Short Stories for English Courses

V >> Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.) >> Short Stories for English Courses

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28

His eyes clouded, and he dropped the newspaper and sat for a long
time with his face in his hands. When he looked up again he
noticed that his gesture had pushed the other papers from the
table and scattered them on the floor at his feet. The uppermost
lay spread out before him, and heavily his eyes began their search
again. "John Lavington comes forward with plan for reconstructing
Company. Offers to put in ten millions of his own--The proposal
under consideration by the District Attorney."

Ten millions ... ten millions of his own. But if John Lavington
was ruined? ... Faxon stood up with a cry. That was it, then--that
was what the warning meant! And if he had not fled from it, dashed
wildly away from it into the night, he might have broken the spell
of iniquity, the powers of darkness might not have prevailed! He
caught up the pile of newspapers and began to glance through each
in turn for the headline: "Wills Admitted to Probate". In the last
of all he found the paragraph he sought, and it stared up at him
as if with Rainer's dying eyes.

That--THAT was what he had done! The powers of pity had singled
him out to warn and save, and he had closed his ears to their
call, had washed his hands of it, and fled. Washed his hands of
it! That was the word. It caught him back to the dreadful moment
in the lodge when, raising himself up from Rainer's side, he had
looked at his hands and seen that they were red. ...

A MESSENGER

BY

MARY RAYMOND SHIPMAN ANDREWS

The Berserker of the North, because he believed in the directing
power of the gods, knew no fear. Death or life--it was meted out
by a destiny that could not err. In song and story he has been one
of the most attractive figures of the past; far more attractive in
his savage virtues than the more sensuous heroes of Greece and
Rome. In this story he lives again in the American boy who has his
ancestor's inexplicable uplift of spirit in the presence of danger
and his implicit faith in "the God of battles and the beauty of
holiness." The ideal of Miles Morgan is such a man as Chinese
Gordon, who, not only in youth but all through life, had eyes for
"the vision splendid."

The ethical value of "A Messenger" may be summed up in the words
of the General: "There is nothing in Americanism to prevent either
inspiration or heroism."

A MESSENGER

[Footnote: From "The Militants," by Mary R. S. Andrews. Copyright,
1907, by Charles Scribner's Sons.]

How oft do they their silver bowers leave,
To come to succour us that succour want!
How oft do they with golden pineons cleave
The flitting skyes, like flying Pursuivant,
Against fowle feendes to ayd us militant!
They for us fight, they watch and dewly ward,
And their bright Squadrons round about us plant;
And all for love, and nothing for reward.
O! Why should heavenly God to men have such regard?

--Spenser's "Faerie Queene."

That the other world of our hope rests on no distant, shining
star, but lies about us as an atmosphere, unseen yet near, is the
belief of many. The veil of material life shades earthly eyes,
they say, from the glories in which we ever are. But sometimes
when the veil wears thin in mortal stress, or is caught away by a
rushing, mighty wind of inspiration, the trembling human soul, so
bared, so purified, may look down unimagined heavenly vistas, and
messengers may steal across the shifting boundary, breathing hope
and the air of a brighter world. And of him who speaks his vision,
men say "He is mad," or "He has dreamed."

The group of officers in the tent was silent for a long half
minute after Colonel Wilson's voice had stopped. Then the General
spoke.

"There is but one thing to do," he said. "We must get word to
Captain Thornton at once."

The Colonel thought deeply a moment, and glanced at the orderly
outside the tent. "Flannigan!" The man, wheeling swiftly, saluted.
"Present my compliments to Lieutenant Morgan and say that I should
like to see him here at once," and the soldier went off, with the
quick military precision in which there is no haste and no delay.

"You have some fine, powerful young officers, Colonel," sail the
General casually. "I suppose we shall see in Lieutenant Morgan one
of the best. It will take strength and brains both, perhaps, for
this message."

A shadow of a smile touched the Colonel's lips. "I think I have
chosen a capable man, General," was all he said.

Against the doorway of the tent the breeze blew the flap lazily
back and forth. A light rain fell with muffled gentle insistence
on the canvas over their heads, and out through the opening the
landscape was blurred--the wide stretch of monotonous, billowy
prairie, the sluggish, shining river, bending in the distance
about the base of Black Wind Mountain--Black Wind Mountain, whose
high top lifted, though it was almost June, a white point of snow
above dark pine ridges of the hills below. The five officers
talked a little as they waited, but spasmodically, absent-
mindedly. A shadow blocked the light of the entrance, and in the
doorway stood a young man, undersized, slight, blond. He looked
inquiringly at the Colonel.

