Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sankar Viswanathan, and the
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FOES IN AMBUSH.
BY
CAPT. CHARLES KING, U. S. A.,
AUTHOR OF
"THE COLONEL'S DAUGHTER," "MARION'S FAITH," "KITTY'S CONQUEST,"
"A SOLDIER'S SECRET," ETC.
PHILADELPHIA:
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
1893.
COPYRIGHT, 1892,
BY
CHARLES KING.
FOES IN AMBUSH.
I.
The sun was just going down, a hissing globe of fire and torment.
Already the lower limb was in contact with the jagged backbone of the
mountain chain that rimmed the desert with purple and gold. Out on the
barren, hard-baked flat in front of the corral, just where it had been
unhitched when the paymaster and his safe were dumped soon after dawn,
a weather-beaten ambulance was throwing unbroken a mile-long shadow
towards the distant Christobal. The gateway to the east through the
Santa Maria, sharply notched in the gleaming range, stood a day's
march away,--a day's march now only made by night, for this was
Arizona, and from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same
anywhere south of that curdling mud-bath, the Gila, the only human
beings impervious to the fierceness of its rays were the Apaches. "And
they," growled the paymaster, as he petulantly snapped the lock of his
little safe, "they're no more human than so many hyenas."
A big man physically was the custodian and disburser of government
greenbacks,--so big that, as he stepped forth through the aperture in
the hot adobe wall, he ducked his head to avert unwilling contact with
its upper edge. Green-glass goggles, a broad-brimmed straw hat, a
pongee shirt, loose trousers of brown linen, and dust-colored canvas
shoes made up the outer man of a personality as distinctly unmilitary
as it was ponderous. Slow and labored in movement, the major was
correspondingly sluggish in speech. He sauntered out into the glare of
the evening sunshine and became slowly conscious of a desire to swear
at what he saw: that, though in a minute or two the day-god would
"douse his glim" behind the black horizon, no preparation whatever had
been made for a start. There stood the ambulance, every bolt and link
and tire hot as a stove-lid, but not a mule in sight. Turning to his
left, he strolled along towards a gap in the adobe wall, and entered
the dusty interior of the corral. One of the four quadrupeds drowsing
under the brush shelter languidly turned an inquiring eye and
interrogative ear in his direction, and conveyed, after the manner of
the mule, a suggestion as to supper. A Mexican boy sprawling in the
shade of a bale of government hay, and clad in cotton shirt and
trousers well-nigh as brown as the skin that peeped through occasional
gaps, glanced up at him with languid interest an instant, and then
resumed the more agreeable contemplation of the writhings of an
impaled tarantula. Under another section of the shed two placid little
burros were dreamily blinking at vacancy, their grizzled fronts
expressive of that ineffable peace found only in the faces of saints
and donkeys. In the middle of the enclosure a rude windlass coiled
with rope stood stretching forth a decrepit lever-arm. The
whippletree, dangling from the end over the beaten circular track,
seemed cracked with heat and age. The stout rope that stretched tautly
from the coil passed over a wooden wheel, and disappeared through a
broad-framed aperture into the bowels of the earth. Close at hand in
the shade of a brush-covered "leanto" hung three or four huge _ollas_,
earthen water-jars, swathed in gunny sack and blanket. Beyond them,
warped out of all possibility of future usefulness, stood what had
once been the running gear of a California buck-board. Behind it
dangled from dusty pegs portions of leather harness, which all the
neat's-foot oil of the military pharmacopoeia could never again
restore to softness or pliability. A newer edition of the same class
of vehicle was covered by a canvas "'paulin." A huge stack of barley
bags was piled at the far end of the corral, guarded from depredation
(quadrupedal) by a barrier of wooden slats, mostly down, and by a
tattered biped, very sound asleep.
"Where's the sergeant?" queried the paymaster, slowly, addressing no
one in particular, but looking plaintively around him.
Still leaning a brown chin on a nearly black hand, and stirring up his
spider with the forked stick he held in the other paw, the boy simply
tilted his head towards the dark opening under the farther end of the
shed, an aperture that seemed to lead to nothing but blackness beyond.
"What's he doing?"
"No sa-a-abe," drawled the boy, never lifting his handsome eyes from
the joys before him.
"Why hasn't he harnessed up?"
A shrug of the shoulders was the only reply.
"Hey?"
"No sa-a-abe," slowly as before.
"What's your name?"
"José."
"Well, here, José, you go and tell him I want him."
The boy slowly pulled himself together and found his feet; started
reluctantly to obey; glanced back at his captive, now scuttling off
for freedom; turned again, scotched him with his forked stick, and
then with a vicious "huh!" drove the struggling Araneid into the sandy
soil. This done, he lounged off towards the dark corner in the wall of
the ranch and dove out of sight.
Presently there slowly issued from this recess a sturdy form in dusty
blue blouse, the sleeves of which were decorated with chevrons in
far-faded yellow. Under the shabby slouch hat a round, sun-blistered,
freckled face, bristling with a week-old beard, peered forth at the
staff official with an expression half of languid tolerance, half of
mild irritation. In most perfunctory fashion the soldier just touched
the hat-rim with his forefinger, then dropped the hand into a
convenient pocket. It was plain that he felt but faint respect for the
staff rank and station of the man in goggles and authority.
"Sergeant Feeny, I thought I told you I wanted everything ready to
start at sunset."
"You did, sir, and then you undid it," was the prompt and sturdy
reply.
