S
o swift had been the succession of events since the first day of the week, few of the social set at Sandy could quite realize, much less fathom, all that had happened, and as they gathered on the verandas, in the cool of the evening after Daly's funeral, the trend of talk was all one way. A man who might have thrown light on certain matters at issue had been spirited away, and there were women quite ready to vow it was done simply to get him beyond range of their questioning. Sergeant Shannon had been sent to the agency on some mission prescribed by Colonel Byrne. It was almost the last order issued by Major Plume before turning over the command.
Byrne himself still lingered at the post, "watching the situation," as it was understood, and in constant telegraphic correspondence with the general at Prescott and the commander of the little guard over the agency buildings at the reservation—Lieutenant Bridger, of the Infantry. With a sergeant and twenty men that young officer had been dispatched to that point immediately after the alarming and unlooked-for catastrophe of the reveille outbreak. Catastrophe was what Byrne called it, and he meant what he said, not so much because it had cost the life of Daly, the agent, whose mistaken zeal hadprecipitated the whole misunderstanding, but rather because of the death of two such prominent young warriors as "Shield" and his friend, who had fallen after dealing the fatal blow to him who had laid violent hands, so they regarded it, on two young girls, one a chieftain's daughter and both objects of reverent and savagely sentimental interest. "If war doesn't come at once," said Byrne, "it will be because the Apache has a new sense or a deep-laid scheme. Look out for him."
No news as yet had come from the runners sent forth in search of the scattered fugitives, who would soon be flocking together again in the fastnesses of the Mogollon to the east or the Red Rock country northward—the latter probably, as being nearer their friends at the reservation and farther from the few renegade Tontos lurking in the mountains toward Fort Apache. Byrne's promise to the wanderers, sent by these runners, was to the effect that they would be safe from any prosecution if they would return at once to the agency and report themselves to the interpreter and the lieutenant commanding the guard. He would not, he said, be answerable for what might happen if they persisted in remaining at large. But when it was found that, so far from any coming in, there were many going out, and that Natzie's father and brother had already gone, Byrne's stout heart sank. The message came by wire from the agency not long after the return of the funeral party, and while the evening was yet young. He sent at once for Wren, and, seated on the major's front piazza, with an orderly hovering just out of earshot, andwith many an eye anxiously watching them along the row, the two veterans were holding earnest conference. Major Plume was at the bedside of his wife, so said Graham when he came down about eight. Mrs. Plume, he continued, was at least no worse, but very nervous. Then he took himself back to the hospital.
Another topic of talk along the line was Blakely's watch and its strange recovery, and many were the efforts to learn what Blakely himself had to say about it. The officers, nearly all of them, of course, had been at intervals to see Blakely and inquire if there were not something that they could do, this being the conventional and proper thing, and they who talked with him, with hardly an exception, led up to the matter of the watch and wished to know how he accounted for its being there on the post of No. 5. It was observed that, upon this topic and the stabbing of Private Mullins, Mr. Blakely was oddly reticent. He had nothing whatever to suggest as explanation of either matter. The watch was taken from the inner pocket of his thin white coat as he lay asleep at the pool, of this he felt confident, but by whom he would not pretend to say. Everybody knew by this time that Angela Wren had seen him sleeping, and had, in a spirit of playful mischief, fetched away his butterfly net, but who would accuse Angela of taking his watch and money? Of course such things had been, said one or two wise heads, but—not with girls like Angela.
But who could say what, all this while, Angela herself was thinking? Once upon a time it had been the way ofour young folk well over the North and West to claim forfeit in the game of "Catching the weasel asleep." There had been communities, indeed, and before co-education became a fad at certain of our great universities, wherein the maid caught napping could hold it no sin against watchful swain, or even against her, that he then and there imprinted on her lips a kiss. On the other hand, the swain found sleeping might not always expect a kiss, but must pay the penalty, a pair of dainty gloves. Many a forfeit, both lip and glove, had there been claimed and allowed in army days whereof we write, and Angela, stealing upon Blakely as he dozed beneath the willows, and liking him well and deploring her father's pronounced aversion to him—perhaps even resenting it an undutiful bit—had found it impossible to resist the temptation to softly disengage that butterfly net from the loosely clasping fingers, and swiftly, stealthily, delightedly to scamper away with it against his waking. It was of this very exploit, never dreaming of the fateful consequences, she and Kate Sanders were so blissfully bubbling over, fairly shaking with maiden merriment when the despoiled victim, homeward bound, caught sight of them upon themesa. Ten minutes more, and in full force she had been made to feel the blow of her father's fierce displeasure. Twenty minutes more, and, under the blow of her father's furious wrath, Blakely had been felled like a log.
When with elongated face and exaggerated gloom of manner Aunt Janet came to make her realize the awful consequences of her crime, Angela's first impulse had beento cry out against her father's unreasoning rage. When she learned that he was in close arrest,—to be tried, doubtless, for his mad assault,—in utter revulsion of feeling, in love and tenderness, in grief and contrition inexpressible, she had thrown herself at his feet and, clasping his knees, had sobbed her heart out in imploring his forgiveness for what she called her wicked, heedless, heartless conduct. No one saw that blessed meeting, that scene of mutual forgiveness, of sweet reconciliation; too sweet and serene, indeed, for Janet's stern and Calvinistic mold.
