soldiers and scouts so eager to pass Sergeant Turpin’s count, and what
with the rear guard hastening up, and what with everybody preparing
weapons and clothing and re-forming for the prospective fight, there
were few thoughts upon the whereabouts of two such items as wild Micky
Free and his partner Jimmie Dunn. Micky was the kind who usually got a
front seat.
Now they too crouched here out of sight upon the narrow shelf. Scarcely
yet had the echoes of the thunderous volley died away. Listen!
Shrill, distant whoops and yells of defiance, also from below! But
there sounded a brisk command, above――the fast shuffle of feet and
the rolling of pebbles――and down the slanting trail that cut along
the sheer wall plunged, sliding and striding, the support company,
Lieutenant Bourke first, Chief Big Mouth next, and their file of men,
white and red mingled in a fast jumble, close pursuing, every carbine
and rifle ready for business.
Micky poised, crouching tense. Just as the tail of the little
procession swung past, slipping and steadying again he darted forward
on the shelf. Jimmie imitated. They scuttled so fast that they either
must keep going or tumble off. The shelf pinched out before it cut
the trail, but Micky never paused; he leaped, and landed like a goat,
on a smaller shelf, a mere piece of out-sticking rock; that gave him
purchase for another leap which took him to the trail; and turning
instantly he ran down.
Jimmie had no time for thought. What Micky could do, he could do――he
_had to_! He, too, leaped; barely touched the next rock with one
moccasin; sprang on, desperately, across space, brushing the wall;
landed on the edge of the trail, slipped, recovered (Whew!), and
gaining balance sped after Micky.
The trail descended, narrow and broken and icy in spots, at a steep
angle. Anybody who lost his footing on it would be a “goner”――he’d not
stop until, having bounced and rolled and hurtled, he was a fragment of
shattered bone and flesh in the roaring river below. It was a regular
Apache trail.
But Micky was running. The Lieutenant Bourke file were at a trot, and
already half-way to the turn around the shoulder. So Jimmie ran.
Micky caught the tail of the file before it rounded the shoulder, and
slackened to keep pace with it. Jimmie caught Micky just as the tail,
who was John Cahill the blacksmith, was disappearing like the lash end
of a dragged whip――but he did not go much farther.
The file were scattering like frightened quail, to a chorus of Apache
yells, and the clatter and swish of arrows, and a rapidly barked
command. Micky dived for the shelter of a jagged boulder, and Jimmie
followed suit. They all had arrived.
It was a broad shelf two hundred yards long, about half-way between the
bottom of the precipice and the top, and littered with boulders. On
right and left, behind the boulders, were the Ross men, their carbine
barrels pointing steadily at a high rock wall about in the middle of
the shelf, a little way out from the face of the precipice. Behind this
rock wall――which was ten feet high and built up smooth――was a large
opening: the Yavapai cave!
All the air resounded with whoops and screeches, and bow twang, and now
and then a gun-shot, coming from the cave. The Yavapais were inside.
Several might be glimpsed, between the end of the rock wall and the
mouth of the cave, darting about. They dragged a body or two back, out
of sight. The Ross volley had killed some of them.
“Big fight!” panted Micky. “Good. We are in time.”
“Hey! What in thunder are you doin’ down hyar?” scolded Joe Felmer,
from behind the next boulder――he and John Cahill together. “You want to
lose yore scalps?”
Micky only grinned impudently, and with an Apache yell answered the
Yavapais. The White Mountains were replying with taunt to taunt. Jimmie
said not a word. He may have done wrong, but here he was.
“Wall, you stay mighty close,” ordered Joe. “This’ll be no picnic.”
“What have you done, Black Beard?” called Chief Big Mouth, who was near.
“The pony thieves were dancing their deeds in the mouth of the cave.
Before they saw us we killed six of them.”
“Bueno,” grunted the fierce Big Mouth.
Lying low, Lieutenant Ross and Lieutenant Bourke and Nan-ta-je were
consulting together. Presently orders were passed from man to man,
on this side; and by ones and twos and threes the soldiers and
scouts spread out, in the gray dawn, selecting other positions here,
or bending, went scurrying across, against the shelter of the cave
rampart, to reinforce the other flank, while the carbines of their
fellows kept the Yavapais from shooting at them.
Listen, again! Amidst the cries of the enraged Yavapais there rose
the clink of carbine butt and shuffle of moccasins from marching men,
again. Major Brown was bringing down the rest of the troops. But Micky
had focussed his attention upon something else. The roving one eye of
his never missed a single point.
