uneasily and beginning to mutter blasphemy at his bonds.
"That fellow begged very hard to be moved down into that wolf-hole of
a place where the Mexican women are, lieutenant, with those two
bunged-up bandits to take care of. Nice time we'd have, sir, if the
three of them was able to move. The boys'd make short work of them
now, the way they're feeling. I went in and took a look at those two
fellows. One of 'em is a goner, sure, but they're dead game, both of
'em. Neither one has a word to say."
"No," answered Drummond, "they refused to give their names to
me,--said it was no earthly consequence what name we put over their
graves, the right set of fellows would be along after a while and do
them all the honor they cared for. How were the Moreno women
behaving?"
"The girl was asleep, I should judge, sir. The old hag was rocking to
and fro, crooning to herself until one of the two--the live one, I
should call him--hurled a curse at her in Spanish and told her to dry
up or he'd kill her. All a bluff, for he can't move a peg."
"Watch them well, Patterson, all the same. Hush!"
Again from within the deep shelter of the rocky cave came the low moan
of anguish,--
"Mother! mother! if you knew--"
"Here, Patterson, I can't stand this. I'm going in to him." And,
picking up the dim lantern which he had taken from the Harvey wagon,
Drummond stole in on tiptoe and knelt again beside his wounded
comrade.
"Wing! sergeant! Look up, man. Speak to me. You must be in distress,
mental or bodily. Do let me help you in some way."
For a moment no reply whatever. Wing's face was hidden. Then he looked
gently upward.
"Lieutenant, I'm ashamed to be giving you so much trouble. Please go
and lie down again, sir; you're worse hurt than I am,--only I suppose
I get to dozing off and then turn on that side."
"No, it isn't that, sergeant. There's something wrong, and it has all
come on you since yesterday morning. Where is your mother?"
Again Wing turned away, burying his face in his arms.
"Listen, sergeant; we hope to get you out of this by to-night. Dr.
Gray ought surely to reach us by that time, and while we may have to
keep up a field hospital here a day or two, my first duty will be to
write and tell your mother how bravely you have served us, and she
shall be told that you are wounded, but not in such a way as to alarm
her."
Out came a restraining hand.
"Lieutenant, she must not know at all."
"Well, she can't, so far as I'm concerned, as I don't know her
address. But think a moment; you know and I know--Hold on, wait!"
And Drummond rose and tiptoed to a cleft in the rock through which
shone a dim light; it was the entrance to the remote inner cave where
the Harvey girls were sleeping. Assured that his words could reach
there no listening ears, Drummond returned, kneeling again by the
sergeant's side. "Just think, man; any moment after daybreak the
Apaches may be upon us, and, who knows? it may be my last fight. Of
course I believe that our fellows can stand them off until rescue
comes, but a bullet may find me any moment, and then who is there to
report your conduct and secure the recognition due you, or, if the
doctor should be late in coming and fever set in and this wound prove
too much for your strength, is there nothing that ought to be said to
her for you?"
Again only painful silence. At last Wing spoke.
"I understand. I appreciate all you say. But I've got to think it
over, lieutenant. Give me an hour or so. Don't ask me to tell you
now."
"So be it, man. Now rest all you possibly can. It's almost day. The
crags are beginning to light up back of us here already. Yes, and the
sentry's calling me now. I'll be back by and by. What is it,
Patterson?" he whispered, going to the mouth of the cave.
"I've just come down from the tree up there, sir. You can see quite a
ways down the range now, though the light is dim, and what I take to
be a signal-fire leaped up not three miles below us, certainly this
side of where Wing was shot."
"So soon? All right, then get back to the post just as quick as you
can. I'll rouse the man who has slept longest. All must be astir in
half an hour, but you keep watch there."
And half an hour later it is that, field-glass in hand, the young
officer is there by Patterson's side, peering eastward almost into the
eye of the sun, searching with anxiety inexpressible for any sign of
dust-cloud rising along the trail on which they came, for the sight he
has seen down the range, now brilliant in the morning light, has
filled his heart with the first real dread it has yet known. In three
places, not more than four or five miles apart, down along the sunlit
side of this wild and picturesque mountain-chain, signal-smokes have
been puffing straight up skyward, the nearest only a couple of miles
from this lone picket post, but all on the same side of the valley.