"You sent for me, sir?" and the General and his aide, and the
grizzled old Captain, and the big, fresh-faced young one, all
watched him.

In direct, quiet words--words whose bareness made them dramatic
for the weight of possibility they carried--the Colonel explained.
Black Wolf and his band were out on the war-path. A soldier coming
in wounded, escaped from the massacre of the post at Devil's Hoof
Gap, had reported it. With the large command known to be here
camped on Sweetstream Fork, they would not come this way; they
would swerve up the Gunpowder River twenty miles away, destroying
the settlement and Little Fort Slade, and would sweep on, probably
for a general massacre, up the Great Horn as far as Fort
Doncaster. He himself, with the regiment, would try to save Fort
Slade, but in the meantime Captain Thornton's troop, coming to
join him, ignorant that Black Wolf had taken the war-path, would
be directly in their track. Some one must be sent to warn them,
and of course the fewer the quicker. Lieutenant Morgan would take
a sergeant, the Colonel ordered quietly, and start at once.

In the misty light inside the tent, the young officer looked
hardly more than seventeen years old as he stood listening. His
small figure was light, fragile; his hair was blond to an extreme,
a thick thatch of pale gold; and there was about him, among these
tanned, stalwart men in uniform, a presence, an effect of
something unusual, a simplicity out of place yet harmonious, which
might have come with a little child into a scene like this. His
large blue eyes were fixed on the Colonel as he talked, and in
them was just such a look of innocent, pleased wonder, as might be
in a child's eyes, who had been told to leave studying and go pick
violets. But as the Colonel ended he spoke, and the few words he
said, the few questions he asked, were full of poise, of crisp
directness. As the General volunteered a word or two, he turned to
him and answered with a very charming deference, a respect that
was yet full of gracious ease, the unconscious air of a man to
whom generals are first as men, and then as generals. The slight
figure in its dark uniform was already beyond the tent doorway
when the Colonel spoke again, with a shade of hesitation in his
manner.

"Mr. Morgan!" and the young officer turned quickly. "I think it
may be right to warn you that there is likely to be more than
usual danger in your ride."

"Yes, sir." The fresh, young voice had a note of inquiry.

"You will--you will"--what was it the Colonel wanted to say? He
finished abruptly. "Choose the man carefully who goes with you."

"Thank you, Colonel," Morgan responded heartily, but with a hint
of bewilderment. "I shall take Sergeant O'Hara," and he was gone.

There was a touch of color in the Colonel's face, and he sighed as
if glad to have it over. The General watched him, and slowly,
after a pause, he demanded:

"May I ask, Colonel, why you chose that blond baby to send on a
mission of uncommon danger and importance?"

The Colonel answered quietly: "There were several reasons,
General--good ones. The blond baby"--that ghost of a smile touched
the Colonel's lips again--"the blond baby has some remarkable
qualities. He never loses his head; he has uncommon invention and
facility of getting out of bad holes; he rides light and so can
make a horse last longer than most, and"--the Colonel considered a
moment--"I may say he has no fear of death. Even among my officers
he is known for the quality of his courage. There is one more
reason: he is the most popular man I have, both with officers and
men; if anything happened to Morgan the whole command would race
into hell after the devils that did it before they would miss
their revenge."

The General reflected, pulling at his moustache. "It seems a bit
like taking advantage of his popularity," he said.

"It is," the Colonel threw back quickly. "It's just that. But
that's what one must do--a commanding officer--isn't it so,
General? In this war music we play on human instruments, and if a
big chord comes out stronger for the silence of a note, the note
must be silenced--that's all. It's cruel, but it's fighting; it's
the game."

The General, as if impressed with the tense words, did not
respond, and the other officers stared at the Colonel's face, as
carved, as stern as if done in marble--a face from which the warm,
strong heart seldom shone, held back always by the stronger will.

The big, fresh-colored young Captain broke the silence. "Has the
General ever heard of the trick Morgan played on Sun Boy, sir?" he
asked.

"Tell the General, Captain Booth," the Colonel said briefly, and
the Captain turned toward the higher officer.