“Yavapai!” he uttered excitedly, half rising and pointing, and up he
jerked his rifle.
“Hooh!” exclaimed Big Mouth, craning.
John Cahill was the quickest. Away beyond, down the beetling canyon
wall, on an out-jutting rock there, stood a naked Indian with long
black hair. He whooped triumphantly. He had escaped, somehow, from the
cave――he was almost to the bottom and in a moment more――――
“Bang!”
Blacksmith Cahill’s carbine had spoken even while Big Mouth and Joe and
Micky were taking aim.
“Thut!” That was the bullet striking flesh. Off from the rock was swept
the Indian, and disappeared. Whether or not he had been killed, nobody
knew; but his body was found later, by some squaws.
“He will take no word to other Yavapai, I think,” pronounced Micky. “If
other Yavapai come and catch us here, then we are dead, too.”
The Major Brown soldiers were pelting in, breathless from the slippery
trail. Hither-thither they deployed, sneaking among the rocks and
darting across the face of the cave-mouth wall. Now a Pima of the
Bourke men stood up, daring the Yavapais while he peered for a
shot into the cave. A puff of smoke belched from a niche atop the
rampart――“Bang!”――and down he wilted, into a crumpled heap without
motion.
The Yavapais yelled louder――their “kill” yell. The Pimas and White
Mountains yelled back. The soldiers were not doing much shooting, yet.
Their officers were arranging them. Very soon the arrangement had
settled into this:
There was one line of crouching scouts and soldiers behind the many
boulders (which sometimes touched one another) not far in front of
the cave-mouth wall and on either flank as the ends curved in. These
were skirmishers. Back of them, clear along the edge of the immensely
broad shelf and extending around the ends of the shelf, and even among
the crags of the precipice, was a second line, in reserve, also behind
rocks, to cover the first line. Some of the rocks were low, some high;
they formed all kinds of shelter, from which one might shoot over and
around corners and through chinks. The Micky-Jimmie boulder, down from
the foot of the trail, in the second line, was about the size of a
roll-top office-desk; and squatting they might peep across the ragged
surface of it and see the whole length of the big shelf.
From either side Joe Felmer and Big Mouth wriggled in toward them, to
shoot between their rocks and this.
“Steady! Hold your fire till orders,” warned Sergeant Turpin and others.
For Antonio Besias the interpreter was speaking. He half rose, from
along the second line, and called in Apache.
“You must all come out!” he shouted. “The soldier-captain has many men
and many guns. He has found you, and you cannot get away. He does not
wish to kill you, but he will kill you unless you lay down your guns
and come out.”
Back behind his rock ducked Antonio, just in time to dodge a dozen
arrows, not to say several bullets. What a storm of hoots and shrieks
had drowned his voice!
“We are not afraid!” were retorting the cave warriors. “Yah yah! We are
not afraid,” they jeered, in Apache and Spanish. “It is you who will
die, you white men and you traitor moccasin-stealers who rob women.” To
accuse an Apache of stealing moccasins from squaws was the bitterest of
insults. “You will not live to see the sun rise. Our people are coming
up from below, and you will be fed to the buzzards. Yah!”
Nan-ta-je tried, in Apache and Mohave jargon both. But he, too, had to
duck, before he had finished telling them to send out their women and
children, anyway.
“We are not fighting those,” he said. “We fight only men. The
soldier-captain will wait until you send out your women and children.
They will not be harmed. It is not right――――” and his words were lost
in another burst of furious, insolent clamor.
Major Brown’s trumpeter orderly sounded: “Commence firing.” The high
strains lilted gaily from canyon wall to canyon wall, and back again.
“Take it easy, boys,” cautioned Sergeant Turpin, near the Jimmy squad.
“Let the front line do the work, but if you see a head, hit it. But
watch out for the women and children.”
The Yavapai warriors, behind their high rock rampart, taller than they
were, had difficulty in seeing out. Occasionally a head seemed to be
cautiously poked up, under an old hat, and the men of the front rank
promptly banged away at it.
Micky, squirming for a rest, leveled his battered rifle across the
top of the boulder, took aim with his one eye――“Bang!” Instantly an
answering shot so shrewdly scraped the boulder top that the stinging
rock splinters filled not only Micky’s one eye but both eyes of the
intently peering Jimmie.
“Fool Red-head, you; why you shoot?” scolded Big Mouth. “Squaw hold up
hat on stick, you shoot at that, man shoot at _you_!”
This trick did not deceive the soldiers long. The Yavapais quit it, and
from behind their wall began to send arrows by scores high into the
air, so that, curving downward, they might land among the rocks where
the soldiers and scouts lay.
