ramparts which I had looked at and thought natural--or, rather, not
thought of at all--earth and gravel spattered up from the ground, the
bawling negress spilled off her box and ran in spirals, screaming, "Oh,
bless my soul, bless my soul!" and I saw a yellow duster flap out of the
ambulance. "Lawd grashus, he's a-leavin' us!" screeched the cook, and
she changed her spirals for a bee-line after him. I should never have
run but for this example, for I have not naturally the presence of mind,
and in other accidents through which I have passed there has never been
promptness about me; the reasoning and all has come when it was over,
unless it went on pretty long, when I have been sometimes able to leap
to a conclusion. But yes, I ran now, straight under a screen of rocks,
over the top of which rose the heads of yellow and black curly. The
sight of them sent rushing over me the first agreeable sensation I had
felt--shapeless rage--and I found myself shouting at them, "Scoundrels!
scoundrels!" while shooting continued briskly around me. I think my
performance would have sincerely entertained them could they have spared
the time for it; and as it was, they were regarding me with obvious
benevolence, when Mr. Adams looked evilly at me across the stones, and
black curly seized the old devil's rifle in time to do me a good turn.
Mr. Adams's bullet struck short of me ten feet, throwing the earth in my
face. Since then I have felt no sympathy for that tobacco-running
pioneer. He listened, coughing, to what black curly said as he pointed
to me, and I see now that I have never done a wiser thing than to go
unarmed in that country. Curly was telling Mr. Adams that I was
harmless. Indeed, that was true! In the bottom of this cup, target for a
circled rim of rifles, separated from the widely scattered Major and his
men, aware of nothing in particular, and seeing nothing in particular
but smoke and rocks and faces peering everywhere, I walked to a stone
and sat upon it, hypnotized again into a spectator. From this
undisturbed vantage I saw shape itself the theft of the gold--the first
theft, that is; for it befell me later to witness a ceremony by which
these eagles of Uncle Sam again changed hands in a manner that stealing
is as good a name for as any.
They had got two mules killed, so that there could be no driving away in
a hurry, and I saw that killing men was not a part of their war, unless
required as a means to their end. Major Pidcock had spared them this
necessity; I could see him nowhere; and with him to imitate I need not
pause to account for the members of our dismounted escort. Two soldiers,
indeed, lay on the ground, the sergeant and another, who had evidently
fired a few resisting shots; but let me say at once that these poor
fellows recovered, and I saw them often again through this adventure
that bound us together, else I could not find so much hilarity in my
retrospect. Escort wagon and ambulance stood empty and foolish on the
road, and there lay the ingenious stone all by itself, and the carbines
all by themselves foolish in the wagon, where the innocent soldiers had
left them on getting out to move the stone. Smoke loitered thin and blue
over this now exceedingly quiet scene, and I smelt it where I sat. How
secure the robbers had felt themselves, and how reckless of
identification! Mid-day, a public road within hearing of a ranch, an
escort of a dozen regulars, no masks, and the stroke perpetrated at the
top of a descent, contrary to all laws of road agency. They swarmed into
sight from their ramparts. I cannot tell what number, but several I had
never seen before and never saw again; and Mr. Adams and yellow and
black curly looked so natural that I wondered if Jenks and the Bishop
would come climbing down too. But no more old friends turned up that
day. Some went to the ambulance swift and silent, while others most
needlessly stood guard. Nothing was in sight but my seated inoffensive
form, and the only sound was, somewhere among the rocks, the voice of
the incessant negress speeding through her prayers. I saw them at the
ambulance, surrounding, passing, lifting, stepping in and out,
ferreting, then moving slowly up with their booty round the hill's brow.
Then silence; then hoofs; then silence again, except the outpouring
negress, scriptural, melodious, symbolic:
"'Oh--Lawd!
Sinner is in my way, Daniel.'"
All this while I sat on the stone. "They have done us brown," I said
aloud, and hearing my voice waked me from whatever state I had been in.
