



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. No one had ever seen Cahill smile. He himself occasionally
joked with others in a grim and embarrassed manner. But no one had ever
joked with him. It was reported that he came from New York, where, it
was whispered, he had once kept bar on the Bowery for McTurk.

Sergeant Clancey, of G Troop, was the authority for this. But when,
presuming on that supposition, he claimed acquaintanceship with Cahill,
the post-trader spread out his hands on the counter and stared at the
sergeant with cold and disconcerting eyes. "I never kept bar nowhere,"
he said. "I never been on the Bowery, never been in New York, never been
east of Denver in my life. What was it you ordered?"

"Well, mebbe I'm wrong," growled the sergeant.

But a month later, when a coyote howled down near the Indian village,
the sergeant said insinuatingly, "Sounds just like the cry of the Whyos,
don't it?" And Cahill, who was listening to the wolf, unthinkingly
nodded his head.

The sergeant snorted in triumph. "Yah, I told you so!" he cried, "a man
that's never been on the Bowery, and knows the call of the Whyo gang!
The drinks are on you, Cahill."

The post-trader did not raise his eyes, but drew a damp cloth up and
down the counter, slowly and heavily, as a man sharpens a knife on a
whetstone.

That night, as the sergeant went up the path to the post, a bullet
passed through his hat. Clancey was a forceful man, and forceful men,
unknown to themselves, make enemies, so he was uncertain as to whether
this came from a trooper he had borne upon too harshly, or whether, In
the darkness, he had been picked off for someone else. The next night,
as he passed in the full light of the post-trader's windows, a shot
came from among the dark shadows of the corral, and when he immediately
sought safety in numbers among the Indians, cowboys, and troopers in the
exchange, he was in time to see Cahill enter it from the other store,
wrapping up a bottle of pain-killer for Mrs. Stickney's cook. But
Clancey was not deceived. He observed with satisfaction that the soles
and the heels of Cahill's boots were wet with the black mud of the
corral.

The next morning, when the exchange was empty, the post-trader turned
from arranging cans of condensed milk upon an upper shelf to face the
sergeant's revolver. He threw up his hands to the level of his ears as
though expressing sharp unbelief, and waited in silence. The sergeant
advanced until the gun rested on the counter, Its muzzle pointing at the
pit of Cahill's stomach. "You or me has got to leave this post," said
the sergeant, "and I can't desert, so I guess it's up to you."

"What did you talk for?" asked Cahill. His attitude was still that
of shocked disbelief, but his tone expressed a full acceptance of the
situation and a desire to temporize.

"At first I thought it might be that new 'cruity' in F Troop," explained
the sergeant "You came near making me kill the wrong man. What harm did
I do you by saying you kept bar for McTurk? What's there in that to get
hot about?"

"You said I run with the Whyos."

"What the h--l do I care what you've done!" roared the sergeant. "I
don't kmow nothing about you, but I don't mean you should shoot me in
the back. I'm going to tell this to my bunky, an' if I get shot up, the
Troop'll know who done it, and you'll hang for it. Now, what are you
going to do?"

Cahill did not tell what he would do; for, from the other store, the low
voice of Mary Cahill called, "Father! Oh, father!"

The two men dodged, and eyed each other guiltily. The sergeant gazed at
the buffalo-robe portieres with wide-opened eyes. Cahill's hands dropped
from the region of his ears, and fell flat upon the counter.

When Miss Mary Cahill pushed aside the portieres Sergeant Clancey, of
G Troop, was showing her father the mechanism of the new
regulation-revolver. He apparently was having some difficulty with the
cylinder, for his face was red. Her father was eying the gun with the
critical approval of an expert.

"Father," said Miss Cahill petulantly, "why didn't you answer? Where is
the blue stationery--the sort Major Ogden always buys? He's waiting."

The eyes of the post-trader did not wander from the gun before him.
"Next to the blank books, Mame," he said. "On the second shelf."

Miss Cahill flashed a dazzling smile at the big sergeant, and whispered,
so that the officer in the room behind her might not overhear, "Is
he trying to sell you Government property, dad? Don't you touch it.
Sergeant, I'm surprised at you tempting my poor father." She pulled the
two buffalo-robes close around her neck so that her face only showed
between them. It was a sweet, lovely face, with frank, boyish eyes.

"When the major's gone, sergeant," she whispered, "bring your gun around
my side of the store and I'll buy it from you."

The sergeant nodded in violent assent, laughing noiselessly and slapping
his knee in a perfect ecstasy of delight.

The curtains dropped and the face disappeared.

The sergeant fingered the gun and Cahill folded his arms defiantly.

"Well?" he said.

"Well?" asked the sergeant.

"I should think you could see how it is," said Cahill, "without my
having to tell you."

"You mean you don't want she should know?"

"My God, no! Not even that I kept a bar."

"Well, I don't know nothing. I don't mean to tell nothing, anyway, so if
you'll promise to be good I'll call this off."

For the first time in the history of Fort Crockett, Cahill was seen to
smile. "May I reach under the counter NOW?" he asked.

