Short Stories for English Courses Part 52

"Oh! certainly that ought to be told," said the Captain, and the General's eyes turned to him again. "Morgan forgot to see young Blue Arrow, his friend, before he got away, and nothing would do but that he should go back and speak to him. He said the boy would be disappointed. The men were visibly uneasy at his going, but that didn't affect him. He ordered them to wait, and back he went, pell-mell, all alone into that horde of fiends. They hadn't got over their funk, luckily, and he saw Blue Arrow and made his party call and got out again all right. He didn't tell that himself, but Sergeant O'Hara made the camp ring with it. He adores Morgan, and claims that he doesn't know what fear is. I believe it's about so.

I've seen him in a fight three times now. His cap always goes off --he loses a cap every blessed scrimmage--and with that yellow mop of hair, and a sort of rapt expression he gets, he looks like a child saying its prayers all the time he is slas.h.i.+ng and shooting like a berserker." Captain Booth faced abruptly toward the Colonel. "I beg your pardon for talking so long, sir," he said.

"You know we're all rather keen about little Miles Morgan."

The General lifted his head suddenly. "Miles Morgan?" he demanded.

"Is his name Miles Morgan?"

The Colonel nodded. "Yes. The grandson of the old Bishop--named for him."

"Lord!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the General. "Miles Morgan was my earliest friend, my friend until he died! This must be Jim's son--Miles's only child. And Jim is dead these ten years," he went on rapidly.

"I've lost track of him since the Bishop died, but I knew Jim left children. Why, he married "--he searched rapidly in his memory-- "he married a daughter of General Fitzbrian's. This boy's got the church and the army both in him. I knew his mother," he went on, talking to the Colonel, garrulous with interest. "Irish and fascinating she was--believed in fairies and ghosts and all that, as her father did before her. A clever woman, but with the superst.i.tious, wild Irish blood strong in her. Good Lord! I wish I'd known that was Miles Morgan's grandson."

The Colonel's voice sounded quiet and rather cold after the General's impulsive enthusiasm. "You have summed him up by his antecedents, General," he said. "The church and the army--both strains are strong. He is deeply religious."

The General looked thoughtful. "Religious, eh? And popular? They don't always go together."

Captain Booth spoke quickly. "It's not that kind, General," he said. "There's no cant in the boy. He's more popular for it-- that's often so with the genuine thing, isn't it! I sometimes think"--the young Captain hesitated and smiled a trifle deprecatingly--"that Morgan is much of the same stuff as Gordon-- Chinese Gordon; the martyr stuff, you know. But it seems a bit rash to compare an every-day American youngster to an inspired hero."

"There's nothing in Americanism to prevent either inspiration or heroism that I know of," the General affirmed stoutly, his fine old head up, his eyes gleaming with pride of his profession.

Out through the open doorway, beyond the slapping tent-flap, the keen, gray eyes of the Colonel were fixed musingly on two black points which crawled along the edge of the dulled silver of the distant river--Miles Morgan and Sergeant O'Hara had started.

"Sergeant!" They were eight miles out now, and the camp had disappeared behind the elbow of Black Wind Mountain. "There's something wrong with your horse. Listen! He's not loping evenly."

The soft cadence of eight hoofs on earth had somewhere a lighter and then a heavier note; the ear of a good horseman tells in a minute, as a musician's ear at a false note, when an animal saves one foot ever so slightly, to come down harder on another.

"Yessirr. The Lieutenant'll remimber 'tis the horrse that had a bit of a spavin. Sure I thot 'twas cured, and 'tis the kindest baste in the rigiment f'r a pleasure ride, sorr--that willin'

'tis. So I tuk it. I think 'tis only the stiffness at furrst aff.

'Twill wurruk aff later. Plaze G.o.d, I'll wallop him." And the Sergeant walloped with a will.

But the kindest beast in the regiment failed to respond except with a plunge and increased lameness. Soon there was no more question of his incapacity.

Lieutenant Morgan halted his mount, and, looking at the woe-begone O'Hara, laughed. "A nice trick this is, Sergeant," he said, "to start out on a trip to dodge Indians with a spavined horse. Why didn't you get a broomstick? Now go back to camp as fast as you can go; and that horse ought to be blistered when you get there.

See if you can't really cure him. He's too good to be shot." He patted the gray's nervous head, and the beast rubbed it gently against his sleeve, quiet under his hand.

"Yessirr. The Lieutenant'll ride slow, sorr, f'r me to catch up on ye, sorr?"

Miles Morgan smiled and shook his head. "Sorry, Sergeant, but there'll be no slow riding in this. I'll have to press right on without you; I must be at Ma.s.sacre Mountain to-night to catch Captain Thornton to-morrow."

