Starlight Ranch Part 13

"That's because Mr. Lee is tactical officer commanding the company, and Mr. Stanley is cadet captain. Oh! I will take him to task if he has been--been----"

But she does not finish. She has turned quickly in speaking, her hand clutching a little knot of bell b.u.t.tons hanging by a chain at the front of her dress. She has turned just in time to catch a warning glance in Uncle Jack's twinkling eyes, and to see a grim smile lurking under the gray moustache of the gentleman with the Loyal Legion b.u.t.ton who is leading away the tall young lady with the dark hair. In another moment they have rejoined the third member of their party,--he who first withdrew,--and it is evident that something has happened which gives them all much amus.e.m.e.nt. They are chatting eagerly together, laughing not a little, although the laughter, like their words, is entirely inaudible to Miss Nan. But she feels a twinge of indignation when the tall girl turns and looks directly at her. There is nothing unkindly in the glance. There even is merriment in the dark, handsome eyes and lurking among the dimples around that beautiful mouth. Why did those eyes--so heavily fringed, so thickly shaded--seem to her familiar as old friends? Nan could have vowed she had somewhere met that girl before, and now that girl was laughing at her. Not rudely, not aggressively, to be sure,--she had turned away again the instant she saw that the little maiden's eyes were upon her,--but all the same, said Nan to herself, she _was_ laughing. They were all laughing, and it must have been because of her outspoken defence of Brother Will and equally outspoken defiance of his persecutors. What made it worse was that Uncle Jack was laughing too.

"Do you know who they are?" she demands, indignantly.

"Not I, Nan," responds Uncle Jack. "Never saw them before in my life, but I warrant we see them again, and at the Point, too. Come, child.

There's our bell, and we must start for the gangway. Your mother is hailing us now. Never mind this time, little woman," he continues, kindly, as he notes the cloud on her brow. "I don't think any harm has been done, but it is just as well not to be impetuous in public speech.

Ah! I thought so. They are to get off here with us."

Three minutes more and a little stream of pa.s.sengers flows out upon the broad government dock, and, as luck would have it, Uncle Jack and his charges are just behind the trio in which, by this time, Miss Nan is deeply, if not painfully, interested. A soldier in the undress uniform of a corporal of artillery hastens forward and, saluting, stretches forth his hand to take the satchel carried by the tall man with the brown moustache.

"The lieutenant's carriage is at the gate," he says, whereat Uncle Jack, who is conducting her mother just in front, looks back over his shoulder and nods compa.s.sionately at Nan.

"Has any despatch been sent down to meet Colonel Stanley?" she hears the tall man inquire, and this time Uncle Jack's backward glance is a combination of mischief and concern.

"Nothing, sir, and the adjutant's orderly is here now. This is all he brought down," and the corporal hands to the inquirer a note, the superscription of which the young officer quickly scans; then turns and, while his soft brown eyes light with kindly interest and he bares his shapely head, accosts the lady on Uncle Jack's arm,--

"Pardon me, madam. This note must be for you. Mrs. McKay, is it not?"

And as her mother smiles her thanks and the others turn away, Nan's eager eyes catch sight of Will's well-known writing. Mrs. McKay rapidly reads it as Uncle Jack is bestowing bags and bundles in the omnibus and feeing the acceptive porter, who now rushes back to the boat in the nick of time.

"Awful sorry I can't get up to the hotel to see you," says the note, dolorously, but by no means unexpectedly. "I'm in confinement and can't get a permit. Come to the officer-in-charge's office right after supper, and he'll let me see you there awhile.

Stanley's officer of the day, and he'll be there to show the way.

In haste, WILL."

"Now _isn't_ that poor w.i.l.l.y's luck every time!" exclaims Miss Nan, her blue eyes threatening to fill with tears. "I _do_ think they might let him off the day we get here."

"Unquestionably," answers Uncle Jack, with great gravity, as he a.s.sists the ladies into the yellow omnibus. "You duly notified the superintendent of your impending arrival, I suppose?"

