Comrades in arms Author:Charles King Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV A CHAMPION MISSING. IN close arrest Lieutenant Crabbe had gone to his quarters. Nay, more. So serious were Langham's injuries—so doubtful the re... more »sult—that, for the first time in the history of Fort Minneconjou, armed sentries stood at the door of an officer's room. The colonel's impromptu council had dissolved. Belden and Sparker, brother captains of the 2—th, trudged home together in awed silence until they reached the latter's gate. Belden was a man much esteemed for his modesty and worth. Sparker was known rather for his money—or that of his indulgent mate. Beyond comradeship in the service there was little in common between the two men. Belden, a strict disciplinarian in his own household, had no words to waste on the management of others'—the most persistent critics in such affairs being the men or women negligent or ignorant as to their own. Sparker was a sower of dragon's teeth, a man to whom was ever traced much of the little meannesses afloat, like malignant microbes, in the social atmosphere at the fort. With no children of his own, Sparker was full of comment onparental weaknesses as exhibited about him. With no erudition beyond that picked up in a yawning contemplation of newspaper headlines, he was prone to sneer at those who studied deeper. With no temporal anxieties to teach him sympathy and charity, he overflowed with captious criticism of those who fell behind. And, having started nine-tenths of such garrison gossip as was of masculine origin, he was now virtuously indignant at the cavalry major who had " brought such disgrace upon the name of the army." " Don't you think," he began at Belden, as they reached the gallery, " he ought to have gone privately to Crabbe and told him what he'd found, and let—let him " " Resign ? " said Belden quietly,...« less