Ranson's Folly

The junior officers of Fort Crockett had organized a mess at the posttrader's. "And a mess it certainly is," said Lieutenant Ranson. The diningtable stood between hogsheads of molasses and a blazing logfire, the counter of the store was their buffet, a pooltable with a cloth, blotted like a map of the Great Lakes, their sideboard, and Indian Pete acted as butler. But none of these things counted against the great fact that each evening Mary Cahill, the daughter of the posttrader, presided over the evening meal, and turned it into a banquet. From her high chair behind the counter, with the cashregister on her one side and the weighingscales on the other, she gave her little Senate laws, and smiled upon each and all with the kind impartiality of a comrade.

At least, at one time she had been impartial. But of late she smiled upon all save Lieutenant Ranson. When he talked, she now looked at the blazing logfire, and her cheeks glowed and her eyes seemed to reflect the lifting flame.

For five years, ever since her father brought her from the convent at St. Louis, Mary Cahill had watched officers come and officers go. Her knowledge concerning them, and their public and private affairs, was vast and miscellaneous. She was acquainted with the traditions of every regiment, with its war record, with its peacetime politics, its nicknames, its scandals, even with the earnings of each companycanteen. At Fort Crockett, which lay under her immediate observation, she knew more of what was going forward than did the regimental adjutant, more even than did the colonel's wife. If Trumpeter Tyler flatted on church call, if Mrs. Stickney applied to the quartermaster for three feet of stovepipe, if Lieutenant Curtis were granted two days' leave for quailshooting, Mary Cahill knew it; and if Mrs. "Captain" Stairs obtained the postambulance for a drive to Kiowa City, when Mrs. "Captain" Ross wanted it for a picnic, she knew what words passed between those ladies, and which of the two wept. She knew all of these things, for each evening they were retailed to her by her "boarders." Her boarders were very loyal to Mary Cahill. Her position was a difficult one, and had it not been that the boyofficers were so understanding, it would have been much more difficult. For the life of a regimental post is as circumscribed as the life on a shipofwar, and it would no more be possible for the ship's barber to rub shoulders with the admiral's epaulets than that a posttrader's child should visit the ladies on the "line," or that the wives of the enlisted men should dine with the young girl from whom they "took in" washing.

Dettagli