The paymaster stood irresolute. Through the shading spectacles of
green his eyes seemed devoid of any expression. His attitude remained
unchanged, thumbs in the low-cut pockets of his wide-flapping
trousers, shoulders meek and drooping.
"W-e-ll," he finally drawled, "you understood I wanted to get on to
Camp Stoneman by sunrise, didn't you? Didn't my clerk, Mr. Dawes, tell
you?"
"He did, yes, sir, and you don't want to get there no more than I do,
major. But I told you flat-footed if you let Donovan and those other
men go back on the trail they'd find some excuse to stop at
Ceralvo's, and, damn 'em, they've done it."
"Don't you s'pose they'll be along presently?"
"S'pose?" and the sun-blistered face of the cavalryman seemed to grow
a shade redder as he echoed almost contemptuously the word of his
superior. "S'pose? Why, major, look here!" And the short, swart
trooper took three quick strides, then pointed through the western gap
in the adobe wall to the gilded edge of the range where the sun had
just slipped from view. "It's ten mile to that ridge, it's ten minutes
since I got the last wig-wag of the signal-flag at the pass. They
hadn't come through then. What chance is there of their getting here
in time to light out at dark? You did tell me to have everything ready
to start, and then you undid it by sending half the escort back.
You've been here in hell's half-acre three days and I've been here
three years. You've never been through Cañon Diablo; I've been through
a dozen times and never yet without a fight or a mighty good chance of
one. Now you may think it's fun to run your head into an ambuscade,
but I don't. You can get 'em too easy without trying here. I'm an old
soldier, major, and too free spoken, perhaps, but I mean no
disrespect, only I wish to God you'd listen to me next time."
"You wouldn't have had me leave those women in the lurch back at the
crossing, would you?" queried the paymaster, half apologetically.
"Why, I don't believe that story at all," flatly answered Feeny; "it's
some damned plant that fellow Donovan's springing on you,--a mere
excuse to ride back so they could drink and gamble with those thugs at
Ceralvo's. They've just been paid off and had no chance for any fun at
all before they were ordered out on this escort duty. That money's
been burning in their pockets now for three whole nights, and they
just can't stand it so long as a drop of liquor's to be had by hard
riding. No soldier is happy till he's dead broke, major, leastwise
none I ever see."
"What makes you doubt the story, sergeant? It came straight enough."
"It came too damned straight, sir; that's just the trouble. It came
straight from Chihuahua Pete's monte mill. It's only a hook to draw
'em back, and they played it on you because they saw you were new to
the country and they knew I was asleep; and now, unless Lieutenant
Drummond should happen in with his troop, there's no help for it but
to wait for to-morrow night, and no certainty of getting away then."
"Well, if Mr. Drummond were here, don't you suppose he'd have gone or
sent back to protect those people?"
"Oh, he'd have gone,--certainly,--that's his business, but it isn't
yours, major. You've got government money there enough to buy up every
rum-hole south of the Gila. You're expected to pay at Stoneman, Grant
and Goodwin and Crittenden and Bowie, where they haven't had a cent
since last Christmas and here it is the middle of May. You ought to
have pushed through with all speed, so none of these jay-hawkers could
get wind of your going, let alone the Apaches. Every hour you halt is
clear gain to them, and here you've simply got to stay twenty-four
hours all along of a cock-and-bull story about some stage-load of
frightened women fifteen miles back at Gila Bend. It's a plant, major,
that's what I believe."
Old Plummer kicked the toe of his shoe into the sandy soil and hung a
reflective head. "I wish you hadn't shut your eyes," he drawled at
length.
"I wouldn't, sir, if I hadn't thought you'd keep yours open. You slept
all night, sir, you and Mr. Dawes, while I rode alongside with finger
on trigger every minute."
Absorbed in their gloomy conversation, neither man noticed that the
wooden shutter in the adobe wall close at hand had been noiselessly
opened from within, just an inch or two. Neither knew, neither could
see that behind it, in the gathering darkness of the short summer
evening, a shadowy form was crouching.
"Then you think we must stay here, do you?" queried the paymaster.
"Think? I know it. Why, the range ahead is alive with Apaches, and we
can't stand 'em off with only half a dozen men. Your clerk's no
'count, major."
Old Plummer stood irresolute. His clerk, a consumptive and broken-down
relative, was at that moment lying nerveless on a rude bunk within the
ranch, bemoaning the fate that had impelled him to seek Arizona in
search of health. He was indeed of little "'count," as the paymaster
well knew. After a moment's painful thought the words rose slowly to
his lips.
"Well, perhaps you know best, so here we stay till to-morrow night, or
at least until they get back."
One could almost hear the whisper in the deep recess of the retaining
wall,--sibilant, gasping. Some one crouching still farther back in the
black depths of the interior _did_ hear.
"_Santa Maria!_"
But when a moment later the proprietor of this roadside ranch, this
artificial oasis in a land of desolation, strolled into the big bare
room where half a dozen troopers were dozing or gambling, it was with
an air of confidential joviality that he whispered to the corporal in
charge,--
"Our fren', the major, he riffuse me sell you aguardiente,--mescal;
but wait--to-night."
"Oh, damn it, Moreno, we'll be half-way to Stoneman by that time,"
interrupted the trooper, savagely. "Who's to know where we got the
stuff? We'll make 'em believe Donovan's squad brought it in from
Ceralvo's. Give me a drink now anyhow, you infernal Greaser; I'm all
burnt out with such a day as this. We've got to start the moment they
get back, and there won't be any time then."
