Three anxious, watchful days went by, with anxious, watchful nights
intervening, with no further tidings of 'Tonio or Stannard or Turner,
of friend or foe from the outside world, and with only one attempt on
part of the invisibly, yet perceptibly, surrounded garrison to
communicate with the field columns. "Hualpai 21," the only designation
he would own to (the real name, in the absence of some tribesman to
speak for him, one could rarely learn from an Indian), was given his
fill of food and rest, then, with a despatch to Turner, was sent forth
Monday night south-eastward, the way he came, and bidden if he reached
the rugged height known as El Caporal, some twelve miles to the
south-east, and deemed it safe to do so, to send at sunrise three quick
mirror flashes toward the flagstaff, repeating twice or thrice to be
sure of its attracting attention. Hualpai 21 took with him one of those
cheap little disks of looking-glass, cased in pewter, at that time
found at every frontier store. He took also the injunction to give his
despatch to Captain Turner or one of his men, but to no Indian
whomsoever--'Tonio in particular. It was the last attempt of the week.
For, from dawn until the sun was an hour high, the watchers watched in
vain. Three signal glasses, telescope and binocular, were trained upon
the heights and no one of them caught the faintest spark of reflected
light. The nearest approach to a signal was seen by a corporal of the
guard and sentry Number Six an hour after midnight, when, in quick
succession, two faint, firefly flashes, unrepeated, were visible afar
out due east of the Picacho, and they could have been caused in only
two ways--somebody experimenting with a mirror and the moonbeams, the
moon being then about three hours high and three-quarters full, or
else, as they were ruddier than moonshine, somebody taking two quick
shots, probably at somebody else. The corporal counted seconds up to
twenty and more, and even in that breathless silence, heard not a sound
to warrant the belief.
Yet a few hours later that sun-blistered morning, the bookkeeper Case
"blew in for a bottle," as he expressed it; remarked with engaging
frankness that he believed he had still a day or so in which to taper,
and would be home and on deck if the Apaches didn't get him meantime;
and, being delicately invited to state where he had spent the night,
replied as frankly as before, "Down at Jose Sanchez's," meaning thereby
the down-stream resort two miles distant, where prospectors, packers
and occasionally men from the post, in peace times, at least, went for
unlimited mescal and monte. Since the death of Comes Flying, the
disappearance of 'Patchie Sanchez (the runner, half-brother to Sanchez,
the gambler), and the general outbreak among the Indians, it had been
shunned as utterly unsafe, and reported abandoned. When cautioned by
Watts against returning thither, Mr. Case replied that now that the
Indians spurned it, for not even 'Tonio would set foot anywhere about
the ranch, the ghost of the brother was seen there every night. He had
seen it and it was an honest ghost, and a convivial spirit, which was
why last night's bottle had lasted no longer. Moreover, Case said that
when he was drinking he was only at home in half-bred society and
couldn't live up to the high tone of the post. When told of Mr.
Willett's further mishap, Case sobered for a moment in manner, and said
Mr. Willett was unwise taking so many chances, and Mr. Willett would be
in big luck if he got away from Almy without further puncture. Somebody
else had been shot at last night. He and the ghost had heard it.
This at the moment was regarded as semi-maudlin talk, but at morning
office hour Watts was sent for, was told what the guard had seen, and
asked what Case had really said, rumor being, as a rule, inaccurate.
Then Archer rebuked Watts for letting Case go in his intoxicated
condition, and it was decided to send a little party in search, in
hopes of fetching him in and finding out more about the alleged
shooting. The party found Case without any trouble. He sat singing to
himself and swinging his legs from the table in the abandoned rookery,
the half-emptied bottle on one side and a "monkey" of spring water on
the other, scornful alike of danger or demands, but indomitably
courteous. The party took a drink with him as promptly invited, but
found him implacably bent on holding the position. Not until argument
and whiskey both were exhausted would he listen to reason and the
suggestion to return to the post. That being the only means to more
whiskey, he started affably enough, but before going half a mile
declared he had left or lent his revolver. "There's only one revolver
at Camp Almy just like it," said he, with drunken dignity, and then,
with sudden gravity, "an' that one--_isn't_ at Camp Almy."