Mrs. McKay smiles quietly. Hers is a sweet and gentle face, lined with many a trace of care and anxiety. Her brother's whimsical ways are old acquaintances, and she knows how to treat them; but Nan is young, impulsive, and easily teased. She flares up instantly.

"Of course we _didn't_, Uncle Jack; how utterly absurd it would sound!

But w.i.l.l.y knew we were coming, and _he_ must have told him when he asked for his permit, and it does seem too hard that he was refused."

"Heartless in the last degree," says Uncle Jack, sympathetically, but with the same suggestive drawl. "Yonder go the father and sister of the young gentleman whom you announced your intention to castigate because he didn't agree that Billy was being abused, Nan. You will have a chance this very evening, won't you? He's officer of the day, according to Billy's note, and can't escape. You'll have wound up the whole family by tattoo. Quite a good day's work. Billy's opposers will do well to take warning and keep out of the way hereafter," he continues, teasingly.

"Oh--ah--_corporal_!" he calls, "who was the young officer who just drove off in the carriage with the lady and gentleman?"

"That was Lieutenant Lee, sir."

Uncle Jack turns and contemplates his niece with an expression of the liveliest admiration. "'Pon my word, Miss Nan, you are a most comprehensive young person. You've indeed let no guilty man escape."

CHAPTER II.

A CADET SCAPEGRACE.

The evening that opened so clear and suns.h.i.+ny has clouded rapidly over.

Even as the four gray companies come "trotting" in from parade, and, with the ease of long habit, quickly forming line in the barrack area, some heavy rain-drops begin to fall; the drum-major has hurried his band away; the crowd of spectators, unusually large for so early in the season, scatters for shelter; umbrellas pop up here and there under the beautiful trees along the western roadway; the adjutant rushes through "delinquency list" in a style distinguishable only to his stolid, silent audience standing immovably before him,--a long perspective of gray uniforms and glistening white belts. The fateful book is closed with a snap, and the echoing walls ring to the quick commands of the first sergeants, at which the bayonets are struck from the rifle-barrels, and the long line bursts into a living torrent sweeping into the hall-ways to escape the coming shower.

When the battalion reappears, a few moments later, every man is in his overcoat, and here and there little knots of upper cla.s.smen gather, and there is eager and excited talk.

A soldierly, dark-eyed young fellow, with the red sash of the officer of the day over his shoulder, comes briskly out of the hall of the fourth division. The chevrons of a cadet captain are glistening on his arm, and he alone has not donned the gray overcoat, although he has discarded the plumed shako in deference to the coming storm; yet he hardly seems to notice the downpour of the rain; his face is grave and his lips set and compressed as he rapidly makes his way through the groups awaiting the signal to "fall in" for supper.

"Stanley! O Stanley!" is the hail from a knot of cla.s.smates, and he halts and looks about as two or three of the party hasten after him.

"What does Billy say about it?" is the eager inquiry.

"Nothing--new."

"Well, that report as good as finds him on demerit, doesn't it?"

"The next thing to it; though he has been as close to the brink before."

"But--great Scott! He has two weeks yet to run; and Billy McKay can no more live two weeks without demerit than Patsy, here, without 'spooning.'"

Mr. Stanley's eyes look tired as he glances up from under the visor of his forage cap. He is not as tall by half a head as the young soldiers by whom he is surrounded.

"We were talking of his chances at dinner-time," he says, gravely.

"Billy never mentioned this break of his yesterday, and was surprised to hear the report read out to-night. I believe he had forgotten the whole thing."

"Who 'skinned' him?--Lee? He was there."

"I don't know; McKay says so, but there were several officers over there at the time. It is a report he cannot get off, and it comes at a most unlucky moment."

With this remark Mr. Stanley turns away and goes striding through the crowded area towards the guard-house. Another moment and there is sudden drum-beat; the gray overcoats leap into ranks; the subject of the recent discussion--a jaunty young fellow with laughing blue eyes--comes tearing out of the fourth division just in time to avoid a "late," and the clamor of tenscore voices gives place to silence broken only by the rapid calling of the rolls and the prompt "here"--"here," in response.