"Hush, caballero; they come not to-night. You will rest here."
"Why, how in blazes do you know?"
"Softly!--I know not. I know noting; yet, _mira!_--I know. They talk
long in the corral,--the major and that pig of a sergeant;--for him I
snap my finger. Look you!" And Moreno gave a flip indicative of
combined defiance and disdain.
"Don't you count on his not finding out, Moreno. It's all easy enough
so far as the major's concerned, but that blackguard Feeny's
different, I tell you. He'd hear the gurgle of the spigot if he were
ten miles across the Gila, and be here to bust things before you could
serve out a gill,--damn him! He's been keen enough to put that
psalm-singing Yankee on guard over your liquor. How're you going to
get at it, anyhow?"
For all answer the Mexican placed the forefinger of his left hand upon
his lips and with that of the right hand pointed significantly to the
hard-beaten earthen floor.
"Ah--I have a mine," he whispered. "You will not betray, eh? Shu-u!
Hush! He comes now."
The gruff voice of Sergeant Feeny broke up the colloquy.
"Corporal Murphy, take what men you have here and groom at once. Feed
and water too.--Moreno, I want supper cooked for eight in thirty
minutes.--Drop those cards now, you men; you should have been sleeping
as I told you, so as to be ready for work to-night."
"Shure we don't go to-night, sergeant?"
"Who says that?" demanded Feeny, quickly, whirling upon his
subordinates. The corporal looked embarrassed and turned to Moreno for
support. Moreno, profoundly calm, was as profoundly oblivious.
"Moreno there," began Murphy, finding himself compelled to speak.
"I?" gravely, courteously protested the Mexican, with deprecatory
shrug of his shoulders and upward lift of eyebrow. "I? What know I? I
do but say the Corporal Donovan is not come. How know I you go not out
to-night?"
"Neither you nor the likes of you knows," was Feeny's stern retort.
"We go when we will and no questions asked. As for you, Murphy, you be
ready, and it's me you'll ask, not any outsider, when we go. I've had
enough to swear at to-day without you fellows playing off on me. Go or
no go--no liquor, mind you. The first man I catch drinking I'll tie by
the thumbs to the back of the ambulance, and he'll foot it to
Stoneman."
No words were wasted in remonstrance or reply. These were indeed "the
days of the empire" in Arizona,--days soon after the great war of the
rebellion, when men drank and swore and fought and gambled in the
rough life of their exile, but obeyed, and obeyed without question,
the officers appointed over them. These were the days when veteran
sergeants like Feeny--men who had served under St. George Cooke and
Sumner and Harney on the wide frontier before the war, who had ridden
with the starry guidons in many a wild, whirling charge under Sheridan
and Merritt and Custer in the valley of Virginia--held almost despotic
powers among the troopers who spent that enlistment in the isolation
of Arizona. Rare were the cases when they abused their privilege.
Stern was their rule, rude their speech, but by officers and men alike
they were trusted and respected. As for Feeny, there were not lacking
those who declared him spoiled. Twice that day had the paymaster been
on the point of rebuking his apparent indifference. Twice had he
withheld his censure, knowing, after all, Feeny to be in the right and
himself in the wrong. And now in the gathering shades of night, as he
stood in silence watching the brisk process of grooming, and noted how
thorough and business-like, even though sharp and stern, was Feeny,
the paymaster was wishing he had not ventured to disregard the caution
of so skilled a veteran.
And yet the paymaster, having a human heart in his breast, had been
sorely tried, for the appeal that came for help was one he could not
well resist. Passing Ceralvo's at midnight and pushing relentlessly
ahead instead of halting there as the men had hoped, the party was
challenged in the Mexican tongue.
"_Que viene?_"
To which unlooked-for and uncalled-for demand the leading trooper,
scorning Greaser interference in American territory, promptly
answered,--
"Go to hell!"
All the same he heard the click of lock and was prompt to draw his own
Colt, as did likewise the little squad riding ahead of the creaking
ambulance. The two leaders of the mules whirled instantly about and
became tangled up with the wheel team, and the paymaster was pitched
out of a dream into a doubled-up mass on the opposite seat. To his
startled questions the driver could only make reply that he didn't
know what was the matter; the sergeant had gone ahead to see.
Presently Feeny shouted "Forward!" and on they went again, and not
until Ceralvo's was a mile behind could the major learn the cause of
the detention. "Some of Ceralvo's people," answered Feeny, "damn their
impudence! They thought to stop us and turn us in there by stories of
Indian raids just below us,--three prospectors murdered twenty-four
miles this side of the Sonora line. Cochises's people never came this
far west of the Chiricahua Range. It's white cut-throats maybe, and
we'll need our whole command."
And yet in the glaring sunshine of that May morning, after they had
unsaddled at Moreno's, after the sergeant, wearied with the vigils of
two successive nights, had gone to sleep in the coolest shade he could
find, there came riding across the sun-baked, cactus-dotted plain at
the west a young man who had the features of the American and the
grave, courteous bearing of the Mexican.
"My name is Harvey," said he. "My sisters, who have been in San
Francisco at school, are with me on the way to visit our parents in
Tucson. Father was to have met us at the Bend with relays of mules. We
have waited forty-eight hours and can wait no longer. For God's sake
let half a dozen of your men ride out and escort them down here.
