Sentry duty at Camp Sandy along in '75 had not been allowed to bear
too heavily on its little garrison. There was nothing worth stealing
about the place, said Plume, and no pawn-shop handy. Of course there
were government horses and mules, food and forage, arms and
ammunition, but these were the days of soldier supremacy in that arid
and distant land, and soldiers had a summary way of settling with
marauders that was discouraging to enterprise. Larceny was therefore
little known until the law, with its delays and circumventions, took
root in the virgin soil, and people at such posts as Sandy seldom shut
and rarely locked their doors, even by night.
Windows were closed and
blanketed by day against the blazing sun and torrid heat, but, soon
after nightfall, every door and window was usually opened wide and
often kept so all the night long, in order that the cooler air,
settling down from mesa and mountain, might drift through every room
and hallway, licking up the starting dew upon the smooth, rounded
surface of the huge ollas, the porous water jars that hung suspended
on every porch, and wafting comfort to the heated brows of the lightly
covered sleepers within. Pyjamas were then unknown in army circles,
else even the single sheet that covered the drowsing soldier might
have been dispensed with.
Among the quarters occupied by married men, both in officers' row and
Sudsville under the plateau, doors were of little account in a
community where the only intruder to be feared was heat, and so it had
resulted that while the corrals, stables, and storehouses had their
guards, only a single sentry paced the long length of the eastward
side of the post, a single pair of eyes and a single rifle barrel
being deemed amply sufficient to protect against possible prowlers the
rear yards and entrances of the row. The westward front of the
officers' homes stood in plain view, on bright nights at least, of the
sentry at the guard-house, and needed no other protector. On dark
nights it was supposed to look out for itself.
A lonely time of it, as a rule, had No. 5, the "backyard sentry," but
this October night he lacked not for sensation. Lights burned until
very late in many of the quarters, while at Captain Wren's and
Lieutenant Blakely's people were up and moving about until long after
midnight. Of course No. 5 had heard all about the dreadful affair of
the early evening. What he and his fellows puzzled over was the
probable cause of Captain Wren's furious assault upon his subaltern.
Many a theory was afloat, Duane, with unlooked-for discretion, having
held his tongue as to the brief conversation that preceded the blow.
It was after eleven when the doctor paid his last visit for the night,
and the attendant came out on the rear porch for a pitcher of cool
water from the olla. It was long after twelve when the light in the
upstairs room at Captain Wren's was turned low, and for two hours
thereafter, with bowed head, the captain himself paced nervously up
and down, wearing in the soft and sandy soil a mournful pathway
parallel with his back porch.