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THROUGH APACHE LAND
BY LIEUT. R. H. JAYNE
AUTHOR OF "LOST IN THE WILDERNESS," "IN THE PECOS COUNTRY," "THE CAVE IN
THE MOUNTAIN," ETC.
NEW YORK
THE MERSHON COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyrighted, 1893,
BY THE PRICE-MCGILL CO.
[Illustration: THE WARRIOR HAD NOT TIME TO RECOVER * * * WHEN TOM
GRASPED HIM BY THE THROAT.]
CONTENTS.
I--Moonlight on the Rio Gila
II--Tom Hardynge's Ruse
III--Pursued by the Apaches
IV--Outwitted
V--An Alarming Message
VI--The Two Scouts
VII--The Cavalry Escort
VIII--In Devil's Pass
IX--Among the Apaches
X--Lone Wolf
XI--Surrounded by Danger
XII--"The Hour has Come"
XIII--The Flight
XIV--Pursued
XV--In the Solitude
XVI--Among the Mountains
XVII--A Mysterious Camp Fire
XVIII--The Indian Fight
XIX--A Terrible Meeting
XX--White vs. Red
XXI--Friends Together
XXII--Anxious Waiting
XXIII--The Death Shot
XXIV--The Buffaloes
XXV--Alone Again
XXVI--Capturing a Mustang
XXVII--A Run for Life
XXVIII--A Great Misfortune
XXIX--The Lone Camp Fire
XXX--Fighting a Grizzly
XXXI--Sleep
XXXII--Reunited
XXXIII--Closing in
XXXIV--Hurricane Hill
XXXV--The Sentinel
XXXVI--A Desperate Scheme
XXXVII--The Two Defenders
XXXVIII--Hand to Hand
XXXIX--Conclusion
THROUGH APACHE LAND.
CHAPTER I.
MOONLIGHT ON THE RIO GILA.
Along the eastern bank a small Indian canoe, containing a single
individual, was stealing its way--"hugging" the shore so as to take
advantage of the narrow band of shadow that followed the winding of the
stream. There were no trees on either side of the river, but this
portion was walled in by bluffs, rising from three or four to fully
twenty feet in height. The current was sluggish and not a breath of air
wrinkled the surface on this mild summer night.
It was in the wildest part of the Indian country, and Tom Hardynge, the
hunter, runner and bearer of all dispatches between the frontier posts
in the extreme southwest, knew very well that for three days past it had
been his proverbial good fortune, or rather a special Providence, that
had kept his scalp from ornamenting the lodge of some marauding Comanche
or Apache. Tom was one of the bravest and most skillful of borderers in
those days, and had been up in the Indian country to learn the truth of
numerous rumors which had come to the stations, reports of a general
uprising among the redskins, with whom the peace commissioners had
succeeded in negotiating treaties after months of diplomacy. After
spending more than a week in dodging back and forth, in the disguise of
an Indian he had learned enough to feel that there was good foundation
for these rumors, and that the exposed stations and settlements were in
imminent peril. As soon as he was assured of this fact he started on his
return to Fort Havens, which still lay a good three days' travel to the
southwest. It was Tom's purpose to continue his descent until the
following night, when, if nothing unexpected should intervene, he hoped
to reach the point where he had left his mustang, and thence it would be
plain sailing for the rest of the way. He knew the country thoroughly,
and was confident that it was safer to perform a part of the journey by
water than by land, which explains how it was that he was still in the
paint and garb of an Indian, and still stealing his way down toward the
Gulf of California.
"Them Apaches are a cute set," he muttered, as he glided along through
the bank of shadow; "I believe they've larned I've been up among them
lookin' around. I can't tell 'zactly how they larned it. I've played
Injun so often that I know I can do it purty well; but they know there's
somethin' in the air, and them signs I spied yesterday showed plain
'nough that they was lookin' for me. They'd give a dozen of their best
warriors, with a chief throwed in to make good weight, to keep me from
reachin' Fort Havens with the news that the Apaches are makin' ready to
raise Old Ned along the border. Fact is, I do carry big news, that's
sartin. Hello!"
This exclamation was caused by the appearance of a bright point of light
on the edge of the bluff, several hundred yards down the river, and upon
the opposite side. At first glance it resembled some star of the first
magnitude, which a sudden depression of the bluff had made visible. The
scout ceased paddling, and, suffering the canoe to drift slowly with the
tide, fixed his keen gray eyes upon the fiery point.
"That ain't any more of a star than I am," he added, a second later.