There is no doubt in the world the Apaches are in the mountains on
both sides, and I'm trembling for fear they've already found our camp.
None of my party dared make the ride, so I had to come."
What was Plummer to do? He didn't want to rouse the sergeant. This
wasn't going back to Ceralvo's, but riding northward to the rescue of
imperilled beauty. He simply couldn't refuse, especially when Donovan
and others were eager to go. From Mr. Harvey he learned that his
father had married into an old Spanish Mexican family at Havana, had
been induced by them to take charge of certain business in Matamoras,
and that long afterwards he had removed to Guaymas and thence to
Tucson. The children had been educated at San Francisco, and the
sisters, now seventeen and fifteen years of age respectively, were
soon to go to Cuba to visit relatives of their mother, but were
determined once more to see the quaint old home at Tucson before so
doing; hence this journey under his charge. The story seemed straight
enough. Plummer had never yet been to Tucson, but at Drum Barracks and
Wilmington he had often heard of the Harveys, and Donovan swore he
knew them all by sight, especially the old man. The matter was settled
before Plummer really knew whether to take the responsibility or not,
and the cavalry corporal with five men rode back into the fiery heat
of the Arizona day and was miles away towards the Gila before Feeny
awoke to a realizing sense of what had happened. Then he came out and
blasphemed. There in that wretched little green safe were locked up
thousands enough of dollars to tempt all the outlawry of the Occident
to any deed of desperation that might lead to the capture of the
booty, and with Donovan and his party away Feeny saw he had but half a
dozen men for defence.
At his interposition the major had at least done one thing,--warned
Moreno not to sell a drop of his fiery mescal to any one of the men;
and, when the Mexican expressed entire willingness to acquiesce,
Feeny's suspicions were redoubled, and he picked out Trooper Latham, a
New Englander whom some strange and untoward fate had led into the
ranks, and stationed him in the bullet-scarred bar-room of the ranch,
with strict orders to allow not a drop to be drawn or served to any
one without the sanction of Sergeant Feeny or his superior officer,
the major. Even the humiliation of this proceeding had in no wise
disturbed Moreno's suavity. "All I possess is at your feet," he had
said to the major, with Castilian grace and gravity; "take or withhold
it as you will."
"Infernal old hypocrite!" swore Feeny, between his strong, set teeth.
"I believe he'd like nothing better than to get the escort drunk and
turn us over bag and baggage to the Morales gang."
Thrice during the hot afternoon had Feeny scouted the premises and
striven to find what number and manner of men Moreno might have in
concealment there. Questioning was of little use. Moreno was ready to
answer to anything, and was never known to halt at a lie. Old Miguel,
the half-breed, who did odd jobs about the well and the corral,
expressed profound ignorance both of the situation and Feeny's
English. The Mexican boy had but one answer to all queries: "No
sa-a-abe." Other occupants there were, but these even Feeny's sense of
duty could not prompt him to disturb. Somewhere in the depths of the
domestic portion of the ranch, where the brush on the flat roof was
piled most heavily and the walls were jealously thick, all
scouting-parties or escorts well knew that Moreno's wife and daughter
were hidden from prying eyes, and rumor had it that often there were
more than two feminine occupants; that these were sometimes joined by
three or four others,--wives or sweethearts of outlawed men who rode
with Pasqual Morales, and all Arizona knew that Pasqual Morales had
little more Mexican blood in his veins than had Feeny himself. He was
an Americano, a cursed Gringo for whom long years ago the sheriffs of
California and Nevada had chased in vain, who had sought refuge and a
mate in Sonora, and whose swarthy features found no difficulty in
masquerading under a Mexican name when the language of love had made
him familiar with the Mexican tongue.
Slow to action, slow of speech as was the paymaster, he was not slow
to see that Sergeant Feeny was anxious and ill at ease, and if a
veteran trooper whom his captain had pronounced the coolest,
pluckiest, and most reliable man in the regiment, could be so
disturbed over the indications, it was high time to take precaution.
What was the threatened danger? Apaches? They would never assault the
ranch with its guard of soldiers, whatsoever they might do in the
cañons in the range beyond. Outlaws? They had not been heard of for
months. He had inquired into all this at Yuma, at the stage stations,
by mail of the commanding officers at Lowell and Bowie and Grant. Not
for six months had a stage been "held up" or a buck-board "jumped"
south of the turbid Gila. True, there was rumor of riot and
lawlessness among the miners at Castle Dome and the customary shooting
scrape at Ehrenberg and La Paz, but these were river towns, far behind
him now as he looked back over the desert trail and aloft into the
star-studded, cloudless sky. Nothing could be more placid, nothing
less prophetic of peril or ambush than this exquisite summer night.
Somewhere within the forbidden region of Moreno's harem a guitar was
beginning to tinkle softly. That was all very well, but then a woman's
voice, anything but soft, took up a strange, monotonous refrain. Line
after line, verse after verse it ran, harsh, changeless. He could not
distinguish the words,--he did not wish to; the music was bad enough
in all conscience, whatsoever it might become when sung by youth or
beauty. As it fell from the lips of Señora Moreno the air was a
succession of vocal nasal disharmonies, high-pitched, strident,
nerve-wracking.