Are we ever quite content, I wonder, that others' bairnies should be so speedily, so entirely, forgiven? All because of this had all Janet's manifestations of sympathy for Robert to be tempered with a fine reserve. As for Angela, it would never do to let the child so soon forget that this should be an awful lesson. Aunt Janet's manner, therefore, when, butterfly net in hand, she required of her niece full explanation of the presence in the room of this ravished trophy, was something fraught with far too much of future punishment, of wrath eternal. Even in her chastened mood Angela's spirit stooden garde. "I have told father everything, auntie," she declared. "I leave it all to him," and bore in silence the comments, without the utterance of which the elder vestal felt she could not conscientiously quit the field. "Bold," "immodest," "unmaidenly," "wanton," were a choice few of Aunt Janet's expletives, and these were unresented. But when she concluded with "I shall send this—thing tohim at once, with my personal apologies for the act of an irresponsible child," up sprang Angela with rebellion flashing from her eyes. She had suffered punishment as a woman. She would not now be treated as a child. To Janet's undisguised amaze and disapprobation, Wren decided that Angela herself should send both apology and net. It was the first missive of the kind she had ever written, but, even so, she would not submit it for either advice or criticism—even though its composition cost her many hours and tears and sheets of paper. No one but the recipient had so much as a peep at it, but when Blakely read it a grave smile lighted his pallid and still bandaged face. He stowed the little note in his desk, and presently took it out and read it again, and still again, and then it went slowly into the inner pocket of his white sack coat and was held there, while he, the wearer, slowly paced up and down the veranda late in the starlit night. This was the evening of Daly's funeral, the evening of the day on which he and his captain had shaken hands and were to start afresh with better understanding.
Young Duane was officer of the day and, after the tattoo inspection of his little guard, had gone for a few minutes to the hospital where Mullins lay muttering and tossing in his feverish sleep; then, meeting Wren and Graham on the way, had tramped over to call on Blakely, thinking, perhaps, to chat a while and learn something. Soon after "taps" was sounded, however, the youngster joined the little group gossiping in guarded tones on the porch at Captain Sanders', far down the row, and, in response to question, said that "Bugs"—that being Blakely's briefestnom de guerre—must be convalescing rapidly, he "had no use for his friends," and, as the lad seemed somewhat ruffled and resentful, what more natural than that he should be called upon for explanation? Sanders and his wife were present, and Mrs. Bridger, very much alive with inquiry and not a little malicious interest. Kate, too, was of the party, and Doty, the adjutant, and Mesdames Cutler and Westervelt—it was so gloomy and silent, said these latter, at their end of the row. Much of the talk had been about Mrs. Plume's illness and her "sleep-walking act," as it had been referred to, and many had thought, but few had spoken, of her possible presence on the post of No. 5 about the time that No. 5 was stabbed. They knewshecouldn't have done it, of course, but then how strange that she should have been there at all! The story had gained balloon-like expanse by this time, and speculation was more than rife. But here was Duane with a new grievance which, when put into Duane's English, reduced itself to this: "Why, it was like as if Bugs wanted to get rid of me and expected somebody else," and this they well remembered later. Nobody else was observed going to Blakely's front door, at least, but at eleven o'clock he himself could still be dimly heard and seen pacing steadily up and down his piazza, apparently alone and deep in thought. His lights, too, were turned down, a new man from the troop having asked for and assumed the duties formerly devolving on the wretch Downs, now doing time within the garrison prison. Before eleven, however, this new martial domestic had gone upstairs to bed and Blakely was all alone, which was as he wished it, for he had things to plan and other things to think of that lifted him above the possibility of loneliness.
Down the line of officers' quarters only in two or three houses could lights be seen. Darkness reigned at Plume's, where Byrne was still rooming. Darkness reigned at Wren's and Graham's, despite the fact that the lords of these manors were still abroad, both at the bedside of Trooper Mullins. A dozen people were gathered by this time at Sanders'. All the other verandas, except Blakely's with its solitary watcher, seemed deserted. To these idlers of the soft and starlit night, sitting bareheaded about the gallery and chatting in the friendly way of the frontier, there came presently a young soldier from the direction of the adjutant's office at the south end. "The night operator," he explained. "Two dispatches have just come for Colonel Byrne, and I thought maybe—"
"No, Cassidy," said Doty. "The colonel is at his quarters. Dispatch, is it? Perhaps I'd better go with you," and, rising, the young officer led the way, entering on tiptoe the hall of the middle house where, far back on a table, a lamp was burning low. Tapping at an inner door, he was bidden to enter. Byrne was in bed, a single sheet over his burly form, but he lay wide awake. He took the first dispatch and tore it open eagerly. It was from Bridger at the agency:
Runners just in say Natzie and Lola had turned back from trail to Montezuma Well, refusing to go further from their dead. Can probably be found if party go at dawn or sooner. Alchisay with them. More Indians surely going out from here.
Runners just in say Natzie and Lola had turned back from trail to Montezuma Well, refusing to go further from their dead. Can probably be found if party go at dawn or sooner. Alchisay with them. More Indians surely going out from here.
Byrne's brow contracted and his lips compressed, but he gave no other sign. "Is Captain Wren still up?" he briefly asked, as he reached for the other dispatch.
"Over at the hospital, sir," said Doty, and watched this famous campaigner's face as he ripped open the second brown envelope. This time he was half out of bed before he could have half finished even that brief message. It was from the general:
News of trouble must have reached Indians at San Carlos. Much excitement there and at Apache. Shall start for Camp McDowell to-morrow as soon as I have seen Plume. He should come early.
