Scot Versus Saxon

: An Apache Princess

Three women were seated at the moment on the front veranda of the

major's quarters--Mrs. Plume, Miss Janet Wren, the captain's sister,

and little Mrs. Bridger. The first named had been intently watching

the officers as, after the dismissal of their companies at the

barracks, they severally joined the post commander, who had been

standing on the barren level of the parade, well out toward the

flagstaff, his adjutant bes
de him. To her the abrupt announcement

caused no surprise. She had seen that Mr. Blakely was not with his

troop. The jeweled hands slightly twitched, but her voice had the

requisite and conventional drawl as she turned to Miss Wren: "Chasing

some new butterfly, I suppose, and got lost. A--what time did--Angela

return?"



"Hours ago, I fancy. She was dressed when I returned from hospital.

Sergeant Leary seems worse to-day."



"That was nearly six," dreamily persisted Mrs. Plume. "I happened to

be at the side window." In the pursuit of knowledge Mrs. Plume adhered

to the main issue and ignored the invalid sergeant, whose slow

convalescence had stirred the sympathies of the captain's sister.





"Yes, it was nearly that when Angela dismounted," softly said Mrs.

Bridger. "I heard Punch galloping away to his stable."



"Why, Mrs. Bridger, are you sure?" And the spinster of forty-five

turned sharply on the matron of less than half her years. "She had on

her white muslin when she came to the head of the stairs to answer

me."



Mrs. Bridger could not be mistaken. It was Angela's habit when she

returned from her rides to dismount at the rear gateway; give Punch

his conge with a pat or two of the hand; watch him a moment as he

tore gleefully away, round to the stables to the westward of the big

quadrangle; then to go to her room and dress for the evening, coming

down an hour later, looking fresh and sweet and dainty as a dewy

Mermet. As a rule she rode without other escort than the hounds, for

her father would not go until the sun was very low and would not let

her go with Blakely or Duane, the only bachelor troop officers then at

Sandy. He had nothing against Duane, but, having set his seal against

the other, felt it necessary to include them both. As a rule,

therefore, she started about four, alone, and was home an hour later.

Five young maidens dwelt that year in officers' row, daughters of the

regiments,--for it was a mixed command and not a big one,--two

companies each of infantry and cavalry, after the manner of the early

70's. Angela knew all four girls, of course, and had formed an

intimacy with one--one who only cared to ride in the cool of the

bright evenings when the officers took the hounds jack-rabbit hunting

up the valley. Twice a week, when Luna served, they held these

moonlit meets, and galloping at that hour, though more dangerous to

necks, was less so to complexions. As a rule, too, Angela and Punch

contented themselves with a swift scurry round the reservation, with

frequent fordings of the stream for the joy it gave them both. They

were rarely out of sight of the sentries and never in any appreciable

danger. No Apache with hostile intent ventured near enough to Sandy to

risk reprisals. Miners, prospectors, and ranchmen were few in numbers,

but, far and wide they knew the captain's bonny daughter, and, like

the men of her father's troop, would have risked their lives to do her

a service. Their aversions as to Sandy were centered in the other sex.



Aunt Janet, therefore, had some reason for doubting the report of Mrs.

Bridger. It was so unlike Angela to be so very late returning,

although, now that Mrs. Bridger had mentioned it, she, too, remembered

hearing the rapid thud of Punch's galloping hoofs homeward bound, as

was she, at 5.45. Yet, barely five minutes thereafter, Angela, who

usually spent half an hour splashing in her tub, appeared full

panoplied, apparently, at the head of the stairs upon her aunt's

arrival, and was even now somewhere down the row, hobnobbing with Kate

Sanders. That Lieutenant Blakely should have missed retreat roll-call

was in itself no very serious matter. "Slept through at his quarters,

perhaps," said Plume. "He'll turn up in time for dinner." In fine the

major's indifference struck the captain as an evidence of official

weakness, reprehensible in a commander charged with the discipline of

a force on hostile soil. What Wren intended was that Plume should be

impressed by his formal word and manner, and direct the adjutant to

look up the derelict instanter. As no such action was taken, however,

he felt it due to himself to speak again. A just man was Wren, and

faithful to the core in his own discharge of duty. What he could not

abide was negligence on part of officer or man, on part of superior or

inferior, and he sought to "stiffen" Plume forthwith.



"If he isn't in his quarters, shall I send a party out in search,

sir?"



"Who? Blakely? Dear, no, Wren! What for?" returned the post commander,

obviously nettled. "I fancy he'll not thank you for even searching his

quarters. You may stumble over his big museum in the dark and smash

things. No, let him alone. If he isn't here for dinner, I'll 'tend to

it myself."



And so, rebuffed, as it happened, by an officer much his inferior in

point of experience and somewhat in years, Wren silently and stiffly

saluted and turned away. Virtually he had been given to understand

that his suggestion was impertinent. He reached his quarters,

therefore, in no pleasant mood, and found his sister waiting for him

with Duty in her clear and shining eyes.



