The Colonel's Lady Read Online Free Page B

passively sober. The others seemed slightly dazed.
    Captain Halan closed the book. “Reardon, Morgan, Steuber, go with Sergeant Roff. As of now you are members of the United States Cavalry, the Regiment, attached to Company A of that regiment. Dodson and Mayhew, go with the B Company first sergeant. McCully with C.”
    We walked across the parade as a twelve-man patrol rode through the gates, dust-covered, sagging wearily in their saddles, and headed for the stables. One of the companies was beginning to fall out as the bugler sounded first call for retreat. They looked hard and tough, almost picture soldiers in their dress uniforms and plumed helmets.
    Morgan said, “I thought this was a fightin' fort, not a bunch of goddamn garrison soldiers.”
    “We stand retreat five days a week,” Sergeant Roff said coldly, “a company at a time. As long as we're able to do that, Kohi's Apaches'll know we're not hurt too bad. We're under strength here, but you'll learn that soon enough. One trooper does the job of two, whether it's on patrol or cleanin' the stables.”
    Steuber nodded ponderously, impressed by the neatness of the dress uniforms. Morgan snorted.
    “Is Halan the company commander of A?” I asked.
    “That's right,” the Sergeant said, “and a better officer won't be found in the cavalry.”
    That was when I saw her.
    I had been looking for her, I suppose, expecting to see her, but I still wasn't prepared for it when she appeared. The carriage came through the gates, from outside Larrymoor's walls, and the guards came to rigid attention, presenting rifle salutes as the carriage rolled past them. The Colonel was beside her.
    “The Colonel and his lady,” Roff said, coming to an abrupt halt. The four of us froze, even Morgan, while the carriage rolled within a dozen yards of us. The Colonel gazed at us vaguely, limply returning the Sergeant's old-Army salute, and I got my first look at Colonel—former Major General—Jameson Joseph Weyland.
    I suppose I expected to see a very large man, or an extremely small man, or a fat man, or some kind of man who was radically different from the ordinary male human being. There was nothing different about him, except for the silver eagles on the tailored shoulders of his cavalry dress jacket. He looked any age between forty and fifty-five, medium height, lean, with a flat military belly. His mustache was the shaggy dragoon's, cultivated and twisted down at the corners of his mouth in exactly the same way every cavalry officer west of the Mississippi wore a mustache. If there was anything distinctive about him, it was his pale, almost colorless eyes.
    Caroline looked straight at me as they went past. There was no change on her face, not even a lifted eyebrow to suggest that she had ever seen me before. She looked straight at me, then at Sergeant Roff, smiling the faintest smile in the world, nodding the smallest nod in the world, just exactly the way a commanding officer's wife should recognize a noncommissioned officer with a long and honorable post record. I felt myself boiling inside, with anger and God knows what else, but I managed to keep my face straight as she looked my way again, for a quick last time. Then the carriage rolled on toward Officers' Row.
    Roff's breath whistled between his teeth, as if he had been holding it for a long time. “Let's go,” he said.
    “By God,” Morgan murmured appreciatively, “I didn't know they grew them like that on the desert.”
    “They don't.” Roff looked at him. “She's only been at the fort a little more than a week.” He sounded as if he didn't think much of Mrs. Weyland, but his face colored slightly just the same, because of the thoughts that must have been going around in his head. Caroline could do that to men, even when they didn't like her. “Let's go,” he said again.
    At the quartermaster's supply room we drew everything the United States Cavalry considered essential. Blue pants with the yellow stripe of the