My senses bounded, and I ran to the hurt soldiers. One was very sick. I
should not have known what to do for them, but people began to arrive,
brought from several quarters by the fusillade--two in a wagon from
Cedar Springs, two or three on horses from the herds they were with in
the hills, and a very old man from somewhere, who offered no assistance
to any one, but immediately seated himself and began explaining what we
all should have done. The negress came out of her rocks, exclamatory
with pity over the wounded, and, I am bound to say, of more help to them
than any of us, kind and motherly in the midst of her ceaseless
discourse. Next arrived Major Pidcock in his duster, and took charge of
everything.
"Let yer men quit the'r guns, did ye, general?" piped the very old man.
"Escort oughtn't never to quit the'r guns. I seen that at Molino del
Rey. And ye should have knowed that there stone didn't crawl out in the
road like a turtus to git the sunshine."
"Where were you?" thundered the Major to the mounted escort, who now
appeared, half an hour after the event, from our flanks, which they had
been protecting at an immense distance. "Don't you know your duty's to
be on hand when you hear firing?"
"Law, honey!" said the cook, with a guffaw, "lemme git my han's over my
mouf."
"See them walls they fooled yer with!" continued the old man, pointing
with his stick. "I could have told yer them wasn't natural. Them doesn't
show like country rock;" by which I found that he meant their faces were
new-exposed and not weather-beaten.
"No doubt you could have saved us, my friend," said the Major, puffing
blandly.
But one cannot readily impress ninety summers. "Yes, I could have told
yer that," assented the sage, with senile complacence. "My wife could
have told yer that. Any smart girl could have told yer that."
"I shall send a despatch for re-enforcements," announced Pidcock. "Tap
the telegraph wire," he ordered.
"I have to repawt to the Major," said a soldier, saluting, "dat de line
is cut."
At this I was taken with indecent laughter, and turned away, while
ninety summers observed, "Of course them boys would cut the wire if they
knew their business."
Swearing capably, the Major now accounted clearly to us for the whole
occurrence, striding up and down, while we lifted the hurt men into the
ranch wagon, and arranged for their care at Cedar Springs. The escort
wagon hurried on to Thomas for a doctor. The ambulance was, of course,
crippled of half its team, and the dead mules were cleared from their
harness and got to the road-side. Having satisfactorily delivered
himself of his explanation, the Major now organized a party for
following the trail of the robbers, to learn into what region they had
betaken themselves. Incredible as it may seem, after my late
unenterprising conduct, I asked one of the riders to lend me his horse,
which he did, remarking that he should not need it for an hour, and that
he was willing to risk my staying absent longer than that.
So we rode away. The trail was clear, and we had but little trouble to
follow it. It took us off to the right through a mounded labyrinth of
hillocks, puny and gray like ash-heaps, where we rose and fell in the
trough of the sullen landscape. I told Pidcock of my certainty about
three of the robbers, but he seemed to care nothing for this, and was
something less than civil at what he called my suggestions.
"When I have ascertained their route," he said, "it will be time enough
to talk of their identity."
In this way we went for a mile or so, the trail leading us onward, frank
and straight, to the top of a somewhat higher hill, where it suddenly
expired off the earth. No breath vanishes cleaner from glass, and it
brought us to a dead halt. We retraced the tracks to make sure we had
not lost them before, but there was no mistake, and again we halted dead
at the vanishing-point. Here were signs that something out of the common
had happened. Men's feet and horseshoe prints, aimless and superimposed,
marked a trodden frame of ground, inside which was nothing, and beyond
which nothing lay but those faint tracks of wandering cattle and horses
that scatter everywhere in this country. Not one defined series, not
even a single shod horse, had gone over this hill, and we spent some
minutes vainly scouring in circles wider and wider. Often I returned to
stare at the trodden, imperturbable frame of ground, and caught myself
inspecting first the upper air, and next the earth, and speculating if
the hill were hollow; and mystery began to film over the hitherto sharp
figures of black curly and yellow, while the lonely country around grew
so unpleasant to my nerves that I was glad when Pidcock decided that he
must give up for to-day. We found the little group of people beginning
to disperse at the ambulance.
"Fooled yer ag'in, did they?" said the old man. "Played the blanket
trick on yer, I expect. Guess yer gold's got pretty far by now." With
this parting, and propped upon his stick, he went as he had come. Not
even at any time of his youth, I think, could he have been
companionable, and old age had certainly filled him with the impartial
malevolence of the devil. I rejoice to say that he presided at none of
our further misadventures.
