Sanford Ray.
P. S. – Inez says it should not be announced until you all have approved, whereas I wished and would be for shouting the news from the housetops. There is a chance of getting this to you quicker than I thought. Captain Dwight has never been himself since Bender's trial and conviction. General Young wanted him to take sick leave last month and go to Japan, but he wouldn't. Now he's fairly broken down and has to be left behind, so this will go to Manila with him. I wonder – I can't help wondering – what he'd think if he knew what was in it. The fellows do say she could have had him and his money, yet she chose your boy, Sandy.
For a moment after reading the final page Colonel Ray sat in silence. Aloft could be heard the firm footfalls of Miss Sanford as she bustled about her room unpacking her belated trunks. Within, with merry snap and sparkle, the fresh-heaped wood fire blazed in the broad open fireplace. Without, the orderly trumpeter, away over by the flagstaff, was winding the last note of stable call. The late afternoon sunshine flooded the valley of the Minneconjou. The mountain air, cool, bracing, redolent of pine and cedar, stirred the tracery of the white curtains at the open southward window and fluttered the silken folds of the standard and guidons at the parlor archway. Anxiously the mother heart was throbbing by his side, and the fond eyes sought the soldier's strong, storm-beaten face. Then she noted the look of bewilderment in his gaze, for again he was studying that postscript. Then suddenly he stretched forth his hand, took from the little pile of newspapers on a chair a copy of a recent army journal, swiftly turned over a page or two, searching the columns with half doubtful eyes; then, finding what he needed, thumbed the paragraph and held it where she could easily see. "Read that," said Ray, and Marion read aloud:
"San Francisco, – 18. – Among the arrivals at the Occidental by the Sheridan from Manila and Nagasaki are Major, Mrs. and Miss Farrell and Captain Oswald M. Dwight, the latter of the – th Cavalry. Major Farrell, Quartermaster U. S. Volunteers, is the owner of valuable properties in Texas, whither he is soon to return. Captain Dwight, one of the most distinguished of our squadron leaders, is rapidly recuperating from serious illness contracted in the Philippines. The voyage proved a blessing in more ways than one, for the dinner given by Major and Mrs. Farrell last night, to a select coterie at the Bohemian Club, was to announce the engagement of their lovely daughter, Inez, to this gallant trooper, who won his spurs in the Apache campaign of the '80's, and the sympathy of hosts of friends on the Pacific coast in the death of his devoted wife six years ago. They will now rejoice with him in his joy, and unite with us in wishing him and his young and beautiful bride all possible felicity."
Mrs. Ray turned, all amaze, incredulity and distress; then, with something like a sob, buried her face on the sturdy blue shoulder. There was suspicious moisture about her husband's blinking eyes, and he for a moment could hardly trust himself to speak.
"Is it —our boy now, dear?" he gently asked, and her head came up at the instant, her blue eyes welling over with indignant tears:
"Oh, Will," she answered, "you know well what I'm thinking. It is of her– of Margaret – it is of their boy – poor little motherless Jim!"
CHAPTER II
A FACE FROM THE PHILIPPINES
The man did not live who could say, much less think, that Oswald Dwight did not devotedly love his devoted wife and had not deeply, even desolately, mourned her untimely death. Margaret Welland was not a woman to be soon forgotten. For six years she had been the object almost of reverence among the officers and men of her husband's regiment, almost of worship among the women. Gentle, generous, and charitable, gifted with many a physical charm and almost every spiritual grace, she had lived her brief life in the army an uncrowned queen, and died a martyr – almost a saint. For long weeks afterward the women would weep at mere mention of her name. The casket that bore the fragile, lifeless form and that of her infant daughter to their final rest was literally buried in flowers that were wet with tears. Strong men, too, turned aside or hid their faces in trembling hands when with bowed head Oswald Dwight was led by, clasping to his breast his sobbing little boy. There were some who said that Dwight could never have pulled up again if it hadn't been for Jimmy. It was long months before the stricken soldier was restored to them. It was longer still before little Jim returned, and every day meantime, after Dwight's appearance, regularly as he rose and went silently about his duties, the father wrote his letter to be read aloud to his only living child, and the one thing that spurred the merry-hearted little fellow to his studies was the longing to read and to answer for himself. Jim's first missive to his father, penned by his own infinite labor, was the event of the second winter at Fort Riley, for it was shown in succession to nearly every comrade and to every even remotely sympathetic woman at the post. There were maidens there who would fain have consoled the tall, distinguished, dark-eyed trooper, so interesting in his depth of melancholy, so eligible as a catch, for Dwight, for an army man, was oddly well to do. Obstinately, however, he refused all consolation from even such a sympathetic source, and would for long brook no companion on his solitary walks or rides. All his talk now was of his boy. All his thoughts, plans, projects, seemed centering on little Jim, who, for the time being, had to be housed among his mother's people. He was still too young for the care of a soldier-father who any day might be compelled to take the field. But then came station at Fort Riley, with its big garrison, its school and its society, and then the yearning at his heart could no longer be denied. The Wellands nearly cried their eyes out when Oswald, toward the end of the third "leave" since Margaret's death, told them that the time for which he had scrupulously sought to prepare them had come at last: he must have his boy – he could not live without him.
Then when Jimmy came it seemed as though an entire garrison had started in to spoil him. He was the merriest, sunniest, friendliest little chap, frank, brave and even beautiful, with all his mother's lovely coloring, with her deep, heavily-lashed, soulful, violet eyes, with her soft curling brown hair, with her sweet, sensitive mouth and pretty white teeth. No wonder big Oswald used to set him on his knee and look long into the smiling little face, so fond and trustful, yet filled with vague wonderment why daddy should so wistfully gaze at him; and then with relief, Jim knew not why, when the strong arms would suddenly draw the lithe, slender little body to that broad and heaving chest and hold it there, close strained, while bearded lips sought and kissed again and again the sunny curls. Dwight just lived for that boy, said Fort Riley, small blame to him! Dwight made little Jim his friend, his confidant, his companion. Jim had his own little pony as soon as he could safely bestride one. Jim had his own little camp bed in the room opening off his father's. Jim had his own shower bath rigged up in his own closet. Jim had his regular setting-up drill and calisthenics, with daddy himself for teacher, his rub-down and his soldier toilet, with daddy to teach him breathing exercises that took the oxygen deep down into his lungs and sent the red blood whirling through his sinewy little frame. Jimmy had his own racket for tennis, his own target rifle, his own kites, tops, marbles, soldiers of every conceivable size, costume and corps, his own railway tracks and trains, his own books and bookshelves, his own desk and study table – pretty much everything a boy could have except his own way, which he was the better without, and his own mother – without whom boy life can never be complete.
Fort Riley could be censorious, Heaven knows, when cause existed, and sometimes when it didn't; but, save the cherished thought of certain sentimental women that little Jim should have a mother's care as well as a father's, Fort Riley had few critics so unwise as to question Dwight's methods with his boy. Jim did not lack for playfellows of his own age – the fort was full of them and they as full of mischief and