If ever there was a pet in the corps of cadets he lived in the person of Billy McKay. Bright as one of his own b.u.t.tons; jovial, generous, impulsive; he had only one enemy in the battalion,--and that one, as he had been frequently told, was himself. This, however, was a matter which he could not at all be induced to believe. Of the Academic Board in general, of his instructors in large measure, but of the four or five ill-starred soldiers known as "tactical officers" in particular, Mr.

McKay entertained very decided and most unflattering opinions. He had won his cadets.h.i.+p through rigid compet.i.tive examination against all comers; he was a natural mathematician of whom a professor had said that he "_could_ stand in the fives and _wouldn't_ stand in the forties;"

years of his boyhood spent in France had made him master of the colloquial forms of the court language of Europe, yet a dozen cla.s.smates who had never seen a French verb before their admission stood above him at the end of the first term. He had gone to the first section like a rocket and settled to the bottom of it like a stick. No subject in the course was really hard to him, his natural apt.i.tude enabling him to triumph over the toughest problems. Yet he hated work, and would often face about with an empty black-board and take a zero and a report for neglect of studies that half an hour's application would have rendered impossible. Cla.s.smates who saw impending danger would frequently make stolen visits to his room towards the close of the term and profess to be baffled by the lesson for the morrow, and Billy would promptly knock the ashes out of the pipe he was smoking contrary to regulations and lay aside the guitar on which he had been softly strumming--also contrary to regulations; would pick up the neglected calculus or mechanics; get interested in the work of explanation, and end by having learned the lesson in spite of himself. This was too good a joke to be kept a secret, and by the time the last year came Billy had found it all out and refused to be longer hoodwinked.

There was never the faintest danger of his being found deficient in studies, but there was ever the glaring prospect of his being discharged "on demerit." Mr. McKay and the regulations of the United States Military Academy had been at loggerheads from the start.

And yet, frank, jolly, and generous as he was in all intercourse with his comrades, there was never a time when this young gentleman could be brought to see that in such matters he was the arbiter of his own destiny. Like the Irishman whose first announcement on setting foot on American soil was that he was "agin the government," Billy McKay believed that regulations were made only to oppress; that the men who drafted such a code were idiots, and that those whose duty it became to enforce it were simply spies and tyrants, resistance to whom was innate virtue. He was forever ignoring or violating some written or unwritten law of the Academy; was frequently being caught in the act, and was invariably ready to attribute the resultant report to ill luck which pursued no one else, or to a deliberate persecution which followed him forever. Every six months he had been on the verge of dismissal, and now, a fortnight from the final examination, with a margin of only six demerit to run on, Mr. Billy McKay had just been read out in the daily list of culprits or victims as "Shouting from window of barracks to cadets in area during study hours,--three forty-five and four P.M."

There was absolutely no excuse for this performance. The regulations enjoined silence and order in barracks during "call to quarters." It had been raining a little, and he was in hopes there would be no battalion drill, in which event he would venture on throwing off his uniform and spreading himself out on his bed with a pipe and a novel,--two things he dearly loved. Ten minutes would have decided the question legitimately for him, but, being of impatient temperament, he could not wait, and, catching sight of the adjutant and the senior captain coming from the guard-house, Mr. McKay sung out in tones familiar to every man within ear-shot,--

"Hi, Jim! Is it battalion drill?"

The adjutant glanced quickly up,--a warning glance as he could have seen,--merely shook his head, and went rapidly on, while his comrade, the cadet first captain, clinched his fist at the window and growled between his set teeth, "Be quiet, you idiot!"

But poor Billy persisted. Louder yet he called,--

"Well--say--Jimmy! Come up here after four o'clock. I'll be in confinement, and can't come out. Want to see you."

And the windows over at the office of the commandant being wide open, and that official being seated there in consultation with three or four of his a.s.sistants, and as Mr. McKay's voice was as well known to them as to the corps, there was no alternative. The colonel himself "confounded"