mpelled to decline all
intercourse. We are beholden, in a measure, to Mr. Burnham, and have to
be guided by his wishes. We are young men compared to him, and it was
through him that we came to seek our fortune here, but he is virtually
the head of both establishments.' Well. There was nothing more to be
said, and the boys came away. One thing more transpired. Burnham gave it
out that he had lived in Texas before the war, and had fought all the
way through in the Confederate service. He thought the officers ought
to know this. It was the major himself to whom he told it, and when the
major replied that he considered the war over and that that made no
difference, Burnham, with a clouded face replied, 'Well, mebbe it
don't--to you.' Whereupon the major fired up and told him that if he
chose to be an unreconstructed reb, when Union officers and gentlemen
were only striving to be civil to him, he might 'go ahead and be d--d,'
and came away in high dudgeon." And so matters stood up to the last we
had heard from Fort Phoenix, except for one letter which Mrs. Frazer
wrote to Mrs. Turner at Sandy, perhaps purely out of feminine mischief,
because a year or so previous Baker, as a junior second lieutenant, was
doing the devoted to Mrs. Turner, a species of mildly amatory
apprenticeship which most of the young officers seemed impelled to serve
on first joining. "We are having such a romance here at Phoenix. You
have doubtless heard of the beautiful girl at 'Starlight Ranch,' as we
call the Burnham place, up the valley. Everybody who called has been
rebuffed; but, after catching a few glimpses of her, Mr. Baker became
completely infatuated and rode up that way three or four times a week.
Of late he has ceased going in the daytime, but it is known that he
rides out towards dusk and gets back long after midnight, sometimes not
till morning. Of course it takes four hours, nearly, to come from there
full-speed, but though Major Tracy will admit nothing, it must be that
Mr. Baker has his permission to be away at night. We all believe that it
is another case of love laughing at locksmiths and that in some way they
contrive to meet. One thing is certain,--Mr. Baker is desperately in
love and will permit no trifling with him on the subject." Ordinarily, I
suppose, such a letter would have been gall and wormwood to Mrs. Turner,
but as young Hunter, a new appointment, was now a devotee, and as it was
a piece of romantic news which interested al