The infantry sergeant in command of the little party tried to wheedle
Case out of his whim, but it was useless. Back he would go, and they,
half supporting, had to go with him. From the drawer of the battered
old table he drew the missing weapon to light, and it stood
revealed--one of the famous Colt's 44, made soon after the Civil War to
replace the percussion-capped "Navy" carried by most officers of the
army until late in the '60's. In the hands of the cavalry at the
moment, and for experimental purposes, were nickel-plated Smith and
Wesson's of the same calibre, and nearly the same length of barrel,
also one or two other patterns of the remodelled Colt. But, as Case
said, this was a special make and model, differing slightly from any
that Sergeant Joyce had ever yet seen; but not until later did the
sergeant or his comrades attach any significance to Case's statement,
"there's only one at Almy just like it."
His weapon recovered, his mental balance slightly restored, and with
the further inspiration of replenished flask ahead, Case made the
difficult essay to tramp the two sandy miles back to the store and the
still more difficult task of there accounting for himself and
explaining his enigmatical sayings. Strong, as directed, strove to keep
him to the point, but the one more drink Case declared indispensable on
his final arrival at dusk sent flitting the last filaments of reason,
and the poor fellow maundered off to sleep on his little cot in the
darkened room, where he was bolted in and left for the night.
"Only one pistol like it at the post, and that--isn't at the post,"
Strong found himself repeating again and again that night, as, after
Mrs. Archer and Mrs. Stannard had read their patient into a doze and
taken their departure, the adjutant stood for a moment by Willet's
bedside. "And now Willett has lost his, and presumably the Tontos, or
perhaps the Apache-Mohaves, have got it!"
They had wandered away in the darkness together, those two brave and
tender-hearted army women, each with a keen anxiety of her own, each
striving to be helpful to the other. Three invalids were there now at
Almy to whom they were giving many hours of care and nursing. Poor Mrs.
Bennett gained little in mental or bodily health. The fearful scenes of
that long night of horror and rapine still seemed vividly before her in
her few hours of fitful slumber, and were this state of things to
continue long, said the doctor, insanity would be a merciful refuge. An
hour or so each day these ministering angels gave to the young
officers. Harris, severely shot, was mending fast, his perfect physical
condition lending itself admirably to his restoration. Willett, but
slightly injured, should be sitting up, with his shoulder in a frame
and his arm in a sling, but he was mending only slowly, and had not a
little fever. Harris, accustomed to self-denial, seemed to require no
physical comforts. Willett, something of a Sybarite, craved iced drinks
and cooling applications that gave more trouble, said Strong, than
twenty Harrises. Willett had even gone so far as to suggest that the
ladies must be tired of reading aloud, possibly Miss Lilian might
relieve one or other, and possibly, hope whispered, both. Harris, who
would have welcomed that presence and possibility as he would no other,
had ventured nothing beyond the expression of a hope that Miss Archer
was quite well.
As for Miss Archer herself, what man can say just what thoughts,
emotions, hopes and fears were rioting in that gentle and innocent, yet
troubled heart. A very unheroic little heroine is this of ours. It was
a time when she might well be thinking of the perils by which they and
their defenders were encompassed round about, of the bereaved and
broken-hearted woman crying to heaven for her murdered husband and her
stolen children, of the scouts and couriers shot down from ambush in
their efforts to reach them in their isolation or to creep through with
messages to the columns afield, of the wounded lying with but scant
attention and puny guard, weary marches away, of the comrades killed or
died of wounds in fierce grapple with the warriors of the desert and
the mountains--even of this young soldier within their gates, sore
stricken in daring rescue of a helpless woman, he to whose coolness and
command of self--and others--had saved her from the rattler's fang.
