions," with the Sergeant. Sergeant McGillicuddy had performed prodigies of valor in fights with Indians; he had been mentioned in general order, along with Colonel Fortescue, and was commonly reputed to fear neither the devil nor the doctor. But he was under iron discipline with Mrs. McGillicuddy, and Kettle, like everybody else, knew it.

While the After-Clap was disporting himself with the articles on the Sergeant's desk, under the full glare of the electric light, a shadow pa.s.sed the window. The next minute Sergeant McGillicuddy entered, the lion in him aroused by the sight of the liberties taken with his desk.

"I say, you naygur," snorted the Sergeant wrathfully, "you take that baby off my desk and out of this office. The C. O's office ain't no day nursery."

"You go to gra.s.s," replied Kettle boldly.

The reason for Kettle's boldness was in sight. Mrs. McGillicuddy's majestic figure was seen approaching from the region back of the dining-room, and she had heard the Sergeant's remark about the C. O.'s office being a day nursery.

"And it's you, Patrick McGillicuddy," cried Mrs. McGillicuddy, sailing into the office, "the father of eight children, complaining of this sweet blessed lamb."

"D' ye mean the naygur?" asked McGillicuddy.

Mrs. McGillicuddy, scorning to reply, seized the baby, and with Kettle following marched out. It was not really judicious for the After-Clap to be taken into the C. O.'s office.

The Sergeant began meekly to straighten up his desk, and Colonel Fortescue, coming in later to glance over the evening newspaper, found McGillicuddy gazing meditatively at the Articles of War, lying in a volume on the table.

The Sergeant was not the modern educated non-com, with an eye to a commission, but an old-timer, unlearned in books, but an expert in handling men and horses.