Three days after the adjournment of Nevins' court Camp Cooke had dropped
back to the weary monotone of its everyday life. Everybody was gone
except the now sullen and complaining prisoner and the little garrison
of two companies of infantry. Vanished even were all but two or three of
the colony of gamblers and alleged prospectors, who occupied, to the
annoyance of the commanding officer and the scandal of the sutler, a
little ranch just outside the reservation lines whither venturesome
spirits from the command were oft enticed and fleeced of the money that
the authorized purveyor of high-priced luxuries considered his
legitimate plunder. By this time Camp Cooke waked up to the fact that it
had been dozing. While its own little force of cavalry was scouting the
valleys of the Verde and the Salado to the east and Blake's troop had
been rushed up the Hessayampa to the north, and there was no one
apparently to do escort duty through the deserts along the Gila, Camp
Cooke and the outlying prowlers believed that those costly trinkets
which Nevins had begged Mr. Loring to take to his wife would not be
withdrawn from the quartermaster's safe, much less sent forth upon their
perilous way. Not until after Colonel Turnbull and the engineer had
ridden off southward, escorted by a sergeant with six tough-looking
troopers; not until after Loring's announcement that the jewels
themselves had been sent ahead; not until after Mr. Gleason had been
remanded to his quarters to "sober up," and the adjutant dispatched to
Captain Nevins with the intimation that if his too audible imprecations
were not stopped he and his tent would be transferred to a corner of the
corral, did Camp Cooke learn that Major Starke had sent a fly-by-night
courier after Blake, recalling the troop, that it had halted on that
stream ten miles above the post, resting all afternoon and evening, had
ridden silently in toward camp an hour after midnight and, after
receiving certain instructions from Starke and a visit from Loring, had
gone on southward, silently as it came, accompanied by the presiding
officer of the court, who hated day marches and the sun-scorched desert,
and leaving escort for those who were still to follow. There was mild
surprise in camp, but untold wrath and vituperation along the line to
Sancho's, for from far and near the choicest renegades of Arizona had
been flocking to the neighborhood only to find themselves outwitted by
the engineer. Not half an hour after the burst of blasphemy from Nevins'
tent informed the camp that something more had happened to agitate anew
his sorely ruffled temper, and the story flew from lip to lip that it
was because the precious jewels were already on their way to 'Frisco,
guarded presumably by Blake and forty carbines, a swarthy half-breed
courier spurred madly southward from the outlying roost on the borders
of the reservation, with the warning that it would be useless risk to
meddle with the Teniente Loring's party when it came along--there were
no valuables with them; they had been sent with the cavalry hours before
the dawn.
Yes, even the sealed record of the court must have been sent at that
time, too, for at ten o'clock in the morning, when Colonel Turnbull and
Mr. Loring mounted and gravely saluted the cap-raising group of officers
as they rode away from the major's quarters, it was observed that Loring
had not even saddle-bags, and the major's striker admitted that he had
hoisted the lieutenant's valise to the pommel of a trooper's saddle at
two o'clock in the morning. Various were the theories and conjectures at
the sutler's all the rest of the day as to the information possessed by
Lieutenant Loring which led to such extreme precaution. The major was
close-mouthed, and, for him, rather stern. He held aloof from his
juniors all day long and seemed to be keeping an eye and an ear attent
on Nevins. That officer's conduct was a puzzle. Six months before he was
the personification of all that was lavish, hospitable, good-natured,
extravagant. Everybody was apparently welcome to the best he had. Then
came the collapse, his arrest, his flight, his capture and confinement,
his laughing defiance of his accusers until he found how much more they
knew than he supposed, his metaphorical prostration at the feet of his
judges, his humility, repentance, suffering and sacrifice, his pledge of
future atonement, his protestations of love for his long-suffering wife,
his surrender of his valuables for her benefit, his meekness of mien
until the court had concluded his case and gone. Then, his sudden
resumption of bold, truculent, defiant manner, his midnight breach of
arrest, which had leaked out through the guard that was promptly sent
forth to fetch him in; then his demand for the return of his property,
and his furious outburst on learning that Loring had taken him at his
word and sent it without delay by the safest possible hands.
That proved an exciting day. The adjutant's message had temporarily awed
and quieted the man, but toward three P. M. the mail carrier arrived
from the Gila with his sack of letters and papers. He reported having
been stopped only five miles out from Sancho's by masked men who quickly
examined his big leather bag, silently pointed to a curious mark, a dab
of paint that must have gotten on it while he was there at the ranch,
and sent him ahead without a word being spoken. He saw other men, but
they passed him by in wide circuit. He met Lieutenant Blake and the
troop, and the lieutenant bade him hurry, so the letters were delivered
nearly two hours earlier than usual. In the mail were a dozen missives
for Captain Nevins, two in dainty feminine superscription postmarked San
Francisco, several that might be bills, others that were local, one
postmarked Tucson, and one slipped in at Sancho's. The major himself
looked these envelopes over as though he thought their contents ought to
be examined, but even a convicted man had his rights, and the letters
were sent to him. In less than three minutes thereafter the hot,
breathless air of the long afternoon was suddenly burdened with another
eruption of oaths and ravings. One or two women sitting in the shade of
their canvas shelters across the parade clapped their hands to their
ears and ran indoors, and the major's orderly dashed full tilt for the
guard. Half an hour later Captain Nevins was escorted to a new abode, a
tent pitched just outside, not within, the corral, and there he was left
to swear at will, with the sentry on No. 4 warned to call the corporal
of the guard if the gentleman for one moment quit the seclusion of his
solitary quarters.
