dances well; perennial
attraction, his detractors say, he finds at the card-table, but Ray is
never quite himself until he throws his leg over the horse he loves. He
is _facile princeps_ the light rider of the regiment, and to this claim
there are none to say him nay. A tip-top soldier too is Ray. Keen on the
scout, tireless on the trail, daring to a fault in action, and either
preternaturally cool or enthusiastically excited when under fire. He is
a man the rank and file swear by and love. "You never hear Loot'nant Ray
saying 'Go in there, fellers.' 'Tis always, 'Come on, boys.' That's why
I like him," is the way Sergeant Moriarty puts it. Among his comrades,
his brother officers that is to say, opinions are divided. Ray has
trusty friends and he has his bitter enemies, though the latter, when
charged with the fact, are prone to say that no one is so much Ray's
enemy as Ray himself,--an assertion which cannot be altogether denied.
But as his own worst enemy Ray is thoroughly open and above-board; he
has not a hidden fault; his sins are many and they are public property
for all he cares; whereas the men who dislike Ray in the regiment are of
the opposite stamp. Among themselves they pick him to pieces with
comparative safety, but outside their limited circle, the damnation of
faint praise, the covert insinuations, or that intangible species of
backbiting which can,

"Without sneering, others teach to sneer,"

has to be their resort, and for good reason. Ray tolerates no slander,
and let him once get wind of the fact that some man has maligned him,
there is a row in the camp. Minding his own business, however
unsuccessfully, he meddles with the affairs of no one else, and thinking
twice before he alludes once to the shortcomings of a comrade, he claims
that consideration for himself, but doesn't get it. There be men who
outrival the weaker sex in the sinister effect they can throw into the
faintest allusion to another's conduct, and in the dexterity with which
they evade the consequences, and of such specimens the --th has its
share. There was Crane, whom Ray had fearfully snubbed and afterwards
"cut" in Arizona; there was Wilkins, whom Ray had treated with scant
courtesy for over a year, because of some gossip that veteran had been
instrumental in putting into circulation; there was Captain Canker, who
used to like and admire Ray in the rough old days in the canons and
deserts, but who had forfeited his esteem whil