The day that broke on old Fort Worth thus late in a sunshiny May proved
one of deep anxiety. There was no telegraph wire then to connect it with
the distant head-quarters of the department. If there had been it would
have been cut six times a week. There was no way of waving back the
coming convoy or of signalling danger. Crockett Springs lay a long day's
ride to the southeast, and the little troop of cavalry there in camp was
looking for the coming of no call upon it for duty until early on the
morrow it should supply the paymaster and his party with breakfast, the
ambulance with fresh mules and driver, and the night riders of the
escort with their relief. Forty troopers from Crockett Springs would
take the place of those who had come from the San Saba, and trot along
with the paymaster until, somewhere about midway to Worth, they should
meet the forty sent out the previous night to bivouac on the prairie and
be ready to take up the gait and keep it until the man of money and his
safe were well within the limits of the reservation. But the fifty-mile
stage from Crockett to the southeast was the worst on the long line.
The road wound over the divide to the valley of the San Saba, and on the
way had to twist and turn through defiles of the range of hills, where
more than a dozen times Indians and outlaws had defied the little
detachments of cavalry scouting after them. The worst part of the pass
lay some twenty miles beyond the stage station at Crockett Springs.
Neither Indians nor outlaws, to be sure, had been heard of in that
neighborhood for several months, but that proved nothing. It was easy
for the latter to sweep from their supposed fastnesses in the Apache
range to the west, and, issuing from the Wild Rose Pass, to water miles
below the springs and then line the rocks in the heart of the San Saba
Pass, without a trooper being the wiser. Forty cavalrymen, as Lawrence
knew, would be the major's escort from the camp on the Rio San Saba
beyond the range. Forty men disciplined and organized ought ordinarily
to be able to cope with any band of outlaws to be found in Texas. But
when, as was now reasonably certain, this far-famed Friday gang had
received accessions from the troops themselves and had welcomed the
deserters and desperadoes so frequently sloughed off from the soldier
skin of Uncle Sam in the days close following the great war, there was
grave reason for precaution, and graver still for anxiety. Question as
he might, Frazier could not shake an atom of the original statement of
Fuller's men. Fifty mounted outlaws, at least count, with a dozen led
horses, they had seen through their field-glass far over the prairie,
pushing southeastward from the direction of Wild Rose Pass of the Apache
range, straight for the lower valley through which ran the little stream
that had its source at Crockett Springs.
So there were anxious hearts at Worth, for, while it was felt that
Brooks would lose no moment and was well on his way at four o'clock of
this bright Sunday morning, he had still some sixty miles to traverse
before he could get to Crockett, rest and bait his men and horses, pick
up Cramer's troop there camped, and then push ahead for the San Saba,
where he expected to find the outlaw gang disposed in ambuscade,
confidently awaiting the coming of their prey.
Now, Brooks had men enough to thrash them soundly, but unless he caught
them in the act of spoliation he lacked authority. Just as sure as he
pitched into a force of armed frontiersmen, they would appeal to the
courts, and public sentiment would be dead against him. He could
doubtless push ahead through the range, careless of lurking scouts of
the would-be robbers, meet Major Pennywise and his protectors, and
escort them back in safety. That problem presented no great difficulty;
but what Frazier wanted and Brooks wanted and everybody, presumably,
wanted was that the outlaws should be caught in the act and be punished
then and there. The question was how to catch them in the act without
being themselves discovered, and before the gang had had time to inflict
much damage on the paymaster's party. There was the rub. "Why, their
first volley, delivered from ambush, might kill half the outfit and the
paymaster too," said Frazier. "No, we dare not risk it, Brooks. Push
through and pull him through, that's the best we can do--unless," and
here came the redeeming clause, "unless on the way you should light on
some unforeseen chance. Then--use your discretion."
Mounted on the very horse he used to ride as troop commander, and with
the old familiar horse-equipments, Ned Lawrence left the post at the
major's side. He had slept as only soldiers can, curled up in the
stage-coach, during the previous afternoon, and was in far better trim
for the long ride in saddle than Captain Mullane, who with bleary eyes
and muddled head rode _solus_ in front of the leading troop, his one
lieutenant, Mr. Bralligan, being reported by Dr. Collabone's assistant
as sick in quarters, which indeed he was, with a lump the size of an
apple on the side of his head, and another, apparently the heft and
density of a six-pounder cannon-ball, rolling about inside of it. "D"
Troop, jogging easily along at the rear of column, was led by Barclay
and Brayton, both of whom had marked the absence of the subaltern of the
leading company, and neither of whom was surprised when ten miles out
there came galloping past them, with a touch of the hand to his
hat-brim, the late regimental commissary, Lieutenant Harry Winn.
