into the sand whirl and the sulphurous glare. He
had sent Brewster on ahead some hours before. " You
138 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST
will want to see Miss McLane as soon as possible,"
he had said, " and there is no need of both of us here."
Brewster had taken an escort and disappeared down
the vista of white sands and scrub growth, though it
was Landor himself who should have gone. He swayed
now in the saddle, his thick lips hung open, and he
moved in a mental cloud as dense as the one of dust
that poured round him.
Brewster reached the post some eighteen hours ahead
of him. He reported, and saw Miss McLane ; then
he made himself again as other men and went down
to the post trader's, with a definite aim in view, that
was hardly to be guessed from his loitering walk.
There were several already in the officers' room, and
they talked, as a matter of course, of the campaign.
" Seen the way Lander's been catching it ? " they
asked.
And Brewster said he had not.
They went on to tell him that it was all in the
Tucson papers, which Brewster knew, however, quite
as well as they did themselves. He had made friends
among the citizen volunteers of San Tomaso on the
night they had camped by the old lake bed, and they
had seen that he was kept supplied with cuttings.
But he pleaded entire ignorance, and the others were
at considerable pains to enlighten him.
It appeared that Landor was accused of cowardice,
and that his name was handled with the delicate sar-
casm usual with Western journalism as fine and
pointed as a Stone-age axe.
THE HERITAGE OP UNREST 139
Brewster poured himself a glass of beer and drank
it contemplatively and was silent. Then he set it
down on the bare table with a sharp little rap, sug-
gesting determination made. It was suggestive of
yet more than this, and caused them to say " Well ? "
with a certain eagerness. He shrugged his shoulders
and changed the subject, refusing pointedly to be
brought back to it, and succeeding altogether in the
aim which had brought him down there.
But that same night he picked two for their reputa-
tion of repeating all they knew, and took them into
his own rooms and told his story to them. And he met
once again with such success that when Landor rode
into the post the next day at about guard-mounting, three
officers, meeting him, raised their caps and passed on.
It struck even through Lander's pain-blurred brain
that it was odd. But the few faculties he could com-
mand still were all engaged in keeping himself in the
saddle until he could reach his own house, where
Ellton and Felipa were waiting to get him to his
room.
He went upon the sick report at once, and for three
days thereafter raved of crucified women with fair hair,
of children lying dead in the canon, of the holes in
his boot soles, and a missing aparejo, also of certain
cursed citizens, and the bad quality of the canned
butter.
Then he began to come to himself and to listen to
all that Felipa had to tell him of the many things she
had not put in her short and labored letters. He saw
140 THE HERITAGE OP UNREST
that she looked more beautiful and less well than when
he had left her. There was a shadow of weariness on
her face that gave it a soft wistfulness which was
altogether becoming. He supposed it was because
she had nursed him untiringly, as she had; but it did
not occur to him to thank her, because she had done
only what was a wife's duty, only what he would have
done for her if the case had been reversed. Toward
the end of the day he began to wonder that no one
had been to see him, and he spoke of it.
" Mr. Ellton was here this morning," Felipa told him,
"and he will be in again before retreat."
But he was not satisfied. His entry into the post
and the cool greeting of the three officers began to come
back to him.
Felipa could be untruthful with an untroubled soul
and countenance to those she disliked. In her inherited
code, treachery to an enemy was not only excusable, but
right. But not even in order to save her husband worry
could she tell him a shadow of an untruth. She did her
best, which was far from good, to evade, however. The
others would probably come, now that he could see
them.
But had they come ? he insisted.
The commandant had sent his orderly with a note.
He raised himself from the pillows too abruptly for a
very weak man. "What is the matter, Felipa?" he
demanded.
She told him that she did not know, and tried to coax
him back to quietness.
THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 141
" There is something," he insisted, dropping his head
down again wearily.
" Perhaps there is," she admitted unwillingly.
He lay thinking for a while, then had her send the
striker for Ellton, who promptly, and awkwardly, re-
plied to the anxious question as to what might be the
trouble, that he was not quite sure, but perhaps it had
to do with these " these " being a small roll of news-
paper clippings he took from his portfolio.
