PULL STICK AND THE HURRICANE.
Ping and Tah-nu-nu had had no good reason for complaining of their
captivity. They had been well fed, they had each a magnificent
handkerchief and a looking-glass medal, they had heard any number of new
stories from the old Chiricahua, and they had seen how high the old
manitou could make the spring jump when he heard good news. They were
almost conscience-smitten to find how friendly were their feelings
towards all those wicked cowboys and blue-coats, but they were sure that
they could get over it all and be good Apaches again as soon as they
should get out of that camp.
One thought came, every now and then, to trouble Tah-nu-nu. Colonel
Evans had said that he meant to take Ping home with him and make a
farmer of him, and Tah-nu-nu's mind drew a humiliating picture of
The-boy-whose-ear-pushed-away-a-piece-of-lead come down to work in a
cornfield with a hoe.
She spoke about it to Ping, and he replied with some awful reminders of
stories he had heard of the cruel manner in which little Indian girls
were sometimes treated by hardhearted pale-face squaws. She might have
felt worse but for a memory she had of a beautiful ribbon given her by a
white lady at the Reservation headquarters.
Both of them knew that the cowboys and the blue-coats intended to march
away early the next morning, and it added more than a little to their
respect for the Apache manitou who managed the Cold Spring water-works.
They believed that the great jump of the fountain had produced such an
effect upon the pale-faces that their chiefs had determined to give up
the pursuit of Kah-go-mish. The old Chiricahua was still detailed to
watch the movements of the chief's children, but they were not tied up
that night.
Neither had Cal been all day in the camp where he had been staked out
the night before. He had seemed to listen so attentively to the stern
warnings given him against any attempt at running away, and he had shown
such good sense that very morning, that he was allowed to walk around as
he pleased. He did so, and he succeeded in putting on an air of easy
unconcern, although he knew that his movements were all closely noted by
the keenest kind of human eyes. He could hardly for a moment be beyond
the range of those of the dog-soldier police, but their watch was
blindness itself compared to that of the squaws and the young people.
The boys, of all sizes, avoided coming too near him, but it was not long
before he made up his mind that every large tuft of weeds around that
camp contained a Mescalero in his teens or under them. Little
six-year-olders stepped away from behind trees, or sauntered out of
bushes, or seemed to have errands which led them right past him. All of
his own faculties were in a state of strained wakefulness, and he did
not allow such things to escape him.
"I'll see the whole camp, anyhow," he said to himself, somewhat late in
the day, after he had become accustomed to the queer sort of freedom
given him. "I won't give them any excuse for piling fire upon me, but I
want to know all about this place."
The stream along which the camp lay was hardly more than two yards wide
in many places, but it ran slowly and seemed to be deep. There were
places clear of bushes, here and there, where it could be seen, and it
had a black look, from the density of the shadows which lay upon it. It
was good water, pretty cool, and the Apaches had taken some fine fish
out of it, but there was something remarkable in the fact that it ran in
a straight line.
Cal walked slowly on, glancing at lodge after lodge. Most of them were
pretty well peopled, and one that was not so had a guard before it, for
it contained the treasures of the Mexican pack-mule train. There was not
an Apache in the band wicked enough to have stolen anything out of that
storehouse lodge, and the solitary dog-soldier who lounged in front of
it was not there as a protection against human thieves. He was to keep
out dogs, snakes, and any other kind of "bad medicine" that might
attempt an investigation of the good things the loss of which Colonel
Romero's cavalry were at that time growling about. He probably had other
duties, but none of them related to Pull Stick, and Cal sauntered on,
barely catching a glimpse of a pair of Apache boys who were doing the
same among the trees on the other side of the brook.
He had never seen finer trees, nor had he ever before noticed precisely
such a run of water, for just a little distance beyond the last of the
widely separated lodges he came to a point where the stream turned off
at right angles.
"It never did that of its own accord," suddenly flashed into the mind of
Cal, and he added, aloud: "Some time or other it was dug out!"
"Ugh!" exclaimed a voice behind him. "What Pull Stick see?"
Cal pointed to the water and tried to explain himself, startled as he
was a little by finding Crooked Nose so near him.
The deeply wrinkled, forbidding face of the Apache brave put on a look
of very dark solemnity as he lifted a hand and pointed at something
about a hundred yards beyond the turn in the stream.
"Ugh!" he said. "Pull Stick good eye."
The first thing that caught Cal's attention was an enormous dead tree,
whose gaunt, leafless arms reached grimly out above a great mound that
it leaned over. He looked again, following the line of the water, and
saw something else that was remarkable. The small rill which fed that
long, deep, shadowed channel fell into it out of a massive stone tank.
The masonry was overgrown with vegetation everywhere except at the place
where the rill poured out.
At some unknown day, away back in the past, when not one of those old
trees had been more than a sapling, some people had been civilized
enough and prosperous enough to construct that granite reservoir.
Cal stared intently, for the shadows were beginning to deepen, and he
knew that he would be interfered with if he went too far in his first
ramble. The stone tank did not contain all the masonry over which the
dead tree was leaning. The mound itself arose four-square.
"It's one of those Mexican pyramids," exclaimed Cal. "I've read about
them. Didn't know that any of them were ever found away up here."
He may or may not have been correct about that, but in a moment more he
turned to Crooked Stick.
"Sun go down?" he asked.
"Ugh! No. Pull Stick get heap water."
The deepening of the shadows had not been altogether because that
notable day of Cal's life had nearly gone. It was rather because black
masses of thunderclouds had suddenly arrived, and had hidden all the sky
above that part of the ancient Aztec forest.
Swiftly enough came a darkness that walked in among the tree-trunks and
covered them so that they could not be seen at twenty feet away.
A vivid gleam of quivering lightning made everything stand out clearly
for a second. Then came a deafening roll of thunder, and that was
followed by another burst of sound that Cal did not recognize. He did
not even know the Apache word for cougar, which sprang to the lips of
Crooked Nose. The beast which had uttered the terrified roar, however,
came leaping past with tremendous bounds, as if the thunderbolt had
fallen near him and he hoped to get away from it. Cal stood still,
mainly because no time was given him for doing anything else, but the
cougar almost brushed his shoulder as it sprang by him.
"Ugh!" said Crooked Nose. "Pull Stick great brave by and by. Good!"
Flash after flash, almost incessantly, followed the tremulous glare of
lightning, and peal on peal followed the thunder, during a full minute,
before any rain fell. Then it seemed to Cal as if one awful flash went
through everything around him, bringing its rattling volume of deafening
thunder with it. He was half-blinded, half-stunned, for a moment.
"That flash must have struck close by," he exclaimed.
So it had, for the next gleam showed him the gigantic trunk of the
withered tree splintered through near the earth, its whitened stem, with
its drapery of vines, toppling over to come down with a great crash upon
the mound above which it so long had stood sentinel.
The next instant all was densely dark, for the rain came down in sheets,
and all other sounds except that of the thunder were drowned in the roar
of a great wind. Cal Evans had come into that forest to witness a
hurricane.