horse is fresh, gallop back on the trail. Tell Sergeant Meinecke to
come ahead for all he's worth. Let the packs take care of themselves.
Send Sergeant Lee in here to me again." Then with trembling hands the
young officer turned his attention to his other patients. Severing
the cords with his hunting-knife, he freed them from their bonds, then
dashed water over their scorched and blackened faces, meantime keeping
up a running fire of questions. Between his sobs, the young civilian
told him that the outlaws had hitched in both teams and taken also the
spare mules and the buck-board. They had lifted the Harvey girls into
the Concord, the safe and Pasqual Morales into the paymaster's
ambulance, while the wounded men and Moreno's people probably were put
on the open wagon. Then they had all driven furiously away to the
south, leaving only two or three men to complete the work at the
ranch. Finding the paymaster and sergeant well-nigh dead, they had
contented themselves with binding and leaving them to their fate, to
be cremated when the roof of the shed came down. Then one of the gang
whom he had once befriended in Tucson pleaded with his fellows to
spare the life of the only one of the party left to tell the tale.
Pasqual and the Mexicans were gone. Those who remained were Americans,
judging by their speech, though two of them were still masked. "My
name is Woods," said the poor fellow. "But that bandit had to beg
hard. They were ready to murder anybody connected with the defence,
for Ramon was killed and Pasqual shot through the leg. I did that,
though they didn't know it. They bound and left me here, but made me
swear I would tell Harvey and his friends when they got back that it
was no use following; they had thirty armed men and three hours'
start. They never thought of any one else getting here first. Oh, my
God! who can break it to Mr. Harvey when he does come?"
And then Sergeant Lee came hurrying back, one or two men with him, and
together they labored to restore to consciousness the paymaster,
breathing feebly, and old Feeny, bleeding from a gash in the back of
the skull and a bullet-hole through the body. For nearly quarter of an
hour their efforts were vain. Meantime Drummond, well-nigh mad over
the delay, was pacing about like a caged tiger. He set two of the men
to work to hitch the bewildered little burros to the well-wheel and
get up several huge bucketfuls of water against the coming of the
troop. He ordered others to rub down his handsome sorrel, Chester, and
the mounts of two of the advanced party. At last after what must have
seemed an age, yet could not have been over thirty minutes from the
time of their arrival, a soldier running in, said he could hear hoofs
out on the plain, and at the same instant two men appeared lugging
between them, bleeding and senseless, the ragged form of Edward
Harvey.
Scratched, torn, covered with blood and bruises, and still unconscious
though he was, Drummond knew him at a glance. They had met the
previous year, and though only once it was enough. Men with young and
lovely sisters are not soon forgotten. Kneeling by his side, the
lieutenant sought anxiously for trace of blade or bullet. Rents there
were many and many a bloody scratch and tear, but, to his infinite
relief, no serious wound appeared. Still in deep swoon, his friend
seemed to resist every effort for his restoration. The dash of water
in his face was answered only by a faint shivering sigh. The
thimbleful of whiskey forced between his lips only gurgled down his
throat, and Drummond felt no responsive flutter of pulse. The shock to
his system must indeed have been great, for Harvey lay like one in a
trance. Drummond feared that he might never again open his eyes to
light and home.
And then the weary troop came trotting into view, old Sergeant
Meinecke in command. Halting and dismounting at his signal, the men
stood silent and wondering at their horses' heads, while their leader
went in to report to his commander. Drummond barely lifted his eyes
from the pallid features before him.
"Unsaddle, sergeant; rub down; pick out the best and likeliest horses.
I want twenty men to go on a chase with me. How soon can the packs get
up?"
"They must be fully half an hour behind, sir."
"Sorry for that, sergeant. We've got to take at least four of them;
load them up with barley, bacon, hardtack, ammunition. Kick off
everything else. We'll feed and water here before starting, then we've
got to ride like the devil. Send Trooper Bland here as soon as he has
unsaddled. I want him to ride with me. He knows all the roads to the
south."
Meinecke saluted in his methodical German fashion, turned away, and
presently could be heard ordering "Unsaddle" and then shouting for
Private Bland.