News of trouble must have reached Indians at San Carlos. Much excitement there and at Apache. Shall start for Camp McDowell to-morrow as soon as I have seen Plume. He should come early.
The colonel was in his slippers and inexpressibles in less than no time, but Plume aloft had heard the muffled sounds from the lower floor, and was down in a moment. Without a word Byrne handed him the second message and waited until he had read, then asked: "Can you start at dawn?"
"I can start now," was the instant reply. "Our best team can make it in ten hours. Order out the Concord, Mr. Doty." And Doty vanished.
"But Mrs. Plume—" began the colonel tentatively.
"Mrs. Plume simply needs quiet and to be let alone," was the joyless answer. "I think perhaps—I am rather in the way."
"Well, I know the general will appreciate your promptness. I—did not know you had asked to see him," and Byrne looked up from under his shaggy brows.
"I hadn't exactly, but my letter intimated as much. There is so very much I—I cannot write about—that of course he's bound to hear,—I don't mean you, Colonel Byrne,—and he ought to know the—facts. Now I'll get ready at once and—see you before starting."
"Better take an escort, Plume."
"One man on driver's seat. That's all, sir. I'll come in presently, in case you have anything to send," said Plume, and hurried again upstairs.
It was barely midnight when Plume's big black wagon, the Concord, all spring and hickory, as said the post quartermaster, went whirling away behind its strapping team of four huge Missouri mules. It was 12.30 by the guard-house clock and the call of the sentries when Wren came home to find Angela, her long, luxuriant hair tumbling down over her soft, white wrapper, waiting for him at the front door. From her window she had seen him coming; had noted the earlier departure of the wagon; had heard the voice of Major Plume bidding good-by, and wondered what it meant—this midnight start of the senior officer of the post. She had been sitting there silent, studying the glittering stars, and wondering would there be an answer to her note? Would he be able to write just yet? Was there reason, really, why heshouldwrite, after all that had passed? Somehow she felt that write he certainly would, and soon, and the thought kept herfrom sleeping. It was because she was anxious about Mullins, so she told herself and told her father, that she had gone fluttering down to meet him at the door. But no sooner had he answered, "Still delirious and yet holding his own," than she asked where and why Major Plume had gone.
"The general wired for him," answered Wren. "And what is my tall girlie doing, spiering from windows this time of night? Go to bed, child." She may be losing beauty sleep, but not her beauty, thought he fondly, as she as fondly kissed him and turned to obey. Then came a heavy footfall on the gallery without, and a dark form, erect and soldierly, stood between them and the dim lights of the guard-house. It was a corporal of the guard.
"No. 4, sir, reports he heard shots—two—way up the valley."
"Good God!" Wren began, then throttled the expletive half spoken. Could they have dared waylay the major—and so close to the post? A moment more and he was hurrying over to his troop quarters; five minutes, and a sergeant and ten men were running with him to the stables; ten, and a dozen horses, swiftly saddled, were being led into the open starlight; fifteen, and they were away at a lunging bronco lope, a twisting column of twos along the sandy road, leaving the garrison to wake and wonder. Three, four, five miles they sped, past Boulder Point, past Rattlesnake Hill, and still no sign of anything amiss, no symptom of night-raiding Apache, for indeed the Apache dreads the dark. Thrice the sergeant had sprung from his horse, lighted a match, and studied the trail. On and on had gone the mules and wagon without apparent break or interruption, until, far beyond the bluff that hid the road from sight of all at Sandy, they had begun the long, tortuous climb of the divide to Cherry Creek. No. 4 might have heard shots, but, if intended for the wagon, they had been harmless. It was long after one when Wren gave the word to put back to the post, and as they remounted and took the homeward trail, they rode for the first five minutes almost directly east, and, as they ascended a little slant of hillside, the sergeant in advance reined suddenly in. "Look there!" said he.
Far over among the rocky heights beyond the valley, hidden from the south from Sandy by precipitous cliffs that served almost as a reflector toward the reservation, a bright blaze had shot suddenly heavenward—a signal fire of the Apache. Some of them, then, were in the heart of that most intractable region, not ten miles northeast of the post, and signaling to their fellows; but the major must have slipped safely through.
Sending his horse to stable with the detachment, Wren had found No. 4 well over toward the east end of his post, almost to the angle with that of No. 5. "Watch well for signal fires or prowlers to-night," he ordered. "Have you seen any?"
"No signal fires, sir," answered the sentry. "Welch, who was on before me, thought he heard shots—"
"I know," answered Wren impatiently. "There wasnothing in it. But we did see a signal fire over to the northeast, so they are around us, and some may be creeping close in to see what we're doing, though I doubt it. You've seen nothing?"
"Well, no, sir; we can't see much of anything, it's so dark. But there's a good many of the post people up and moving about, excited, I suppose. There were lights there at the lieutenant's, Mr. Blakely's, a while ago, and—voices." No. 4 pointed to the dark gable end barely forty yards away.
"That's simple enough," said Wren. "People would naturally come up to this end to see what had become of us, why we had gone, etc. They heard of it, I dare say, and some were probably startled."
"Yes, sir, it sounded like—somebody cryin'."
Wren was turning away. "What?" he suddenly asked.
