United States, but
the name of the post commander at Grant, Lowell or Crittenden was a
household word, and in the eyes of the populace the second lieutenant
commanding the paymaster's escort was illimitably "a bigger man" than
the thrice distinguished soldier and citizen whose sole monument, up to
that time, was the flagstaff at the adobe corral and barracks sacred to
his name. Mr. Blake had never been in such a God-forsaken country or
community before, but there was something in the utter isolation, the
far-stretching waste of shimmering sand, the desolate mountain ranges
sharply outlined, hostile and forbidding, the springless, streamless,
verdureless plains of this stricken land, that harmonized with the
somewhat savage and cynical humor in which he had sought service in the
most intolerable clime then open to the troops of Uncle Sam. Blake had
been jilted and took it bitterly to heart. Wearing the willow himself,
he cherished it as the only green and growing thing in the Gila valley;
whereas, had he sought sympathy he would have found other young
gentlemen similarly decorated, and therefore as content as he to spend
the months or possibly years of their embittered life just as far from
the madding crowd and, as Blake cynically put it, "as near hell." Blake
was a man of distinction, as relatives went, and those were days when
friends at court had more to do with a fellow's sphere of duty--very
much more--than had the regimental commander or even the
adjutant-general. Blake took Arizona in preference to a tour in the
signal office at Washington. He wanted to get as far away from the
national capital and the favorite haunt of "the Army and Navy forever"
as he possibly could. It was the most natural thing in the world to him
that he should ask for duty in the land of deserts, centipedes,
rattlesnakes, and Apaches. He put it on the ground of serious bronchial
trouble which could be cured only in a dry climate, but the war office
knew as well as the navy department that it was an affair of the heart
and not of the throat. He wasn't the first man, by any manner of means,
to fall in love with Madeleine Torrance, the prettiest girl and most
unprincipled flirt that ever wore the navy button or tormented a sailor
father. Blake sought the roughest duty--that of escorting inspectors,
staff officers or paymasters on their wearisome trips through the
wilderness--and no one denied him. The cavalry was short of officers and
he got as