"Are there any of our men besides the farrier who have any knowledge
of surgery?" asked the lieutenant of Sergeant Lee.
"They say Bland has, sir. I don't know any one else."
"Well, I've just sent for him. Mr. Harvey here doesn't seem to be
wounded, yet it's impossible to bring him to. Give Woods a little more
whiskey and see if you can get a word out of the major or Feeny."
But efforts with the half-suffocated men had no effect. The whiskey
with Woods had better results. He presently ceased his shivering sobs
and could answer more questions. Drummond begged for particulars of
the capture, and these the man found it difficult to give. He was
stationed at the back door, the corral side, he said, and hardly saw
the final rush. But there was something so queer about it. There had
been a few minutes' lull. Then Harvey and Feeny both began to talk
excitedly and to call out that the "road agents" were running away,
and then presently there came sound of galloping hoofs and cheering,
and both the sergeant and Mr. Harvey had shouted that the troops were
coming and rushed out to meet them,--"And the next thing I knew," said
Woods, "was seeing Feeny flattened out on the ground and crawling on
his hands and knees and the room filled with roughs, some Mexicans,
some Yanks, and I slipped into the corral and saw one of them shoot
Feeny as he was trying to crawl after me; and while they were swearing
and searching for the safe and carrying it out, Mr. Dawes and Mullan
managed, somehow, to help the paymaster out, and then went in after
the other man." Then Woods could tell little more. One thing, he said,
amazed and excited him so he couldn't believe his eyes, but he was
almost ready to swear that the fellow Feeny ran to shake hands with
was a soldier in uniform, and that he held Feeny's hand while another
man came up behind and "mashed" him with the butt of his pistol, and
that this fellow in soldier clothes was the man who afterwards shot
Feeny as he was trying to crawl away.
Drummond looked around at the man incredulous,--almost derisive. The
story was improbable, too much so to deserve even faint attention.
Just then Meinecke came back and, precise as ever, stood attention
and saluted.
"Herr Lieutenant, Private Bland is not with my party at all, sir."
"Did you leave him back with the packs?"
"No, sir; the men say he wasn't with us all night. He rode ahead with
the lieutenant until we came to Corporal Donovan's body."
"He's not been with me since," exclaimed the lieutenant. "Sergeant
Lee, ask if any of the men have seen him."
Lee was gone but a moment, then came back with grave face and troubled
eyes, bringing with him a young trooper who was serving his first
enlistment.
"Private Goss, here, has a queer story to tell, sir."
"What do you know? What have you seen?" asked Drummond.
"Why, sir, right after Sergeant Lee caught sight of the fire and sung
out that it was Moreno's I was back about a couple of rods looking for
my canteen. I was that startled when they found Corporal Donovan dead
that I dropped it, and all of a sudden somebody comes out past me
leading his horse, and I asked him what he had lost, and he said his
pipe, and passed me by, and I thought nothing more about it,--only no
sooner did he get out into the dark where I couldn't see him than I
heard all of a sudden a horse start at full gallop right over in this
direction, and now I think of it it must have been Bland, for it was
him that passed me, sir,--sneaking out like."
Drummond sprang to his feet.
"What say you to this, sergeant? Do you believe,--do you think it
possible that Bland has deserted and joined these outlaws?"
"I don't know what to think, sir, but I haven't forgotten what Feeny
said of him."
"What was that?"
"That he had too smooth a tongue to have led a rough and honest life;
that if he was a Texan as he claimed, Texas people had learned to talk
a different lingo since he was stationed among them with the old
Second Cavalry before the war, and that he wished he'd been there at
Lowell when the adjutant accepted those letters from former officers
of the regiment as genuine. Bland would never show them to Feeny. Said
he had sent 'em all to his home in Texas. That was what made bad blood
between them."
"By heaven! and now to think that one of our troop--'C' troop--should
have been engaged in this outrage! But we'll get them, men," said
Drummond, straightening up to his full height and raising his
gauntleted hand in air. "They can't go fast or far with those wagons
such a night as this. They'll strike the foot-hills before they've
gone ten miles, then they'll have to go slow. We'll catch them before
the sun is up, and, by the God of heaven, if Bland is with them, I'll
string him to the highest tree we can find."