"That's good!" said Brayton, as he saw his classmate ride up to the
major and report, then fall back and range himself alongside Mullane.
But Barclay was silent.
"You think he ought not to have come?" asked Brayton, half hesitatingly,
as he glanced at his silent leader.
"I'm thinking more of others--who should be here," was the answer. "Yet
those two have so much to leave." And Brayton, following the glance of
his captain's eyes, fully understood.
The morning grew warm as the sun began to climb above the distant
low-lying hills to the east. The dust soon rose in dense clouds from
beneath the crushing hoofs, and, leaving Brayton with the troop, Barclay
cut across the chord of a long arc in the trail and reined up alongside
the major. The command at the moment was moving at a sharp trot through
a long, low depression in the prairie-like surface. Brooks returned the
captain's punctilious salute with a cheery nod and cordial word of
greeting.
"With your permission, sir, I will fall back a hundred yards or so,
divide the troop into sections, and so avoid the dust."
Brooks glanced back over his shoulder. "Why, certainly, captain," said
he. "I ought to have known the dust would be rising by this time. It's
eight o'clock," he continued, glancing at his watch. Barclay turned in
saddle and signalled with his gauntlet, whereat Brayton slackened speed
to the walk, and a gap began to grow between the rearmost horses of
Mullane's troop and the head of "D's" already dusty column.
"Ride with us a moment, won't you, Barclay?" called the major,
significantly, as his subordinate seemed on the point of reining aside
to wait for his men. "I want you two to know each other." And the new
and the old captain of "D" Troop, who had courteously shaken hands with
each other when presented in the dim light of the declining moon at four
o'clock, now trotted side by side, Lawrence eying his successor with
keen yet pleasant interest. He had been hearing all manner of good of
him during the wakeful watches of the night, and was manfully fighting
against the faint yet irrepressible feeling of jealous dislike with
which broader and better men than he have had to struggle on being
supplanted. Do what he might to battle against it, Lawrence had been
conscious of it hour after hour, and felt that he winced time and again
when some of the callers spoke even guardedly of the changes Barclay was
making in the old troop, changes all men except the ultra-conservative
ranker element (as the ranker was so often constituted at that peculiar
time, be it understood) could see were for the better.
"You and Barclay lead on, will you, Ned?" said the major, in his genial
way. "I wish to speak with Mullane a moment." Whereat he reined out to
the right and waited for the big Irishman to come lunging up. Mullane
was already spurring close at his heels, gloomily eying the combination
in front. "There are Oirish and Oirish," as one of their most
appreciative and broad-minded exponents, Private Terence Mulvaney, has
told us; and it galled the veteran dragoon to see his junior in rank
bidden to ride even for the moment at the head of the swiftly moving
column. So, reckless of the fact that his individual spurt would call
for a certain forcing of the pace along his entire troop, now moving in
long column of twos, Mullane had spurred his horse to close the
twelve-yard gap between himself and the major's orderly, determined that
there should be no conference of the powers in which he was not
represented.
"Captain Mullane," said Brooks, "I see it is getting dusty. You might
divide into sections, as 'D' troop has done, and keep fifty yards apart,
so that the dust can blow aside and not choke your men."
"This is 'L' Troop, sorr, and my men are not babes in arrums," was
Mullane's magnificent reply. At any other time he might have felt the
pertinence of the suggestion, but here was a case where a doughboy
captain, bedad, had instigated the measure for the comfort of his men.
That was enough to damn it in the eyes of the old dragoon. The answer
was shouted, too, with double intent. Mullane desired Barclay to hear
what he thought of such over-solicitude; but Barclay, riding onward
sturdily if not quite so easily as was Lawrence, gave no sign. He was
listening, with head inclined, to the words of the keen campaigner on
his right.
Brooks was quick to note the intention of the Irish officer, and equally
quick to note the flushed and inflamed condition of his face, the
thickness of his tongue. "So ho, my Celtic friend," thought he, as he
saw that two canteens were swung on the off side of Mullane's saddle,
one at the cantle under the rolled blanket, the other half shaded by the
bulging folds of the overcoat at the pommel, "I suspected there was more
whiskey than wit in your eagerness at the start; now I know it."
But even to Mullane the major would not speak discourteously. "We all
know 'L' Troop is ready for anything, captain," he smilingly answered,
"but I have to call for unusual exertion to-day, and the fresher they
are to-night the better. Let them open out, as I say," he continued; and
Mullane saw it was useless to put on further airs.
