Marions Faith | Page 9

had been killed and buried, many another wounded and not especially mentioned, and all of them had done months of hard work where Billings had put in only so many days, but here he came in at the eleventh hour, and they, who had borne the heat and burden of the campaign and received every man his penny, couldn't help a few good-natured slings at the fact that Billings's penny was just as big and round as theirs. The department commander had been close at hand every time that fortunate youth came in from a scout, and even Ray, who was incessantly seeking the roughest and most dangerous service, could not repress a wistful expression of his views when he heard of the final scrimmage far up towards Chevelon's Fork. "Here we fellows have been bucking against this game for nigh onto four years now, and if ever we raked in a pile it's all been ante'd up since, and now Billings comes in fresh--never draws but he gets a full hand--and he scoops the deck. He has too much luck for a white man." The remark was one that, said by Ray himself in his whimsical and downright manner, was destitute of any hidden meaning, and Billings, who had not seen Ray for years, would never have misunderstood it, but when he first heard it six months afterwards, and while Ray and himself had yet to meet, it was told semi-confidentially, told as Ray never said it, told in fact--by Gleason; and Billings, who was of a nervous, sensitive disposition, as outspoken in a way as Ray was in his, was hurt more than a little. He had known Ray a dozen years before when both were wearing the gray as cadets at the Point, but they were in different classes and by no means intimate. Each, however, had cordially liked the other, and Billings would have been slow to believe the statement as told him for a single instant except for two things,--one was that Gleason was a new acquaintance of whom up to that time he knew nothing really discreditable; the other was that just before the regiment came East from Arizona the adjutancy became vacant, Lieutenant Truscott, who had long held the position, was detailed for duty at West Point and speedily promoted to his captaincy; Billings was brought in wounded and sent off by sea to San Francisco as soon as he could travel, and so heard little of the particulars of some strange mystery that was going on at regimental headquarters, and when, some months later, he rejoined the regiment in Kansas, it was with much mental perturbation that he received from "Old Catnip" the offer of the still vacant adjutancy.
Of course, he had heard by that time just why Truscott had resigned and refused to re-accept the position; he also knew that the colonel had said that he could give it to no officer who had not served with them in the rough days in Arizona; and, moreover, that he had once declared that offering the adjutancy to a second lieutenant was equivalent to saying that no first lieutenant was capable of performing the duties. But he did not know that soon after Truscott's resignation the colonel had tendered the adjutancy to Ray, and that impolitic youth had promptly declined. He knew, as did the whole regiment, that for Truscott Ray had an enthusiastic admiration and regard, and for that matter, Billings himself had reason to look upon the ex-adjutant as a friend worth having; but he did not suspect, as some at old Camp Sandy more than suspected, that Ray had been offered his place. The colonel, in his surprise and mortification, would speak of it to no one. Ray, in his blunt honesty, conceived it to be his duty to regard the offer as confidential, since he had declined, and so, snubbed any one who strove to extract information. Most of the senior lieutenants were on detached service when they came in from Arizona. Everybody thought Stryker would get the detail as soon as he returned from abroad, whither he had gone on leave after making, as mountain scout leader, the best four years' record in the regiment; but Stryker came just as Billings did, and to Billings, not Stryker, was the adjutancy tendered. What made the regiment indignant was, that so far from being in the least put out about it, Stryker placidly remarked that Billings was the very man for the place. "He isn't entitled to it," said the --th; "in ten years' service he hasn't spent ten months with us." But Stryker did not see fit to tell them what he knew and the colonel knew,--that he had been tendered and had accepted the position of aide-de-camp to