[Illustration: 0040]
[Illustration: 9040]
HAT off mule of the paymaster's ambulance been a quadruped of wonderful
recuperative powers. She had gone nearly dead lame all the previous day,
and now at 5 o'clock on this breezy morning was trotting along as though
she had never known a twinge in her life. Mr. Staines was apparently
nonplussed. Acting on his advice, the paymaster had decided to break
camp soon after 2 o'clock, make coffee, and then start for Rawlins' camp
at once. He confidently expected to have to drag along at a slow walk,
and his idea was to get well through the Canyon del Muerto before the
heat of the day. The unexpected recovery of Jenny, however, enabled
them to go bowling ahead over the level flat, and at sunrise they were
already in sight of the northern entrance to the gorge. It was odd how
early Mr. Staines began to develop lively interest in the condition of
that mule. First he suggested to the driver that he was going too fast,
and would bring on that lameness again; but the driver replied that it
was Jenny herself who was doing most of the pulling. Then Staines became
fearful lest the cavalry escort should get exhausted by such steady
trotting, and ventured to say to Major Sherrick that they ought to rein
up on their account. Sherrick was eager to push ahead, and, like most
other men not to the manner born, never for a moment thought of such a
thing as a horse's getting used up by simply carrying a man-at-arms six
hours at ceaseless trot or lope. However, he knew that Staines was far
more experienced in such matters than he, and so could not disregard his
advice.
[Illustration: 8041]
“How is it, sergeant, are we going too fast for you?” he asked.
“Not a bit of it, sir,” was the cheery answer.
“We're glad enough to go lively now and rest all day in the shade.”
“You see how it is, Staines; they don't want to slack up speed. We'll
get to Rawlins' in time for breakfast at this rate,” and again Staines
was silent. Presently the team began the ascent of a rolling wave of
foothill, around which the roadway twisted as only Arizona roadways can,
and at the crest the driver reined in to give his mules a “breather.”
Staines leaped from the ambulance for a stretch. The troopers promptly
dismounted and loosened saddle girths.
“Yonder is the mouth of the Canyon, sir,” said the sergeant, pointing
to a rift in the range to the south, now gorgeously lighted up by the
morning sunshine.
“How long is the defile, sergeant?”
“Not more than four miles, sir--that is, the Canyon itself--but it is
crooked as a ram's horn, and the approach on the other side is a long,
winding valley.”
“When were you there last?” asked Staines.
“About six months ago, just after Dins-more was murdered.”
Staines turned quickly away and strolled back a few yards along the
road.
“You knew Dinsmore, then?” asked the paymaster.
“I knew him well, sir. We had served together during the war. They said
he fell in love with a pretty Mexican girl at Tucson, and she would
not listen to him. Some of the men heard that she was a daughter of old
Pedro who keeps that ranch, and that it was hoping to see her that he
went there.”
“I know. I remember hearing about it all then,” said the paymaster. “Did
you ever see anything of the man who was said to have killed him?”
“Sonora Bill? No, sir; and I don't know anyone who ever did. He was
always spoken of as the chief of a gang of cutthroats and stage robbers
down around Tucson. They used to masquerade as Apaches sometimes--that's
the way they were never caught. The time they robbed Colonel Wood and
killed his clerk 'I' troop was scouting not ten miles away, and blessed
if some of the very gang didn't gallop to Lieutenant Breese and swear
the Apaches had attacked their camp here in Canyon del Muerto, so that
when the lieutenant was wanted to chase the thieves his troop couldn't
be found anywhere--he was 'way up here hunting for Apaches in the
Maricopa range. The queer thing about that gang was that they always
knew just when a paymaster's outfit or a Government officer with funds
would be along. It was those fellows that robbed Major Rounds, the
quartermaster, and jumped the stage when Lieutenant Spaulding and his
wife were aboard. She had beautiful diamonds that they were after,
but the lieutenant fooled them--he had them sent by express two days
afterward.”
Mr. Staines came back toward the ambulance at this moment, took a field
glass from its case, and retraced his steps along the road some twenty
yards. Here he adjusted the glass and looked long toward the northeast.
“All ready to start, sir,” said the driver.
The major swung himself up to his seat; the troopers quietly “sinched”
their saddles and mounted, and still the clerk stood there absorbed.
“Come, Staines!” shouted the paymaster, impatiently, “we're waiting for
you.” And still he did not move. The sergeant whirled his horse about
and clattered back to where he stood.
“Come, sir, the major's waiting.” Staines turned abruptly and, silent as
ever, hurried to the wagon.
“What were you staring at so long?” said the paymaster, pettishly, as
his assistant clambered in. “I shouted two or three times.”
Staines' face was pale, yet there were drops of sweat upon his brow.
“I thought I saw a party of horsemen out there on the flats.”
“The devil!” said the paymaster, with sudden interest. “Where? Let me
look.”
“You can't see now, sir. Even the dust cloud is gone. They are behind
that low ridge some eight or ten miles out there in the valley.”