Landor looked them over and gave them back con-
temptuously. " Well ? " he said, " there's nothing new
in all that. It's devilish exasperating, but it's old as
Hamilcar. I made an enemy of a fellow from Tucson,
reporter named Stone, over at the San Carlos Agency
a few years ago. He's been waiting to roast me ever
since. There must be something else."
The adjutant agreed reluctantly. " I think there is.
It wouldn't surprise me if some one had been talking.
I can't get at it. But you must not bother about it. It
will blow over."
As an attempt at consolation, it failed. Landor
fairly sprang into a sitting posture, with a degree of
impulsiveness that was most unusual with him. His
eyes glistened from the greenish circles around them.
" Blow over ! Good Lord ! do you suppose I'll let it
blow over ? It's got to be sifted to the bottom. And
you know that as well as I do." He lay weakly back
again, and Felipa came to the edge of the bed and, sit-
ting upon it, stroked his head with her cool hand.
Ellton ventured some assistance. " I do know this
142 THE HERITAGE OP UNREST
much, that the C. O. got a telegram from some Eastern
paper, asking if the reports of your cowardice as given
in the territorial press were true."
Landor asked eagerly what he had answered.
" I didn't see the telegram, but it was in effect that
he had no knowledge of anything of the sort, and put
no faith in it."
" Doesn't he, though ? Then why doesn't he come
around and see me when I'm lying here sick ? " He
was wrathful and working himself back into a fever
very fast.
Felipa shook her head at Ellton. " Don't get your-
self excited about it, Jack dear," she soothed, and Ell-
ton also tried to quiet him.
" He will come, I dare say. And so will the others,
now that you are able to see them. Brewster inquired."
The captain's lips set.
Ellton wondered, but held his peace. And the com-
mandant did go to Landor's quarters within the next
few hours. Which was Ellton's doings.
" I don't know what has been said, Major, but some-
thing more than just what's in the papers must have
gotten about. That sort of mud-slinging is too com-
mon to cause comment, even. It must be some spite
work. There's no reason to suppose, surely, that after
a quarter of a century of gallant service he's been and
shown the white feather. He's awfully cut up, really
he is. He's noticed it, of course, and it's too deuced
bad, kicking a man when he's down sick and can't help
himself."
THE HERITAGE OP UNREST 143
The major stopped abruptly in his walk to and fro
and faced him. " Do you know more about it, then,
than Brewster who was with him ? "
Ellton fairly leaped in the air. " Brewster ! So
it's Brewster! The in " Then he recollected that
Brewster was going to be the major's son-in-law, and
he stopped short. "No wonder he keeps away from
there," he simmered down.
" He told me it was because he and Landor had had
some trouble in the field, and weren't on the best of
terms."
" I say, Major, if he's got any charges to prefer why
doesn't he put them on paper and send them in to you,
or else shut up his head?" He was losing his temper
again.
The major resumed his walk and did not answer.
Ellton went on, lapsing into the judicial. "In the
meantime, anyway, a man's innocent until he's proven
guilty. I say, do go round and see him. The others
will follow your lead. He's awfully cut up and wor-
ried, and he's sick, you know."
So that evening when all the garrison was upon its
front porches and the sidewalk, the major and the
lieutenant went down the line to Landor's quarters.
And their example was followed. But some hung
back, and constraint was in the air.
Because of which Landor, as soon as he was up, went
in search of the commanding officer, and found him in
the adjutant's office, and the adjutant with him. He
demanded an explanation. " If any one has been say-
144 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST
ing anything about me, I want to know it. I want to
face him. It can't be that newspaper rot. We are all
too used to it."
"It seems, Landor," the major said, "to be rather
that which is left unsaid."
Landor asked what he meant by that. " I'm sick of
all this speaking in riddles," he said.
The major told him a little reluctantly. " Well, it's
this, then : Brewster will not, or cannot, defend your
conduct in the matter of the San Tomaso volunteers."
Landor sat speechless for a moment. Then he jumped
up, knocking over a pile of registers. He seized a bone
ruler, much stained with official inks, red and blue, and
slapped it on the palm of his hand for emphasis. " I'll
demand a court of inquiry into my conduct. This
shan't drop, not until the strongest possible light
has been turned on it. Why doesn't Brewster prefer
charges? Either my conduct was such that he can
defend it openly, or else it was such as to call for a
court-martial, and to justify him in preferring charges.