A woman of many a noble trait was Janet Wren,--a woman who had done a

world of good to those in sickness, sorrow, or other adversity, a

woman of boundless faith in herself and her opinions, but not too much

hope or charity for others. The blood of the Scotch Covenanters was

in her veins, for her mother had been born and bred in the shadow of

the kirk and lived and died in the shadow of the cross. A woman with a

mission was Janet, and one who went at it unflinchingly. She had loved

her brother always, yet disapproved his marriage to so young and

unformed a woman as was his wife. Later, she had deprecated from the

start the soldier spirit, fierce in his Highland blood, that tore him

from the teachings of their gentle mother and her beloved meenister,

took him from his fair young wife when most she needed him and sent

him straightway into the ranks of the one Highland regiment in the

Union Army at the outbreak of the Civil War. His gallant colonel fell

at First Bull Run, and Sergeant Wren fought over his body to the

fervent admiration of the Southerners who captured both. The first War

Secretary, mourning a beloved brother and grateful to his defender,

commissioned the latter in the regulars at once and, on his return

from Libby, Wren joined the army as a first lieutenant. With genuine

Scottish thrift, his slender pay had been hoarded for him, and his now

motherless little one, by that devoted sister, and when, a captain at

the close of the war, he came to clasp his daughter to his heart, he

found himself possessed of a few hundreds more than fell to the lot of

most of his associates. It was then that Janet, motherless herself,

had stepped into the management of her brother's army home, and sought

to dominate in that as she had in everything else from early girlhood.

Wren loved her fondly, but he, too, had a will. They had many a

clash. It was this, indeed, that led to Angela's going so early to an

Eastern school. We are all paragons of wisdom in the management of

other people's children. It is in dealing with our own our limitations

are so obvious. Fond as she had become of Angela's sweet young mother,

it must be owned that whom Janet loved in this way she often

chastened. Neighbors swore it was not grief, nor illness, half so much

as sister-in-law, that wore the gentle spirit to the snapping-point.

The great strong heart of the soldier was well-nigh broken at his

loss, and Janet, who had never seen him shed a tear since early

boyhood, stood for once, at least, in awe and trembling at sight of

his awful grief. Time and nature played their part and brought him,

gradually, resignation, but never genuine solace. He turned to little

Angela with almost passionate love and tenderness. He would, mayhap,

have spoiled her had not frontier service kept him so much afield that

it was Janet who really reared her,--but not according to the strict

letter of her law. Wren knew well what that was and forbade.



Misfortunes came to Janet Wren while yet a comely woman of

thirty-five. She could have married, and married well, a comrade

captain in her brother's regiment; but him, at least, she held to be

her own, and, loving him with genuine fervor and devotion, she sought

to turn him in all things to her serious views of life, its manifold

duties and responsibilities. She had her ideal of what a man should

be--a monarch among other men, but one knowing no God but her God, no

creed but her creed, no master but Duty, no mistress but herself, and

no weakness whatsoever. A braver, simpler, kinder soul than her

captain there dwelt not in the service of his country, but he loved

his pipe, his song, his dogs, his horses, his troop, and certain

soldier ways that, during his convalescence from wounds, she had not

had opportunity to observe. She had nursed him back to life and love

and, unwittingly, to his former harmless habits. These all she would

have had him forswear, not for her sake so much, she said, but because

they were in themselves sinful and beneath him. She sought to train

him down too fine for the rugged metal of the veteran soldier, and the

fabric snapped in her hands. She had sent him forth sore-hearted over

her ceaseless importunity. She had told him he must not only give up

all his ways, but, if he would make her happy, he must put the words

of Ruth into his mouth, and that ended it. He transferred into another

corps when she broke with him; carried his sore heart to the Southern

plains, and fell in savage battle within another month.



Not long thereafter her little fortune, invested according to the

views of a spiritual rather than a temporal adviser,--and much against

her brother's wishes,--went the way of riches that have wings, and

now, dependent solely upon him, welcomed to his home and fireside, she

nevertheless strove to dominate as of yore. He had had to tell her

Angela could not and should not be subjected to such restraints as the

sister would have prescribed, but so long as he was the sole victim

he whimsically bore it without vehement protest. "Convert me all you

can, Janet, dear," he said, "but don't try to reform the whole

regiment. It's past praying for."



Now, when other women whispered to her that while Mrs. Plume had been

a belle in St. Louis and Mr. Blakely a young society beau, the

magnitude of their flirtation had well-nigh stopped her marriage, Miss

Wren saw opportunity for her good offices and, so far from avoiding,

she sought the society of the major's brooding wife. She even felt a

twinge of disappointment when the young officer appeared, and after

the initial thirty-six hours under the commander's roof, rarely went

thither at all. She knew her brother disapproved of him, and thought

it to be because of moral, not military, obliquity. She saw with

instant apprehension his quick interest in Angela and the child's

almost unconscious response. With the solemn conviction of the maiden

who, until past the meridian, had never loved, she looked on Angela as

far too young and immature to think of marrying, yet too shallow, vain

and frivolous, too corrupted, in fact, by that pernicious society

school--not to shrink from flirtations that might mean nothing to the

man but would be damnation to the girl. Even the name of this big,

blue-eyed, fair-skinned young votary of science had much about it that

made her fairly bristle, for she had once been described as an

"austere vestal" by Lieutenant Blake, of the regiment preceding them

at Sandy, the ----th Cavalry--and a mutual friend had told her all

about it--another handicap for Blakely. She had grown, it must be

admitted, somewhat gaunt and forbidding in these later years, a thing

that had stirred certain callow wits to differentiate between the

Misses Wren as Angela and Angular, which, hearing, some few women

reproved but all repeated. Miss Wren, the sister, was in fine a woman

widely honored but little sought. It was Angela that all Camp Sandy

would have met with open arms.