And this was the status of affairs when the sun went down at the close
of the third day after adjournment. When it rose upon the fourth all was
quiet about the impetuous captain's canvas home--too quiet, thought the
officer of the day after his visit to the guard at reveille, and
therefore did he untie the cords that fastened the flaps in front and
peer within. Five minutes later two new prisoners were placed in charge
of the guard, of which they had been members during the night--Privates
Poague and Pritzlaff, of the first and second reliefs, respectively. But
the aggregate gain in the column of "in arrest or confinement" was only
one, for Captain Nevins had disappeared.
Of course there was a rush to the outlying ranch, whose few remaining
occupants grinned exasperatingly and shrugged their shoulders, but gave
no information. Of course a courier was sent scurrying away on the trail
of the cavalry, but he came back sore-footed at night, relieved of his
horse, arms and equipments, and thanking God for his life. Of course
another courier was started by night to make the perilous ride to the
Salado and order the instant return of at least a platoon, but nothing
more was heard of him for a week, and it was nearly five days before
these desert-bound exiles of Camp Cooke got another atom of reliable
news from Sancho's, and meantime wondrous other things had happened.
It did not take long to determine the means by which Nevins had
succeeded in getting away. There was little, indeed, to prevent his
doing so if he saw fit to go, for, unless sentries were posted on all
four sides of his tent, he might crawl off in the darkness unobserved.
The sentry on No. 4 had received orders merely to summon the corporal
and report to him if the officer ventured to leave his tent, and as No.
4 was a post over a hundred yards in length, and the sentry responsible
for all of it, there was no right or reason in demanding of him that he
should give his undivided attention to what might be going on close to
the corral. In fact, by removing Nevins from the inner quadrangle of the
camp and placing him outside the walls, Major Starke had made it all the
easier for him to skip a second time if he saw fit to do so; but Starke
reasoned that Nevins still had some hope that congressional influence
would save him from dismissal, and therefore would not peril his chances
by a second flight. Starke did not know that Nevins was honest at least
in one statement, that he expected dismissal. His fate was sealed, his
pay was confiscated to square shortages. There was actually nothing to
be gained by staying at Cooke in virtual confinement, perhaps eight or
ten weeks, until his case could be decided in Washington and the orders
received back in Arizona. It actually simplified matters in many ways
for Nevins to go. Somebody, for instance, would have to pay the cost of
his subsistence all that time at Cooke. Thrice a day his meals were sent
to him from the little bachelors' mess, already sorely taxed for the
"entertainment" of the members of the court, and the four poor fellows
who constituted that frontier club had been only too glad when its
members from other stations insisted that they should pay their share of
the long three weeks' burden on the culinary department. But Nevins now
was penniless, so he said, and why should impecunious infantry
subalterns support in idleness a disgraced and virtually dismissed
officer? Yet that is precisely what the government compelled them to
do--or starve him. Thinking it all over during the day, Major Starke
concluded that at least Camp Cooke had something to be thankful for, and
sending for Privates Poague and Pritzlaff, he sternly rebuked them for
their probable negligence (for "discipline must be maintained"), and
with dire threats of what they might expect in the way of punishment if
they transgressed in the slightest way for six months to come, he bade
them go back to duty, released, which they did, each with his tongue in
his cheek and a wink of the inner eye, as they strode off together and
went grinning to the guard-tents for their blankets.
All the same Starke wished to know whither Nevins had gone, and whether
anything new had started him. This time no horse or mule had
disappeared, but the tracks of two quadrupeds were found on the Mesa
coming from "Rat Hell," as Captain Post, who had done time in Libby,
named the gambling ranch outside the reservation--to a point within one
hundred yards of the corral, and thence bore away southward straight as
the flight of the crow. Two reprobates in the captain's company declared
that the black-bearded clerk arrested with Nevins, but released because
he was a civilian over whom the military had no jurisdiction, had been
over at the ranch all the previous day. Sentry Poague frankly admitted
that he had heard horses' hoofs out on the Mesa and voices in the
captain's tent, but saw nobody crossing his post and couldn't be
expected to in the pitchy darkness. Whither Nevins went was therefore a
matter that could only be conjectured in the light of later events. How
he went was a matter of little moment. It was good riddance to bad
rubbish, said Starke, until at last the next mail came from Sancho's.
For nearly five days the major declared himself content if he never saw
Nevins again. Then he turned to and prayed with all his soul that he
might catch him--if only for five minutes.