|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 32
* * * * *
The group of officers in the tent was silent for a long half minute
after Colonel Wilson's voice had stopped. Then the General spoke.
"There is but one thing to do," he said. "We must get word to Captain
Thornton at once."
The Colonel thought deeply a moment, and glanced at the orderly outside
the tent. "Flannigan!" The man, wheeling swiftly, saluted. "Present my
compliments to Lieutenant Morgan and say that I should like to see him
here at once," and the soldier went off, with the quick military
precision in which there is no haste and no delay.
"You have some fine, powerful young officers, Colonel," said the General
casually. "I suppose we shall see in Lieutenant Morgan one of the best.
It will take strength and brains both, perhaps, for this message."
A shadow of a smile touched the Colonel's lips. "I think I have chosen
a capable man, General," was all he said.
Against the doorway of the tent the breeze blew the flap lazily back and
forth. A light rain fell with muffled gentle insistence on the canvas
over their heads, and out through the opening the landscape was
blurred--the wide stretch of monotonous, billowy prairie, the sluggish,
shining river, bending in the distance about the base of Black Wind
Mountain--Black Wind Mountain, whose high top lifted, though it was
almost June, a white point of snow above dark pine ridges of the hills
below. The five officers talked a little as they waited, but
spasmodically, absent-mindedly. A shadow blocked the light of the
entrance, and in the doorway stood a young man, undersized, slight,
blond. He looked inquiringly at the Colonel.
"You sent for me, sir?" and the General and his aide, and the grizzled
old Captain, and the big, fresh-faced young one, all watched him.
In direct, quiet words--words whose bareness made them dramatic for the
weight of possibility they carried--the Colonel explained. Black Wolf
and his band were out on the war-path. A soldier coming in wounded,
escaped from the massacre of the post at Devil's Hoof Gap, had reported
it. With the large command known to be here camped on Sweetstream Fork,
they would not come this way; they would swerve up the Gunpowder River
twenty miles away, destroying the settlement and Little Fort Slade, and
would sweep on, probably for a general massacre, up the Great Horn as
far as Fort Doncaster. He himself, with the regiment, would try to save
Fort Slade, but in the meantime, Captain Thornton's troop, coming to
join him, ignorant that Black Wolf had taken the war-path, would be
directly in their track. Some one must be sent to warn them, and of
course the fewer the quicker. Lieutenant Morgan would take a sergeant,
the Colonel ordered quietly, and start at once.
In the misty light inside the tent, the young officer looked hardly more
than seventeen years old as he stood listening. His small figure was
light, fragile; his hair was blond to an extreme, a thick thatch of
pale gold; and there was about him, among these tanned, stalwart men in
uniform, a presence, an effect of something unusual, a simplicity out of
place yet harmonious, which might have come with a little child into a
scene like this. His large blue eyes were fixed on the Colonel as he
talked, and in them was just such a look of innocent, pleased wonder, as
might be in a child's eyes, who had been told to leave studying and go
pick violets. But as the Colonel ended he spoke, and the few words he
said, the few questions he asked, were full of poise, of crisp
directness. As the General volunteered a word or two, he turned to him
and answered with a very charming deference, a respect that was yet full
of gracious ease, the unconscious air of a man to whom generals are
first as men, and then as generals. The slight figure in its dark
uniform was already beyond the tent doorway when the Colonel spoke
again, with a shade of hesitation in his manner.
"Mr. Morgan!" and the young officer turned quickly. "I think it may be
right to warn you that there is likely to be more than usual danger in
your ride."
"Yes, sir." The fresh, young voice had a note of inquiry.
"You will--you will"--what was it the Colonel wanted to say? He finished
abruptly. "Choose the man carefully who goes with you."
"Thank you, Colonel," Morgan responded heartily, but with a hint of
bewilderment. "I shall take Sergeant O'Hara," and he was gone.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|