Sergeant O'Hara's chin dropped. "Sure the Lieutenant'll niver be thinkin' to g'wan alone--widout me?" and with all the Sergeant's respect for his superiors, it took the Lieutenant ten valuable minutes to get the man started back, shaking his head and muttering forebodings, to the camp.

It was quiet riding on alone. There were a few miles to go before there was any chance of Indians, and no particular lookout to be kept, so he put the horse ahead rapidly while he might, and suddenly he found himself singing softly as he galloped. How the words had come to him he did not know, for no conscious train of thought had brought them; but they surely fitted to the situation, and a pleasant sense of companions.h.i.+p, of safety, warmed him as the swing of an old hymn carried his voice along with it.

"G.o.d shall charge His angel legions Watch and ward o'er thee to keep; Though thou walk through hostile regions, Though in desert wilds thou sleep."

Surely a man riding toward--perhaps through--skulking Indian hordes, as he must, could have no better message reach him than that. The bent of his mind was toward mysticism, and while he did not think the train of reasoning out, could not have said that he believed it so, yet the familiar lines flas.h.i.+ng suddenly, clearly, on the curtain of his mind, seemed to him, very simply, to be sent from a larger thought than his own. As a child might take a strong hand held out as it walked over rough country, so he accepted this quite readily and happily, as from that Power who was never far from him, and in whose service, beyond most people, he lived and moved. Low but clear and deep his voice went on, following one stanza with its mate:

"Since with pure and firm affection Thou on G.o.d hast set thy love, With the wings of His protection He will s.h.i.+eld thee from above."

The simplicity of his being sheltered itself in the broad promise of the words.

Light-heartedly he rode on and on, though now more carefully; lying flat and peering over the crests of hills a long time before he crossed their tops; going miles perhaps through ravines; taking advantage of every bit of cover where a man and a horse might be hidden; travelling as he had learned to travel in three years of experience in this dangerous Indian country, where a shrub taken for granted might mean a warrior, and that warrior a hundred others within signal. It was his plan to ride until about twelve-- to reach Ma.s.sacre Mountain, and there rest his horse and himself till gray daylight. There was gra.s.s there and a spring--two good and innocent things that had been the cause of the bad, dark thing which had given the place its name. A troop under Captain James camping at this point, because of the water and gra.s.s, had been surprised and wiped out by five hundred Indian braves of the wicked and famous Red Crow. There were ghastly signs about the place yet; Morgan had seen them, but soldiers may not have nerves, and it was good camping ground.

On through the valleys and half-way up the slopes, which rolled here far away into a still wilder world, the young man rode.

Behind the distant hills in the east a glow like fire flushed the horizon. A rim of pale gold lifted sharply over the ridge; a huge round ball of light pushed faster, higher, and lay, a bright world on the edge of the world, great against the sky--the moon had risen. The twilight trembled as the yellow rays struck into its depths, and deepened, dying into purple shadows. Across the plain zigzagged the pools of a level stream, as if a giant had spilled handfuls of quicksilver here and there.

Miles Morgan, riding, drank in all the mysterious, wild beauty, as a man at ease; as open to each fair impression as if he were not riding each moment into deeper danger, as if his every sense were not on guard. On through the s.h.i.+ning moonlight and in the shadow of the hills he rode, and, where he might, through the trees, and stopped to listen often, to stare at the hilltops, to question a heap of stones or a bush.

At last, when his leg-weary horse was beginning to stumble a bit, he saw, as he came around a turn, Ma.s.sacre Mountain's dark head rising in front of him, only half a mile away. The spring trickled its low song, as musical, as limpidly pure as if it had never run scarlet. The picketed horse fell to browsing and Miles sighed restfully as he laid his head on his saddle and fell instantly to sleep with the light of the moon on his damp, fair hair. But he did not sleep long. Suddenly with a start he awoke, and sat up sharply, and listened. He heard the horse still munching gra.s.s near him, and made out the shadow of its bulk against the sky; he heard the stream, softly falling and calling to the waters where it was going. That was all. Strain his hearing as: he might he could hear nothing else in the still night. Yet there was something. It might not be sound or sight, but there was a presence, a something--he could not explain. He was alert in every nerve. Suddenly the words of the hymn he had been singing in the afternoon flashed again into his mind, and, with his c.o.c.ked revolver in his hand, alone, on guard, in the midnight of the savage wilderness, the words came that were not even a whisper:

"G.o.d shall charge His angel legions Watch and ward o'er thee to keep; Though thou walk through hostile regions, Though in desert wilds thou sleep."

He gave a contented sigh and lay down. What was there to worry about? It was just his case for which the hymn was written."

Desert wilds "--that surely meant Ma.s.sacre Mountain, and why should he not sleep here quietly, and let the angels keep their watch and ward! He closed his eyes with a smile. But sleep did not come, and soon his eyes were open again, staring into blackness, thinking, thinking.