Major Brown met this with a similar scheme. Nan-ta-je and Archie
MacIntosh wriggled forward, as rapidly as snakes, among the rocks, from
back line to front line, taking a message to soldiers and scouts. The
word was passed, for suddenly all the line elevated the carbines and
rifles a little higher and shot fast.
Long Jim Cook and Alchisé and Lieutenant Ross and the others in sight
were grabbing the cartridges spread by the handful beside them, and
using them as rapidly as triggers might be pulled. From the whole wide
cave floated dust; here and there the edges melted away.
“Hi! That’s the stuff!” muttered Joe. “Shoot into the cave an’ let the
bullets glance. That’ll fetch ’em.”
Now squaws and children were crying with pain and fright. The glancing,
re-bounding bullets favored nobody. The warriors howled furiously.
The lead was finding them, behind their wall. Worse, it was wounding
their wives and babies. So they stood up, to face it and try to divert
it――stop it, if possible.
Their scowling faces and naked or ragged-shirted shoulders might be
seen, above the breastworks, amidst the smoke and dust. They, too,
shot rapidly, point-blank, into the rocks before――and the squaws’ and
children’s arms were glimpsed, handing up to them loaded guns.
At the far end of the wall was a strange, wild figure――their medicine
man! Yes, because he wore a large head-dress of painted feathers and
a painted, beaded buckskin shirt hung with strings and shells, which
should protect him and his people from the bullets. He was fighting,
too!
Twice Joe Felmer drew bead on him and shot; only to mutter:
“I can’t tech that feller.”
“No. He is big medicine,” reproved Chief Bocon. “You had better save
your bullets, Black Beard.”
“Cease firing!” shrilled the bugle. And on a sudden there was nothing
doing, and almost a complete silence, except for crying children, until
Antonio Besias called again, in Spanish.
“You have fought well, but you can see that you have no chance. The
soldier-captain says for you to come out. Or if you are so foolish as
not to come out, send to us your women and children, that they may not
be hurt.”
The Yavapais did not answer. They had disappeared from the wall. Maybe
they were consulting together, about the peace summons. Everybody
waited expectantly. Jimmie, trembling with the excitement and the
horror of the fight, hoped that the people in the cave would now
surrender.
Ah, what was that? More defiance? The Yavapais were chanting――a high,
wild chorus, men and squaws both――and the shuffle and thud of a dance
could be heard.
“Hooh! They make ready to charge,” grunted Chief Big Mouth. “They sing
their death song. We must shoot straight, Black Beard.”
“Look out! It is the death song! They will charge!” were warning
Nan-ta-je, Bobby Do-klinny, Alchisé, and the other scouts, in Apache
and Spanish; and the soldiers repeated.
“Good!” pronounced Micky, his blue eye snapping. “It will be a fight
man to man. That is no fun, to shoot into a cave.”
The chant welled higher and stronger, and all the canyon echoed again.
Would they never come?
The front or skirmish line had shifted to their knees, guns at
shoulders――Lieutenant Ross had drawn his revolver.
“Steady, lads,” was cautioning Sergeant Turpin and his non-coms, to
this rear line. “Hold your places.”
“Here they come!”
A great cheer rang, for like jacks-in-the-box the Yavapai warriors had
appeared――some twenty or thirty of them――all together leaping atop
their rampart――strong, muscular, bronze-skinned fighters, bristling
quivers of reed arrows upon their left shoulders, strung bows in one
hand, rifles in the other, their eyes gleaming blackly, their raven
hair flung back, their painted faces scowling. They emptied their guns
in a crashing volley, and proceeded to ply their bows while the squaws
handed up fresh guns. The skirmish line of scouts and soldiers swept
the wall――the smoke eddied and hung――and out from the farther end of
the wall bolted a little bevy of other warriors, to break through for
freedom.
Up from their rocks jumped the skirmish line, and ran to head them
off. Long Jim Cook, Alchisé, Bobby Do-klinny, Nan-ta-je, Slim Shorty,
Lieutenant Ross, with his revolver――they all ran, shooting and yelling.
They were too many for the Yavapais. The top of the wall had been
cleaned――and back through the opening at the end hustled, pell-mell,
the escaping warriors, dragging cripples, but leaving, in the open
space there, half a dozen crimsoned, motionless forms.
The firing died away. The face of the cave precipice was beginning to
glow with sunlight. What next, now?
“Yavapai!” yelped Micky, springing up.
“Hooh!” exclaimed Big Mouth.
