Under Fire | Page 2

land of the Sioux and Apache,--the home
of the bear and the buffalo? What city-bred boy could "hold a candle"
to the glaring halo about the head of two who could claim personal
acquaintance with the great war chiefs Red Cloud and Spotted
Tail?--who had actually been to ride and hunt with that then just
dawning demigod of American boyhood,--Buffalo Bill? Sneer and
scoff and cavil as did their little rivals for a time, calumny was crushed
and scoffers blighted that wonderful March morning when, before the
whole assembled school, there suddenly appeared that paragon of
plainsmen, that idol of all well-bred young Westerners, he whom only
on flaring posters or in the glare of the footlights had they been
permitted to see, and smiling, superbly handsome, king of scouts and
Indian-fighters, Buffalo Bill himself stepped into their midst and

clasped the little Cranstons, madly rejoicing, in his arms, while their
father, the cavalry captain, and even the dreaded teacher looked
approvingly on. It was after that episode of no avail for even the
sturdiest of their schoolmates to seek to belittle the Cranston fame.
Louis, the elder, could not invent a whopper so big as to tax the
credulity of the school. Buffalo Bill was "starring it" with his theatrical
company through the States that spring, playing some blood-curdling,
scalp-taking; hair-raising border drama which all boys eager strove to
see, and when his old chum and comrade, the captain, went to call on
him at his hotel, the great chief of scouts would not rest until together
they had gone to see his friends "the boys." That other parents should
have been pestered half to death as a result of this visitation any one
who knows boys has not to be told, and many were the queries and
complaints addressed to the laughing cavalryman upon that score.
Parents, as a rule, had no proper conception of the honest merit and
deserved fame of this transplanted hero, Bill,--were amazed to learn
from Cranston that he was no fraud at all, but a man whom he and his
regimental comrades swore by. A total change had come over the spirit
of the school-boys' dreams. Nothing but Indian raids, buffalo-hunts, or
terrific combats diversified the hour of recess. The little girls chose
romantic prairie names, were either Indian maidens or
ever-ready-to-be-rescued damsels in distress. The boys became
redoubtable chiefs or rival imitation scouts, but Louis Cranston alone
was permitted to play the rôle of Buffalo Bill; in his presence no other
boy dare attempt it.
It was a revolutionized society long before that budding May morning
on which the captain had to take train for the far West, leaving wife and
little ones to his father's care until the long threatened and now
imminent campaign should be over. Then, should God spare his life
through what proved to be the fiercest and most fatal of ten fierce and
fatal summers, they should rejoin him at some distant frontier fort, and
the boys' triumphant reign at school be ended. Loudly did they clamor
to be taken with him. Stoutly did Louis maintain that his pony could
keep up with the swiftest racer in the regiment, and indirectly did he
give it to be understood at school that just as soon as the war really
began he'd be out with "C" troop as he had been in the past. The war

had begun and some savage fighting had already taken place, when the
orders were launched for the Eleventh Cavalry to concentrate for field
service. Cranston wired that he would give up the last ten days of his
leave, and Mrs. Cranston, brave, submissive, but weeping sore at times,
set to packing her soldier's trunk. It was their last evening together for
many a long month, and their friends knew it, and therefore, even if
they called to leave a sympathetic word with the grandparents, they did
not expect to see the captain and his wife. Once or twice the
gray-haired mother had come to twine her arms about her big boy's
neck, or to say that Mr. and Mrs. Somebody had just called, but
wouldn't intrude. It was, therefore, a surprise when towards nine
o'clock she came to announce a caller below,--a caller who begged not
to be denied,--Mrs. Barnard.
"Mrs. Barnard!" exclaimed the army wife, in that tone in which
incredulity mingled with surprise tells to the observant ear that no
welcome awaits the announced one.
"Who is Mrs. Barnard?" asked the trooper, looking up from the depths
of his big trunk.
"Oh, her husband owns about half the tenth ward," said Mrs. Cranston
the elder, city bred, "and," hesitatingly, "you've often seen her in
church."
"At church--yes," answered her daughter-in-law, "but no one ever sees
her anywhere else. She has never called on