The sergeant grinned appreciatively, and shifted his gun. "Yes, but
I'll keep this out until I'm sure it's a bottle," he said, and laughed
boisterously.

For an instant, under the cover of the counter, Cahill's hand touched
longingly upon the gun that lay there, and then passed on to the bottle
beside it. He drew it forth, and there was the clink of glasses.

In the other room Mary Cahill winked at the major, but that officer
pretended to be both deaf to the clink of the glasses and blind to the
wink. And so the incident was closed. Had it not been for the folly of
Lieutenant Ranson it would have remained closed.

A week before this happened a fire had started in the Willow Bottoms
among the tepees of some Kiowas, and the prairie, as far as one could
see, was bruised and black. From the post it looked as though the sky
had been raining ink. At the time all of the regiment but G and H
Troops was out on a practice-march, experimenting with a new-fangled
tabloid-ration. As soon as it turned the buttes it saw from where the
light in the heavens came and the practice-march became a race.

At the post the men had doubled out under Lieutenant Ranson with wet
horse-blankets, and while he led G Troop to fight the flames, H Troop,
under old Major Stickney, burned a space around the post, across which
the men of G Troop retreated, stumbling, with their ears and shoulders
wrapped in the smoking blankets. The sparks beat upon them and the
flames followed so fast that, as they ran, the blazing grass burned
their lacings, and they kicked their gaiters ahead of them.

When the regiment arrived it found everybody at Fort Crockett talking
enthusiastically of Ranson's conduct and resentfully of the fact that
he had regarded the fire as one which had been started for his especial
amusement.

"I assure you," said Mrs. Bolland to the colonel, "if it hadn't been
for young Ranson we would have been burned in our beds; but he was most
aggravating. He treated it as though it were Fourth of July fireworks.
It is the only entertainment we have been able to offer him since he
joined in which he has shown the slightest interest." Nevertheless,
it was generally admitted that Ranson had saved the post. He had been
ubiquitous. He had been seen galloping into the advancing flames like
a stampeded colt, he had reappeared like a wraith in columns of black,
whirling smoke, at the same moment his voice issued orders from twenty
places. One instant he was visible beating back the fire with a wet
blanket, waving it above him jubilantly, like a substitute at the
Army-Navy game when his side scores, and the next staggering from out
of the furnace dragging an asphyxiated trooper by the collar, and
shrieking, "Hospital-steward, hospital-steward! here's a man on fire.
Put him out, and send him back to me, quick!"

Those who met him in the whirlwind of smoke and billowing flame related
that he chuckled continuously. "Isn't this fun?" he yelled at them.
"Say, isn't this the best ever? I wouldn't have missed this for a trip
to New York!"

When the colonel, having visited the hospital and spoken cheering words
to those who were sans hair, sans eyebrows and with bandaged hands,
complimented Lieutenant Ranson on the parade-ground before the assembled
regiment, Ranson ran to his hut muttering strange and fearful oaths.

That night at mess he appealed to Mary Cahill for sympathy. "Goodness,
mighty me!" he cried, "did you hear him? Wasn't it awful? If I'd thought
he was going to hand me that I'd have deserted. What's the use of
spoiling the only fun we've had that way? Why, if I'd known you could
get that much excitement out of this rank prairie I'd have put a match
to it myself three months ago. It's the only fun I've had, and he goes
and preaches a funeral oration at me."

Ranson came into the army at the time of the Spanish war because it
promised a new form of excitement, and because everybody else he
knew had gone into it too. As the son of his father he was made an
adjutant-general of volunteers with the rank of captain, and unloaded
on the staff of a Southern brigadier, who was slated never to leave
Charleston. But Ranson suspected this, and, after telegraphing his
father for three days, was attached to the Philippines contingent and
sailed from San Francisco in time to carry messages through the surf
when the volunteers moved upon Manila. More cabling at the cost of many
Mexican dollars caused him to be removed from the staff, and given a
second lieutenancy in a volunteer regiment, and for two years he pursued
the little brown men over the paddy sluices, burned villages,
looted churches, and collected bolos and altar-cloths with that
irresponsibility and contempt for regulations which is found chiefly
in the appointment from civil life. Incidentally, he enjoyed himself
so much that he believed in the army he had found the one place where
excitement is always in the air, and as excitement was the breath of his
nostrils he applied for a commission in the regular army. On his record
he was appointed a second lieutenant in the Twentieth Cavalry, and on
the return of that regiment to the States--was buried alive at Fort
Crockett.

After six months of this exile, one night at the mess-table Ranson broke
forth in open rebellion. "I tell you I can't stand it a day longer," he
cried. "I'm going to resign!"

From behind the counter Mary Cahill heard him in horror. Second
Lieutenants Crosby and Curtis shuddered. They were sons of officers
of the regular army. Only six months before they themselves had been
forwarded from West Point, done up in neat new uniforms. The traditions
of the Academy of loyalty and discipline had been kneaded into their
vertebrae. In Ranson they saw only the horrible result of giving
commissions to civilians.

"Maybe the post will be