[Illustration: Music]
Unable to listen after the third repetition, Plummer slowly retired
from the corral and once more appeared at the front, just in time for
a sensation. Two troopers, two of the men who had ridden back with
Donovan, came lurching into the lighted space before the main
entrance. At sight of the paymaster one of them stiffened up and with
preternatural gravity of mien executed the salute. The other, with an
envelope in his hand, reeled out of saddle, failed to catch his
balance, plunged heavily into the sand and lay there. Corporal Murphy
sprang eagerly forward, the first man to reach him, and turned the
prostrate trooper over on his back.
"What's the matter?" queried Plummer. "Is he sick?"
"Sick is it?" was the quick retort, as the corporal sniffed at the
tainted breath of the sufferer. "Be the powers! I only wish I had half
his disayse."
And then came Feeny, glaring, wrathful.
"Come down off the top of that horse, Mullan," he ordered, fiercely.
"How--how'd ye get here? Which way'd ye come? Where's the rest?"
With the ponderous dignity of inebriety, Mullan slowly pointed up the
desert under the spot where the pole-star glowed in the northern
skies.
"Sarsh'nt," he hiccoughed, "we're--we're too late; 'Paches got
there--first."
"Hwat! hwat!" thundered Feeny. "D'ye mean there _were_ women,--that it
wasn't a plant?"
"Fack."
"Hware's your despatches, you drunken lout? How dare you dhrink when
there was fight ahead? Hware's your despatches? and may heaven blast
the souls of you both!"
"Here, sergeant," said Murphy, wrenching the soiled envelope from the
loose grasp of the prostrate trooper.
"It's to you, sir," said Feeny, with one glance at the sprawling
superscription. "In God's name read and let us know what devil's
work's abroad to-night."
Even Plummer's pudgy fingers trembled as he tore open the dingy
packet. Old Moreno came forth with a light, his white teeth gleaming,
his black eyes flashing from one to another of the group. Holding the
pencilled page close to the lantern, the paymaster read aloud,--
"Camp burned. One man killed; others scattered; mules and
buck-board gone. For God's sake help in the pursuit. Strike
for Raton Pass. The Indians have run away my poor sisters.
"EDWARD HARVEY."
The major dropped the paper, fairly stunned with dismay. Feeny sprang
forward, picked it up, and eagerly scrutinized the page. Mullan,
standing unsteadily at the head of his wearied and dejected horse, was
looking on with glassy eyes, his lips vainly striving to frame further
particulars. Leaving their supper unfinished, the other men of the
little squad had come tumbling out into the summer night. No one paid
other heed to the trooper sprawling in the sand. Already in deep,
drunken slumber, he was breathing stertorously. Feeny's eyes seemed
fastened to the letter. Line by line, word by word, again and again he
spelled it through. Suddenly he leaped forward and clutched Mullan at
the throat, shaking him violently.
"Answer now. Hware'd you get your liquor? Didn't this fellow give it
to you?"
"On my honor--no, sarsh'nt, 'pon my 'on--"
"Oh, to hell with your honor and you with it! Hware'd you get it if it
wasn't from him? Shure you've not been near Ceralvo's?"
"No, sarsh'nt, no Ceralvo's. We met couple gen'l'men--perfec'
gen'l'men, ranchers; they were going after the Indians. They gave us
jus' o-one drink--'piece. Jus' five minutes--go."
"How far away was this? Hware were they? Answer or, damn you, I'll
shake the truth out of you!" shouted Feeny, suiting action to word.
"Spake before you, too, are lying like that other hog. Did you ever
see the camp? Did you ever get to the crossing at all? Douse a dipper
of water over him, you Latham, quick. Wake up, I say, Mullan. For the
love of God, major, I believe they're both drugged. I believe it's all
a damned lie. I believe it's only a skame to get you to send out the
rest of your escort, so they can tackle you alone. Kick him, Murphy,
kick him; throt him round; don't let him get to sleep. Answer me, you
scoundrel!" he fairly yelled, for Mullan's head was drooping on his
breast and every lurch promised to land him on his face. Twice his
knees doubled up like a foot-rule and the stout little sergeant had to
jerk him to his feet.
"Search 'em both. See if they've a flask betune 'em, Latham. Answer
me, Mullan, did you see the burned camp? Did you see the dead man?
Did--Oh, murther! he's gone! There's never a word to be got out of
aither of them this night. But don't you believe that letther, major.
Don't you trust a word of it; it's false as hell. It's only a plant to
rob ye of your escort first and your life and money later. That's it,
men, douse them, kick them, murther them both if you like,--the
curs!--and they'd drink when they knowed every man was needed." And
adding force to his words, Feeny drove a furious kick at the luckless
Mullan.
"Do you mean there is no truth in this? Do you mean you think it all a
fraud, a trick?" at last queried the major. "Why, it seems
incredible!"
"I say just what I mean, major. It's a plot to rob you. I mean the
gang has gathered for that very purpose. I mean that every story told
us about the Apaches west or south of here or between us and the Gila
is a bloody lie. The guard at the signal-station hadn't seen or heard
of them. They laughed at me when I told them what they tried to make
us believe at Ceralvo's. 'Twas there they wanted to have you stop, for
there you'd have no chance at all. Shure, do you suppose if the
Apaches _were_ out--if this story _was_ true--they wouldn't have heard
it and investigated it by this time, and the beacon-fire would have
been blazing at the Picacho?"
Then Murphy turned and ran around the corner of the corral to a point
where he could see the dim outline of the range against the western
sky. The next moment his voice rose upon the night air, vibrant,
thrilling,--
"Look! God be good to us, major! It's no lie. The signal-fire's
blazing at the peak."