Last evening the answer came from across the broad desert. They have
come over, therefore, and are hastening up the chain to join the eager
advance here so close to their hiding-place. Beyond a doubt watchful
spies are already lurking among those heights to the west, striving to
get close enough to peer into the rocky fortress and estimate the
strength of the garrison. Great they well know it cannot be, for did
not their keen eyes count nearly twenty chasing those hated brigands
far down towards Sonora Pass, and of that number how many have
returned?--only three. Did they not see the flurry and excitement when
that sergeant was shot from ambush? Now, therefore, is the time to
strike,--now while the main body is far away. Whatsoever booty there
may be obtainable in that rocky cañon 'tis well worth the attempt. And
so from north to south the puff-balls of blue-white smoke go sailing
upward through the pines, and it all means speed! speed!
At seven o'clock the little command has had coffee and a hearty
breakfast. No lack of provender here in this hitherto undiscovered
robbers' roost. Drummond, cool, confident, has had his men about him
where none others could see or hear, has assigned them the stations
which they are to take the instant of alarm, and has given them their
instructions. Walsh it is who is now on lookout, and he is peering
away down southward so intently that some comrade is prompted to call
up to him in a low tone,--
"See anything?"
To which, without removing the glass from under his hat-brim, the
Irish trooper merely shakes his head.
"Any more smokes?"
"Sorra a smoke have I seen at all."
"Well, then, what in blazes are you staring at?"
"How can I tell ye till I find out?" is the Hibernian reply, and this
is enough to send the corporal on a climb. Drummond at the moment is
again kneeling by Wing, who has but just awakened from a fitful sleep,
Miss Harvey being the first to hear him stir and sigh. Ruth and her
sister, too, seem about to withdraw, but Wing, whose voice is weak
now, begs them to remain.
"Has anything been seen yet--back on the trail--of the Stoneman
party?" he asks.
"No, sergeant," replies Drummond; "but remember that we can only see
some six miles of the trail, after that it is lost in that tortuous
ravine down which we rode on the chase. Walsh is up there on lookout,
and I'll ask if he can see anything now;" and calling to one of the
men, Drummond bids him inquire. All eagerly await the reply.
At last it comes,--
"No dust on the back track, sir, but something that looks like it far
to the south. We think it may be some of our fellows coming back, but
it is too faint and far to make it out yet."
The corporal is the speaker, his resonant voice contrasting strongly
with the feeble accents of his immediate superior, the wounded
sergeant.
"Then I have something that must be told you, lieutenant, something
Miss Harvey already has an inkling of, for she has met and known my
dear mother. If this pain continue to increase, and fever set in, I
may be unable to tell it later. Some of the men thought I had enlisted
under an alias, lieutenant, but they were wrong. Wing is my rightful
name. My father was chief officer of the old 'Flying Cloud' in the
days when American clipper ships beat the world. The gold fever seized
him, though, and he quit sailing and went to mining in the early days
of San Francisco, and there when I was a little boy of ten he died,
leaving mother with not many thousand dollars to take care of herself
and me. 'You will have your brother to help you' were words he spoke
the last day of his life, and even then I noted how little comfort
mother seemed to find in that fact. It was only a few months after
father's death that Uncle Fred, from being an occasional visitor, came
to living with us all the time, made his home there, though seldom
within doors night or day. He was several years younger than mother.
He was the youngest, it seems, of the family, 'the baby,' and had been
petted and spoiled from earliest infancy. I soon found why he came.