"There's more than him that'll be strung up," growled a grizzled old
trooper in an undertone. "The gang that murdered Pat Donovan will find
scant mercy in this crowd."
"Ay, ay," said another, "and there's more than Pat Donovan to be
scored off. Look yonder." For at the instant one of the packers came
leading into the corral a resisting mule, at sight of whose burden
many of the horses started in fear. It was the lifeless body of
Donovan's companion, the soldier who had escaped the assassin's bullet
when "Patsy" fell only to be overtaken and cut down half-way to
Moreno's.
"It's the bloodiest night I've known even in Arizona," said Lee to his
young leader. "The paymaster and Mr. Harvey about as good as dead, old
Feeny dying, most like, the clerk and Mullan and some other trooper of
the escort burned to ashes in that hell-hole there, and Donovan and
this last one--some of our fellows think is Flynn, from 'F'
troop--shot to death. It's worse than Apache, lieutenant, and there'll
be no use trying to restrain our fellows when we catch the
blackguards."
Quarter of an hour later, leaving half a dozen soldiers under an
experienced sergeant to guard the packs, the wounded, and the
non-combatants at the smouldering ruins of the ranch, with barely a
score of seasoned troopers at his back, Lieutenant Jim Drummond rode
resolutely out towards the southern desert, towards the distant line
of jagged mountains that spanned the far horizon. The false and fatal
blaze at the Picacho had utterly disappeared, and all was darkness at
the west. The red glow of the smouldering embers behind was no longer
sufficient to light their path. Straight away southward led the
wheel-tracks, first separate and distinct, but soon blending, as
though one wagon had fallen behind and followed the trail of the
bolder leader in the first. Straight away after them went the ruck of
hoof-tracks, telling plainly that for a time at least the gang had
massed and was prepared to guard its plunder. Stop to divide it was
evident they dared not, for they had not with them the implements to
break into the safe, and all their searching and threatening had
failed to extract from the apparently dying paymaster any clue as to
what he had done with the key. Stick together, therefore, they
undoubtedly would, reasoned the lieutenant, and all their effort would
be to reach some secure haunt in the Sierras, and there send back
their demand for ransom. Twenty-five thousand dollars in cash and
George Harvey's precious daughters! It was indeed a rich haul,--one
that in all the dread history of the Morales gang had never been
equalled. Even had they failed to secure the safe the richer booty was
theirs in having seized the girls. But few people in Arizona--as
Arizona then was constituted--would make great effort to overhaul a
gang of robbers whose only victim was Uncle Sam and "his liveried
hirelings." Nobody in Sonora would fail to regard them with envious
eyes; but in the deed of rapine that made them the captors and
possessors of those defenceless sisters each man had put a price upon
his head, a halter round his neck, for "Gringo" and "Greaser,"
American and Mexican alike, would spring to arms to rescue and avenge.
As the rearmost of the little party of pursuers disappeared in the
darkness and the wearied pack-mules went jogging sullenly after, urged
on by the goad of their half-Mexican driver, the sergeant left in
charge of the detachment at the corral looked at his watch and noted
that it was just half-past two o'clock. The dawn would be creeping on
at four.
Wearied as were his men he did not permit them all to rest. The
condition of his wounded and the instructions left him by Lieutenant
Drummond made it necessary that they should have constant attention.
