Six years of fighting, of bloodshed, of heavy loss in blood and treasure
to the government, the careers of the incarnate devils Juh, Victorio,
and Geronimo--all the evils let loose on the southwest from '78 to '85
were traceable primarily to the selling of bad whiskey to a hunting
party of Chiricahuas by two storekeepers, greedy of gain.
Of course there were complications following, a long and involved list
of them. Of course the Indians only sought the excuse, and very probably
would have made it if it had not been made for them. And of course the
Interior Department bungled under the guidance of politicians, of whom
the best that possibly can be said is that they were stupid tools of
corrupt men in the territories, who were willing to turn the blood of
innocent settlers into gold for their own pockets.
And still, those who hated the Apache most--officers who had fought them
for years, who were laboring under no illusions whatever; the Commanders
of the Department of Arizona and of the Division of the
Missouri--reported officially that Victorio and his people had been
unjustly dealt with. And these were men, too, who had publicly
expressed, time and again, their opinion that the Apaches were idle and
worthless vagabonds, utterly hopeless, squalid, untrustworthy; robbers
and thieves by nature. They had none of Crook's so many times
unjustified faith in the red savage,--that faith which, wantonly
betrayed, brought him to defeat and bitter disappointment at the last.
Since Crook had gone to the northern plains, in the spring of '75, the
unrest among the Apaches had been steadily growing, until five years
later it was beyond control, and there began the half decade which
opened with Victorio on the war-path, and closed with the closing of the
career of the unfortunate general--most luckless example of the failing
of failure--and the subjection of Geronimo.
The never ending changes of the service, which permitted no man to
remain in one spot for more than two years at the utmost limit, had sent
Landor's troop back to Grant, and it was from there that he was ordered
out at the beginning of the summer.
The curtain-raiser to the tragedy about to come upon the boards was a
little comedy.
One fine afternoon the post was moving along in its usual routine--that
quiet which is only disturbed by the ever recurring military formalities
and the small squabbles of an isolated community. There had been a lull
in the war rumors, and hope for the best had sprung up in the wearied
hearts of the plains service, much as the sun had that day come out in a
scintillating air after an all-night rain-storm.
Mrs. Landor sat on the top step of her porch. Landor was with her, also
his second lieutenant Ellton, and Brewster, who in the course of events
had come into the troop. There had been, largely by Felipa's advice, an
unspoken agreement to let the past be. A troop divided against itself
cannot stand well on the inspector general's reports. And as Brewster
was about to marry the commanding officer's daughter, it was well to
give him the benefit of the doubt of his entire sanity when he had been
under the influence of what had been a real, if short-lived, passion for
Felipa. They were all discussing the feasibility of getting up an
impromptu picnic to the foot-hills.
"Miss McLane will go, I suppose?" asked Felipa.
Brewster answered that she would, of course. He was rather annoyingly
proprietary and sure of her.
"But you have no Jill," she said, smiling at Ellton. His own smile was
very strained, but she did not see that, nor the shade of trouble in his
nice blue eyes.
There fell a moment's pause. And it was broken by the sound of clashing
as of many cymbals, the clatter of hoofs, the rattle of bouncing wheels,
and around the corner of the line there came tearing a wagon loaded with
milk tins. A wild-eyed man, hatless, with his hair on end, lashed his
ponies furiously and drew up all of a heap, in front of the commanding
officer's quarters.
Landor and his lieutenant jumped up and ran down the walk. "What's all
this, Dutchy?" they asked.
Dutchy was a little German, who kept a milk ranch some seven miles from
the post. "Apachees, Apachees," he squealed, gasping for breath.
"Where?" the commandant asked.
"I see dem pass by my ranch. Dey weel run off all my stock, seexty of
dem, a hundred mebee. I come queek to tell you."
"You came quick all right enough," said Landor, looking at the lathered
broncos. But Major McLane was inquiring, and the result of his inquiries
was that two troops were hurried in hot pursuit.
The post was tremendously excited. As the cavalry trotted off up the
slope toward the foot-hills, the men left behind went to the back of the
post and watched, women looked through field-glasses, from the upper
windows, children balanced upon the fences of the back yards, and
Chinese cooks scrambled to the top of chicken coops and woodsheds,
shading their eyes with their hands and peering in the direction of the
gap. Dogs barked and hens cackled and women called back and forth. Down
at the sutler's store the German was being comforted with beer at a
dollar a bottle.