No. 4 repeated his statement. Wren pondered a moment, started to speak, to question further, but checked himself and trudged thoughtfully away through the yielding sand. The nearest path led past the first quarters, Blakely's, on the eastward side, and as the captain neared the house he stopped short. Somewhere in the shadows of the back porch low, murmuring voices were faintly audible. One, in excited tone, was not that of a man, and as Wren stood, uncertain and surprised, the rear door was quickly opened and against the faint light from within two dark forms were projected. One, the taller, he recognized beyond doubt as that of Neil Blakely; theother he did not recognize at all. But he had heard the tone of the voice. He knew the form to be, beyond doubt, that of a young and slender woman. Then together the shadows disappeared within and the door was closed behind them.
T
hree days later the infantry guard of the garrison were in sole charge. Wren and Sanders, with nearly fifty troopers apiece, had taken the field in compliance with telegraphic orders from Prescott. The general had established field headquarters temporarily at Camp McDowell, down the Verde Valley, and under his somewhat distant supervision four or five little columns of horse, in single file, were boring into the fastnesses of the Mogollon and the Tonto Basin. The runners had been unsuccessful. The renegades would not return. Half a dozen little nomad bands, forever out from the reservation, had eagerly welcomed these malcontents and the news they bore that two of their young braves had been murdered while striving to defend Natzie and Lola. It furnished all that was needed as excuse for instant descent upon the settlers in the deep valleys north of the Rio Salado, and, all unsuspecting, all unprepared, several of these had met their doom. Relentless war was already begun, and the general lost no time in starting his horsemen after the hostiles. Meantime the infantry companies, at the scattered posts and camps, were left to "hold the fort," to protect the women, children, and property, and Neil Blakely, a sore-hearted man because forbidden by the surgeon to attempt to go, was chafing, fuming, and retarding his recovery at his lonely quarters. The men whom he most liked were gone, and the few among the women who might have been his friends seemed now to stand afar off. Something, he knew not what, had turned garrison sentiment against him.
For a day or two, so absorbed was he in his chagrin over Graham's verdict and the general's telegraphic orders in the case, Mr. Blakely never knew or noticed that anything else was amiss. Then, too, there had been no opportunity of meeting garrison folk except the few officers who dropped in to inquire civilly how he was progressing. The bandages were off, but the plaster still disfigured one side of his face and neck. He could not go forth and seek society. There was really only one girl at the post whose society he cared to seek. He had his books and his bugs, and that, said Mrs. Bridger, was "all he demanded and more than he deserved." To think that the very room so recently sacred to the son and heir should be transformed into what that irate little woman called a "beetle shop"! It was one of Mr. Blakely's unpardonable sins in the eyes of the sex that he found so much to interest him in a pursuit that neither interested nor included them. A man with brains and a bank account had no right to live alone, said Mrs. Sanders, she having a daughter of marriageable age, if only moderately prepossessing. All this had the women to complain of in him before the cataclysm that, for the time at least, had played havoc with his good looks. All this he knewand bore with philosophic and whimsical stoicism. But all this and more could not account for the phenomenon of averted eyes and constrained, if not freezing, manner when, in the dusk of the late autumn evening, issuing suddenly from his quarters, he came face to face with a party of four young women under escort of the post adjutant—Mrs. Bridger and Mrs. Truman foremost of the four and first to receive his courteous, yet half embarrassed, greeting. They had to stop for half a second, as they later said, because really he confronted them, all unsuspected. But the other two, Kate Sanders and Mina Westervelt, with bowed heads and without a word, scurried by him and passed on down the line. Doty explained hurriedly that they had been over to the post hospital to inquire for Mullins and were due at the Sanders' now for music, whereupon Blakely begged pardon for even the brief detention, and, raising his cap, went on out to the sentry post of No. 4 to study the dark and distant upheavals in the Red Rock country, where, almost every night of late, the signal fires of the Apaches were reported. Not until he was again alone did he realize that he had been almost frigidly greeted by those who spoke at all. It set him to thinking.
Mrs. Plume was still confined to her room. The major had returned from Prescott and, despite the fact that the regiment was afield and a clash with the hostiles imminent, was packing up preparatory to a move. Books, papers, and pictures were being stored in chests, big and little, that he had had made for such emergencies. It wasevident that he was expecting orders for change of station or extended leave, and they who went so far as to question the grave-faced soldier, who seemed to have grown ten years older in the last ten days, had to be content with the brief, guarded reply that Mrs. Plume had never been well since she set foot in Arizona, and even though he returned, she would not. He was taking her, he said, to San Francisco. Of this unhappy woman's nocturnal expedition the others seldom spoke now and only with bated breath. "Sleep-walking, of course!" said everybody, no matter what everybody might think. But, now that Major Plume knew that in her sleep his wife had wandered up the row to the very door—the back door—of Mr. Blakely's quarters, was it not strange that he had taken no pains to prevent a recurrence of so compromising an excursion, for strange stories were afloat. Sentry No. 4 had heard and told of a feminine voice, "somebody cryin' like" in the darkness of midnight about Blakely's, and Norah Shaughnessy—returned to her duties at the Trumans', yet worrying over the critical condition of her trooper lover, and losing thereby much needed sleep—had gained some new and startling information. One night she had heard, another night she had dimly seen, a visitor received at Blakely's back door, and that visitor a woman, with a shawl about her head. Norah told her mistress, who very properly bade her never refer to it again to a soul, and very promptly referred to it herself to several souls, one of them Janet Wren. Janet, still virtuously averse toBlakely, laid the story before her brother the very day he started on the warpath, and Janet was startled to see that she was telling him no news whatever. "Then, indeed," said she, "it is high time the major took his wife away," and Wren sternly bade her hold her peace, she knew not what she was saying! But, said Camp Sandy, who could it have been but Mrs. Plume or, possibly, Elise? Once or twice in its checkered past Camp Sandy had had its romance, its mystery, indeed its scandals, but this was something that put in the shade all previous episodes; this shook Sandy to its very foundation, and this, despite her brother's prohibition, Janet Wren felt it her duty to detail in full to Angela.
