The Man in Gray: A Romance of North and South Part 40

"It's all right, my boy. I've been young myself. Good luck."

Stuart's laughter rang clear and hearty.

"Thank you, Colonel. You had me scared."

He had just turned to leave the room when a messenger handed Sumner a telegram.

Stuart paused to hear the message.

"Bad news, Lieutenant."

"What, sir?"

"An attack has been made on the Southern settlement on the Pottawattomie."

"A drunken fight--"

"No. Wilkinson, the member of the Legislature from Miami County, was taken from his house in the night and murdered."

"The story's a fake," Stuart ventured.

"The man who sent this message doesn't make such mistakes."

He paused and studied the telegram.

"No. This means the beginning of a blood feud. The time's ripe for it."

"We'll have better news to-morrow," Stuart hoped.

"We'll have worse. I've been looking for something like this since the day I heard old Brown harangue a mob at Lawrence."

He stopped short.

"You'll have to give me back that order, my boy."

Stuart's face fell.

"Colonel, I've just got to see that girl, if it's only for a day--"

He slowly handed the order back to the Commandant. Sumner watched the red blood mount to Stuart's face with a look of sympathy.

"Is it as bad as that, boy?"

"It couldn't be worse, sir," Stuart admitted in low tones. "I'm a goner."

"All right. You've no time to lose, I'll give you three days--"

"Thank you!"

"This regiment will be on the march before a week has pa.s.sed or I miss my guess."

"I'll be here, sir!" was the quick response.

Stuart grasped the leave of absence and hurried out before another messenger could arrive.

He reached Fort Riley the following day and had but twenty-four hours in which to crowd the most important event of his life.

He paced the floor in Colonel Cooke's reception room awaiting Flora's appearance with eager impatience. What on earth could be keeping her? He asked himself the question fifty times and looked at his watch a dozen times before he heard the rustle of organdy on the stairs.

A vision of radiant youth! She had taken time to make her beauty still more radiant with the daintiest touches to her blonde hair.

The simple dress she wore was a poem. The young cavalier was stunned anew. There was no doubt about the welcome in her smile and voice. It thrilled him to his fingertips. He held her hand until she drew it away with a little self-conscious laugh that was confusing to Stuart's plan of direct action.

There was a touch of the Southern girl's conscious poise and coquetry in the laugh. There was something aloof in it that meant trouble. He felt it with positive terror. He didn't have time to fence for position. He was in no mood for a flirtation. He had come to speak the deep things.

She led him to a seat with an air of dignity and reserve that alarmed him still more. He had taken too much for granted perhaps. There might be another man. Conceited fool! He hadn't thought it possible. Her manner had been so frank, so utterly sincere.

She sat by his side smiling at him in the bewitching way so many pretty girls had done before, when they merely wished to play with love.

He spoke in commonplaces and studied her with increasing panic. Her tactics baffled him. Until at last he believed he had solved the riddle!

She had suddenly waked to the fact, as he had, that she had met her fate. She was drawing back for a moment in fright at the seriousness of surrender.

"Yes, that's it!" he murmured half aloud.

"What did you say?" she asked archly.

And his heart sank again. She asked the question with a tone of teasing that made him blush in spite of himself.

With sudden resolution he decided to make the plunge. He seized her hand and spoke with a queer hitch of awkwardness in his voice.

"Miss Flora, I've just twenty-four hours to be here. Every one of them is precious. I want to make them count. Don't you know that I love you?"

The little mouth twitched with a smile.

"I've heard that you're very fickle, Mr. Jeb Stuart. Isn't this all very, very sudden, to be so serious?"

She was still smiling and her eyes were twinkling, but her hand was not trembling. She was complete mistress of her emotions.

Stuart felt his heart pounding. He couldn't keep his hand from trembling, nor his voice from quivering slightly.

"I know I've been a little quick on the trigger, Miss Flora. But it came to me in a flash, the moment I saw you. I've had a good time with pretty girls--yes. But I never felt that way when I met one of the others. And now I'm stammering and trembling and I don't know how to talk to you. I can't rattle on like I've done so many times.

You--you've got me, dear honey girl, for life, if you want me--please--be good to me."

She laughed a joyous, girlish peal that disconcerted him completely.

"My daddy's been warning me against you, sir!"

Stuart suddenly caught a note in her laughter that gave him courage.

She was not laughing at him but with him.