Short twenty-eight thousand dollars and two mules, we set out anew, the
Major, the cook, and I, along the Thomas road, with the sun drawing
closer down upon the long steel saw that the peaks to our westward made.
The site of my shock lay behind me--I knew now well enough that it had
been a shock, and that for a long while to come I should be able to feel
the earth spatter from Mr. Adams's bullet against my ear and sleeve
whenever I might choose to conjure that moment up again--and the present
comfort in feeling my distance from that stone in the road increase
continually put me in more cheerful spirits. With the quick rolling of
the wheels many subjects for talk came into my mind, and had I been
seated on the box beside the cook we should have found much in common.
Ever since her real tenderness to those wounded men I had wished to ask
the poor old creature how she came in this weary country, so far from
the pleasant fields of cotton and home. Her hair was gray, and she had
seen much, else she had never been so kind and skilful at bandaging. And
I am quite sure that somewhere in the chambers of her incoherent mind
and simple heart abided the sweet ancient fear of God and love of her
fellow-men--virtues I had met but little in Arizona.
"De hole family, scusin' two," she was saying, "dey bust loose and tuck
to de woods." And then she moralized upon the two who stayed behind and
were shot. "But de Gennul he 'low dat wuz mighty pore reasonin'."
I should have been glad to exchange views with her, for Major Pidcock
was dull company. This prudent officer was not growing distant from his
disaster, and as night began to come, and we neared Thomas, I suppose
the thought that our ambulance was driving him perhaps to a
court-martial was enough to submerge the man in gloom. To me and my news
about the robbers he was a little more considerate, although he still
made nothing of the fact that some of them lived in the Gila Valley, and
were of the patriarchal tribe of Meakum.
"Scoundrels like that," he muttered, lugubriously, "know every trail in
the country, and belong nowhere. Mexico is not a long ride from here.
They can get a steamer at Guaymas and take their choice of ports down to
Valparaiso. Yes, they'll probably spend that money in South America. Oh,
confound that woman!"
For the now entirely cheerful negress was singing:
"'Dar's de gal, dar's my Susanna.
How by gum you know?
Know her by de red bandanna,
An' de shoestring hangin' on de flo'--
Dad blam her!--
An' de shoestring hangin'--'
"Goodness grashus! what _you_ gwineter do?"
At this sudden cry and the stopping of the ambulance I thought more
people were come for our gold, and my spirit resigned itself. Sit still
was all I should do now, and look for the bright day when I should
leave Arizona forever. But it was only Mrs. Sproud. I had clean
forgotten her, and did not at once take in to what an important turn the
affairs of some of us had come. She stepped out of the darkness, and put
her hand on the door of the ambulance.
"I suppose you're the Paymaster?" Her voice was soft and easy, but had
an ample volume. As Pidcock was replying with some dignity that she was
correct, she caught sight of me. "Who is this man?" she interrupted him.
"My clerk," said Pidcock; and this is the promptest thing I can remember
of the Major, always excepting his conduct when the firing began on the
hill. "You're asking a good many questions, madam," he added.
"I want to know who I'm talking to," said she, quietly. "I think I've
seen property of yours this evening."
"You had better get in, madam; better get in."
"This is the Paymaster's team from Fort Grant?" said Mrs. Sproud to the
driver.
"Yes, yes, madam. Major Pidcock--I am Major Pidcock, Paymaster to the
United States army in the Department of Colorado. I suppose I understand
you."
"Seven canvas sacks," said Mrs. Sproud, standing in the road.
"Get in, madam. You can't tell who may be within hearing. You will find
it to your advantage to keep nothing--"
Mrs. Sproud laughed luxuriously, and I began to discern why black curly
might at times have been loath to face her.
"I merely meant, madam--I desired to make it clear that--a--"
"I think I know what you meant. But I have no call to fear the law. It
will save you trouble to believe that before we go any further."
"Certainly, madam. Quite right." The man was sweating. What with
court-martial and Mrs. Sproud, his withers were wrung. "You are entirely
sure, of course, madam--"
"I am entirely sure I know what I am about. That seems to be more than
some do that are interested in this gold--the folks, for instance, that
have hid it in my hay-stack."
"Hay-stack! Then they're not gone to Mexico!"