It was Sunday when he started out on this mission, and he fell to remembering the Sunday nights at home--long, long ago they seemed now. The family sang hymns after supper always; his mother played, and the children stood around her--five of them, Miles and his brothers and sisters. There was a little sister with brown hair about her shoulders, who always stood by Miles, leaned against him, held his hand, looked up at him with adoring eyes--he could see those uplifted eyes now, s.h.i.+ning through the darkness of this lonely place. He remembered the big, home-like room; the crackling fire; the peaceful atmosphere of books and pictures; the dumb things about its walls that were yet eloquent to him of home and family; the sword that his great-grandfather had worn under Was.h.i.+ngton; the old ivories that another great-grandfather, the Admiral, had brought from China; the portraits of Morgans of half a dozen generations which hung there; the magazine table, the books and books and books. A pang of desperate homesickness suddenly shook him. He wanted them--his own. Why should he, their best-beloved, throw away his life--a life filled to the brim with hope and energy and high ideals--on this futile quest? He knew quite as well as the General or the Colonel that his ride was but a forlorn hope. As he lay there, longing so, in the dangerous dark, he went about the library at home in his thought and placed each familiar belonging where he had known it all his life. And as he finished, his mother's head shone darkly golden by the piano; her fingers swept over the keys; he heard all their voices, the dear never-forgotten voices. Hark! They were singing his hymn-- little Alice's reedy note lifted above the others--"G.o.d shall charge His angel legions--"

Now! He was on his feet with a spring, and his revolver pointed steadily. This time there was no mistaking--something had rustled in the bushes. There was but one thing for it to be--Indians.

Without realizing what he did, he spoke sharply.

"Who goes there?" he demanded, and out of the darkness a voice answered quietly:

"A friend."

"A friend?" With a shock of relief the pistol dropped by his side, and he stood tense, waiting. How might a friend be here, at midnight in this desert! As the thought framed itself swiftly the leaves parted, and his straining eyes saw the figure of a young man standing before him.

"How came you here?" demanded Miles sternly. "Who are you!"

Even in the dimness he could see the radiant smile that answered him. The calm voice spoke again: "You will understand that later.

I am here to help you."

As if a door had suddenly opened into that lighted room of which he dreamed, Miles felt a sense of tranquillity, of happiness stirring through him. Never in his life had he known such a sudden utter confidence in any one, such a glow of eager friendliness as this half-seen, mysterious stranger inspired. "It is because I was lonelier than I knew," he said mentally. "It is because human companions.h.i.+p gives courage to the most self-reliant of us;" and somewhere in the words he was aware of a false note, but he did not stop to place it.

The low, even voice of the stranger spoke again. "There are Indians on your trail," he said. "A small band of Black Wolf's scouts. But don't be troubled. They will not hurt you."

"You escaped from them?" demanded Miles eagerly, and again the light of a swift smile shone into the night. "You came to save me --how was it? Tell me, so that we can plan. It is very dark yet, but hadn't we better ride? Where is your horse?"

He threw the earnest questions rapidly across the black night, and the unhurried voice answered him. "No," it said, and the verdict was not to be disputed. "You must stay here."

Who this man might be or how he came Miles could not tell, but this much he knew, without reason for knowing it; it was some one stronger than he, in whom he could trust. As the new-comer had said, it would be time enough later to understand the rest.

Wondering a little at his own swift acceptance of an unknown authority, wondering more at the peace which wrapped him as an atmosphere at the sound of the stranger's voice, Miles made a place for him by his side, and the two talked softly to the plas.h.i.+ng undertone of the stream.

Easily, naturally, Miles found himself telling how he had been homesick, longing for his people. He told him of the big familiar room, and of the old things that were in it, that he loved; of his mother; of little Alice, and her baby adoration for the big brother; of how they had always sung hymns together Sunday night; he never for a moment doubted the stranger's interest and sympathy--he knew that he cared to hear.

"There is a hymn," Miles said, "that we used to sing a lot--it was my favorite; 'Miles's hymn,' the family called it. Before you came to-night, while I lay there getting lonelier every minute, I almost thought I heard them singing it. You may not have heard it, but it has a grand swing. I always think"--he hesitated--"it always seems to me as if the G.o.d of battles and the beauty of holiness must both have filled the man's mind who wrote it." He stopped, surprised at his own lack of reserve, at the freedom with which, to this friend of an hour, he spoke his inmost heart.

"I know," the stranger said gently. There was silence for a moment, and then the wonderful low tones, beautiful, clear, beyond any voice Miles had ever heard, began again, and it was as if the great sweet notes of an organ whispered the words:

"G.o.d shall charge His angel legions Watch and ward o'er thee to keep; Though thou walk through hostile regions, Though in desert wilds thou sleep."

"Great Heavens!" gasped Miles. "How could you know I meant that?