Mother was often in tears, Uncle Fred always begging or demanding
money. The boys at school twitted me about my gambler uncle, though
I've no doubt their fathers gambled as much as he. These were just
before the early days of the great war that sprang up in '61 and that
we boys out on the Pacific coast only vaguely understood. Sometimes
Uncle Fred came home drunk and I could hear him threatening poor
mother, and things went from bad to worse, and one night when I was
just thirteen I was awakened from sound sleep by her scream. In an
instant I flew to her room, catching up as I ran father's old
bowie-knife that always hung by my door. In the dim light I saw her
lying by the bedside, a man bending over and choking her. With all my
strength I slashed at him just as he turned. I meant to kill, but the
turn saved him. He sprang to his feet with an oath and cry and rushed
to the wash-stand. I had laid Uncle Fred's cheek open from ear to
chin.
"It was long before mother could check the flow of the blood. It
sobered him, of course, and made him piteously weak. For days after
that she nursed and cared for him, but forbade my entering the room.
Men came to see him,--insisted on seeing him,--and she would send me
to the bank for gold and pay their claims and bid them go. At last he
was able to walk out with that awful slash on his thin white face.
Once then he met and cursed me, but I did not mind, I had acted only
to save mother. How could I suppose that her assailant was her own
brother? Then finally with sobs and tears she told me the story, how
he had been their mother's darling, how wild and reckless was his
youth, how her mother's last thought seemed to be for him, and how on
her knees she, my own mother, promised to take care of poor Freddie
and shield him from every ill, and this promise she repeated to me,
bidding me help her keep it and to conceal as far as I could her
brother's misdeeds. For a few months things went a little better.
Uncle Fred got a commission in a California regiment towards the close
of the war and was sent down to Arizona. Then came more tears and
trouble. I couldn't understand it all then, but I do now. Uncle Fred
was gambling again, drawing on her for means to meet his losses. The
old home went under the hammer, and we moved down to San Diego, where
father had once invested and had left a little property. And then came
the news that Uncle Fred had been dismissed, all on account of drink
and gambling and misappropriation of funds. Miss Harvey knows all
about this, lieutenant, for mother told her and had reason to. And
next came forgery, and we were stranded. We heard that he had gone
after that with a wagon-train to Texas. I got employment on a ranch,
and then mother married again, married a man who had long befriended
us and who could give her a comfortable home. She is now Mrs. Malcomb
Bland, of San Francisco, and Mr. Bland offered to take me into his
store, but I loved the open air and independence. Mr. Bland and Mr.
Harvey had business relations, and when Uncle Fred was next heard from
he was 'starving to death,' he said, 'actually dying.' He wrote to
mother from Yuma. Mother wired me to go to him at once, and I did. He
was considerably out at elbows, but in no desperate need yet. Just
then Mr. Harvey offered him a good salary to take charge of his
freight-train. We all knew how that must have been brought about, and
I felt that it would only be a matter of time when he would rob his
new employer. He did; was discharged, but Mr. Bland made the amount
good, and the matter was hushed up. Then he drove stage awhile and
then disappeared. Mother has written me time and again to find him or
find out what has become of him, and I promised I would leave no stone
unturned. Tell her I have kept my word. Tell her I found him. But tell
her for God's sake to think no more of him. Tell her not to strive to
find him or to ask what he is or even where he is beyond that he has
gone to Sonora."
"Lieutenant," said Patterson, suddenly appearing at the opening,
"could you step here a moment?"
Drummond springs up.
"One moment, Mr. Drummond," whispers Wing, weakly; "I must say one
word to you--alone."
"I'll return in a minute, sergeant. Let me see what Patterson wants."
Miss Harvey and Ruth have risen; the former is very pale and evidently
trembling under some strong emotion. Once more she bends over him.
"Drink this, Mr. Wing, and now talk no more than you absolutely have
to."
Then renewing the cooling bandage on his forehead, her hands seem to
linger--surely her eyes do--as she rises once more to her feet.
Meantime the lieutenant has stepped out into the cañon.
"What is it, Patterson? quick!"
"That was some of our fellows, sir, a squad of four; but they turned
all of a sudden and galloped back out of sight. It looks to me as
though they were attacked."
"How far away were they? How many miles down the desert?"
"Oh, at least six or eight miles down, sir; down beyond where you met
them yesterday."
"How about our trail? Anybody in sight there?"
