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He hardly slept that night from excitement, and it was the very next morning that Russell was electrified by the telegraphic news that the th had had sharp fighting; that the main body of the regiment, early in the morning three days previous, had met and driven back to the reservation a large force of Cheyennes seeking to join Sitting Bull; that Captain Wayne's squadron had been surrounded and cut off by others of the same tribe, and rescued by Truscott's squadron at the same instant that the fight was going on at the War Bonnet; that Wayne's people would undoubtedly have been massacred to a man as their ammunition was spent but for the heroism of Ray, who had run the gauntlet through the Cheyennes all alone in the darkness, found Truscott's squadron going rapidly away in another direction, turned him to the rescue just in the nick of time, and now, weak and wounded, was being sent in to Russell; that there had been several men killed, quite a number wounded, and that among these latter were Blake, Wayne, and Dana; and that Blake, too, would be sent to Russell.
"Miss Marion Sanford. She was a classmate of Mrs. Truscott's in their school-days, and belongs to a wealthy New Jersey family, Mr. Billings says." "Oh, I know!" said Mrs. Raymond. "She's that handsome girl in the album that Grace had at Sandy, don't you know? with the Worth dress and the something or other the matter with her forehead, a burn or a birth-mark, wears her hair so low over it.
Not that she talks or writes very much of that matter, however; for quite a wise little head is that which is perched on Mrs. Truscott's white shoulders. Once in a while in some letter to an old and trusted friend she finds it more than she can do to utterly repress her overwhelming sense of bliss, and then she lets slip some little confession of which Jack is the subject.
There was nothing for it but to leave instantly and to seek safety in America. His rank was that of rittmeister in the hussars, and he had nothing to do but enlist in the cavalry. He was penniless and starving when he reached Truscott's quarters, and her face, bending over him as he rallied from his swoon, had haunted him day and night with its beauty, its sympathy and tenderness.
He could not tell of that interview without betraying her, without bringing Grace Truscott's name into the very snare that Gleason had laid for it. The colonel saw his hesitation, and wheeled around in his chair; Mr. Warner looked up in surprise. "I say, do you know anything of Wolf's desertion, of its causes, of where he has probably gone?" repeated the colonel, sharply.
Stannard had thrust his head forward and his hands into his breeches-pockets. "Now, isn't that simply damnable?" he asked. "You do not believe Ray guilty, do you?" was Truscott's response. "No, I don't," though there was hesitating accent on the don't. Stannard hated to be thought unprepared for any trait in a fellow-man good or bad. "What can the charges be?
But he did not know that soon after Truscott's resignation the colonel had tendered the adjutancy to Ray, and that impolitic youth had promptly declined.
A few days of rest and jubilee and greeting of old and new friends among the regiments there assembled, and then they turned their horses' heads southward, gave one backward look at the valley where they turned the tables on the Cheyennes, where Wayne had so nearly sacrificed his whole command, where Ray had run the gauntlet of death by torture to save them, where Truscott's night dash to the rescue had brought him charging just in time, and over the rolling prairies they marched to seek far to the south their winter homes.
Suddenly, soft and sweet on the clear night air he heard the notes of a guitar, then a tenor voice, well trained, rich and melodious. He well knew there was no officer in the garrison who could sing like that. Who was it? Where was it? Slipping through the back-yard and keeping close under the high board fence, Mr. Gleason tiptoed up the row until behind Truscott's.
Ray had been much agitated at first and had hurried thither, and heaven only knows the variety of conjectures propounded. By the time Ray was seen coming up the row again there were four ladies on Mrs. Turner's piazza, who were vehemently interested in his next move. They watched his going to Truscott's; but, of course, watching was perfectly justifiable in view of their anxiety about her.
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