"It was apropos of what the Colonel said of his incentive
faculties, General," he began. "A year ago the youngster with a
squad of ten men walked into Sun Boy's camp of seventy-five
warriors. Morgan had made quite a pet of a young Sioux, who was
our prisoner for five months, and the boy had taught him a lot of
the language, and assured him that he would have the friendship of
the band in return for his kindness to Blue Arrow--that was the
chap's name. So he thought he was safe; but it turned out that
Blue Arrow's father, a chief, had got into a row with Sun Boy, and
the latter would not think of ratifying the boy's promise. So
there was Morgan with his dozen men, in a nasty enough fix. He
knew plenty of Indian talk to understand that they were discussing
what they would do with him, and it wasn't pleasant.

"All of a sudden he had an inspiration. He tells the story
himself, sir, and I assure you he'd make you laugh--Morgan is a
wonderful mimic. Well, he remembered suddenly, as I said, that he
was a mighty good ventriloquist, and he saw his chance. He gave a
great jump like a startled fawn, and threw up his arms and stared
like one demented into the tree over their heads. There was a
mangy-looking crow sitting up there on a branch, and Morgan
pointed at him as if at something marvellous, supernatural, and
all those fool Indians stopped pow-wowing and stared up after him,
as curious as monkeys. Then to all appearances, the crow began to
talk. Morgan said they must have thought that spirits didn't speak
very choice Sioux, but he did his best. The bird cawed out:

"'Oh, Sun Boy, great chief, beware what you do!'

"And then the real bird flapped its wings and Morgan thought it
was going to fly, and he was lost. But it settled back again on
the branch, and Morgan proceeded to caw on:

"'Hurt not the white man, or the curses of the gods will come upon
Sun Boy and his people.'

"And he proceeded to give a list of what would happen if the
Indians touched a hair of their heads. By this time the red devils
were all down on their stomachs, moaning softly whenever Morgan
stopped cawing. He said he quite got into the spirit of it, and
would have liked to go on some time, but he was beginning to get
hoarse, and besides he was; in deadly terror for fear the crow
would fly before he got to the point. So he had the spirit order
them to give the white men their horses and turn them loose
instanter; and just as he got all through, off went the thing with
a big flap and a parting caw on its own account. I wish I could
tell it as Morgan does--you'd think he was a bird and an Indian
rolled together. He's a great actor spoiled, that lad."

"You leave out a fine point, to my mind, Captain Booth," the
Colonel said quickly. "About his going back."

"Oh! certainly that ought to be told," said the Captain, and the
General's eyes turned to him again. "Morgan forgot to see young
Blue Arrow, his friend, before he got away, and nothing would do
but that he should go back and speak to him. He said the boy would
be disappointed. The men were visibly uneasy at his going, but
that didn't affect him. He ordered them to wait, and back he went,
pell-mell, all alone into that horde of fiends. They hadn't got
over their funk, luckily, and he saw Blue Arrow and made his party
call and got out again all right. He didn't tell that himself, but
Sergeant O'Hara made the camp ring with it. He adores Morgan, and
claims that he doesn't know what fear is. I believe it's about so.
I've seen him in a fight three times now. His cap always goes off
--he loses a cap every blessed scrimmage--and with that yellow mop
of hair, and a sort of rapt expression he gets, he looks like a
child saying its prayers all the time he is slashing and shooting
like a berserker." Captain Booth faced abruptly toward the
Colonel. "I beg your pardon for talking so long, sir," he said.
"You know we're all rather keen about little Miles Morgan."

The General lifted his head suddenly. "Miles Morgan?" he demanded.
"Is his name Miles Morgan?"

The Colonel nodded. "Yes. The grandson of the old Bishop--named
for him."

"Lord!" ejaculated the General. "Miles Morgan was my earliest
friend, my friend until he died! This must be Jim's son--Miles's
only child. And Jim is dead these ten years," he went on rapidly.
"I've lost track of him since the Bishop died, but I knew Jim left
children. Why, he married "--he searched rapidly in his memory--
"he married a daughter of General Fitzbrian's. This boy's got the
church and the army both in him. I knew his mother," he went on,
talking to the Colonel, garrulous with interest. "Irish and
fascinating she was--believed in fairies and ghosts and all that,
as her father did before her. A clever woman, but with the
superstitious, wild Irish blood strong in her. Good Lord! I wish
I'd known that was Miles Morgan's grandson."

The Colonel's voice sounded quiet and rather cold after the
General's impulsive enthusiasm. "You have summed him up by his
antecedents, General," he said. "The church and the army--both
strains are strong. He is deeply religious."

The General looked thoughtful. "Religious, eh? And popular? They
don't always go together."

