Then with sudden impulsive movement he bent, kissed her forehead, and turned as suddenly away.

When the sisters looked into each other’s eyes a moment later one face was blushing like the dawn, the other was pallid with a new and deep anxiety.

And now we, too, must follow Wing.  He was a total stranger, it is to be remembered, to the regiment when, after its years of battling in the Army of the Potomac, it was sent into exile on the far Pacific coast and speedily lost to sight in the deserts of Arizona.  The type of non-commissioned officer most familiar to the rank and file as well as to their superiors was the old-fashioned “plains raised,” “discipplin furst and rayson aftherwards” class of which Feeny was so prominent an exponent.  Brave to rashness and faithful to the very death, they had reason to look for respect and appreciation.  They were men whose only education was that picked up in the camps and campaigns of the famous old regiments to which, when mere recruits, they had been assigned.  They were invaluable in the army, and would have been utterly misjudged and out of their element anywhere else.  That “book learning” and soldiering could ever go hand in hand no man in the old dragoons would ever have believed for an instant.  Such scholars as had drifted into the ranks were, as a rule, irreclaimable drunkards, lost to any chance of redemption at home, and only tolerated in the service in the rough old days because of their meek and uncomplaining performance of long hours of extra duty in the troop or regimental offices when, their whiskey and their money alike exhausted, they humbly went back to their desks, asking only to live in the hope of another drunk.  Hundreds of the old dragoons could barely sign their names, many could only touch the pen when called upon to make “his (X) mark.”  “Another busted clerk” was the general expression when the young Californian came forward to enlist.  Yet he was the picture of clear-eyed, athletic manhood, was accepted with much hesitancy by the officers and undoubted suspicion by the men, yet speedily proved a splendid horseman, scout, shot, and, as was the final admission, “all-round trooper,” despite the fact that he was well educated and spoke Spanish like a native.  Still, such was the prevailing faith, as it ever is among veteran soldiers, that the old style was the best, it was long before he won promotion.  No one who has not known both can begin to imagine the difference between the army of a quarter-century ago and the army of to-day.  Just as Feeny was a resolute specimen of the old, so was Wing a pioneer of his class in the new.  At the moment when the latter struck spurs to the wearied flanks of poor Dick and called on him for one more effort, the stalwart and handsome sergeant sped away on the path of duty, confident of the fact that by this time every man in his own troop and every soldier who knew him at all would stake his last dollar on “Bob” Wing’s tackling the problem before him as fearlessly and intelligently as any veteran in the regiment.