"You 'tind to it, sergeant," he grunted over his shoulder to his loyal
henchman, and then, uninvited, ranged up alongside the leader.
The prairie was open here; the road split up into several tracks from
time to time, and the men could have ridden platoon front without much
difficulty for two or three miles. Away to the southeast the ground rose
in slow, gradual, almost imperceptible slope to the edge of the far
horizon, not a tree or shrub exceeding a yard in height breaking
anywhere the dull monotony of the landscape. Eastward, miles and miles
away, a line of low rolling hills framed the dull hues of the picture.
Northward there was the same almost limitless expanse of low, lazy
undulation. To the right front, the south and southwest, the land seemed
to fall away in even longer, lazier billows, until it flattened out into
a broad valley, drained by some far-distant, invisible stream. Only to
the west and northwest, over their right shoulders, was there gleam of
something brighter. The faint blue outline of the far-away Apache range
was still capped in places by glistening white, while straight away to
the northwest, back of and beyond the dim dust-cloud through which the
swallow-tailed guidons were peeping, hovered over their winding trail
the bold and commanding heights, Fort Worth's shelter against the keen
blasts that swept in winter-time across the prairie from the upper
valley of the Rio Bravo. Four hours out, and just where the road dipped
into that broad deep swale a quarter-mile behind the rearmost
troopers,--just where the wreck of one of Fuller's wagons and the bones
of two of Fuller's mules and the soft spongy mud to the west of the
trail told how the waters could gather there in the rainy season and
evaporate to nothingness when needed in the dry,--a solitary stake
driven into the yielding soil bore on bullet-perforated cross-board the
legend, "20 miles to Worth and only 20 rods to Hell."
Only twenty miles in four hours, with fresh horses and the cool of the
morning, and a paymaster with forty thousand dollars in deadly danger
some sixty to eighty miles away. Slow going that, yet scientific. Not
another drop of water could those lively chargers hope to have until
they reached the springs at Crockett, forty miles away. Thrice has
Brooks halted for brief ten minutes' rest, the resetting of saddles,
etc., and now, after fifteen minutes' lively jog, he signals "walk"
again, and glances back to watch the march of his men. By this time the
column is long drawn out. The two troops are split up into four sections
each, riding a little over a dozen men in a bunch; by this means they
are relieved from the ill effects of the choking clouds of dust. Mullane
halts with the major. It pleases him to convey the impression to his men
that Brooks can't get along without him. A big pull at his pommel
canteen, ten minutes back, has temporarily braced him, and he wants to
talk, whereas Brooks, intent on the duty before him, wishes to think.
"Hwat time will we make Crockett's, major?"
"Not before five or five-thirty," is the brief answer.
"'L' Troop can do it in two hours less."
"So could 'D,' if it hadn't to push on again at nightfall." Brooks
answers in civil tone, despite the hint conveyed by the brevity of his
words, despite the conviction that is growing on him as he somewhat
warily glances over his companion, that what "L" might do its captain
won't do if he consults that canteen again. Two silent but keen-eared
orderlies are sitting in saddle close beside their respective officers,
and it will not do to give his thoughts away.
Then Mullane tries another tack. He seeks confidential relations with
his chief; and when an Irishman has a man he is jealous of to talk about
and whiskey to start him, he needs no supply of facts; they bubble from
his seething brain, manufactured for the occasion.
"The Preacher was caught where he couldn't get out of it," says he, with
a leering wink at the leading horseman. "Is he larnin' his thrade from
Lawrence, afther robbin' him av his throop?"
And now Brooks fires up unexpectedly. Turning quickly on the Irishman
with anger in his eyes, the major bends forward over the pommel.
"Captain Mullane," he says, so low that the near-by troopers fail to
catch his words, so distinctly that the captain cannot fail to, "there
are things of more value in a trade than the tricks of it that you seem
to know so well. You can learn more from Captain Barclay that is worth
knowing than you can ever teach him, and I'll listen to no slur at his
expense. You've been drinking too much, Mullane. Take my advice and pull
the stopper out of that canteen and put one on your tongue."
The Irishman boils up with wrath. The idea of Major Mildmanners pitching
into him--him, that was once the pride of the Second Dragoons!--and
praising that white-livered parson! Whurroo! Mullane at the moment could
have flung commission and conscience to the wind, everything but that
canteen. Nothing but the stern and icy stare in Brooks's usually
benignant eye represses the outburst trembling on the tangling tip of
his tongue.
"If you knew--what I know, sorr, that man'd not be ridin' wid his
betthers," he begins, "and it's this night that'll prove me wurrds."