It was sore trouble for him to look at the old paymaster, whose life
seemed ebbing away, lying there so pallid and moaning at times so
pitifully, but Feeny lay torpid, breathing, yet seeming to suffer not
at all. Both were in desperate need of surgical attendance, but where
could surgeon be found? The nearest was at Stoneman, the little
cantonment across the Christobal, thirty miles to the east; and though
a gallant fellow had volunteered to make the ride alone through the
Apache-infested pass and carry the despatch that Drummond had
hurriedly pencilled, there was no possibility of doctors reaching them
before the coming night, and the thought of all they might have to
suffer through the fierce white heat of the intervening day was one
that gave the sergeant deep concern. Then, too, who could say whether
the solitary trooper would succeed in running the gauntlet and making
his way through? He was a resolute old frontiersman, skilled in Indian
warfare, and well aware that his best chance was in the dark, but
speed as he might the broad light of day would be on him long before
he could get half-way through the range. The stage from the west would
probably come along about sunset, but nothing could be hoped for
sooner. No troops were nearer than the Colorado in that direction
except the little signal-post at the Picacho. Corporal Fox and two men
had been sent thither to inquire what the signal meant, and it would
soon be time for them to come riding in with their report. How he
wished Wing were here! Wing knew something about everything. He was
an expert veterinarian, something of a doctor, knew more of mineralogy
than all the officers put together, and could speak Spanish better
than any man in the regiment. When it became necessary to have a
signal-station at the peak and it was found that no one knew anything
about the business, Wing got one of the old red manuals, studied the
system, and inside of a week was signalling with the expert sent down
from San Francisco.
The interior of the ranch was still a smouldering furnace as four
o'clock drew nigh. Woods, weak and exhausted, had fallen into an
uneasy sleep. The trooper detailed to watch over old Plummer and Feeny
and bathe their faces with cool water was nodding over his charge.
Here and there under the shed on the north side which the flames had
not reached the men were dozing, or in low, awe-stricken tones,
talking of the tragic events of the night. Near the east gate,
reverently and decently covered with the only shroud to be had, the
newest of the saddle-blankets, lay the stiffening remains of poor
Donovan and his comrade. Lurking about the westward end of the
enclosure, their beady eyes every now and then glittering in the
fire-light, the Mexicans, men and boy, were smoking their everlasting
_papellitos_, apparently indifferent to the fate that had deprived
them of home and occupation. One of the troopers had burrowed a hole
in the sand, started a little cook fire, and was boiling some coffee
in a tin quart mug. Overhead and far down to the horizon, on every
side the stars shone and sparkled through the vaporless skies.
Eastward towards the Christobal they were just beginning to pale when
a faint voice was heard pleading for water. Sergeant Butler sprang
from his seat and hastened to where he had left Mr. Harvey but a few
minutes before, still in deep and obstinate swoon.
"Water is it, sir? Here you are! I'm glad to see you picking up a
little. Mr. Drummond left this for you, too, sir. He said you would
maybe need it." And the sergeant raised the dizzy head and held a
little flask to Harvey's lips.
"Where is he?" at last the sufferer was able to gasp.
"Overhauling the outlaws, hand over fist, by this time, sir. He has
twenty good men at his back, and we'll have the ladies safe
to-night,--see if we don't."
"Oh, God!" groaned the stricken brother, burying his face in his arms
as the recollection of the fearful events of the night came crowding
upon him. For a moment he seemed to quiver and tremble in every limb,
then with sudden effort raised his head and turned again, the blood
trickling anew from a gash in his face as he did so.
"Give me more of that," he moaned, stretching forth a trembling hand.
"More water, too. Lend me a horse and your carbine. I must go! I
_must_ go!" But there his strength failed him, and grasping wildly at
empty air, poor Harvey fell heavily back before the sergeant could
interpose an arm to save.
"Don't think of it, sir; you're far too weak, and you're not needed.
Never fear, the lieutenant and 'C' troop will do all that men can do.
They'll bring the ladies safely back as soon as they've hung what's
left of that murdering gang.--Hello! That you, Fox?" he shouted,
springing up as two or three horsemen came spurring in.
"It's I,--Wing," was the answer in ringing tones. "Fox is coming
slower. Quick now. Is it so that that gang has run off the young
ladies?"
"It's God's truth. Here's Mr. Ned Harvey himself."
In an instant Wing was kneeling by the side of the prostrate man.
"Merciful heaven, my friend, but they've used you fearfully! They only
bound and held me till Jackson got back from Ceralvo's a couple of
hours ago. Are you shot,--injured?"
"No, no," groaned Harvey. "But I am broken, utterly broken, and my
sisters are in the hands of those hounds."