Captain Booth spoke quickly. "It's not that kind, General," he
said. "There's no cant in the boy. He's more popular for it--
that's often so with the genuine thing, isn't it! I sometimes
think"--the young Captain hesitated and smiled a trifle
deprecatingly--"that Morgan is much of the same stuff as Gordon--
Chinese Gordon; the martyr stuff, you know. But it seems a bit
rash to compare an every-day American youngster to an inspired
hero."

"There's nothing in Americanism to prevent either inspiration or
heroism that I know of," the General affirmed stoutly, his fine
old head up, his eyes gleaming with pride of his profession.

Out through the open doorway, beyond the slapping tent-flap, the
keen, gray eyes of the Colonel were fixed musingly on two black
points which crawled along the edge of the dulled silver of the
distant river--Miles Morgan and Sergeant O'Hara had started.

"Sergeant!" They were eight miles out now, and the camp had
disappeared behind the elbow of Black Wind Mountain. "There's
something wrong with your horse. Listen! He's not loping evenly."
The soft cadence of eight hoofs on earth had somewhere a lighter
and then a heavier note; the ear of a good horseman tells in a
minute, as a musician's ear at a false note, when an animal saves
one foot ever so slightly, to come down harder on another.

"Yessirr. The Lieutenant'll remimber 'tis the horrse that had a
bit of a spavin. Sure I thot 'twas cured, and 'tis the kindest
baste in the rigiment f'r a pleasure ride, sorr--that willin'
'tis. So I tuk it. I think 'tis only the stiffness at furrst aff.
'Twill wurruk aff later. Plaze God, I'll wallop him." And the
Sergeant walloped with a will.

But the kindest beast in the regiment failed to respond except
with a plunge and increased lameness. Soon there was no more
question of his incapacity.

Lieutenant Morgan halted his mount, and, looking at the woe-begone
O'Hara, laughed. "A nice trick this is, Sergeant," he said, "to
start out on a trip to dodge Indians with a spavined horse. Why
didn't you get a broomstick? Now go back to camp as fast as you
can go; and that horse ought to be blistered when you get there.
See if you can't really cure him. He's too good to be shot." He
patted the gray's nervous head, and the beast rubbed it gently
against his sleeve, quiet under his hand.

"Yessirr. The Lieutenant'll ride slow, sorr, f'r me to catch up on
ye, sorr?"

Miles Morgan smiled and shook his head. "Sorry, Sergeant, but
there'll be no slow riding in this. I'll have to press right on
without you; I must be at Massacre Mountain to-night to catch
Captain Thornton to-morrow."

Sergeant O'Hara's chin dropped. "Sure the Lieutenant'll niver be
thinkin' to g'wan alone--widout me?" and with all the Sergeant's
respect for his superiors, it took the Lieutenant ten valuable
minutes to get the man started back, shaking his head and
muttering forebodings, to the camp.

It was quiet riding on alone. There were a few miles to go before
there was any chance of Indians, and no particular lookout to be
kept, so he put the horse ahead rapidly while he might, and
suddenly he found himself singing softly as he galloped. How the
words had come to him he did not know, for no conscious train of
thought had brought them; but they surely fitted to the situation,
and a pleasant sense of companionship, of safety, warmed him as
the swing of an old hymn carried his voice along with it.

"God shall charge His angel legions Watch and ward o'er thee to
keep; Though thou walk through hostile regions, Though in desert
wilds thou sleep."

Surely a man riding toward--perhaps through--skulking Indian
hordes, as he must, could have no better message reach him than
that. The bent of his mind was toward mysticism, and while he did
not think the train of reasoning out, could not have said that he
believed it so, yet the familiar lines flashing suddenly, clearly,
on the curtain of his mind, seemed to him, very simply, to be sent
from a larger thought than his own. As a child might take a strong
hand held out as it walked over rough country, so he accepted this
quite readily and happily, as from that Power who was never far
from him, and in whose service, beyond most people, he lived and
moved. Low but clear and deep his voice went on, following one
stanza with its mate:

"Since with pure and firm affection Thou on God hast set thy love,
With the wings of His protection He will shield thee from above."
The simplicity of his being sheltered itself in the broad promise
of the words.