In the storm-cleared atmosphere the troops could be seen until they
turned into the gap, and shortly thereafter they reappeared, coming back
at a trot.
The milk ranch and the stock were unhurt, and there were not even any
Indian signs. It was simply another example, on the milkman's part, of
the perfection to which the imagination of the frontier settler could be
cultivated.
"I see him, I see him all the same," he protested, with tears and
evident conviction.
"I guess not," said Landor, tolerantly, as he turned his horse over to
his orderly; "but, anyway," he added to Ellton, "we had a picnic--of a
sort."
And before the next morning the picnic that kept the southwest
interested for five years had begun. Victorio and two hundred hostiles
had left the Mescalero Agency for good and all, killing, burning,
torturing, and destroying as they went, and troops from all the
garrisons were sent out post haste.
At noon Landor got his orders. He was to leave at four o'clock, and when
he told Felipa she planned for dinner at three, with her usual manner of
making all things as pleasant as possible, and indulging in no vain and
profitless regrets. "We may as well have Mr. Brewster and Nellie McLane,
too," she decided, and went off in search of them, bareheaded and
dancing with excitement. She dearly loved rumors of war. The prospect of
a scout was always inspiriting to her.
Ellton messed with them regularly, but he was not to go out, because he
was acting adjutant. To his intense disgust and considerable
mortification--for he was young and very enthusiastic and burdened with
ideals--he was obliged to appear spick and span in irreproachable
undress, beside his superiors in their campaign clothes.
"They're out from Apache, two troops under Kimball and Dutton; Morris
has a band of scouts, Bayard has sent two troops, Wingate one. Oh! it's
going to be grim-visaged war and all that, this time, sure," Brewster
prophesied.
Ellton could not eat. He bewailed his hard fate unceasingly.
"Shut up," said Brewster, with malicious glee. "They also serve who
only stand and wait, you know," he chuckled. "You can serve your
admiring and grateful country quite as well in the adjutant's office as
summering on the verdant heights of the Mogollons."
Ellton retaliated with more spirit. "Or guarding a water hole on the
border for two or three months, and that's quite as likely to be your
fate."
"True, too," Brewster admitted perforce.
"I've been talking to a fellow down at the Q. M. corral," Landor said,
"Englishman named Cairness,--Charley Cairness. He's going as a scout. He
can't resist war's alarms. He used to be in my troop a few years ago,
and he was a first-rate soldier--knew his place a good deal better than
if he had been born to it, which he very obviously wasn't."
"Squaw-man, isn't he?" Brewster asked.
Landor shrugged his shoulder, but Felipa would not have it so. "You know
he is not, Jack," she said a little petulantly, which was noticeably
unwonted on her part.
"I don't know anything whatever about it," he answered; "that is none of
my affair. I should be surprised if he were, and I must say I am
inclined to think he is not."
"I know he is not," she said decisively.
"I beg pardon," said Brewster, pointedly, accentuating the slight
awkwardness.
But Landor was not aware that there was any. "Cairness is a very decent
sort of a fellow," he said good-humoredly. "And, personally, I am
indebted to him for having saved Mrs. Landor's life up Black River way."
Ellton filled in the pause that threatened, with a return to the
dominant topic. "This not having any pack-train," he opined, "is the
very deuce and all. The only transportation the Q. M. can give you is a
six-mule team, isn't it?"
"Yes; but it happens to be enough for the next few weeks. We are going
to camp around San Tomaso to afford the settlers protection. We can't
follow any trails, those are our orders, so the pack-train doesn't
matter anyway. By that time they will have scared up one."
As they came out from dinner the orderlies had the horses at the door.
Landor gave his wife parting instructions the while Brewster took an
ostentatiously affectionate farewell of Miss McLane, who was herself
neither so affectionate nor so sorrowful as she might have been expected
to be. The adjutant watched them, furtively and unhappily. Felipa
herself was not as unmoved as usual.
When Landor had trotted off, and she and the girl were left alone, she
went into the house and came back with a pair of field-glasses. Through
them she could see her husband riding at the head of the column, along
the road, and another figure beside him, mounted on a bony little pinto
bronco.
So he was near her again. She had not seen him in many months, but she
had felt that he must be always, as he had been through those days in
the fastnesses of the Sierra Blanca, following her afar off, yet near
enough to warn her, if need arose. She was too superstitious to watch
him out of sight, and she turned back into the house, followed by Miss
McLane, just as stable call sounded, and the white-clad soldiers tramped
off to the corrals.