CHAPTER IV.
In the busy week that followed Lieutenant Stuyvesant had his full shareof work and no time for social distraction. Appointed to the staff ofGeneral Vinton, with orders to sail without delay for Manila, the youngofficer found his hours from morn till late at night almost too shortfor the duties demanded of him.
The transports were almost ready. The troops had been designated for theexpedition. The supplies were being hurried aboard. The general had hismen all the livelong day at the rifle-ranges or drill-grounds, for mostof the brigade were raw volunteers who had been rushed to the point ofrendezvous with scant equipment and with less instruction. The campswere thronged with men in all manner of motley as to dress and no littlevariety as to dialect. Few of the newly appointed officers in theDepartment of Supply were versed in their duties, and the young regularsof the staff of the commanding general were working sixteen hours out ofthe twenty-four, coaching their comrades of the volunteers.
The streets were crowded with citizens eager to welcome and applaud thearriving troops. Hotels were thronged. Restaurants were doing a thrivingbusiness, for the army ration did not too soon commend itself in itssimplicity to the stomachs of some thousands of young fellows who hadknown better diet if no better days, many of their number having leftluxurious homes and surroundings and easy salaries to shoulder a musketfor three dollars a week.
Private soldiers in blue flannel shirts were learning to stand attentionand touch their caps to young men in shoulder-straps whom they hadlaughed at and called "tin soldiers" a year agone because they belongedto the militia--a thing most of the gilded youth in many of our Westerncities seemed to scorn as beneath them.
In the wave of patriotic wrath and fervor that swept the land when theMaine was done to death in Havana Harbor, many and many a youth who hassneered at the State Guardsmen learned to wish that he too had giventime and honest effort to the school of the soldier, for now, unless hehad sufficient "pull" to win for him a staff position, his only hope wasin the ranks.
And so, even in the recruit detachments of the regulars, were foundscores of young men whose social status at home was on a plane muchhigher than that of many of their officers. But the time had come whenthe long and patient effort of the once despised militiaman had wondeserved recognition. The commissions in the newly raised regiments wereheld almost exclusively by officers who had won them through longservice with the National Guard.
And in the midst of all the whirl of work in which he found himself,Lieutenant Stuyvesant had been summoned to the tent of General Drayton,commanding the great encampment on the sand-lots south of the Presidioreservation, and bidden to tell what he knew of one Walter F. Foster,recruit --th Cavalry, member of the detachment sent on via the Denverand Rio Grande to Ogden, then transferred to the Southern Pacific trainNumber 2 _en route_ to San Francisco, which detachment was burned outof its car and the car out of its train early on the morning of the---- of June, 1898, somewhere in the neighborhood of a station withthe uncouth name of Beowawe in the heart of the Humboldt Desert, andwhich Recruit Foster had totally disappeared the following evening,having been last seen by his comrades as the train was ferried acrossCarquinez Straits, thirty miles from Oakland Pier, and later byrailway hands at Port Costa on the back trip of the big boat to theBenicia side.
There was little Stuyvesant could tell. He hardly remembered the manexcept as a fine-featured young fellow who seemed shy, nervous, andunstrung, something Stuyvesant had hitherto attributed to the startlingand painful experience of the fire, and who, furthermore, seemeddesirous of dodging the lieutenant, which circumstance Stuyvesant couldnot fathom at all, and if anything rather resented.
He explained to the general that he was in no wise responsible for thecare of the detachment. He had only casually met them at Ogden, andcircumstances later had thrown him into closer relation.
But the veteran general was desirous of further information. He sat atthe pine table in his plainly furnished tent, looking thoughtfully intothe frank and handsome face of the young officer, his fingers beating atattoo on the table-top. The general's eyes were sombre, even sad attimes. Beneath them lay lines of care and sorrow. His voice was low, hismanner grave, courteous, even cold. He was studying his man anddiscussing in his mind how far he might confide in him.
Obedient to the general's invitation, Stuyvesant had taken a chair closeto the commander's table and sat in silence awaiting further question.At last it came.
"You say he left nothing--no trace--behind?"
"There was nothing to leave, general. He had only a suit of underwear,in which he escaped from the car. The men say he had had money and avalise filled with things which he strove to keep from sight of any ofhis fellows. They say that he befriended a tough character by the nameof Murray, who had enlisted with him, and they think Murray knowssomething about him."
"Where is Murray now?" asked the chief.
"In the guard-house at the Presidio. He gave the corporal in charge agood deal of trouble and was placed under guard the morning they reachedthe city. They had to spend the night with the Iowa regiment at OaklandPier."
Again the gray-haired general gave himself to thought. "Could you tellhow he was dressed when he disappeared?" he finally asked.