“Go on, driver, it's only cattle from the ranch or something of that
kind. I didn't know, by the way you looked and spoke, but that it might
be some of Sonora Bill's gang.”
“Hardly, sir; they haven't been heard of for a year, and once away from
Pedro's we are safe enough anyhow.”
Half an hour later the four-mule team was winding slowly up a rocky
path. On both sides the heights were steep, covered with a thick
undergrowth of scrub oak and juniper. Here and there rocky cliffs
jutted out from the hillside and stood like sentinels along the way.
The sergeant, with one trooper, rode some distance ahead, their carbines
“advanced” and ready for use, for Edwards was an old campaigner, and,
though he thought it far from probable that any outlaws would be fools
enough to attempt to “get away with” a paymaster's bank when he and his
five men were the guardians and Captain Rawlins with his whole troop
was but a short distance away, he had learned the lesson of precaution.
Major Sherrick, with his iron safe under his own seat, grasped a rifle
in both hands. The driver was whistling softly to himself and glancing
attentively ahead, for there was a continuous outcrop of boulders all
along the road. The remaining troopers, four in number, rode close
behind or alongside the wagon.
Presently they reached a point where, after turning a precipitous ledge
of rock, glistening in the morning sunshine, they saw before them a
somewhat steep incline. Here, without a word, Staines swung lightly
from the vehicle and trudged for a moment alongside; then he stooped to
adjust his boot lace, and when Sherrick looked back the clerk was coming
jauntily after them, only a dozen paces in rear. In this order they
pushed ahead perhaps a hundred yards farther, moving slowly up the
defile, and Staines could easily have regained his distance, but for
some reason failed to do so. Suddenly, and for no apparent cause, Jenny
and her mate shied violently, swerved completely around and were tangled
up with the wheel team before the driver could use the lash. Even his
ready blasphemy failed to straighten things out.
“Look out for those rocks up there on the right!” he shouted. “Grab
their heads, Billy!”
Even as he spoke the rocky walls of the Canyon resounded with the crash
of a score of firearms. The driver, with a convulsive gasp, toppled
forward out of his seat, his hand still clinching the reins. One of the
troopers clapped his hand to his forehead, his reins falling useless
upon his horse's neck, and reeled in the saddle as his charger whirled
about and rushed, snorting with fright, down the narrow road. At the
instant of the firing the sound of a dozen “spats” told where
the leaden missiles had torn through the stiff canvas cover of the
ambulance; and Sherrick, with blanched face, leaped from the riddled
vehicle and plunged heavily forward upon his hands and knees. Two of
the troopers sprang from their saddles, and, crouching behind a boulder
across the road, opened fire up the opposite hillside. The sergeant and
his comrade, bending low over their horses' necks, came thundering back
down the Canyon, just in time to see the mules whirl about so suddenly
as to throw the ambulance on its side. The iron safe was hurled into the
shallow ditch; the wagon bed dragged across the prostrate form of the
paymaster, rolling him over and over half a dozen times, and then, with
a wreck of canvas, splinters, chains and traces clattering at their
heels, the four mules went rattling away down the gorge.
[Illustration: 0047]
“Jump for shelter, men!” shouted Sergeant Edwards, as he dragged the
senseless form of the major under the great ledge to the right. “Stand
them off as long as you can! Come out of your holes, you cowardly
hounds!” he roared, shaking his fist at the smoke-wreathed rocks up the
heights. “Come out and fight fair! There's only five of us left!”
Here in the road lay the major, bleeding from cuts and bruises, with
every breath knocked out of his battered body; yonder, his hands
'clinched in the death agony, the stiffening form of the driver--plucky
to the last. Twenty yards away down the road, all in a heap, lay one
poor soldier shot through the head, and now past praying for. One of
the others was bleeding from a gash along the cheek where a bullet had
zipped its way, and Edwards shouted in vain for Staines to join them;
the clerk had disappeared. For full five minutes the desperate combat
was maintained; the sergeant and his little squad crouching behind the
nearest rocks and firing whenever head or sombrero showed itself along
the heights. Then came shots from the rear, and another poor fellow was
laid low, and Edwards realized, to his despair, that the bandits were on
every side, and the result only a question of time.
And then--then, there came a thunder of hoof beats, a storm of ringing
cheers, a rush and whirl of panting, foaming steeds and a score of
sunburnt, stalwart troopers racing in the lead of a tall young soldier,
whose voice rang clear above the tumult: “Dismount! Up the rocks, men!
Lively now!” And, springing from his own steed, leaping catlike from
rock to rock, Phil Adriance went tearing up the heights, his soldiers at
his heels. Edwards and his unwounded men seized and held the trembling
horses; Sherrick feebly crawled to his precious safe and fell across it,
his arms clasping about his iron charge. For five minutes more there was
a clamor of shots and shouts, once in a while a wild Mexican shriek
for mercy, all the tumult gradually receding in the distance, and at
last--silence. Then two men came down the bluffs, half bearing between
them the limp form of their young leader. The lieutenant was shot
through both thighs and was faint from loss of blood.