II.
Late that night, with jaded steeds, a little troop of cavalry was
pushing westward across the desert. The young May moon was sinking to
rest, its pure pallid light shining faintly in contrast with the ruddy
glow of some distant beacon in the mountains beneath. Ever since
nightfall the rock buttress at the pass had been reflecting the lurid
glare of the leaping flames as, time and again, unseen but busy hands
heaped on fresh fuel and sent the sparks whirling in fiery eddies to
the sky. Languid and depressed after a long day's battling with the
fierce white sunshine, horses and men would gladly have spent the
early hours of night dozing at their rude bivouac in the Christobal.
Ever since nine in the morning, after a long night march, they had
sought such shade as the burning rocks might afford, scooping up the
tepid water from the natural tanks at the bottom of the cañon and
thanking Providence it was not alkali. The lieutenant commanding, a
tall, wiry, keen-faced young fellow, had made the rounds of his camp
at sunset, carefully picking up and scrutinizing the feet of his
horses and sending the farrier to tack on here and there a starting
shoe. Gaunt and sunburned were his short-coupled California chargers,
as were their tough-looking riders; fetlocks and beards were uniformly
ragged; shoes of leather and shoes of iron showed equal wear. A
bronze-faced sergeant, silently following his young chief, watched him
with inquiring eyes and waited for the decision that was to condemn
the command to another night march across the desert, or remand them
to rest until an hour or so before the dawn.
"How far did you say it was to Ceralvo's, sergeant?"
"About twenty-two miles, west."
"And to Moreno's?"
"About fifteen, sir; off here." And the sergeant pointed out across
the plain, lying like a dun-colored blanket far towards the southern
horizon.
"We can get barley and water at both?"
"Plenty, sir."
"The men would rather wait here, I suppose, until two or three
o'clock?"
"Very much, sir; they haven't been able to rest at all to-day. I've
fed out the last of the barley, though."
The lieutenant reflected a moment, pensively studying the legs of the
trumpeter's horse.
"Is there any chance of Moreno's people not having heard about the
Apaches in the Christobal?"
"Hardly, sir; they are nearer the Tucson road than we are. The stage
must have gone through this morning early. It's nothing new anyhow.
I've never known the time when the Indians were not in the
neighborhood of that range. Moreno, too, is an old hand, sir."
The lieutenant looked long and intently out over the dreary flats
beyond the foot-hills. Like the bottom of some prehistoric lake long
since sucked dry by the action of the sun, the parched earth stretched
away in mile after mile of monotonous, life-ridden desert, a Sahara
without sign of an oasis, a sandy barren shunned even by scorpion and
centipede. Already the glow was dying from the western sky. The red
rim of the distant range was purpling. The golden gleam that flashed
from rock to rock as the sun went down had vanished from all but the
loftiest summits, and deep, dark shadows were creeping slowly out
across the plain. Over the great expanse not so much as the faintest
spark could be seen. Aloft, the greater stars were beginning to peep
through the veil of pallid blue, while over the distant pass the sun's
fair hand-maiden and train-bearer, with slow, stately mien, was
sinking in the wake of her lord, as though following him to his rest.
Not a breath of air was astir. The night came on still as the realms
of solitude. Only the low chatter of the men, the occasional stamp of
iron-shod hoof or the munching jaws of the tired steeds broke in upon
the perfect silence. From their covert in the westward slope of the
Christobal the two sentries of the little command looked out upon a
lifeless world. Beneath them, whiffing their pipes after their frugal
supper, the troopers were chatting in low tone, some of them already
spreading their blankets among the shelving rocks. The embers from the
cook fire glowed a deeper red as the darkness gathered in the pass,
and every man seemed to start as though stung with sudden spur when
sharp, quick, and imperative there came the cry from the lips of the
farther sentry,--
"Fire, sir,--out to the west!"
In an instant Lieutenant Drummond had leaped down the rocky cañon and,
field-glass in hand, was standing by the sentry's side. No need to
question "Where away?" Far out across the intervening plain a column
of flame was darting upward, gaining force and volume with every
moment. The lieutenant never even paused to raise the glass to his
eyes. No magnifying power was needed to see the distant pyre; no
prolonged search to tell him what was meant. The troopers who had
sprung to their feet and were already eagerly following turned short
in their tracks at his first word.
"Saddle up, men. It's the beacon at Signal Peak."
Then came a scene of bustle. No words were spoken; no further orders
given. With the skill of long practice the men gathered their few
belongings, shook out the dingy horse-blankets and then, carefully
folding, laid them creaseless back of the gaunt withers of their
faithful mounts. The worn old saddles were deftly set, the crude
buckles of the old days, long since replaced by cincha loop, snapped
into place; lariats coiled and swung from the cantle-rings; dusty old
bits and bridles adjusted; then came the slipping into carbine-slings
and thimble-belts, the quick lacing of Indian moccasin or canvas
legging, the filling of canteens in the tepid tanks below, while all
the time the cooks and packers were flying about gathering up the pots
and pans and storing rations, bags, and blankets on the roomy
_apparejos_. Drummond was in the act of swinging into saddle when his
sergeant hastened up.
"Beg pardon, lieutenant, but shall I leave a small guard with the
pack-train or can they come right along?"
"They'll go with us, of course. We can't leave them here. We must head
for Ceralvo's at once. How could those Indians have got over that
way?"