To do her justice, it should be said that Miss Wren had striven valiantly against the impulse,—had indeed mastered it for several hours,—but the sight of the vivid blush, the eager joy in the sweet young face when Blakely's new "striker" handed in a note addressed to Miss Angela Wren, proved far too potent a factor in the undoing of that magnanimous resolve. The girl fled with her prize, instanter, to her room, and thither, as she did not reappear, the aunt betook herself within the hour. The note itself was neither long nor effusive—merely a bright, cordial, friendly missive, protesting against the idea that any apology had been due. There was but one line which could be considered even mildly significant. "The little net," wrote Blakely, "has now a value that it never had before." Yet Angela was snuggling that otherwise unimportant billet to her cheek when the creaking stairwaytold her portentously of a solemn coming. Ten minutes more and the note was lying neglected on the bureau, and Angela stood at her window, gazing out over dreary miles of almost desert landscape, of rock and shale and sand and cactus, with eyes from which the light had fled, and a new, strange trouble biting at her girlish heart. Confound No. 4—and Norah Shaughnessy!
It had been arranged that when the Plumes were ready to start, Mrs. Daly and her daughter, the newly widowed and the fatherless, should be sent up to Prescott and thence across the desert to Ehrenberg, on the Colorado. While no hostile Apaches had been seen west of the Verde Valley, there were traces that told that they were watching the road as far at least as the Agua Fria, and a sergeant and six men had been chosen to go as escort to the little convoy. It had been supposed that Plume would prefer to start in the morning and go as far as Stemmer's ranch, in the Agua Fria Valley, and there rest his invalid wife until another day, thus breaking the fifty-mile stage through the mountains. To the surprise of everybody, the Dalys were warned to be in readiness to start at five in the morning, and to go through to Prescott that day. At five in the morning, therefore, the quartermaster's ambulance was at the post trader's house, where the recently bereaved ones had been harbored since poor Daly's death, and there, with their generous host, was the widow's former patient, Blakely, full of sympathy and solicitude, come to say good-bye. Plume's own Concord appeared almost at the instant in front of his quarters,and presently Mrs. Plume, veiled and obviously far from strong, came forth leaning on her husband's arm, and closely followed by Elise. Then, despite the early hour, and to the dismay of Plume, who had planned to start without farewell demonstration of any kind, lights were blinking in almost every house along the row, and a flock of women, some tender and sympathetic, some morbidly curious, had gathered to wish the major's wife a pleasant journey and a speedy recovery. They loved her not at all, and liked her none too well, but she was ill and sorrowing, so that was enough. Elise they could not bear, yet even Elise came in for a kindly word or two. Mrs. Graham was there, big-hearted and brimming over with helpful suggestion, burdened also with a basket of dainties. Captain and Mrs. Cutler, Captain and Mrs. Westervelt, the Trumans both, Doty, the young adjutant, Janet Wren, of course, and the ladies of the cavalry, the major's regiment, without exception, were on hand to bid the major and his wife good-bye. Angela Wren was not feeling well, explained her aunt, and Mr. Neil Blakely was conspicuous by his absence.
It had been observed that, during those few days of hurried packing and preparation, Major Plume had not once gone to Blakely's quarters. True, he had visited only Dr. Graham, and had begged him to explain that anxiety on account of Mrs. Plume prevented his making the round of farewell calls; but that he was thoughtful of others to the last was shown in this: Plume had asked Captain Cutler, commander of the post, to order the release of that wretch Downs. "He has been punished quite sufficiently, I think," said Plume, "and as I was instrumental in his arrest I ask his liberation." At tattoo, therefore, the previous evening "the wretch" had been returned to duty, and at five in the morning was found hovering about the major's quarters. When invited by the sergeant of the guard to explain, he replied, quite civilly for him, that it was to say good-by to Elise. "Me and her," said he, "has been good friends."
Presumably he had had his opportunity at the kitchen door before the start, but still he lingered, feigning professional interest in the condition of the sleek mules that were to haul the Concord over fifty miles of rugged road, up hill and down dale before the setting of the sun. Then, while the officers and ladies clustered thick on one side of the black vehicle, Downs sidled to the other, and the big black eyes of the Frenchwoman peered down at him a moment as she leaned toward him, and, with a whispered word, slyly dropped a little folded packet into his waiting palm. Then, as though impatient, Plume shouted "All right. Go on!" The Concord whirled away, and something like a sigh of relief went up from assembled Sandy, as the first kiss of the rising sun lighted on the bald pate of Squaw Peak, huge sentinel of the valley, looming from the darkness and shadows and the mists of the shallow stream that slept in many a silent pool along its massive, rocky base. With but a few hurried, embarrassed words, Clarice Plume had said adieu to Sandy, thinking never to see it again. They stood andwatched her past the one unlighted house, the northernmost along the row. They knew not that Mr. Blakely was at the moment bidding adieu to others in far humbler station. They only noted that, even at the last, he was not there to wave a good-by to the woman who had once so influenced his life. Slowly then the little group dissolved and drifted away. She had gone unchallenged of any authority, though the fate of Mullins still hung in the balance. Obviously, then, it was not she whom Byrne's report had implicated, if indeed that report had named anybody. There had been no occasion for a coroner and jury. There would have been neither coroner nor jury to serve, had they been called for. Camp Sandy stood in a little world of its own, the only civil functionary within forty miles being a ranchman, dwelling seven miles down stream, who held some Territorial warrant as a justice of the peace.