"Mexico, sir? They live right here in this valley. Now I'll get in, and
when I ask you, you will please to set me down." She seated herself
opposite us and struck a match. "Now we know what we all look like,"
said she, holding the light up, massive and handsome. "This young man is
the clerk, and we needn't mind him. I have done nothing to fear the law,
but what I am doing now will make me a traveller again. I have no
friends here. I was acquainted with a young man." She spoke in the
serenest tone, but let fall the match more quickly than its burning made
needful. "He was welcome in my home. He let them cook this up in my
house and never told me. I live a good ways out on the road, and it was
a safe place, but I didn't think why so many met him, and why they sat
around my stable. Once in a while this week they've been joking about
winning the soldiers' pay--they often win that--but I thought it was
just cowboy games, till I heard horses coming quick at sundown this
afternoon, and I hid. Will hunted around and said--and said I was on
the stage coming from Solomonsville, and so they had half an hour yet.
He thought so. And, you see, nobody lives in the cabin but--but me."
Mrs. Sproud paused a moment here, and I noticed her breathing. Then she
resumed: "So I heard them talk some; and when they all left, pretty
soon, I went to the hay-stack, and it was so. Then the stage came along
and I rode to Thomas."
"You left the gold there!" groaned the wretched Major, and leaned out of
the ambulance.
"I'm not caring to touch what's none of mine. Wait, sir, please; I get
out here. Here are the names I'm sure of. Stop the driver, or I'll
jump." She put a paper in the Major's hand. "It is Mrs. Sproud's
hay-stack," she added.
"Will you--this will never--can I find you to-morrow?" he said,
helplessly, holding the paper out at her.
"I have told you all I know," said Mrs. Sproud, and was gone at once.
Major Pidcock leaned back for some moments as we drove. Then he began
folding his paper with care. "I have not done with that person," said
he, attempting to restore his crippled importance. "She will find that
she must explain herself."
Our wheels whirled in the sand and we came quickly to Thomas, to a crowd
of waiting officers and ladies; and each of us had an audience that
night--the cook, I feel sure, while I myself was of an importance second
only to the Major's. But he was at once closeted with the commanding
officer, and I did not learn their counsels, hearing only at breakfast
that the first step was taken. The detail sent out had returned from
the hay-stack, bringing gold indeed--one-half sackful. The other six
were gone, and so was Mrs. Sproud. It was useless to surmise, as we,
however, did that whole forenoon, what any of this might mean; but in
the afternoon came a sign. A citizen of the Gila Valley had been paying
his many debts at the saloon and through the neighborhood in gold. In
one well known for the past two years to be without a penny it was the
wrong moment to choose for honest affluence, and this citizen was the
first arrest. This further instance of how secure the robbers felt
themselves to be outdid anything that had happened yet, and I marvelled
until following events took from me the power of astonishment. The men
named on Mrs. Sproud's paper were fewer than I think fired upon us in
the attack, but every one of them was here in the valley, going about
his business. Most were with the same herd of cattle that I had seen
driven by yellow and black curly near the sub-agency, and they two were
there. The solvent debtor, I should say, was not arrested this morning.
Plans that I, of course, had no part in delayed matters, I suppose for
the sake of certainty. Black curly and his friends were watched, and
found to be spending no gold yet; and since they did not show sign of
leaving the region, but continued with their cattle, I imagine every
effort was being made to light upon their hidden treasure. But their
time came, and soon after it mine. Stirling, my friend, to whom I had
finally gone at Carlos, opened the wire door of his quarters where I sat
one morning, and with a heartless smile introduced me to a gentleman
from Tucson.
"You'll have a chance to serve your country," said Stirling.
I was subpoenaed!
"Certainly not!" I said, with indignation. "I'm going East. I don't live
here. You have witnesses enough without me. We all saw the same thing."
"Witnesses never see the same thing," observed the man from Tucson.
"It's the government that's after you. But you'll not have to wait. Our
case is first on the list."
"You can take my deposition," I began; but what need to dwell upon this
interview? "When I come to visit you again," I said to Stirling, "let me
know." And that pink-faced, gray-haired captain still shouted
heartlessly.
"You're an egotist," said he. "Think of the scrape poor old Pidcock has
got himself into."