Micky had leveled his rifle――it missed fire. Now twenty paces before
their rock was standing, on another rock, a tall Apache-Mohave. How he
had sneaked this far, nobody might say. He must have run out from the
near end of the rampart, while everybody was watching the far end. The
smoke was very thick.
He did not know that there were two lines of enemy, and he had paused
a moment to whoop his triumph at having passed the first line. How
foolish! In a twinkle a score of carbines and rifles were focussed on
him――John Cahill aimed, Joe Felmer aimed, Big Mouth aimed――they could
not miss.
He was a fine, brave warrior――and he saw, too late.
“Soldados (Soldiers)!” he shrieked.
“Crash!” The guns all shot together; the bullets fairly lifted him and
drove him topsy-turvy, riddled through and through from head to waist.
“Crowed a leetle soon, that feller,” commented Joe.
XV
JIMMIE IS A VETERAN
The December sun was high and warm, flooding the broad rock-strewn
terrace half-way between river and sky, but the battle was still
going on. Now that the Yavapais had found out they could not break to
freedom, the second soldier line had been advanced, with a dash, to
join the first. As fast as it could be loaded and fired, every gun was
speeding bullet after bullet into the cave, filling it with a very
hailstorm of glancing, crisscrossing lead.
The cave was broad, and seemed to be shallow; and how anybody in there
could be alive was a mystery. But alive some of those Apache-Mohaves
were, for above the deafening staccato of a hundred carbines rose the
death chant and the shrieks and wails and groans and curses.
There was no token of surrender. It was a fight to the death. Cleverly
shielded in a niche at his end of the rampart the medicine-man, barely
seen through the smoke and dust, was shooting as before, helped by the
squaws who handed up guns to him; he certainly wore a charmed shirt.
Now and again a warrior bobbed up, fired blindly, and bobbed down.
Micky had long ago used the last of his cartridges. Like Jimmie, he
might only lie and watch.
“I told you there would be a good fight!” he shouted, in Jimmie’s ear.
“This is the end of these Delt-che people. They fight like wolves in a
pen, but it is no use.”
“Look!” shouted back Jimmie, pointing.
An Apache-Mohave boy――he was naked and chubby and could not have been
more than three or four years old――had run out, around the cave wall,
into the open space in front; and there he stood, sucking his thumb,
and scowling at the Americanos as if he wanted the noise stopped. Over
he keeled, struck by a chance bullet (for nobody would have shot at
_him_); but he was not dead――he lay and kicked and howled, and all the
firing ceased as if by magic.
From the soldiers’ line somebody darted forward. Hurrah!
It was Nan-ta-je. He reached the little boy, grabbed him and at one
jump was behind a rock again.
[Illustration: HURRAH! IT WAS NAN-TA-JE]
“Hurrah for Joe! Bully for Joe!” Even the Yavapais might have
cheered――but Nan-ta-je had been just in time. Scarcely had the uproar
of banging guns and howling warriors and shrieking squaws and wailing
children been renewed, when down from above rushed a tremendous
boulder, bursting like a bomb-shell upon the wall itself.
“Hooh!” ejaculated Micky, astonished.
The firing slackened, everybody outside looked up. On the very top of
the canyon, right over the cave mouth, were many figures――soldiers――and
Indians! Outlined against the sky, they appeared curiously small.
“By the great horn spoon, thar’s Burns!” exclaimed Joe Felmer.
Surely! Jimmie had forgotten about the Captain Burns and Lieutenant
Thomas company, but here they were, soldiers and Pimas, crowding the
rim of the cliff, and gazing over as far as they dared. They had
returned from following the pony trail, and had heard the shooting.
Several of the soldiers were hanging part way――waist far, that is――from
the edge, and held in place by other soldiers behind them were aiming
their revolvers. The cliff slanted back, above the cave, so that
persons above might see its threshold, and the rampart before――and, of
course, see the warriors between the two.
But that rock! Here came another! Watch out――soldiers had rolled a
second great boulder to the rim――they gave it a final shove, and
bounding, ploughing, hurtling, it brought an avalanche down the face
of the precipice and landing truly in the mouth of the cave burst
thunderously into a hundred pieces.
A third boulder followed immediately. Then two at once. The soldiers
and scouts below were cheering and shouting and shooting again, but
the crashing of the boulders was louder. The dust they made was denser
than the powder smoke――the mouth of the cave could not be seen. But
somewhere in that veil were the wretched Yavapais. Jimmie felt sick.