"A young man in the second sleeper gave him a pair of worn blue sergetrousers and his morocco slippers. Somebody else contributed a _neglige_shirt and a black silk travelling cap. He was wearing these when lastI spoke to him at Sacramento, where he would not eat anything. I--I hadwired ahead for dinner for them."
"Yes," said the general with sudden indignation in his tone, "and I'mtold the company refused to reimburse you. What excuse did they give?"
"It's of little consequence, sir," laughed Stuyvesant. "The loss hasn'tswamped me."
"That's as may be," answered the general. "It's the principle involved.That company is coining money by the thousands transporting troops atfull rates, and some of the cars it furnished were simply abominable.What was the excuse given?"
"They said, or rather some official wrote, that they wouldn't reimburseus because they had already had to sustain the loss of that car due tothe carelessness of our men, and their own train-hands, general, knewthere was no smoking and the men were all asleep. Foster had a verynarrow escape, and Corporal Connelly was badly burned lugging Murrayout."
The general took from a stack of correspondence at his right hand aletter on club paper, studied it a moment, and then glanced up atStuyvesant. "Was not Colonel Ray's regiment with you at Chickamauga?" heasked.
"It was expected when I left, general. You mean the --th Kentucky?"
"I mean his volunteer regiment--yes. I was wondering whether any of hisfamily had gone thither. But you wouldn't be apt to know."
And Stuyvesant felt the blood beginning to mount to his face. He couldanswer for it that one member had not gone thither. He was wonderingwhether he ought to speak of it when Drayton finally turned upon him andheld forth the letter. "Read that," said he, "but regard it asconfidential."
It was such a letter as one frank old soldier might write another. Itwas one of a dozen that had come to Drayton that day asking his interestin behalf of some young soldier about joining his command. It was datedat Cincinnati five days earlier, and before Stuyvesant had read halfthrough the page his hand was trembling.
"Dear Drayton," it said, "I'm in a snarl, and I want your help. My sister's pet boy came out to try his hand at ranching near us last year. He had some money from his father and everything promised well for his success if he could have stuck to business. But he couldn't. Billy Ray, commanding my first squadron, was stationed with me, and the first thing I knew the boy was head over ears in love with Billy's daughter. I can't blame him. Marion, junior, is as pretty a girl as ever grew up in the army, and she's a brave and winsome lass besides--her Dad all over, as her mother says.
"Walter's ranch was thirty miles away, but he'd ride the sixty six times a week, if need be, to have a dance
with Maidie Ray, and the cattle could go to the wolves. Then came the war. The Governor of Kentucky gave Ray the command of a regiment, and that fool boy of mine begged him to take him along. Ray couldn't. Besides, I don't think he half liked Walter's devotions to the girl, though he hadn't anything against him exactly. Then I was retired and sent home, and the next thing my sister, Mrs. Foster, came tearing in to tell me Walter had gone and enlisted--enlisted in the regulars at Denver and was going to 'Frisco and Manila, as he couldn't get to Cuba. She's completely broke up about it.
"Foster went to Washington and saw the President and got a commission for him in the signal corps,--volunteers,--and he should be with you by the time you get this, so I wired ahead.
"He isn't altogether a bad lot, but lacks horse sense, and gave his parents a good deal of anxiety in his varsity days abroad. He was in several scrapes along with a boon companion who seems to have been so much like him, physically and morally, that, mother-like, Mrs. Foster is sure that very much of which her Walter was accused was really done by Wally's chum. I'm not so sure of this myself, but at all events Foster made it a condition that the boy should cut loose from the evil association, as he called it, before certain debts would be paid. I don't know what soldier stuff there is in him--if any--but give him a fair start for old times' sake.
"I need not tell you that I wish you all the joy and success the double stars can bring. I'd be in it too but for that old Spotsylvania shot-hole and rheumatics. My eagles, however, will fold their wings and take a rest, but we'll flap 'em and scream every time you make a ten-strike.
"Yours, as ever,
"Martindale."
Stuyvesant did not look up at once after finishing the letter. When hedid, and before he could speak, the general was holding out sometelegrams, and these too he took and read--the almost agonized appealsof a mother for news of her boy--the anxious inquiries, coupled withsuggestions of the veteran soldier concerning the only son of a belovedsister. Drayton's fine, thoughtful face was full of sympathy--his eyesclouded with anxiety and sorrow. Martindale was not the only old soldierin search of son or nephew that fateful summer.
"You see how hard it is to be able to send no tidings whatever," hesaid. "I sent to you in the hope that you might think of some possibleexplanation, might suggest some clue or theory. Can you?"
There was just one moment of silence, and then again Stuyvesant lookedup, his blue eyes meeting the anxious gaze of the commander.
"General," he hazarded, "it is worth while to try Sacramento. Miss Rayis there."