But Norah Shaughnessy, from the gable window of the Trumans' quarters, shook a hard-clinching Irish fist and showered malediction after the swiftly speeding ambulance. "Wan 'o ye," she sobbed, "dealt Pat Mullins a coward and cruel blow, and I'll know which, as soon as ever that poor bye can spake the truth." She would have said it to that hated Frenchwoman herself, had not mother and mistress both forbade her leaving the room until the Plumes were gone.
Three trunks had been stacked up and secured on the hanging rack at the rear of the Concord. Others, with certain chests and boxes, had been loaded into one bigwagon and sent ahead. The ambulance, with the Dalys and the little escort of seven horsemen, awaited the rest of the convoy on the northward flats, and the cloud of their combined dust hung long on the scarred flanks as the first rays of the rising sun came gilding the rocks at Boulder Point, and what was left of the garrison at Sandy turned out for reveille.
That evening, for the first time since his injury, Mr. Blakely took his horse and rode away southward in the soft moonlight, and had not returned when tattoo sounded. The post trader, coming up with the latest San Francisco papers, said he had stopped a moment to ask at the store whether Schandein, the ranchman justice of the peace before referred to, had recently visited the post.
That evening, too, for the first time since his dangerous wound, Trooper Mullins awoke from his long delirium, weak as a little child; asked for Norah, and what in the world was the matter with him—in bed and bandages, and Dr. Graham, looking into the poor lad's dim, half-opening eyes, sent a messenger to Captain Cutler's quarters to ask would the captain come at once to hospital. This was at nine o'clock.
Less than two hours later a mounted orderly set forth with dispatches from the temporary post commander to Colonel Byrne at Prescott. A wire from that point about sundown had announced the safe arrival of the party from Camp Sandy. The answer, sent at ten o'clock, broke up the game of whist at the quarters of the inspector general. Byrne, the recipient, gravely read it, backed from the table, and vainly strove not to see the anxious inquiry in the eyes of Major Plume, his guest. But Plume cornered him.
"From Sandy?" he asked. "May I read it?"
Byrne hesitated just one moment, then placed the paper in his junior's hand. Plume read, turned very white, and the paper fell from his trembling fingers. The message merely said:
Mullins recovering and quite rational, though very weak. He says two women were his assailants. Courier with dispatches at once.(Signed)Cutler, Commanding.
Mullins recovering and quite rational, though very weak. He says two women were his assailants. Courier with dispatches at once.
(Signed)Cutler, Commanding.
I
t was not so much his wounds as his weakness," Dr. Graham was saying, later still that autumn night, "that led to my declaring Blakely unfit to take the field. He would have gone in spite of me, but for the general's order. He has gone now in spite of me, and no one knows where."
It was then nearly twelve o'clock, and "the Bugologist" was still abroad. Dinner, as usual since his mishap, had been sent over to him from the officers' mess soon after sunset. His horse, or rather the troop horse designated for his use, had been fed and groomed in the late afternoon, and then saddled at seven o'clock and brought over to the rear of the quarters by a stable orderly.
There had been some demur at longer sending Blakely's meals from mess, now reduced to an actual membership of two. Sandy was a "much married" post in the latter half of the 70's, the bachelors of the commissioned list being only three, all told,—Blakely, and Duane of the Horse, and Doty of the Foot. With these was Heartburn, the contract doctor, and now Duane and the doctor were out in the mountains and Blakely on sick report, yet able to be about. Dotythought him able to come to mess. Blakely, thinking he looked much worse than he felt, thanks to his plastered jowl, stood on his rights in the matter and would not go. There had been some demur on part of the stable sergeant of Wren's troop as to sending over the horse. Few officers brought eastern-bred horses to Arizona in those days. The bronco was best suited to the work. An officer on duty could take out the troop horse assigned to his use any hour before taps and no questions asked; but the sergeant told Mr. Blakely's messenger that the lieutenant wasn't for duty, and it might make trouble. It did. Captain Cutler sent for old Murray, the veteran sergeant, and asked him did he not know his orders. He had allowed a horse to be sent to a sick man—an officer not on duty—and one the doctor had warned against exercise for quite a time, at least. And now the officer was gone, so was the horse, and Cutler, being sorely torn up by the revelations of the evening and dread of ill befalling Blakely, was so injudicious as to hint to a soldier who had worn chevrons much longer than he, Cutler, had worn shoulder-straps, that the next thing to go would probably be his sergeant's bars, whereat Murray went red to the roots of his hair—which "continued the march" of the color,—and said, with a snap of his jaws, that he got those chevrons, as he did his orders, from his troop commander. A court might order them stricken off, but a captain couldn't, other than his own. For which piece of impudence the veteran went straightway to Sudsville in close arrest. Corporal Bolt was ordered to take overhis keys and the charge of the stables until the return of Captain Wren, also this order—that no government horse should be sent to Lieutenant Blakely hereafter until the lieutenant was declared by the post surgeon fit for duty.