Certainly nothing can justify him in smirching me with
damning silence. That is the part neither of an officer
nor of a man." He kicked one of the registers out of
the way, and it flapped across the floor and lay with
its leaves crumpled under the fair leather covers.
" By George ! McLane, it strikes me as devilish odd
that you should all give ear to the insinuations of a
shave-tail like Brewster, against an old hand like myself.
Be that as it may, however, until this thing has been
cleared up, I shall thank all of you to continue in your
THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 145
attitude of suspicion, and not in any way draw on your
charity by extending it to me. I shall demand a court
of inquiry." He laid the ruler back on the desk. "I
report for duty, sir," he added officially.
It was the beginning of a self-imposed Coventry.
He sent in a demand for a court of inquiry, and Brew-
ster, with much show of reluctance and leniency, pre-
ferred charges.
The post talked it over unceasingly, and commented
on Lander's attitude. " He stalks around in defiant
dignity and makes everybody uncomfortable," they
said.
" Everybody ought to be uncomfortable," Ellton told
them ; " everybody who believed the first insinuation
he heard ought to be confoundedly uncomfortable."
He resigned from the acting adjutancy and returned to
his troop duties, that Landor, who had relieved Brew-
ster of most of the routine duties, and who was still
fit for the sick list himself, might not be overburdened.
So the demand and the charges lay before the de-
partment commander, and there was a lull, during
which Landor came upon further trouble, and worse.
He undertook the examination of the papers he had
found in the dead men's pockets. They had been
buried in earth for two weeks.
He found that it had been father and son come from
the Eastern states in search of the wealth that lay in
that vague and prosperous, if uneasy, region anywhere
west of the Missouri. And among the papers was a
letter addressed to Felipa. Landor held it in the flat
146 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST
of his hand and frowned, perplexed. He knew that it
was Cairness's writing. More than once on this last
scout he had noticed its peculiarities. They were un-
mistakable. Why was Cairness writing to Felipa?
And why had he not used the mails ? The old, never
yet justified, distrusts sprang broad awake. But yet
he was not the man to brood over them. He remem-
bered immediately that Felipa had never lied to him.
And she would not now. So he took the stained letter
and went to find her.
She was sitting in her room, sewing. Of late she
had become domesticated, and she was fading under it.
He had seen it already, and he saw it more plainly than
ever just now. She looked up and smiled. Her smile
had always been one of her greatest charms, because
it was rare and very sweet. " Jack," she greeted him,
"what have you done with the bread knife you took
with you, dear ? I have been lost without it."
" I have it," he said shortly, standing beside her and
holding out the letter.
She took it and looked from it to him, questioningly.
" What is this ? " she asked.
Then it was the first, at any rate. His manner soft-
ened.
" It smells horribly," she exclaimed, dropping it on
the floor, "it smells of hospitals disinfectants." But
she stooped and picked it up again.
"It is from Cairness," said Landor, watching her
narrowly. Her hand shook, and he saw it.
" From Cairness ? " she faltered, looking up at him
THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 147
with frightened eyes ; " when did it come ? " Her
voice was as unsteady as her hands. She tore it open
and began to read it there before him. He stood and
watched her lips quiver and grow gray and fall help-
lessly open. If she had been under physical torture,
she could have kept them pressed together, but not
now.
" Where did you " she began ; but her voice failed,
and she had to begin again. " Where did you get
this?"
He told her, and she held it out to him. He started
to take it, then pushed it away.
She put down her work and rose slowly to her
feet before him. She could be very regal sometimes.
Brewster knew it, and Cairness guessed it ; but it was
the first time it had come within Lander's experience,
and he was a little awed.
" I wish you to read it, John," she said quietly.
He hesitated still. " I don't doubt you," he told her.
" You do doubt me. If you did not, it would never
occur to you to deny it. You doubt me now, and you
will doubt me still more if you don't read it. In justice
to me you must."
It was very short, but he held it a long time before
he gave it back.
