"This makes the second time he's come in since six o'clock. I refused to let him have a drop. Can't something be done to keep him out? We can't lock the door, you know, sir."
Stuyvesant quickly arose and stepped up the aisle. By this time everybody was gazing towards the front entrance in concern and curiosity. The colored waiter was still confronting the soldier as though to prevent his coming farther into the car. The soldier, with flushed and sodden face and angry eyes, had placed a hand on the broad shoulder of the servant and was clumsily striving to put him aside.
Stuyvesant's tall, athletic figure suddenly shut both from view. Never hesitating, he quickly elbowed the negro out of the way, seized the doorknob with his left hand, throwing the door wide open, then, looking the soldier full in the face, pointed to the tourist car with the other.
"Go back at once," was all he said.
The man had been hardly six days in service, and had learned little of army life or ways. He was a whole American citizen, however, if he was half drunk, and the average American thinks twice before he obeys a mandate of any kind. This one coming from a tall young swell was especially obnoxious.
The uniform as yet had little effect on Recruit Murray. Where he hailed from the sight of it had for years provoked only demonstrations of derision and dislike. He didn't know who the officer was—didn't want to know—didn't care. What he wanted was whiskey, and so long as the money was burning in his pocket he knew no reason why he shouldn't have it. Therefore, instead of obeying, he stood there, sullen and swaying, scowling up as though in hate and defiance into the grave, set young face. Another second and the thing was settled. Stuyvesant's right hand grasped the blue collar at the throat, the long, slender fingers gripping tight, and half shot, half lifted the amazed recruit across the swaying platform and into the reeling car ahead. There he plumped his captive down into a seat and sent for the corporal. Connelly came, rubbing his eyes, and took in the situation at a glance.
"I ordered him not to leave the car three hours ago, sir," he quickly spoke. "But after supper I got drowsy and fell asleep in my section. Then he skinned out. I'd iron him, sir, if I had anything of the kind."
"No," said Stuyvesant, "don't think of that. Just keep a watch over him and forbid his leaving the section. No, sir, none of that," he added, as in drunken dignity Murray was searching for a match to light his pipe and hide his humiliation. "There must be no smoking in this flimsy car, corporal. A spark would set fire to it in a second."
"Them was my orders, sir. This fellow knows it as well as I do. But he's given trouble one way or other ever since we started. You hear that again, now, Murray: no drink; no smoke. I'll see to it that he doesn't quit the car again, sir," he concluded, turning appealingly to the young officer, and Stuyvesant, taking a quiet look up and down the dimly lighted, dusty aisle, was about to return to the "diner," when Murray struggled to his feet. Balked in his hope of getting more drink, and defrauded, as in his muddled condition it seemed to him, of the solace of tobacco, the devil in him roused to evil effort by the vile liquor procured surreptitiously somewhere along the line, the time had come for him, as he judged, to assert himself before his fellows and prove himself a man.
"You think you're a better man than I am," he began thickly, glaring savagely at the young officer. "But I'll be even with you, young fellow. I'll——" And here ended the harangue, for, one broad hand clapped over the leering mouth and the other grasping the back of his collar, Corporal Connelly jammed him down on the seat with a shock that shook the car.
"Shut up, you drunken fool!" he cried. "Don't mind him, lieutenant. He's only a day at the depot, sir. Sit still, you blackguard, or I'll smash you!"—this to Murray, who, half suffocated, was writhing in his effort to escape. "A—ch!" he cried, with sudden wrenching away of the brawny hand, "the beast has bitten me," and the broad palm, dripping with blood, was held up to the light.
Deeply indented, there were the jagged marks of Murray's teeth.
"Here, Foster, Hunt, grab this man and don't let him stir, hand or foot. See what you get for giving a drunkard money. Grab him, I say!" shouted Connelly, grinning with mingled pain and wrath as the lieutenant led him to the wash-stand.
Another recruit, a stalwart fellow, who had apparently seen previous service, sprang to the aid of the first two named, and between them, though he stormed and struggled a moment, the wretch was jammed and held in his corner.
Stanching the blood as best he could and bandaging the hand with his own kerchief, Stuyvesant bade the corporal sit at an open window a moment, for he looked a trifle faint and sick—it was a brutal bite. But Connelly was game.
"That blackguard's got to be taught there's a God in Israel," he exclaimed, as he turned back to the rear of the car. "I beg the lieutenant's pardon, but—he is not in the regular army, I see," with a glance at the collar of the young officer's blouse. "We sometimes get hard cases to deal with, and this is one of them. This kind of a cur wouldn't hesitate to shoot an officer in the back or stab him in the dark if he didn't like him. I hope the lieutenant may never be bothered with him again. No, damn you!" he added between his set teeth, as he looked down at the sullen, scowling prisoner, "what you ought to have is a good hiding, and what you'll get, if you give any more trouble, is a roping, hand and foot. We ought to have irons on a trip like this, lieutenant," he continued, glancing up into the calm, refined face of the young soldier. "But I can get a rope, if you say so, and tie him in his berth."
"I have no authority in the matter," said Stuyvesant reflectively. "No one has but you, that I know of. Perhaps he'll be quiet when he cools down," and the lieutenant looked doubtfully at the semi-savage in the section nearest the door.
"He'll give no more trouble this night, anyhow," said Connelly, as the officer turned to go. "And thank you, sir, for this," and he held up the bandaged hand. "But I'll keep my eyes peeled whenever he's about hereafter, and you'll be wise to do the same, sir."
For one instant, as the lieutenant paused at the door-way and looked back, the eyes of the two men met, his so brave and blue and clear; the other's—Murray's—furtive, blood-shot, and full of hate. Then the door slammed and Stuyvesant was gone.
Twice again that night he visited the recruit car. At ten o'clock, after enjoying for an hour or more the sight of Miss Ray in animated chat with two of the six women passengers of the sleeper, and the sound of her pleasant voice, Stuyvesant wandered into the diner for a glass of cool Budweiser.
"That's an ugly brute of a fellow that bit your corporal, sir," said the steward. "I was in there just now, and he's as surly as a cur dog yet."
Stuyvesant nodded without a word. He was in a petulant frame of mind. He wanted "worst kind," as he would have expressed it, to know that girl, but not a glance would she give him. She owed him one, thought he, for letting that rabbit go. Moreover, being an army girl, as he had learned, she should not be so offish with an officer.
Then the readiness with which the corporal had "spotted" him as a volunteer, as not a regular, occurred to him, and added to his faintly irritable mood. True, his coat-collar bore the tell-tale letters U. S. V., but he had served some years with one of the swellest of swell Eastern regiments, whose set-up and style were not excelled by the regulars, whose officers prided themselves upon their dress and bearing.
If it was because he was not of the regular service that Miss Ray would not vouchsafe him a glance, Mr. Stuyvesant was quite ready to bid her understand he held himself as high as any soldier in her father's famous corps. If it