"There she goes again!"
The torch, for such it was, remained stationary for scarcely a minute,
when it began revolving swiftly from right to left, the gyration being
of such a nature as to prove that it was swung by the hand of some
person. Three revolutions, and then it suddenly reversed and made three
in the opposite direction, then two back, then two forward, then one
back and forth, and then it vanished in the gloom of the night. Tom
scarcely breathed while viewing this pantomime, and when it ended he
still held the paddle motionless while he chuckled to himself, for he
knew what it all meant. He had seen Indian telegraphy before, and had
learned to comprehend a great deal of those mysterious signs and signals
by which news is carried across mountain and prairie with incredible
speed. He had ridden his fleet mustang to death to head off some of
these telegrams, and yet in every case the Indians, by some trickery
unexplained to him, had outsped him.
"Yes, I can read that," Tom growled, still drifting with the current.
"That ere redskin is signalin' to some other scamp, and it's all about
_me_. It says that I'm on the river somewhere, and a lookout must be
kept for me."
Such was the fact. The Indian who swayed the torch meant thereby to
appraise some confederate that the scout who had dared to penetrate such
a distance into their country, and to unearth their most important
secrets, was seeking to make his way down the Rio Gila and out of their
country again. This much said the torch in language that could not be
mistaken. Although it added no more, yet the sequence was inevitable,
and Tom needed no one to apprise him that the river both above and below
him was closely watched, and that he was in the greatest peril of his
life. Being entirely shrouded in shadow, he could not see the moon,
which rode high in the sky, scarcely touched by a floating cloud.
"I wish the moon would go out of sight altogether," he said to himself,
as he viewed the clear sky. "I'd like to see it as black as a wolf's
mouth, and then I'd teach these scamps somethin'; but there's too much
confounded moonlight layin' loose for a chap to show any scientific
tricks."
The fact that a redskin had indulged in signaling suggested that there
must be some one to whom he had signaled, and the hunter devoted himself
to learning where the second Apache was located.
"As near as I kin calc'late, the chap must be on this side of the
stream, and purty close to where I'm rockin' in the cradle of the deep
this very minute."
He now moved his paddle slightly--just enough to hold the boat
motionless while he looked and listened. The stillness was profound; not
even the soft sighing of the wind reaching his ears. He had peered
around in the gloom only a few minutes when he discerned the reply to
the signal already described, and so close that he was startled.
Scarcely fifty feet below him, and on the edge of the bluff, several
yards in height, a light flashed into view. A second glance showed him
that it was a flaming torch held in the hand of an Indian, who began
whirling it around his head with a swiftness that made it seem like a
revolving wheel of fire. The rapid motion of the torch, as the reader
may infer, caused an equally rapid increase of the flame upon it, so
that it revealed the Indian himself; and the hunter, as he looked toward
it, saw the figure of the warrior standing like some pyrotechnist in the
center of his own display.
A better target could not have been asked, and Tom, quick as thought,
raised his rifle and sighted it; but with his finger upon the trigger,
he refrained, lowered the piece and shook his head, muttering as he did
so:
"He deserves it, and I'd like to give it to him, but it won't do. They'd
know what the rifle-crack meant, and I'd have a hornet's nest about my
head quick as lightnin'."
Tom was not certain of the meaning of the exhibition he had just seen,
but believed that it was intended as a mere reply to the other--the same
as if the Apache had shouted "All right!" in response to the
notification. The Indian must have circled the torch in this manner for
more than a score of times, when he threw it from his hand into the
river, where it fell with a hiss, and was instantly extinguished.
The scout was in a quandary. If he continued down stream he must pass
directly beneath the spot where his foe was standing, and the shadow was
by no means dense enough to make it possible for him to escape
observation. He was confident, however, that if he could change places
with the warrior, he could discern the canoe without any closer
approach. He was at a disadvantage, for the bluff was perfectly
perpendicular and so high that he could not reach the ground above
without retreating up the river for at least a quarter of a mile, where
the bluff was depressed enough to permit him to draw himself upward upon
it. Had the bank been low and wooded, it would have been the easiest
matter in the world to have shoved the canoe into the shelter, or to
have circumvented the Indian by lifting it bodily from the water and
going around him, and striking the river again below. But Tom hesitated
only a few minutes. He was anxious to get forward, for delay was
dangerous and he felt annoyed at the manner in which he was dogged.
"Here goes," he exclaimed, starting the canoe forward again. "If that
Apache is anxious for a scrimmage, he can have one."