Light-heartedly he rode on and on, though now more carefully;
lying flat and peering over the crests of hills a long time before
he crossed their tops; going miles perhaps through ravines; taking
advantage of every bit of cover where a man and a horse might be
hidden; travelling as he had learned to travel in three years of
experience in this dangerous Indian country, where a shrub taken
for granted might mean a warrior, and that warrior a hundred
others within signal. It was his plan to ride until about twelve--
to reach Massacre Mountain, and there rest his horse and himself
till gray daylight. There was grass there and a spring--two good
and innocent things that had been the cause of the bad, dark thing
which had given the place its name. A troop under Captain James
camping at this point, because of the water and grass, had been
surprised and wiped out by five hundred Indian braves of the
wicked and famous Red Crow. There were ghastly signs about the
place yet; Morgan had seen them, but soldiers may not have nerves,
and it was good camping ground.

On through the valleys and half-way up the slopes, which rolled
here far away into a still wilder world, the young man rode.
Behind the distant hills in the east a glow like fire flushed the
horizon. A rim of pale gold lifted sharply over the ridge; a huge
round ball of light pushed faster, higher, and lay, a bright world
on the edge of the world, great against the sky--the moon had
risen. The twilight trembled as the yellow rays struck into its
depths, and deepened, dying into purple shadows. Across the plain
zigzagged the pools of a level stream, as if a giant had spilled
handfuls of quicksilver here and there.

Miles Morgan, riding, drank in all the mysterious, wild beauty, as
a man at ease; as open to each fair impression as if he were not
riding each moment into deeper danger, as if his every sense were
not on guard. On through the shining moonlight and in the shadow
of the hills he rode, and, where he might, through the trees, and
stopped to listen often, to stare at the hilltops, to question a
heap of stones or a bush.

At last, when his leg-weary horse was beginning to stumble a bit,
he saw, as he came around a turn, Massacre Mountain's dark head
rising in front of him, only half a mile away. The spring trickled
its low song, as musical, as limpidly pure as if it had never run
scarlet. The picketed horse fell to browsing and Miles sighed
restfully as he laid his head on his saddle and fell instantly to
sleep with the light of the moon on his damp, fair hair. But he
did not sleep long. Suddenly with a start he awoke, and sat up
sharply, and listened. He heard the horse still munching grass
near him, and made out the shadow of its bulk against the sky; he
heard the stream, softly falling and calling to the waters where
it was going. That was all. Strain his hearing as: he might he
could hear nothing else in the still night. Yet there was
something. It might not be sound or sight, but there was a
presence, a something--he could not explain. He was alert in every
nerve. Suddenly the words of the hymn he had been singing in the
afternoon flashed again into his mind, and, with his cocked
revolver in his hand, alone, on guard, in the midnight of the
savage wilderness, the words came that were not even a whisper:

"God shall charge His angel legions Watch and ward o'er thee to
keep; Though thou walk through hostile regions, Though in desert
wilds thou sleep."

He gave a contented sigh and lay down. What was there to worry
about? It was just his case for which the hymn was written."
Desert wilds "--that surely meant Massacre Mountain, and why
should he not sleep here quietly, and let the angels keep their
watch and ward! He closed his eyes with a smile. But sleep did not
come, and soon his eyes were open again, staring into blackness,
thinking, thinking.

It was Sunday when he started out on this mission, and he fell to
remembering the Sunday nights at home--long, long ago they seemed
now. The family sang hymns after supper always; his mother played,
and the children stood around her--five of them, Miles and his
brothers and sisters. There was a little sister with brown hair
about her shoulders, who always stood by Miles, leaned against
him, held his hand, looked up at him with adoring eyes--he could
see those uplifted eyes now, shining through the darkness of this
lonely place. He remembered the big, home-like room; the crackling
fire; the peaceful atmosphere of books and pictures; the dumb
things about its walls that were yet eloquent to him of home and
family; the sword that his great-grandfather had worn under
Washington; the old ivories that another great-grandfather, the
Admiral, had brought from China; the portraits of Morgans of half
a dozen generations which hung there; the magazine table, the
books and books and books. A pang of desperate homesickness
suddenly shook him. He wanted them--his own. Why should he, their
best-beloved, throw away his life--a life filled to the brim with
hope and energy and high ideals--on this futile quest? He knew
quite as well as the General or the Colonel that his ride was but
a forlorn hope. As he lay there, longing so, in the dangerous
dark, he went about the library at home in his thought and placed
each familiar belonging where he had known it all his life. And as
he finished, his mother's head shone darkly golden by the piano;
her fingers swept over the keys; he heard all their voices, the
dear never-forgotten voices. Hark! They were singing his hymn--
little Alice's reedy note lifted above the others--"God shall
charge His angel legions--"

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28