Ray's Daughter. Charles KingЧитать онлайн книгу.
of her strident voice and oracular ways. It was well remembered that so far from being of aid or value in caring for the injured men, she had pestered people with undesired advice and interference, had made much noise and no bandages, and later, when an official of the company boarded the train, had constituted herself spokeswoman for the passengers, not at all to their advantage and much to his disgust. Then, finding that Miss Ray was looked upon as the only heroine of the occasion, she had assumed a guardianship, so to speak, over that young lady which became almost possessive in form, so passively was it tolerated.
She had plied the girl with questions as to the friends who were to meet her on arrival in San Francisco, and Miss Ray had smilingly given evasive answers.
When, therefore, they neared Sacramento and the vice-president announced her intention of sallying forth to see to it that proper victuals were provided for her soldier boys, Miss Ray had a few minutes in which to make her preparations, and the next thing the vice-president saw of her supposed ward and dependant, that young lady was in the embrace of a richly dressed and most distinguished looking woman, whose gray hair only served to heighten the refinement of her features. Just behind the elder lady stood a silk-hatted dignitary in the prime of life, and behind him a footman or valet, to whom the porter was handing Miss Ray's belongings.
And what the vice-president so much resented was that Miss Ray had not only never mentioned her purpose of leaving the train at Sacramento, but never so much as introduced her friends, at whom the vice-president smiled invitingly while accepting Miss Ray's courteous but brief thanks for "so much attention during the afternoon," but who merely bowed in acknowledgment when she would have addressed them on the subject of Miss Ray's being of so much help to her when help was so much needed, and who spirited the young lady away to the handsome carriage awaiting her.
The vice-president was distinctly of the opinion that folks didn't need to slink off in that way unless they were ashamed of where they were going or afraid of being found out, whereat Stuyvesant found himself gritting his teeth with wrath, and so whirled about and left her.
It was after midnight when they reached the pier at Oakland. There, under the great train-shed, track after track was covered with troop cars and a full regiment lay sleeping.
An alert young officer of the guard raised his hand in salute as Stuyvesant addressed him. No, there were no ambulances, no soldiers from the Presidio. They might be waiting across the ferry.
But how was he to get the injured men across the ferry, thought Stuyvesant. Two of them would have to be carried.
The long train, except that recruit car, was now emptied. The throng of passengers had gone on through the waiting-rooms and up the stairway to the saloon deck of the huge ferry-boat. If he purposed going, no time was to be lost, and the porter bearing his hand-luggage ventured a word to that effect.
Stuyvesant looked back. There were protruding heads at many of the windows of the recruit car, but, obedient to the instructions given by Connelly, no man, apparently, had left his place, and Connelly, though suffering, had evidently resumed control, much benefited by the services of another physician who had boarded the train in the late afternoon and renewed the bandages and dressings of the injured men. Then Stuyvesant became suddenly aware of a messenger-boy with a telegram. It was addressed to "Lieutenant Stuyvesant, AD C., Train No. 2, Oakland." Tearing it open, he read as follows:
"Report by wire condition of Recruit Foster. If serious, have him conveyed to St. Paul's Hospital. Commission as lieutenant and signal officer awaits him here."
It was signed by the adjutant-general at department head-quarters, San Francisco.
But the boy had still another. This too he held forth to Stuyvesant, and the latter, not noticing that it was addressed "Commanding Officer U. S. Troops, Train No. 2," mechanically opened and read and made a spring for the car.
The message was from Port Costa, barely thirty miles away, and briefly said: "Any your men missing? Soldier left car here believed jumped overboard return trip ferry-boat."
One man was missing. Recruit Foster, for whom a commission as lieutenant and signal officer was waiting at department head-quarters, could not be found.
CHAPTER IV.
In the busy week that followed Lieutenant Stuyvesant had his full share of work and no time for social distraction. Appointed to the staff of General Vinton, with orders to sail without delay for Manila, the young officer found his hours from morn till late at night almost too short for the duties demanded of him.
The transports were almost ready. The troops had been designated for the expedition. The supplies were being hurried aboard. The general had his men all the livelong day at the rifle-ranges or drill-grounds, for most of the brigade were raw volunteers who had been rushed to the point of rendezvous with scant equipment and with less instruction. The camps were thronged with men in all manner of motley as to dress and no little variety as to dialect. Few of the newly appointed officers in the Department of Supply were versed in their duties, and the young regulars of the staff of the commanding general were working sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, coaching their comrades of the volunteers.
The streets were crowded with citizens eager to welcome and applaud the arriving troops. Hotels were thronged. Restaurants were doing a thriving business, for the army ration did not too soon commend itself in its simplicity to the stomachs of some thousands of young fellows who had known better diet if no better days, many of their number having left luxurious homes and surroundings and easy salaries to shoulder a musket for three dollars a week.
Private soldiers in blue flannel shirts were learning to stand attention and touch their caps to young men in shoulder-straps whom they had laughed at and called "tin soldiers" a year agone because they belonged to the militia—a thing most of the gilded youth in many of our Western cities seemed to scorn as beneath them.
In the wave of patriotic wrath and fervor that swept the land when the Maine was done to death in Havana Harbor, many and many a youth who has sneered at the State Guardsmen learned to wish that he too had given time and honest effort to the school of the soldier, for now, unless he had sufficient "pull" to win for him a staff position, his only hope was in the ranks.
And so, even in the recruit detachments of the regulars, were found scores of young men whose social status at home was on a plane much higher than that of many of their officers. But the time had come when the long and patient effort of the once despised militiaman had won deserved recognition. The commissions in the newly raised regiments were held almost exclusively by officers who had won them through long service with the National Guard.
And in the midst of all the whirl of work in which he found himself, Lieutenant Stuyvesant had been summoned to the tent of General Drayton, commanding the great encampment on the sand-lots south of the Presidio reservation, and bidden to tell what he knew of one Walter F. Foster, recruit—th Cavalry, member of the detachment sent on via the Denver and Rio Grande to Ogden, then transferred to the Southern Pacific train Number 2 en route to San Francisco, which detachment was burned out of its car and the car out of its train early on the morning of the—— of June, 1898, somewhere in the neighborhood of a station with the uncouth name of Beowawe in the heart of the Humboldt Desert, and which Recruit Foster had totally disappeared the following evening, having been last seen by his comrades as the train was ferried across Carquinez Straits, thirty miles from Oakland Pier, and later by railway hands at Port Costa on the back trip of the big boat to the Benicia side.
There was little Stuyvesant could tell. He hardly remembered the man except as a fine-featured young fellow who seemed shy, nervous, and unstrung, something Stuyvesant had hitherto attributed to the startling and painful experience of the fire, and who, furthermore, seemed desirous of dodging the lieutenant, which circumstance Stuyvesant could not fathom at all, and if anything rather resented.
He explained to the general that he was in no wise responsible for the care of the detachment. He had only