“Has no one a little whiskey?” asked Corporal Watts.
“Here you are” was the answer. And Mr. Staines, with very white face,
stepped down from behind the ledge and held out his flask.
A week later the lieutenant lay convalescing at Rawlins' camp. A
vigorous constitution and the healthful, bracing, open-air life he
had led for several years, either in the saddle or tramping over the
mountains, had enabled him to triumph speedily over such minor ills as
flesh wounds, even though the loss of blood had been very great. The
young soldier was soon able to give full particulars of his chase, and
to one man alone, Rawlins, the secret of its inspiration.
Most important had been the results. It was evident to everyone who
examined the ground--and Rawlins had scoured the range with one platoon
of his troop that very afternoon after the fight, while his lieutenant,
Mr. Lane, was chasing the fugitives with another--that a band of at
least twenty outlaws had been concealed among the rocks of Canyon del
Muerto for two or three days, evidently for the purpose of waylaying
the escort of the paymaster when he came along. Their horses had been
concealed half a mile away in a deep ravine, and it was in trying to
escape to them that they had sustained their losses. Five of their
number were shot down in full flight by Adri-ance's men, and, could they
have caught the others, no quarter would have been given, for the men
were infuriated by the sight of the havoc the robbers had wrought, and
by the shooting of their favorite officer.
[Illustration: 0052]
No papers had been found on the bodies; nothing, in fact, to identify
them with any band. All, with one exception, were Mexicans; he was a
white man whom none of the troopers could identify, though Corporal
Watts, of Troop B, declared he had seen him at “Cutthroat Crossing” the
last time he went through there on escort duty. The others, whoever they
were, rode in a body until they got around the range to the southward,
then seemed to scatter over the face of the earth. Some odd things had
transpired, over which Rawlins pondered not a little. It was Corporal
Watts who brought to his camp at 11 o'clock the news of the desperate
attempt to murder and rob the paymaster, and as they rode back together
the corporal gave the captain such information as lay in his power.
Lieutenant Adriance had “routed out” the detachment just at daybreak,
when it was still dark, and saddling with the utmost haste had led away
across country for the canyon, leaving the pack mules and a small guard
at camp. “We rode like the wind,” said Watts, “after the first few
miles, and every man seemed to know just what to expect when at last we
struck the road and saw the trail of the ambulance and escort. We got
there just in the nick of time.”
When Sherrick--who though severely battered and bruised had no bones
broken--was able to talk at all, he never could say enough in praise of
Adriance and his men; but what he wanted to know was how they came to
learn of the threatened danger. Captain Rawlins protested that it was
“past finding out.” The major questioned the men, but without
success, and as for Staines, it was remarked that his pertinacity in
cross-examination was simply wonderful. For some reason, however, the
men of B troop did not like the fellow and would have little to do with
him. But up to the time that Major Sherrick was able to push ahead for
Tucson it is certain that he had discovered nothing as to the source of
the lieutenant's information; neither had they heard of Leon Ruiz, the
night messenger. Staines opined that he must have been intercepted by
the bandits, perhaps killed by them, when it was found that he was the
bearer of a message to Captain Rawlins. After a brief chat with the
lieutenant himself, one which the doctor did not interdict, the old
troop commander sent a trusty sergeant with six men to scout the
neighborhood of the rancho.
Lieutenant Lane was detached to take command of Adriance's troop,
which was sent on its way forthwith, leaving the gloomy rancho alone to
sentinel the Gila crossing. But the moment Sherrick and his silent clerk
drove on toward Tucson the old captain said a few words of farewell to
the invalid, left him in the doctor's charge and rode away northward
on the trail of his sergeant. That night he rapped for admission and
ordered supper at Rancho Ruiz, while his men, strolling about the
premises, took careful note of the three or four scowling “greasers” who
infested the corral.
Adriance was sitting up and beginning to hobble around when Rawlins
returned to camp during the week that followed, and was all eagerness
to hear what tidings the captain had to tell. But Rawlins had little to
say; he had seen Pedro and had had one glimpse of Senora Dolores,
but not so much as a word with the senorita; she was kept carefully
concealed. Within the month Adriance was quite well enough to travel to
his station, but refused. He would remain here, he said, until able to
relieve Lane of the command of his troop and continue the scouting work.
He did not wish to go to the fort. Sherrick and his clerk had come back
in the course of a fortnight, and Mr. Staines asked to see Lieutenant
Adriance, but that gentleman refused--a matter which caused the clerk
to “bite his lips and look queer,” reported the soldier who took the
message, but he said nothing at all.
Ten days afterward a Prescott paper mentioned the fact that Mr. Albert
G. Staines, so long and favorably known in this Territory, had dropped
in to look over valuable mining properties in the Big Bug and Hassayampa
districts; and this Rawlins silently showed to Adriance.
“Then you may be sure he'll come down to the rancho, and in less than no
time,” said Adriance, “and I must go.” Rawlins made no reply at first,
then he rose and nervously paced the floor a moment and turned upon his
junior.
“Philip, I say no!”