



Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team







RANSON'S FOLLY

And Others

By Richard Harding Davis


Illustrations By Frederic Remington, Walter Appleton Clark, Howard
Chandler Christy, E.M. Ashe & F. Dorr Steele (illustrations not
available in this file)





CONTENTS

RANSOM'S FOLLY Illustrated by Frederic Remington.

THE BAR SINISTER Illustrated by E.M. Ashe.

A DERELICT Illustrated by Walter Appleton Clark.

LA LETTRE D'AMOUR Illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy.

IN THE FOG Illustrated by Frederic Dorr Steele.




Illustrations:

"Throw up your hands," he commanded.

Ranson faced the door, spinning the revolver around his fourth finger.

"I suppose I'm the ugliest bull-dog in America".

"Miss Dorothy snatches me up and kisses me between the ears."

"We've got a great story! We want a clear wire."

He played to the empty chair.

The men around the table turned and glanced toward the gentleman in
front of the fireplace.

"What was the object of your plot?"




RANSON'S FOLLY

I


The junior officers of Fort Crockett had organized a mess at the
post-trader's. "And a mess it certainly is," said Lieutenant Ranson. The
dining-table stood between hogsheads of molasses and a blazing log-fire,
the counter of the store was their buffet, a pool-table with a cloth,
blotted like a map of the Great Lakes, their sideboard, and Indian Pete
acted as butler. But none of these things counted against the great fact
that each evening Mary Cahill, the daughter of the post-trader, presided
over the evening meal, and turned it into a banquet. From her high
chair behind the counter, with the cash-register on her one side and
the weighing-scales on the other, she gave her little Senate laws, and
smiled upon each and all with the kind impartiality of a comrade.

At least, at one time she had been impartial. But of late she smiled
upon all save Lieutenant Ranson. When he talked, she now looked at the
blazing log-fire, and her cheeks glowed and her eyes seemed to reflect
the lifting flame.

For five years, ever since her father brought her from the convent at
St. Louis, Mary Cahill had watched officers come and officers go. Her
knowledge concerning them, and their public and private affairs, was
vast and miscellaneous. She was acquainted with the traditions of
every regiment, with its war record, with its peace-time politics, its
nicknames, its scandals, even with the earnings of each company-canteen.
At Fort Crockett, which lay under her immediate observation, she knew
more of what was going forward than did the regimental adjutant, more
even than did the colonel's wife. If Trumpeter Tyler flatted on church
call, if Mrs. Stickney applied to the quartermaster for three feet
of stovepipe, if Lieutenant Curtis were granted two days' leave for
quail-shooting, Mary Cahill knew it; and if Mrs. "Captain" Stairs
obtained the post-ambulance for a drive to Kiowa City, when Mrs.
"Captain" Ross wanted it for a picnic, she knew what words passed
between those ladies, and which of the two wept. She knew all of these
things, for each evening they were retailed to her by her "boarders."
Her boarders were very loyal to Mary Cahill. Her position was a
difficult one, and had it not been that the boy-officers were so
understanding, it would have been much more difficult. For the life of a
regimental post is as circumscribed as the life on a ship-of-war, and
it would no more be possible for the ship's barber to rub shoulders with
the admiral's epaulets than that a post-trader's child should visit the
ladies on the "line," or that the wives of the enlisted men should dine
with the young girl from whom they "took in" washing.

So, between the upper and the nether grindstones, Mary Cahill was left
without the society of her own sex, and was of necessity forced to
content herself with the society of the officers. And the officers
played fair. Loyalty to Mary Cahill was a tradition at Fort Crockett,
which it was the duty of each succeeding regiment to sustain. Moreover,
her father, a dark, sinister man, alive only to money-making, was known
to handle a revolver with the alertness of a town-marshal.

Since the day she left the convent Mary Cahill had held but two
affections: one for this grim, taciturn parent, who brooded over her as
jealously as a lover, and the other for the entire United States Army.
The Army returned her affection without the jealousy of the father, and
with much more than his effusiveness. But when Lieutenant Ranson
arrived from the Philippines, the affections of Mary Cahill became less
generously distributed, and her heart fluttered hourly between trouble
and joy.

There were two rooms on the first floor of the post-trader's--this
big one, which only officers and their women-folk might enter, and the
other, the exchange of the enlisted men. The two were separated by
a partition of logs and hung with shelves on which were displayed
calicoes, tinned meats, and patent medicines. A door, cut in one end
of the partition, with buffalo-robes for portieres, permitted Cahill to
pass from behind the counter of one store to behind the counter of the
other. On one side Mary Cahill served the Colonel's wife with many yards
of silk ribbons to be converted into german favors, on the other her
father weighed out bears' claws (manufactured in Hartford, Conn., from
turkey-bones) to make a necklace for Red Wing, the squaw of the Arrephao
chieftain. He waited upon everyone with gravity, and in obstinate
silence