" And do you care for him, too ? " he asked, looking
her straight in the eyes. It was a very calm question,
put he realized it with exasperation as a father
might have put it.
She told him that she did, quite as calmly. Her
148 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST
manner and her tone said it was very unfortunate, that
the whole episode was unfortunate, but that it was not
her fault.
He went over to the window and stood looking out
of it, his hands clasped behind his back. Some chil-
dren were playing tag around the flag-staff, and he
watched a long-limbed small daughter of the frontier
dodging and running, and was conscious of being glad
that she touched the goal.
It was characteristic of Felipa that she forgot him
altogether and reread the letter, her breath coming in
audible gasps.
"I give this to a friend," it ran, "to be delivered
into your own hands, because I must tell you that,
though I should never see you again for the life I
lead is hazardous, and chance may at any time take
you away forever I shall love you always. You will
not be angry with me, I know. You were not that
night by the campfire, and it is not the unwaveringly
good woman who resents being told she is loved, in the
spirit I have said it to you. I do not ask for so much
as your friendship in return, but only that you re-
member that my life and devotion are yours, and that,
should the time ever come that you need me, you send
for me. I will come. I will never say this to you
again, even should I see you ; but it is true, now and
for all time."
Landor turned away from the window and looked at
her. It was in human nature that she had never seemed
so beautiful before. Perhaps it was, too, because there
THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 149
was warmth in her face, the stress of life that was more
than physical, at last.
It struck him that he was coolly analytical while his
wife was reading the love-letter (if that bald statement
of fact could be called a love-letter) of another man,
and telling him frankly that she returned the man's
love. Why could not he have had love, he who had
done so much for her ? There was always the subcon-
sciousness of that sacrifice. He had magnified it a little,
too, and it is difficult to be altogether lovable when one's
mental attitude is "see what a good boy am I." But
he had never reflected upon that. He went on telling
himself what in all justice to him he had never
thrown up to her, that his life had been one long de-
votion to her ; rather as a principle than as a person-
ality, to be sure, but then And yet she loved the
fellow whom she had not known twenty-four hours in
all a private, a government scout, unnoticeably below
her in station. In station, to be sure ; but not in birth,
after all. It was that again. He was always brought
up face to face with her birth. He tried to reason it
down, for the hundredth time. It was not her fault,
and he had taken her knowingly, chancing that and
the consequences of her not loving him. And these
were the consequences : that she was sitting rigid be-
fore him, staring straight ahead with the pale eyes of
suffering, and breathing through trembling lips.
But she would die before she would be faithless to
him. He was sure of that. Only why should he
exact so much ? Why should he not make the last of
150 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST
a long score of sacrifices ? He had been unselfish with
her always, from the day he had found the little child,
shy as one of the timid fawns in the woods of the reser-
vation, and pretty in a wild way, until now when she
sat there in front of him, a woman, and his wife, loving,
and beloved of, another man.
He went and stood beside her and laid his hand upon
her hair.
She looked up and tried hard to smile again.
"Poor little girl," he said kindly. He could not
help it that they were the words of a compassionate
friend, rather than of an injured husband.
She shook her head. " It is the first you have known
of it, Jack," she said ; " but I have known it for a long
while, and I have not been unhappy."
" And you care for him ? "
She nodded.
" Are you certain of it ? You have seen so very little
of him, and you may be mistaken."
If he had had any hope, it vanished before her unhesi-
tating, positive, " No ; I am not mistaken. Oh, no ! "
He took a chair facing her, as she put the letter back
in its envelope and laid it in her work-basket. It was
very unlike anything he had ever imagined concerning
situations of the sort. But then he was not imagina-
tive. " Should you be glad to be free to marry him ? "
he asked, in a spirit of unbiassed discussion.
She looked at him in perplexity and surprise. " How
could I be ? There is no use talking about it."
He hesitated, then blurted it out, in spite of the
THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 151
inward warning that it would be unwise. " I could
let you free yourself."
His glance fell before hers of dismay, disapproval,
and anger an anger so righteous that he felt himself
to be altogether in the wrong. " Do you mean divorce?"
She said it like an unholy word.