Very possibly she did think of it--and often--and tried to think of
them still oftener, but all the time, it must be owned, in her heart of
hearts she was hearing again the soft, caressing tone of that deep,
rich voice--"the words of love then spoken;" she saw again the lustrous
eyes that shone and burned into hers despite their drooping lids, the
graceful, gallant form of that picture of the knight and gentleman
whose swift wooing had made such wondrous way. Lilian Archer was but a
child in spite of years and schooling. She spent her earliest years
within the shadow of the flag and the sound of the drum. She had seen
nothing of garrison life from that morning in '61, when she had just
passed her sixth birthday, when they were bundled aboard a wheezing
river stern wheeler and floated for many a day and many and many a long
mile down a muddy, twisting stream--her father so grave and anxious,
and some of the officers with him so urgent and appealing. She could
not understand why her mother should so often sit with tear-brimming
eyes and clasp her to her bosom with the boy brother she so loved--and
teased. Father's home was in a proud old border state, and they went
there for a week or two, after that sorrowful day in St. Louis when
three of father's old friends and comrades came for one last conference
and then--a last good-by--two of them refusing his hand. They had
resigned and followed their state. They had striven to take him with
them to swell the ranks of the proud young army of the South. They had
loved him well and he them, but there was something floating overhead,
from the white staff at the stern, he held still dearer. One officer,
who was most urgent in his pleadings, was her bonny "Uncle Barney,"
mother's own brother, and when he left, without kiss for her or
handclasp for the sad-faced soldier in the worn uniform of blue,
mother's heart seemed almost breaking. Father took them to _his_
father's old home, and left them there while he went to drilling
militiamen north of the Ohio, and was presently made a colonel of
volunteers. But the people who lived about them were all for the South,
and they could not forgive mother for his taking sides against them;
so, throughout the long bitter struggle, while he was at the front or
suffering in Southern prison, as happened once, and from Northern
suspicion, as happened much more than once, they lived in lodgings in a
quiet little country town, where brother and she went hand in hand to
school and saw little of the outer world and nothing of the war. Then
at last came peace, and in '66 the reorganization of the army, and
father--in a general's uniform on a major's pay. Then in '69 General
Grant appointed brother a cadet, and all were so proud and hopeful when
he left them for the Point. He was the image of Uncle Barney, who was
killed leading his splendid brigade in one of the earliest battles in
Virginia, and, like Uncle Barney, brother was high-spirited and
impatient. Mathematics and demerit set him back in '70 and dropped him
out entirely in '71, when father was weeks away across the deserts of
Arizona, and they were in lodgings at San Francisco, and poor mother
was nearly distraught with grief and anxiety. Brother never came back
to them. He went straight, it seems, to the Brooklyn Navy-Yard;
enlisted in the Marines, and, within five months thereafter, jumped
from the deck of the "Yantic" in a swift tideway at Amoy, striving to
aid a drowning shipmate, and was never seen again. That was the saddest
Christmas they ever knew. Father had to return to his post, and all
that year of '72 they wore deep mourning and went nowhere. During the
spring of '73 mother was rallying a little, and loving army friends
from the Presidio and Angel Islands, who used to come to see them so
often, now sought to have Lilian visit them; but wisely Mrs. Archer
kept her at her studies and her music and away from possible
fascination of the garrison, and except, therefore, for two dances
given by the artillery, and one charming, rose-bowered afternoon
reception at Angel Island, Lilian had seen nothing of army life and
next to nothing of army beaux, until in all the ardor and innocence of
sweet, winsome, wholesome girlhood--buoyant, beautiful and in exuberant
health and spirits, she was suddenly landed here at this out of the way
station in uttermost Arizona, and brought face to face with love and
destiny.
For two days she had been hoping that mother would suggest that she,
too, might come when they went for the afternoon visits to their
wounded. But, though mother had twice taken her to sit a few minutes by
the side of poor, frenzied Mrs. Bennett, there came no intimation that
she might follow to the bedside of Lieutenant Willett, whose voice the
child was longing to hear again, whose face she craved to see. No woman
of heroic mould, perhaps, was Mrs. Archer. Hers was one of those fond,
clinging natures, capable of any sacrifice for the husband or child she
loved. She had turned her back on the home and the people so dear to
her when unhesitatingly she followed the soldier husband she
rapturously loved, and now, though she yearned to take her daughter to
her heart and kiss away the wistful, pathetic, pleading look in the
fond eyes that never before had appealed to her in vain, something told
her it were best to let her fight it out, even to suffer, alone, than
admit, even to her, the possibility of a growing love for this
brilliant and dangerous young gallant, as to whom she had unwittingly
heard such damning accusation. It had not taken Mrs. Archer long to
learn that Case, nerved by drink, had appeared at Harris's bedside that
Sunday afternoon, asking to speak with him alone, only to be speedily
followed by Willett, and by the altercation she had overheard. Under
the circumstances, as known to her, Mrs. Archer was thankful that,
since he could not leave the post, Lieutenant Willett could not even
leave his room. Not with her knowledge and consent should her gentle
Lilian be again brought within the sphere of his influence.
But Love that laughs at locksmiths was yet to find his way, and that
right soon.