At five o'clock of this cloudless October morning Colonel Montgomery
Byrne, "of the old Army, sir," was reviling the fates that had set him
the task of unraveling such a skein as he found at Sandy. At six he
was blessing the stars that sent him. Awakened, much before his usual
hour, by half-heard murmur of scurry and excitement, so quickly
suppressed he believed it all a dream, he was thinking, half drowsily,
all painfully, of the duty devolving on him for the day, and wishing
himself well out of it, when the dream became real, the impression
vivid.
His watch told him reveille should now be sounding. His ears
told him the sounds he heard were not those of reveille, yet something
had roused the occupants of Officers' Row, and then, all on a sudden,
instead of the sweet strains of "The Dawn of the Day" or "Bonnie Lass
o' Gawrie" there burst upon the morning air, harsh and blustering, the
alarum of the Civil War days, the hoarse uproar of the drum thundering
the long roll, while above all rang the loud clamor of the cavalry
trumpet sounding "To Horse."
"Fitz James was brave, but to his heart
The life blood leaped with sudden start."
Byrne sprang from his bed. He was a soldier, battle-tried, but this
meant something utterly new to him in war, for, mingling with the
gathering din, he heard the shriek of terror-stricken women. Daly's
bed was empty. The agent was gone. Elise aloft was jabbering patois
at her dazed and startled mistress. Suey, the Chinaman, came
clattering in, all flapping legs and arms and pigtail, his face livid,
his eyes staring. "Patcheese! Patcheese!" he squealed, and dove under
the nearest bed. Then Byrne, shinning into boots and breeches and
shunning his coat, grabbed his revolver and rushed for the door.
Across the parade, out of their barracks the "doughboys" came
streaming, no man of them dressed for inspection, but rather, like
sailors, stripped for a fight; and, never waiting to form ranks, but
following the lead of veteran sergeants and the signals or orders of
officers somewhere along the line, went sprinting straight for the
eastward mesa. From the cavalry barracks, the northward sets, the
troopers, too, were flowing, but these were turned stableward, back of
the post, and Byrne, with his nightshirt flying wide open, wider than
his eyes, bolted round through the space between the quarters of Plume
and Wren, catching sight of the arrested captain standing grim and
gaunt on his back piazza, and ran with the foremost sergeants to the
edge of the plateau, where, in his cool white garb, stood Plume,
shouting orders to those beneath.