"It is beyond me to say, sir. I didn't know they ever went west of the
Santa Maria."
"I can hardly believe it now, but there's no doubting that signal; it
is to call us thither at all speed wherever we may be, and means only
one thing,--'Apaches here.' Sergeant Wing is not the man to get
stampeded. Can they have jumped the stage, do you think, or attacked
some of Ceralvo's people?"
"Lord knows, sir. I don't see how they could have swung around there;
there's nothing to tempt them along that range until they get to the
pass itself. They must have come around south of Moreno's."
"I think not, sergeant."
The words were spoken in a very quiet voice. Drummond turned in
surprise, his foot in the stirrup, and looked at the speaker, a
keen-eyed trooper of middle age, whose hair was already sprinkled with
gray.
"Why not, Bland?"
"Because we have been along the range for nearly fifty miles below
here, sir, and haven't crossed a sign, and because I understand now
what I couldn't account for at two o'clock,--what I thought must be
imagination."
"What was that?"
"Smoke, sir, off towards the Gila, north of Ceralvo's, I should say,
just about north of west of where we are."
"Why didn't you report it?"
"You were asleep, sir, and by the time I got the glasses and looked it
had faded out entirely; but it's my belief the Indians are between us
and the river, or were over there north of Ceralvo's to-day. If not
Indians, who?"
"You ride with me, Bland. I'll talk with you further about this. Come
on with the men as soon as you have the packs ready, sergeant." And so
saying, Lieutenant Drummond mounted and rode slowly down the winding
trail among the boulders. At the foot of the slope, where the water
lay gleaming in its rocky bed, he reined his horse to the left to give
him his fill of the pool, and here the trooper addressed as Bland
presently joined him.
"Where was it you enlisted, Bland?" was the younger soldier's first
question. "I understand you are familiar with all this country."
"At Tucson, sir, six months ago, after the stage company discharged
me."
"I remember," was the answer, as the lieutenant gently drew rein to
lift his horse's head. "I think you were so frank as to give the
reason of your quitting their employment."
"Well, there was no sense trying to conceal it, or anything else a man
may do out here, lieutenant. They fired me for drinking too much at
the wrong time. The section boss said he couldn't help himself, and I
don't suppose he could."
"As I remember," said Drummond, presently, and with hesitation, for he
hated to pry into the past of a man who spoke so frankly and who made
no effort to conceal his weakness, "you were driver of the buck-board
the Morales gang held up last November over near the Catarinas."
"Yes; that's the time I got drunk, sir. It's all that saved me from
being killed, and between keeping sober and losing my life or getting
drunk and losing a job, I preferred the latter."
"Yet you were in a measure responsible for the safety of your
passengers and mail, were you not?"
"Well, no, sir, not after the warning I gave the company. I told them
Ramon Morales was in Tucson the night before we had to pull out, and
wherever he was that infernal cut-throat of a brother of his wasn't
far away. I told them it was taking chances to let Judge Gillette and
that infantry quartermaster try to go through without escort. I begged
to throw up the job that very night, but they held me to my contract,
and I had to go. We were jumped not ten miles out of town, and before
any one could draw a Derringer every man of us was covered. The judge
might have known they'd shoot him on sight ever since that Greaser
from Hermosillo was lynched. But they never harmed the quartermaster."
"Huh! The devil they didn't!" laughed the lieutenant. "They took his
watch and his money and everything he had on except his
underclothing. How long had you been driving when that happened?"
"Just eight months, sir, between Tucson and Grant."
"And did you never serve with the cavalry before? You ride as though
you had."
"Most men hereabouts served on one side or other," said Bland, calmly,
as his horse finished his long pull at the water.
"And your side was--?"
"Confederate," was the brief reply. "I was born in Texas. Here comes
the troop, sir."
"Come on, then. I want to ask you about that trail to Crittenden as we
ride. We make first for the Picacho Pass from here."
"Why, that's south of west, sir," answered Bland. "I had thought
perhaps the lieutenant would want to go northward towards the Gila to
head off any parties of the Apaches that might be striving to get away
eastward with their booty. They must have picked up something over at
the Bend."
"They're more likely to go southward, Bland, for they know where we've
been scouting all the week. No, I'll march straight to the signal.
There they must know where the Indians have gone."
"Ay, ay, sir, but then you can only pursue, and a stern chase is a
long one."
Drummond turned in saddle as they rode forth upon the dark _falda_
and gazed long and fixedly at the trooper by his side. Imperturbably
Bland continued to look straight ahead. Queer stories had been afloat
regarding this new acquisition. He mingled but little with the men. He
affected rather the society of the better class of non-commissioned
officers, an offence not likely to be condoned in a recruit. He was
already distinguished for his easy mastery of every detail of a
cavalryman's duty, and for his readiness to go at any or all times on
scout, escort, or patrol, and the more hazardous or lonely the task
the better he seemed to like it. Then he was helpful about the offices
in garrison, wrote a neat hand, was often pressed into service to aid
with the quartermaster or commissary papers, and had been offered
permanent daily duty as company clerk, but begged off, saying he loved
a horse and cavalry work too well to be mured in an office. He was
silence and reticence itself on matters affecting other people, but
the soul of frankness, apparently, where he was personally concerned.
