invested his savings in this little estate and
settled thereon to grow up with the country--the Stannards' winsome
Millie having accepted a life interest in him and his modest property.
They knew every man riding that trail, from the daily mail messenger
to the semi-occasional courier. Their own regiment had gone, but they
had warm interest in its successors. They knew Downs, had known him
ever since his younger days when, a trig young Irish-Englishman, some
Londoner's discharged valet, he had 'listed in the cavalry, as he
expressed it, to reform. A model of temperance, soberness, and
chastity was Downs between times, and his gifts as groom of the
chambers, as well as groom of the stables, made him, when a model,
invaluable to bachelor officers in need of a competent soldier
servant. In days just after the great war he had won fame and money as
a light rider. It was then that Lieutenant Blake had dubbed him
"Epsom" Downs, and well-nigh quarreled with his chum, Lieutenant Ray,
over the question of proprietorship when the two were sent to separate
stations and Downs was "striking" for both. Downs settled the matter
by getting on a seven-days' drunk, squandering both fame and money,
and, though forgiven the scriptural seventy times seven (during which
term of years his name was changed to Ups and Downs), finally
forfeited the favor of both these indulgent masters and became
thereafter simply Downs, with no ups of sufficient length to restore
the average--much less to redeem him. And yet, when eventually
"bobtailed" out of the ----th, he had turned up at the old arsenal
recruiting depot at St. Louis, clean-shaven, neat, deft-handed,
helpful, to the end that an optimistic troop commander "took him on
again," in the belief that a reform had indeed been inaugurated. But,
like most good soldiers, the commander referred to knew little of
politics or potables, otherwise he would have set less store by the
strength of the reform movement and more by that of the potations.
Downs went so far on the highroad to heaven this time as to drink
nothing until his first payday. Meantime, as his captain's mercury,
messenger, and general utility man, moving much in polite society at
the arsenal and in town, he was frequently to be seen about
Headquarters of the Army, then established by General Sherman as far
as possible from Washington and as close to the heart of St. Louis. He
learned something of the ins and outs of social life in the gay