There were left at the post, of each of the two cavalry troops, about a dozen men to care for the stables, the barracks, and property. Seven of these had gone with the convoy to Prescott, and, when Cutler ordered half a dozen horsemen out at midnight to follow Blakely's trail and try to find him, they had to draw on both troop stables, and one of the designated men was the wretch Downs,—and Downs was not in his bunk,—not anywhere about the quarters or corrals. It was nearly one by the time the party started down the sandy road to the south, Hart and his buckboard and a sturdy brace of mules joining them as they passed the store. "We may need to bring him back in this," said he, to Corporal Quirk.
"An' what did ye fetch to bring himtowid?" asked the corporal. Hart touched lightly the breast of his coat, then clucked to his team. "Faith, there's more than wan way of tappin' it then," said Quirk, but the cavalcade moved on.
The crescent moon had long since sunk behind the westward range, and trailing was something far too slow and tedious. They spurred, therefore, for the nearest ranch, five miles down stream, making their first inquiry there. The inmates were slow to arise, but quick to answer. Blakely had neither been seen nor heard of.Downs they didn't wish to know at all. Indians hadn't been near the lower valley since the "break" at the post the previous week. One of the inmates declared he had ridden alone from Camp McDowell within three days, and there wasn't a 'Patchie west of the Matitzal. Hart did all the questioning. He was a business man and a brother. Soldiers, the ranchmen didn't like—soldiers set too much value on government property.
The trail ran but a few hundred yards east of the stream, and close to the adobe walls of the ranch. Strom, the proprietor, got out his lantern and searched below the point where the little troop had turned off. No recent hoof-track, southbound, was visible. "He couldn't have come this far," said he. "Better put back!" Put back they did, and by the aid of Hart's lantern found the fresh trail of a government-shod horse, turning to the east nearly two miles toward home. Quirk said a bad word or two; borrowed the lantern and thoughtfully included the flask; bade his men follow in file and plunged through the underbrush in dogged pursuit. Hart and his team now could not follow. They waited over half an hour without sign or sound from the trailers, then drove swiftly back to the post. There was a light in the telegraph office, and thither Hart went in a hurry. Lieutenant Doty, combining the duties of adjutant and officer of the day, was up and making the rounds. The sentries had just called off three o'clock.
"Had your trouble for nothing, Hart," hailed the youngster cheerily. "Where're the men?"
"Followed his trail—turned to the east three miles below here," answered the trader.
"Three milesbelow! Why, man, he wasn't below. He met them up Beaver Creek, an' brought 'em in."
"Brought who in?" asked Hart, dropping his whip. "I don't understand."
"Why, the scouts, or runners! Wren sent 'em in. He's had a sharp fight up the mountains beyond Snow Lake. Three men wounded. You couldn't have gone a mile before Blakely led 'em across No. 4's post. Ahorah and another chap—'Patchie-Mohaves. We clicked the news up to Prescott over an hour ago."
"Blakely led 'em across no. 4's post""Blakely led 'em across no. 4's post"
The tin reflector at the office window threw the light of the glass-framed candle straight upon Hart's rubicund face, and that face was a study. He faltered a bit before he asked:
"Did Blakely seem all right?—not used up, I mean?"
"Seemed weak and tired, but the man is mad to go and join his troop now—wants to go right out with Ahorah in the morning, and Captain Cutler says no. Oh, they had quite a row!"
They had had rather more than quite a row, if truth were told. Doty had heard only a bit of it. Cutler had been taken by surprise when the Bugologist appeared, two strange, wiry Apaches at his heels, and at first had contented himself with reading Wren's dispatch, repeating it over the wires to Prescott. Then he turned on Blakely, silently, wearily waiting, seated at Doty's desk, and on the two Apaches, silently, stolidly waiting, squattedon the floor. Cutler wished to know how Blakely knew these couriers were coming, and how he came to leave the post without permission. For a moment the lieutenant simply gazed at him, unanswering, but when the senior somewhat sharply repeated the question, in part, Blakely almost as sharply answered: "I did not know they were coming nor that there was wrong in my going. Major Plume required nothing of the kind when we were merely going out for a ride."
This nettled Cutler. He had always said that Plume was lax, and here was proof of it. "I might have wanted you—Ididwant you, hours ago, Mr. Blakely, and even Major Plume would not countenance his officers spending the greater part of the night away from the post, especially on a government horse," and there had Cutler the whip hand of the scientist, and Blakely had sense enough to see it, yet not sense enough to accept. He was nervous and irritable, as well as tired. Graham had told him he was too weak to ride, yet he had gone, not thinking, of course, to be gone so long, but gone deliberately, and without asking the consent of the post commander. "My finding the runners was an accident," he said, with some little asperity of tone and manner. "In fact, I didn't find them. They found me. I had known them both at the reservation. Have I your permission, sir"—this with marked emphasis—"to take them for something to eat. They are very hungry,—have come far, and wish to start early and rejoin Captain Wren,—as I do, too."