Anybody was welcome to know his past, he said. He was raised in Texas;
had lived for years on the frontier; had been through Arizona with a
bull-team in the 50's, and had 'listed under the banner of the Lone
Star when Texas went the way of all the sisterhood of Southern (not
border) States, and then, being stranded after the war, had
"bullwhacked" again through New Mexico; had drifted again across the
Mimbres and down to the old Spanish-Mexican town of Tucson; had tried
prospecting, mail-riding, buck-board driving, gambling; had been one
of the sheriff's posse that cleaned out Sonora Bill's little band of
thugs and cut-throats, and had expressed entire willingness to
officiate as that lively outlaw's executioner in case of his capture.
He had twice been robbed while driving the stage across the divide and
had been left for dead in the Maricopa range, an episode which he said
was the primal cause of his dissipations later. Finally, after a
summary discharge he had come to the adjutant at Camp Lowell,
presented two or three certificates of good character and bravery in
the field from officers who bore famous names in the Southern army,
and the regimental recruiting officer thought he could put up with an
occasional drunk in a man who promised to make as good a trooper under
the stars and stripes as he had made under the stars and bars. And so
he was enlisted, and, to the surprise of everybody, hadn't taken a
drop since.
Now this, said the rank and file, was proof positive of something
radically wrong, either in his disposition or his record. It was
entirely comprehensible and fully in accordance with human nature and
the merits of the case that a man should quit drinking when he quit
the army, but that a man with the blot of an occasional spree on his
escutcheon should enlist for any other cause than sheer desperation,
and should then become a teetotaler, was nothing short of _prima
facie_ evidence of moral depravity.
"There's something behind it all, fellers," said Corporal Murphy, "and
I mean to keep an eye on him from this out. If he don't dhrink next
pay-day, look out for him. He's a professional gambler laying for your
hard-earned greenbacks."
And so while the seniors among the sergeants were becoming gradually
the associates, if not the intimates, of this fine-looking trooper,
the mass of the regiment, or rather the little detachment thereof
stationed at Lowell, looked upon Bland with the eye of suspicion.
There was one sergeant who repudiated him entirely, and who openly
professed his disbelief in Bland's account of himself, and that was
Feeny. "He may have testimonials from all Texas," said he, hotly, "but
I've no use for that sort of credentials. Who can vouch for his goings
and comings hereabouts before he joined us? I think Murphy's right,
and if I was stationed at Lowell and belonged to his troop, you bet
I'd watch him close."
Now, in all the command it would have been a hard matter to find a
soldier in whose favor appearances were so unanimously allied. Tall,
erect, sinewy, and active, he rode or walked with an easy grace that
none could fail to mark. His features were fine and clear cut; his
eyes a dark hazel, with heavy curling lashes and bushy, low-arched
brows; his complexion, naturally dark, was bronzed by sun and
sand-storm to a hue almost Mexican. He shaved clean all but the heavy
moustache that drooped over his firm lips, and the sprinkling of gray
about the brows, temples, and moustache was most becoming to his
peculiar style. One prominent mark had he which the descriptive book
of his company referred to simply as "sabre-scar on right jaw," but it
deserved mention more extended, for the whitish streak ran like a
groove from just below the ear-tip to the angle of the square,
resolute chin. It looked as though in some desperate fray a mad sweep
had been made with vengeful blade straight for the jugular, and, just
missing that, had laid open the jaw for full four inches. "But," said
Feeny, "what could he have been doing, and in what position could he
have been, sitting or standing, to get a sabre-stroke like that? Where
was his guard? A Bowie-knife, now ----" and there the suggestion ended.
But it was the scarred side of Bland's soldierly face that young
Lieutenant Drummond was so closely studying as they rode out into the
starlit Arizona night. He, too, had heard the camp chat about this
apparently frank, open-hearted trooper, and had found himself more
than once speculating as to his real past, not the past of his
imagination or of his easy off-hand description. By this time, in
perfect silence save for the occasional clink of canteen, the gurgle
of imprisoned water, or, once in a while, the click of iron-shod hoof,
the troop was marching in shadowy column of twos well out beyond the
_falda_ and over the almost dead level of the plain. Far ahead the
beacon still blazed brightly and beckoned them on. It was time for
precaution.
"Sergeant," said Drummond, "send a corporal and four men forward. Let
them spread out across the front and keep three or four hundred yards
ahead of us. Better take those with the freshest horses, as I want
them to scout thoroughly and to be on the alert for the faintest
sound. Any of our men who know this valley well?"
"None better than Bland here, sir," was the half-hesitant reply.
"W-e-l-l, I need Bland just now. Put some of the old hands and older
heads on, and don't let anything escape their notice."
"Beg pardon, lieutenant, but what's to be the line of direction? When
we started it was understood that we were to take the shortest cut for
Ceralvo's, and now we're heading for the Picatch."
"No, we make for the pass first; that's the quickest way to reach the
signal-station, then we learn where to strike for the Indians. Did
you ever hear of their being as far west as the Maricopa range
before?"
"Never, sir, in the whole time we've been here, and since the
lieutenant joined they've never been heard of crossing the Santa Maria
valley."
"What on earth could tempt them out so far? There's nothing to be
gained and every chance of being cut off by troops from Grant and
Bowie, even if they do succeed in slipping by us."
"That's more than I can tell, sir. The men say the paymaster's coming
along this week; they heard it from the quartermaster's train we
passed at the Cienega three days ago."
Trooper Bland was riding in silence on the left of the detachment
commander as he had been directed. The sergeant had come up on the
other flank.
"What men heard this?" asked Drummond, quickly.