"R-r-robert," began Miss Wren, as the captain unclasped his saber belt

and turned it over to Mickel, his German "striker." She would have

proceeded further, but he held up a warning hand. He had come homeward

angering and ill at ease. Disliking Blakely from the first, a

"ballroom soldier," as he called him, and alienated from him later, he

had heard still further whisperings of the devotions of a chieftain's

daughter at the agency, above all, of the strange infatuation of the

major's wife, and these had warranted, in his opinion, warning words

to his senior subaltern in refusing that gentleman's request to ride

with Angela. "I object to any such attentions--to any meetings

whatsoever," said he, but sooner than give the real reason, added

lamely, "My daughter is too young." Now he thought he saw impending

duty in his sister's somber eyes and poise. He knew it when she began

by rolling her r's--it was so like their childhood's spiritual guide

and mentor, MacTaggart, erstwhile of the "Auld Licht" persuasion, and

a power.



"Wait a bit, Janet," said he. "Mickel, get my horse and tell Sergeant

Strang to send me a mounted orderly." Then, as Mickel dropped the

saber in the open doorway and departed, he turned upon her.



"Where's Angela?" said he, "and what was she doing out after recall?

The stable sergeant says 'twas six when Punch came home."



"R-r-robert, it is of that I wish to speak to you, and before she

comes to dinner. Hush! She's coming now."



Down the row of shaded wooden porticos, at the major's next door, at

Dr. Graham's, the Scotch surgeon and Wren's especial friend and crony,

at the Lynns' and Sanders's beyond, little groups of women and

children in cool evening garb, and officers in white, were gathered in

merry, laughing chat. Nowhere, save in the eyes of one woman at the

commanding officer's, and here at Wren's, seemed there anything

ominous in the absence of this officer so lately come to join them.

The voice of Angela, glad and ringing, fell upon the father's ears in

sudden joy. Who could associate shame or subterfuge with tones so

charged with merriment? The face of Angela, coming suddenly round the

corner from the side veranda, beamed instantly upon him, sweet,

trusting and welcoming, then slowly shadowed at sight of the set

expression about his mouth, and the rigid, uncompromising, determined

sorrow in the features of her aunt.



Before she could utter a word, the father questioned:



"Angela, my child, have you seen Mr. Blakely this afternoon?"



One moment her big eyes clouded, but unflinchingly they met his gaze.

Then, something in the stern scrutiny of her aunt's regard stirred all

that was mutinous within her; yet there was an irrepressible twitching

about the corners of the rosy mouth, a twinkle about the big brown

eyes that should have given them pause, even as she demurely answered:



"Yes."



"When?" demanded the soldier, his muscular hand clutching ominously at

the wooden rail; his jaw setting squarely. "When--and where?"



But now the merriment with which she had begun changed slowly at sight

of the repressed fury in his rugged Gaelic face. She, too, was

trembling as she answered:



"Just after recall--down at the pool."



For an instant he stood glaring, incredulous. "At the pool! You! My

bairnie!" Then, with sudden outburst of passionate wrath, "Go to your

room!" said he.



"But listen--father, dear," she began, imploringly. For answer he

seized her slender arm in almost brutal grasp and fairly hurled her

within the doorway. "Not a word!" he ground between his clinched

teeth. "Go instantly!" Then, slamming the door upon her, he whirled

about as though to seek his sister's face, and saw beyond her,

rounding the corner of the northwest set of quarters, coming in from

the mesa roadway at the back, the tall, white figure of the missing

man.



Another moment and Lieutenant Blakely, in the front room of his

quarters, looking pale and strange, was being pounced upon with eager

questioning by Duane, his junior, when the wooden steps and veranda

creaked under a quick, heavy, ominous tread, and, with livid face and

clinching hands, the troop commander came striding in.



"Mr. Blakely," said he, his voice deep with wrath and tremulous with

passion, "I told you three days ago my daughter and you must not meet,

and--you know why! To-day you lured her to a rendezvous outside the

post--"



"Captain Wren!"



"Don't lie! I say you lured her, for my lass would never have met

you--"



"You shall unsay it, sir," was Blakely's instant rejoinder. "Are you

mad--or what? I never set eyes on your daughter to-day--until a moment

ago."



And then the voice of young Duane was uplifted, shouting for help.

With a crash, distinctly heard out on the parade, Wren had struck his

junior down.



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