"They will start whenIam ready, Mr. Blakely," said Cutler, "and you certainly will not start before. In point of fact, sir, you may not be allowed to start at all."
It was now Blakely's turn to redden to the brows. "You surely will not prevent my going to join my troop, now that it is in contact with the enemy," said he. "All I need is a few hours' sleep. I can start at seven."
"You cannot, with my consent, Mr. Blakely," said the captain dryly. "There are reasons, in fact, why you can't leave here for any purpose unless the general himself give contrary orders. Matters have come up that—you'll probably have to explain."
And here Doty entered, hearing only the captain's last. At sight of his adjutant the captain stopped short in his reprimand. "See to it that these runners have a good supper, Mr. Doty," said Cutler. "Stir up my company cook, if need be, but take them with you now." Then, turning again on Blakely, "The doctor wishes you to go to bed at once, Mr. Blakely, and I will see you in the morning, but no more riding away without permission," he concluded, and thereby closed the interview. He had, indeed, other things to say to, and inquire of, Blakely, but not until he had further consulted Graham. He confidently expected the coming day would bring instructions from headquarters to hold both Blakely and Trooper Downs at the post, as a result of his dispatches, based on the revelation of poor Pat Mullins. But Downs, forewarned, perhaps, had slipped into hiding somewhere—an old trick of his, when punishment was imminent. Itmight be two or three days before Downs turned up again, if indeed he turned up at all, but Blakely was here and could be held. Hence the "horse order" of the earlier evening.
It was nearly two when Blakely reached his quarters, rebuffed and stung. He was so nervous, however, that, in spite of serious fatigue, he found it for over an hour impossible to sleep. He turned out his light and lay in the dark, and the atmosphere of the room seemed heavily charged with rank tobacco. His new "striker" had sat up, it seems, keeping faithful vigil against his master's return, but, as the hours wore on, had solaced himself with pipe after pipe, and wandering about to keep awake. Most of the time, he declared, he had spent in a big rocking chair on the porch at the side door, but the scent of the weed and of that veteran pipe permeated the entire premises, and the Bugologist hated dead tobacco. He got up and tore down the blanket screen at the side windows and opened all the doors wide and tried his couch again, and still he wooed the drowsy god in vain. "Nor poppy nor mandragora" had he to soothe him. Instead there were new and anxious thoughts to vex, and so another half hour he tossed and tumbled, and when at last he seemed dropping to the borderland, perhaps, of dreams, he thought he must be ailing again and in need of new bandages or cooling drink or something, for the muffled footfalls, betrayed by creaking pine rather than by other sound, told him drowsily that the attendant or somebody, cautioned not to disturb him, was movingslowly across the room. He might have been out on the side porch to get cool water from theolla, but he needn't be so confoundedly slow and cautious, though he couldn't help the creaking. Then, what could the attendant want in the front room, where were still so many of the precious glass cases unharmed, and the Bugologist's favorite books and his big desk, littered with papers, etc.? Blakely thought to hail and warn him against moving about among those brittle glass things, but reflected that he, the new man, had done the reshifting under his, Blakely's, supervision, and knew just where each item was placed and how to find the passage way between them. It really was a trifle intricate. How could he have gone into the spare room at Captain Wren's, and there made his home as—she—Mrs. Plume had first suggested? There would not have been room for half his plunder, to say nothing of himself. "What on earth can Nixon want?" he sleepily asked himself, "fumbling about there among those cases? Was that a crack or a snap?" It sounded like both, a splitting of glass, a wrenching of lock spring or something. "Be careful there!" he managed to call. No answer. Perhaps it was some one of the big hounds, then, wandering restlessly about at night. They often did, and—why, yes, that would account for it. Doors and windows were all wide open here, what was to prevent? Still, Blakely wished he hadn't extinguished his lamp. He might then have explored. The sound ceased entirely for a moment, and, now that he was quite awake, he remembered that the hospital attendant was nolonger with him. Then the sounds must have been made by the striker or the hounds. Blakely had no dogs of his own. Indeed they were common property at the post, most of them handed down with the rest of the public goods and chattels by their predecessors of the ----th. At all events, he felt far too languid, inert, weak, indifferent or something. If the striker, he had doubtless come down for cool water. If the hounds, they were in search of something to eat, and in either case why bother about it? The incident had so far distracted his thoughts from the worries of the night that now, at last and in good earnest, he was dropping to sleep.
But in less than twenty minutes he was broad awake again, with sudden start—gasping, suffocating, listening in amaze to a volley of snapping and cracking, half-smothered, from the adjoining room. He sprang from his bed with a cry of alarm and flung himself through a thick, hot veil of eddying, yet invisible, smoke, straight for the communicating doorway, and was brought up standing by banging his head against the resounding pine, tight shut instead of open as he had left it, and refusing to yield to furious battering. It was locked, bolted, or barred from the other side. Blindly he turned and rushed for the side porch and the open air, stumbling against the striker as the latter came clattering headlong down from aloft. Then together they rushed to the parlor window, now cracking and splitting from the furious heat within. A volume of black fume came belchingforth, driven and lashed by ruddy tongues of flame within, and their shouts for aid went up on the wings of the dawn, and the infantry sentry on the eastward post came running to see; caught one glimpse of the glare at that southward window; bang went his rifle with a ring that came echoing back from the opposite cliffs, as all Camp Sandy sprang from its bed in answer to the stentorian shout "Fire! No. 5!"