"Nobody, sir, not even a thing, not even a whiff of dust."
"Very well. Keep on the alert. It's good to know that all the Apaches
are not around us yet. Neither bullet nor arrow can get down here so
long as we man the rocks above. I'll be out in a moment."
Then once more he kneels by Wing.
"Lieutenant, did you ever see a girl behave with greater bravery? Do
you know what she has undergone?--Miss Harvey, I mean?"
"Both are behaving like heroines, Wing, and I think I am beginning to
see through this plot at last."
"Never let mother know it,--promise me, sir,--but when Harvey
discharged him--my uncle, I mean--he swore he'd be revenged on the old
man, and 'twas he----"
"The double-dyed villain! I know, I understand now, Wing; you needn't
tell me. He has been in the pay of the Morales gang for months. He
enlisted so as to learn all the movements of officers and
scouting-parties. He enlisted under his benefactor's name. He has
forged that, too, in all probability, and then, deserting, it was he
who sought to carry away these precious girls, and he came within an
ace of succeeding. By the Eternal, but there will be a day of
reckoning for him if ever 'C' troop runs foul of him again! No wonder
you couldn't sleep, poor fellow, for thinking of that mother. This
caps the climax of his scoundrelism. Where,--when did you see him
last?--since he enlisted?"
But now Wing's face is again averted. He is covering it with his arms.
"Wing, answer me!" exclaims Drummond, springing suddenly to his feet.
"By heaven, I demand to know!" Then down on his knees he goes again,
seizing and striving to pull away the nearest arm. "You need not try,
you cannot conceal it now. I see it all,--all. Miss Harvey," he cries,
looking up into the face of the trembling girl, who has hastened in at
sound of the excitement in his voice,--"Miss Harvey, think of it;
'twas no Apache who shot him, 'twas a worse savage,--his own uncle."
"Promise me mother shall not know," pleads poor Wing, striving to rise
upon his elbow, striving to restrain the lieutenant, who again has
started to his feet. "Promise me, Miss Fanny; you know how she loved
him, how she plead with you."
"I promise you this, Wing," says Drummond, through his clinching
teeth, "that there'll be no time for prayer if ever we set eyes on him
again; there'll be no mercy."
"You can't let your men kill him in cold blood, lieutenant. I could
not shoot him."
"No, but, by the God of heaven, I could!"
And now as Wing, exhausted, sinks back to his couch his head is caught
on Fanny Harvey's arm and next is pillowed in her lap.
"Hush!" she murmurs, bending down over him as mother might over
sleeping child. "Hush! you must not speak again. I know how her heart
is bound up in you, and I'm to play mother to you now."
And as Drummond, tingling all over with wrath and excitement, stands
spellbound for the moment, a light step comes to his side, a little
hand is laid on the bandaged arm, and Ruth Harvey's pretty face, two
big tears trickling down her cheeks, is looking up in his.
"You, too, will be ill, Mr. Drummond. Oh, why can't you go and lie
down and rest? What will we do if both of you are down at once with
fever?"
She is younger by over two years than her brave sister. Tall though
she has grown, Ruth is but a child, and now in all her excitement and
anxiety, worn out with the long strain, she begins to cry. She strives
to hide it, strives to control the weakness, and, failing in both,
strives to turn away. All to no purpose. An arm in a sling is of
little avail at such a moment. Whirling quickly about, Drummond brings
his other into action. Before the weeping little maid is well aware
what is happening her waist is encircled by the strong arm in the
dark-blue sleeve, and how can she see that she is drawn to his breast,
since now her face is buried in both her hands and those hands in the
flannel of his hunting-shirt,--just as high as his heart? Small wonder
is it that Corporal Costigan, hurrying in at the mouth of the cave,
stops short at sight of this picturesque _partie carrée_. Any other
time he would have sense enough to face about and tiptoe whence he
came, but now there's no room left for sentiment. _Tableaux-vivants_
are lovely in their way, even in a cave lighted dimly by a
hurricane-lamp, but sterner scenes are on the curtain. Drummond's
voice is murmuring soothing, yes, caressing words to his sobbing
captive. Drummond's bearded lips, unrebuked, are actually pressing a
kiss upon that childish brow when Costigan, with a preliminary
clearing of his throat that sounds like a landslide and makes the rock
walls ring again, startles Ruth from her blissful woe and brings
Drummond leaping to the mouth of the cave.