"Never worry about that, man. I know young Drummond well. There isn't
a braver, better officer in the old regiment if he is but a boy. He'll
never drop that trail till he overtakes them, and by the time he needs
us, old Pike here and I will be at his side. Thank the Lord, those
louts were frightened off and never took our horses. They're fresh as
daisies both of 'em. Cheer up, Mr. Harvey. If hard riding and hard
fighting will do it, we'll have your sisters here to nurse you before
another night.--Come, Pike," he cried, as he vaulted into saddle. "Now
for the liveliest gallop of your lazy, good-for-nothing life. Come
on!"
VII.
A new May morning was breaking, its faint rosy light warming the
crests of the Santa Maria, when Lieutenant Drummond signalled "halt"
to his little band, the first halt since leaving Moreno's at half-past
two. Down in a rocky cañon a number of hoof-prints on the trail
diverged to the left and followed an abrupt descent, while the wagons
had kept to the right, and by a winding and more gradual road seemed
to have sought a crossing farther to the west. It was easy to divine
that, with such elements in the gang, there had been no long
separation between the horsemen and the treasure they were guarding,
and, eager as he was to overtake the renegades, Drummond promptly
decided to follow the hoof-tracks, rightly conjecturing, too, that
they would bring him to water in the rocky tanks below. Dismounting
and leading his big sorrel, he sprang lightly from ledge to ledge down
what seemed a mere goat-trail, each man in succession dismounting at
the same point, and, with more or less elasticity, coming on in the
footsteps of his leader. The faint wan light of early dawn was
rendering neighboring objects visible on the sandy plain behind them,
but had not yet penetrated into the depths of the gorge. Lying far to
the west of the Tucson road, this was a section of the country unknown
to any of the troop, and with every prospect of a broiling ride across
the desert ahead so soon as the sun was up, no chance for watering
their horses could be thrown away. Just as he expected, Drummond found
the descent becoming more gradual, and in a moment or two the bottom
of the dark rift was found, and presently, keeping keen lookout for
the reflection of the stars still lingering overhead, the leading men
were rewarded, and halted at the edge of a shining pool of clear,
though not very cool, water, and the horses thrust their hot muzzles
deep into the wave. Here, shaded by the broad-brimmed hats of white
felt, such as the Arizona trooper of the old days generally affected,
a match or two was struck and the neighborhood searched for "sign."
The rocks around the tank were dry, the little drifts of sand blown
down from the overhanging height were smooth. Whatsoever splashing had
been done by the horses of the outlaws there had been abundant time
for it to evaporate, therefore the command could not thus far have
gained very rapidly on the pursued. But Drummond felt no
discouragement. Up to this point the way had been smooth and
sufficiently hard to make wheeling an easy matter. The wagons had
been lugged along at brisk trot, the attending cavaliers riding at
lively lope. Now, however, there would be no likelihood of their
making such time. The ambulance could only go at slow walk the rest of
the way, and the guards must remain alongside to protect the stolen
funds, not so much from envious outsiders as from one another. Pasqual
Morales showed his accustomed shrewdness when he forbade that any one
should try to burst into the safe and extract the money, for well he
knew that if divided among the men there would be no longer a
loadstone to hold them together, to call for their fiercest fighting
powers if assailed. The instant the money was scattered the gang would
follow suit, and he be left to meet the cavalry single-handed.
The horses of the little detachment were not long in slaking their
thirst. The noiseless signal to mount was given, and, following in the
lead of their young lieutenant, the troopers rode silently down the
winding cañon, Drummond and Sergeant Lee bending low over their
chargers' necks to see that they did not miss the hoof-prints. Little
by little the light of dawn began to penetrate the dark depths in
which they were scouting, and trailing became an easier matter.
Presently the sergeant pointed to the face of the opposite slope, now
visible from base to summit where an abrupt bend threw it against the
eastern light.
"Yonder's where the ambulance came down, sir."
"I see, and we can't be far from where it crossed. Trot ahead and take
a look. Let Patterson go with you. If you find a chance for
short-cuts, signal."