He had forgotten that the laws and rites of the
Church of Rome had a powerful hold upon her, though
she was quite devoid of religious sentiment. He
admitted apologetically that he had meant divorce, and
she expressed her reproach. In spite of himself and
what he felt ought properly to be the tragedy of the
affair, he smiled. The humor of her majestic disap-
proval was irresistible under the circumstances. But
she had little sense of humor. " What would you sug-
gest, then, if I may ask ? " he said. He had to give up
all pathos in the light of her deadly simplicity.
" Nothing," she answered ; " I can't see why it should
make any difference to you, when it hasn't with me."
She had altogether regained the self-possession she
had been surprised out of, with an added note of
reserve.
And so he had to accept it. He rose, with a slight
sigh, and returned to the examination of his spoils.
But when he was away from Felipa and her blight-
ing matter of fact, the pathos of it came uppermost
again. Troubles seemed to thicken around him. His
voluntary Coventry was making him sensitive. He
had thought that his wife was at least giving him the
best of her cool nature. Cool ! There was no cold-
152 THE HERITAGE OP UNREST
ness in that strained white face, as she read the letter.
The control she had over herself ! It was admirable.
He thought that most women would have fainted, or
have grown hysterical, or have made a scene of some
sort. Then he recalled the stoicism of the Apache
and was back at her birth again.
He realized for the first time the injury his thought
of it did her. It was that which had kept them
apart, no doubt, and the sympathy of lawlessness that
had drawn her and Cairness together. Yet he had
just begun to flatter himself that he was eradicat-
ing the savage. She had been gratifyingly like other
women since his return. But it was as Brewster had
said, after all, the Apache strain was abhorrent to him
as the venom of a snake. Yet he was fond of Felipa,
too.
Someway it had not occurred to him to be any more
angry with Cairness than he had been with her. The
most he felt was resentful jealousy. There was noth-
ing more underhand about the man than there was
about Felipa. Sending the note by the prospectors
had not been underhand. He understood that it had
been done only that it might make no trouble for her,
and give himself no needless pain. Cairness would
have been willing to admit to his face that he loved
Felipa. That letter must have been written in his
own camp.
He heard his wife coming down the stairs, and
directly she stood in the doorway. " Will you let me
have that knife, Jack dear ? " she asked amiably.
THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 153
He turned his chair and studied her in a kind of
hopeless amusement. " Felipa," he said, " if you will
insist upon being told, I cut open the pockets of those
dead men's clothes with it."
" But I can have it cleaned," she said.
He turned back abruptly. " You had better get
another. You can't have that one," he answered.
Was it possible that twenty minutes before he had
risen to the histrionic pitch of self-sacrifice of offering
her her freedom to marry another man ?
XII
IT was unfortunate for Landor, as most things seemed
to be just then, that the Department Commander hap-
pened to have an old score to settle. It resulted in the
charges preferred by Brewster being given precedence
over the request for a court of inquiry. The Depart-
ment Commander was a man of military knowledge,
and he foresaw that the stigma of having been court-
martialled for cowardice would cling to Landor through
all his future career, whatever the findings of the court
might be. An officer is in the position of the wife
of Caesar, and it is better for him, much better, that
the charge of " unsoldierly and unofficer-like conduct,
in violation of the sixty-first article of war," should
never come up against him, however unfounded it
may be.
It was a very poor case, indeed, that Brewster made
out, despite a formidable array of specifications. As it
progressed, the situation took on a certain ludicrous-
ness. The tale of woe was so very trivial ; it seemed
hardly worth the trouble of convening twelve officers
from the four corners of the Department to hear it.
And there was about Brewster, as he progressed, a sug-
gestion of dragging one foot after the other, leaving
out a word here, overlooking an occurrence there, cut-
154
THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 155
ting off a mile in one place, and tacking on an hour in
another.
Landor's wrath was mighty, but he smiled as he sat
balancing a ruler on his fingers and hearing how the
citizens of San Tomaso, eager to avenge their wrongs,
had met him at early morning, had gone bravely for-
ward, keen on the scent, had implored him to hasten,
while he halted on worthless pretexts, and had, towards
evening, reluctantly left a hot trail, going from it at
right angles, "and camping," said Brewster, regretfully,
" as far away as it was possible to get, considering the