"Lieutenant, there's something coming out over our trail."
"Thank God!" sighs Wing, as he raises his eyes to those of his fair
nurse. "Thank God! for your sakes!"
"Thank God, Ruth!" cries Fanny, extending one hand to her sister while
the other is unaccountably detained. "Thank God! it's father and the
Stoneman party and Doctor Gray."
And Ruth, throwing herself upon her knees by her sister's side, buries
her head upon her shoulder and sobs anew for very joy.
And then comes sudden start. All in an instant there rings, echoing
down the cañon, the sharp, spiteful crack of rifles, answered by
shrieks of terror from the cave where lie the Moreno women, and by
other shots out along the range. Three faces blanch with sudden fear,
though Wing looks instantly up to say,--
"They can't harm you, and our men will be here in less than no time."
Out in the gorge men are springing to their feet and seizing their
ready arms; horses are snorting and stamping; mules braying in wild
terror. Two of the ambulance mules, breaking loose from their
fastenings, come charging down the resounding rock, nearly
annihilating Moreno, who, bound and helpless, praying and cursing by
turns, has rolled himself out of his nook and lies squarely in the way
of everything and everybody. But above all the clamor, the ring of
carbine, the hiss and spat of lead flattening upon the rocks,
Drummond's voice is heard clear and commanding, serene and confident.
"Every man to his post now. Remember your orders."
Gazing out into the cañon with dilated eyes, Ruth sees him nimbly
clamber up the opposite side towards the point where Walsh is kneeling
behind a rock,--Walsh with his Irish mug expanded in a grin of
delight, the smoke just drifting from the muzzle of his carbine as he
points with his left hand somewhere out along the cliffs. She sees her
soldier boy, crouching low, draw himself to Walsh's side, sees him
glancing eagerly over the rocks, then signalling to some one on their
own side, pointing here and there along the wooded slope beyond her
vision; sees him now, with fierce light in his eyes, suddenly clutch
Walsh's sleeve and nod towards some invisible object to the south;
sees Walsh toss the butt of his carbine to the shoulder and with quick
aim send a bullet driving thither; sees Drummond take the field-glass
and, resting it on the eastward ledge, gaze long and fixedly out over
the eastward way; sees him start, draw back the glass, wipe the lenses
with his silken kerchief, then peer again; sees him drop them with a
gesture almost tragic, but she cannot hear the moan that rises to his
lips.
"My God! those are Apaches, too."
XI.
Ten o'clock on a blazing Arizona morning. The hot sun is pouring down
upon the jagged front of a range of heights where occasional clumps of
pine and cedar, scrub oak and juniper, seemed the only vegetable
products hardy enough to withstand the alternations of intense heat by
day and moderate cold by night, or to find sufficient sustenance to
eke out a living on so barren a soil. Out to the eastward, stretching
away to an opposite range, lies a sandy desert dotted at wide
intervals with little black bunches of "scrub mezquite" and blessed
with only one redeeming patch of foliage, the copse of willows and
cottonwood here at the mouth of a rock-ribbed defile where a little
brook, rising heaven knows how or where among the heights to the west,
comes frothing and tumbling down through the windings of the gorge
only to bury itself in the burning sands beyond the shade. So narrow
and tortuous is the cañon, so precipitous its sides, as to prove
conclusively that by no slow process, but by some sudden spasm of
nature, was it rent in the face of the range. And here in its depths,
just around one of the sharpest bends, honey-combed out of the solid
rock are half a dozen deep lateral fissures and caves where the
sunbeams never penetrate, where the air is reasonably cool and still,
where on this scorching May morning, far away from home and relatives,
two young girls are sheltered by the natural roofs and walls against
the fiery sunshine and by a little band of resolute men against the
fury of the Apaches.