Читать книгу Betty at Fort Blizzard - Molly Elliot Seawell - Страница 9

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Colonel John Hope Fortescue, commanding the fine new cavalry post of Fort Blizzard, in the far Northwest, sat in his comfortable office and gazed through the big window at the plaza with its tall flagstaff, from which the splendid regimental flag floated in the crystal cold air of December. Afar off was a broad plateau for drills, an aviation field, and beyond all, a still, snow-bound world, walled in by jagged peaks of ice. It seemed to Colonel Fortescue, who was an idealist and at the same time a crack cavalry officer, that the great flag on the giant flagstaff dominated the frozen world around it, and its stars were a part of the firmament. When the sun rose and the flag was run up, then indeed it was sunrise. And when the sun descended in majesty, so the flag descended in glory.

As the last pale gleam of splendor touched the flag, the sunset gun cracked out suddenly. Colonel Fortescue and his right-hand man for twenty years, Sergeant Patrick McGillicuddy, rose to their feet and stood at "attention," as the flag fell slowly. Then it was reverently furled, and the color sergeant, with the guard, started toward the Colonel's quarters, all whom they passed making way for them and saluting the furled colors.

Colonel Fortescue continued to look out of the window, while Sergeant McGillicuddy, getting some belated mail together, passed out of the office entrance of the fine new commandant's quarters. Two horsewomen—Mrs. Fortescue, she who had been Betty Beverley, and her seventeen-year-old Anita—followed by a trooper as escort, were coming through the main entrance. Colonel Fortescue's eyes softened as he watched his wife and daughter, Mrs. Fortescue as slim as when she was Betty Beverley of old in Virginia, and riding as lightly and gracefully as a bird on the wing.

There were two other watchers besides the Colonel. These two stood at the drawing-room window. One was tall and black and kind-eyed, with the unquenchable kindness of the colored race. His official name was Solomon Ezekiel Pickup, but ever since Mrs. Fortescue, as Betty Beverley, had taken him, a little waif, forlorn and homeless and friendless, he had been simply Kettle, being as black as a kettle. He had watched and adored the baby days of "Marse Beverley," the straight young stripling now training to be a soldier at West Point, and Anita, the violet-eyed daughter, the adored of her father's heart, but Kettle had not come into his own until the two-year-old baby, John Hope Fortescue II, had arrived in a world which did not expect him, but welcomed him the more rapturously on that account. The new baby had taken everybody by surprise, and immediately acquired the name of the After-Clap. He coolly approved of his father and mother, and thought Anita an entertaining person when she got down on the floor to play with him. Naturally he was indifferent to his twenty-year-old brother, whom he had never seen, but Kettle—his own Kettle—was the beloved of the After-Clap's heart. Next to Kettle in his affections was Mrs. McGillicuddy, the six-foot-two wife of Sergeant McGillicuddy, who had eight children, of assorted sizes, and still found time to do a great deal for the After-Clap.

Mrs. Fortescue, riding briskly across the plaza, and seeing Kettle, so black, holding in his arms the laughing baby, so white, smiled and waved her hand at them. Then, catching sight of the Commanding Officer, standing at the window of his office, she smiled at him. But Colonel Fortescue was not smiling; on the contrary, he was frowning as his eyes fell upon Mrs. Fortescue's mount, Birdseye, a light built black mare, with a shifty eye and a propensity to make free with her hind feet. More than once Colonel Fortescue had reminded Mrs. Fortescue that it was somewhat beneath the dignity of a Commanding Officer's wife to ride a kicking horse. But Mrs. Fortescue had a sneaking affection for Birdseye and much preferred her to Pretty Maid, the brown mare Anita rode, and who was considered as demure as Anita, and Anita was very demure, and very, very pretty. At least, so thought Lieutenant Victor Broussard, watching her out of the tail of his eye, as he passed some distance away. It was not so far away, however, that Anita could not see the handsome turn of his close-cropped black head, and his eyes full of laughter and courage and impudence. As some things go by contraries, the glimpse of Broussard made Anita dismount quickly from Pretty Maid and flit within doors to avoid the sight of him. Once indoors, Anita ran where she could catch a last look of Broussard's young figure, his cavalry cape thrown back, before he turned the corner and was gone.

Colonel Fortescue, at the office window, returned a salute, without a smile, to Mrs. Fortescue's greeting from afar. His teeth came together with a snap.

"It's the last time," he said aloud—meaning that Mrs. Fortescue would have to submit to his judgment in horses and let Birdseye alone.

What happened next turned the Colonel's resolution to adamant. A trooper was leading Pretty Maid away and another trooper was about to do the same for Birdseye when the black mare suddenly threw her head down and her heels up. Mrs. Fortescue kept her seat, while the mare, backing, and kicking as she backed, knocked over a couple of the passing color guard, and only by adroitness the color sergeant saved the flag from being dropped to the ground. Meanwhile, the two troopers, falling backward, collided with the chaplain, a small, meek man, as brave as a lion, who stopped to look and was ignominiously bowled over. Sergeant McGillicuddy, just coming out of the office entrance, made a dash forward and grabbed Birdseye by the bridle. The mare, still unable to unseat Mrs. Fortescue or to break away from the wiry little Sergeant, yet managed to scatter all the official mail in the Sergeant's hand on the snow. Kettle, who could not have remained away from "Miss Betty" under such circumstances to save his life, dropped the baby on the drawing-room floor and rushed out. This the After-Clap resented, shrieking wildly.