Even the death chant had ceased, across there. Anyway, it could not be
heard amidst the other uproar. The Captain Burns men worked hard. The
rampart was being crushed and buried. The Major Brown men were standing
up while they fired; they were so excited. Jimmie and Micky were
standing.
“Down, down with you!” bawled sergeant and corporal. “Wait till the
chargin’ order!”
The fight continued, but it was becoming a very one-sided fight.
Bombarded by the rock artillery from above, and by the carbines from in
front, and held by the cave wall behind, the Apache-Mohaves were being
literally wiped out of existence. They were replying not at all; their
brave medicine-man had disappeared amidst the murk――the occasional
rifts showed him no longer.
Still, it was dangerous, here in front of the cave, for the bursting
boulders, piling up in the entrance and shattering the rampart there,
sent their fragments flying like pieces of shell, causing the soldiers
to duck and laugh as they plied their cartridges.
Now the trumpet sounded――“Cease firing!” The shots died away as Major
Brown, standing, waved his arm at the Captain Burns company, on the rim
of the precipice over the cave, to signal them to stop rolling down
their boulders.
“Prepare to charge!” the orders were repeated, along the line below.
The sun was high, marking noon. The battle had been going on for at
least five hours!
“Prepare to charge!” Up sprang the line, and at the instant down
bounded the last of the boulders, which the officers above had been
unable to withhold. It gave one final tremendous jump, and landed well
out in front of the cave――“Boom!” Something struck Jimmie――yes, a piece
of it caught him as he blindly dodged――and whirling him around knocked
him head over heels.
He tried to pick himself up, and a fierce pain stabbed him in the right
leg, making him dizzy. He propped on one arm, among the rocks, while
his eyes cleared a little. Already the line was running and scrambling
forward, soldiers and scouts both; nobody now might pause to tend to
_him_. He stared, blinking weakly. What would happen? Were the Yavapais
away back in the cave, somewhere, and where they were waiting, to
defend it?
There was Micky, scooting about; and Nan-ta-je, and Joe, and Jack Long,
and Captain Taylor and Lieutenant Bourke, their carbines and revolvers
poised, as they advanced at double-quick. Right up to the top of the
huge pile of shattered rocks climbed the first man――Corporal Thomas
Hanlon, he――and glared in; jumped down, out of sight, and over and
around poured the others. But not a shot was fired. Evidently all the
Yavapais were dead. Oh!
With that, Jimmie sighed, everything swam before him, and he must have
fainted, because the next that he knew, Joe Felmer was sopping his face
from a canteen, and Micky was squatting beside, grinning.
From the cave sounded the hum of voices; the soldiers and scouts were
still busy there. The Burns soldiers and Pimas had come down.
“Hyar! You lie quiet,” ordered Joe. “You got a busted leg, I reckon,
an’ you don’t want to see inside that cave, anyhow. Wish I hadn’t,
myself.”
“Are they all dead, Joe?” quavered Jimmie, helplessly. Wow, how that
leg hurt! But it had been bound up, after a fashion, probably by Joe.
“Ev’ry buck, includin’ the medicine man. Plumb shot through, or
smashed; lots of ’em both. Some squaws an’ kids left,” grunted Joe.
“It’s what you might call a massacree. Now, you stay hyar, till
we’re ready to move ye. I’m needed yonder. Micky can nuss ye; both
o’ ye ought to be back with the pack-train――’tain’t no place for
boys――’speshully for one who can’t dodge rocks.”
Muttering, Joe (who really was kind-hearted) trudged away.
“Ah, I told you it would be a great fight, Boy-who-sleeps,” grinned
Micky Free, as he squatted. “Black Beard is angry, because you are the
only one of us wounded; but you will be a warrior, now.”
“Were you in the cave, Red-head?” asked Jimmie, also in Apache.
“Yes. It is very red. All the Yavapai warriors are dead. The medicine
chief is dead, under a rock. One old man was partly alive, and he died
soon. Some squaws and children hid behind large flat rocks, and under
dead people. They will be captives. You will see them. Delt-che is not
there; but he has lost his best warriors, and he never will make a good
fight again. I am glad we came, Cheemie.”
“What are the Pimas doing, Red-head?” asked Jimmie. For the Pimas, with
Chief Owl Ears in the center, were sitting in a bunch and wailing.
“Oh, those Pimas!” scoffed Micky. “They make medicine. They no good
any more. They find their Pima who was killed, and now their medicine
tells them they must not fight again till after they have mourned him
by singing and bathing and not eating. That will take several days. But
Apaches wait till they get home. I do not think much of the foolish
Pimas. And the Maricopas are the same. All no good――stop fighting and
make medicine. Huh!”