"The government needs all the witnesses it can get," said the man from
Tucson. "Luke Jenks is smart in some ways."
"Luke Jenks?" I sat up in my canvas extension-chair.
"Territorial Delegate; firm of Parley and Jenks, Tucson. He's in it."
"By heavens!" I cried, in unmixed delight. "But I didn't see him when
they were shooting at us."
The man from Tucson stared at me curiously. "He is counsel for the
prisoners," he explained.
"The Delegate to Washington defends these thieves who robbed the United
States?" I repeated.
"Says he'll get them off. He's going to stay home from Washington and
put it through in shape."
It was here that my powers of astonishment went into their last decline,
and I withheld my opinion upon the character of Mr. Jenks as a public
man. I settled comfortably in my canvas chair.
"The prisoners are citizens of small means, I judge," said I. "What fee
can they pay for such a service?"
"Ah!" said Stirling,
"That's about it, I guess," said the man from Tucson. "Luke is mighty
smart in his law business. Well, gents, good-day to you. I must be
getting after the rest of my witnesses."
"Have you seen Mrs. Sproud?" I asked him.
"She's quit the country. We can't trace her. Guess she was scared."
"But that gold!" I exclaimed, when Sterling and I were alone. "What in
the world have they done with those six other bags?"
"Ah!" said he, as before. "Do you want to bet on that point? Dollars to
doughnuts Uncle Sam never sees a cent of that money again. I'll stake my
next quarter's pay--"
"Pooh!" said I. "That's poor odds against doughnuts if Pidcock has the
paying of it." And I took my turn at laughing at the humorous Stirling.
"That Mrs. Sproud is a sensible woman to have gone," said he,
reflectively. "They would know she had betrayed them, and she wouldn't
be safe in the valley. Witnesses who know too much sometimes are found
dead in this country--but you'll have government protection."
"Thank you kindly," said I. "That's what I had on the hill."
But Stirling took his turn at me again with freshened mirth.
Well, I think that we witnesses were worth government protection.
At seasons of especial brightness and holiday, such as Christmas
and Easter, the theatres of the variety order have a phrase which
they sometimes print in capitals upon their bills--Combination
Extraordinary; and when you consider Major Pidcock and his pride, and
the old plantation cook, and my reserved Eastern self, and our
coal-black escort of the hill, more than a dozen, including Sergeant
Brown and the private, both now happily recovered of their wounds, you
can see what appearance we made descending together from the mean
Southern Pacific train at Tucson, under the gaze of what I take to have
been the town's whole population, numbering five thousand.
Stirling, who had come to see us through, began at his persiflage
immediately, and congratulated me upon the house I should play to,
speaking of box-office receipts and a benefit night. Tucson is more than
half a Mexican town, and in its crowd upon the platform I saw the gaudy
shawls, the ear-rings, the steeple straw hats, the old shrivelled
cigarette-rolling apes, and the dark-eyed girls, and sifted with these
the loungers of our own race, boots, overalls, pistols, hotel clerks,
express agents, freight hands, waitresses, red-shirts, soldiers from
Lowell Barracks, and officers, and in this mass and mess of color and
dust and staring, Bishop Meakum, in his yellow duster, by the door of
the Hotel San Xavier. But his stare was not, I think now, quite of the
same idleness with the rest. He gave me a short nod, yet not unfriendly,
as I passed by him to register my name. By the counter I found the
wet-eyed Mowry standing.
"How's business on the other side of the track?" I said to him.
"Fair to middlin'. Get them mines ye was after at Globe?"
"You've forgotten I told you they're a property I don't care for, Mr.
Mowry. I suppose it's interest in this recent gold discovery that brings
you to Tucson." He had no answer for me but a shrewd shirking glance
that flattered my sense of acumen, and adding, pleasantly, "So many of
your Arizona citizens have forsaken silver for gold just now," I wrote
my name in the hotel book, while he looked to remind himself what it
was.
"Why, you're not to stay here," said Stirling, coming up. "You're
expected at the Barracks."
He presented me at once to a knot of officers, each of whom in turn made
me known to some additional by-stander, until it seemed to me that I
shook a new hand sixty times in this disordered minute by the hotel
book, and out of the sixty caught one name, which was my own.