A week later the surgeon at Camp Cooke found himself minus one of his
ambulances after all. In response to a penciled note from Blake it had
been hurried from what there was of the shack aggregation at that point
to what was left of Sancho's, Major Starke and the doctor with it. They
found much of the corral in ruins and one end of the rancho badly
scorched. "The wife of my brother," with Pancha, and that ceremonious
copy of the Castilian himself had disappeared, but Sancho was still
there, a much wronged man, and Pedro and José and Concho and a decrepit
mule or two, all under the surly surveillance of Sergeant Feeny and half
a dozen troopers whose comrades were afield chasing banditti through the
deserts and mountains, while those who were detailed to remain spent
long, anxious hours watching over and striving to soothe a young officer
delirious from injuries to the head and resultant fever. Loring a sick
man, indeed, when the surgeon reached him; but poor Blake, wearing
himself down to skin and bone in fruitless chase, would gladly have been
in his place.
The stage which he and his men had rushed to rescue was actually out
there to the east, as Pancha had declared, "held up" among some little
sand dunes, but it bore neither passengers nor treasure, and what on
earth the robbers should have detained him for nearly twenty miles east
of Gila Bend--held him in the hot sun from nine in the morning until
late in the afternoon, then sent him on again, only to be once more
"rounded to" with a furious chorus of yells and volleyings of pistols
when within only two miles of Sancho's, that bewildered Jehu could not
imagine. The marvel of it was that, though the old stage was "riddled
like a sieve," as he said, "and bullets flew round me like a swarm of
buzzin' bees, not one of 'em more'n just nipped me and raised a blister
in the skin." Indeed, even those abrasions were indistinguishable,
though Jake solemnly believed in their existence. Then another queer
thing! Long before the lieutenant and "his fellers" reached the
imperiled vehicle all but two or three of the dozen assailants went
scurrying off in the darkness, and when the cavalry came charging
furiously through the gloom there was no one to oppose them. Jehu Jake
couldn't even tell which way the bandits had gone--every way, he
reckoned; and after careering blindly about for half an hour or so,
Blake's most energetic men came drifting back and said it was useless to
attempt pursuit until dawn, even though that would give the renegades
six hours' start. Slowly and disgustedly Blake ordered his men to form
ranks and march back to camp, when suddenly an idea struck him--Loring!
Loring, with his precious saddle-bags, had been left alone; and, calling
for a set of fours to follow him, Blake clapped his spurless heels to
his indignant horse's flanks and galloped for home, only to find Sancho
and Pete lamenting over the prostrate, senseless and bleeding form of
the engineer, whose arm was still thrown protectingly over the ravished
saddle-bags.
The pocket containing that precious envelope was slashed open. The
envelope and watch were gone. The record of the court in the other bag
was undisturbed.
And then as he bathed his comrade's head and stanched the blood and
strove to call him back to consciousness, Blake saw it all, or thought
he did, and gnashed his teeth in impotent wrath. He was tricked,
betrayed, yes, possibly ruined, all by a gang of miserable "greasers,"
through the medium of a pretty Mexican girl and his own wretched
imbecility. There was no name Blake didn't call himself. There was
nothing disreputable he did not not think of Sancho, but what could he
prove? Sancho was a heavy loser. Sancho's best mules and all his fine
horses, including the famous roan had been spirited away. The gang had
made a wreck of the bar and a puddle of his famous liquor. Manuel, his
brother, with his beloved wife and child, had fled in terror, said
Sancho, else would they now be here nursing the heroic officer who had
striven to defend them against such a rush of wretches. Blake drove him
away with imprecations, vowing that he, Sancho, was in collusion with
the gang, against which unmerited slur Sancho protested in sonorous
Spanish, and to prove his innocence pointed to his bespattered bar-room,
and as that failed to move the obdurate heart of the raging cavalryman,
went sorrowfully back to the dark ranch whence there suddenly arose a
sheet of flame and the cry that the villains had set fire to the corral
before they left. For half an hour the straw and hay made a fierce
blaze, and the troopers turned to and saved the ranch, as Sancho knew
they would, and the actual damage was but slight. Some day Sancho would
present a claim against the government for twenty times the amount and
get such portion of it as was not required by the local agent and
lobbying aids who rushed it through congress. Against Sancho there was
no proof whatever, and when Blake rode away at dawn to take the trail of
the robber band he had to invoke Sancho's assistance in looking after
his stricken friend. There were hours that day when Blake could almost
have blown his brains out. He, who prided himself on the field record he
was making, had been outwitted, tricked, utterly and ridiculously
fooled. By heaven! if horses could hold out those rascals should not go
unwhipped of justice! Bitter as was his cup the previous year, this was
bitterer still.
Not for ten days, after a long and fruitless chase through the Dragoon
Mountains and almost into Mexico, did Blake return to the Bend, and by
that time Loring was just gone, borne in the ambulance to Yuma. He had
regained consciousness under the doctor's care, said old Feeny, but was
sorely weak and shaken, and the doctor had gone on with him.
So ended for the time being, at least, the survey of the Gila Valley,
for the surgeon at Fort Yuma coincided with the opinion of his brother
from Cooke that Lieutenant Loring could perform no duty for weeks, that
he should have care, rest and a sea voyage. The record of the court had
been sent on by mail stage to San Francisco, and after a fortnight of
total quiet at Yuma, Loring was conveyed down the Colorado to the Gulf
and shipped aboard the coasting steamer for the two weeks run around Old
California and up the Pacific to Yerba Buena. The very day they sailed
old Turnbull came to join him on the voyage. Not a trace had been
discovered of the fugitive, Captain Nevins, and such suspicious
characters as Blake had overhauled were long since released for lack of
evidence. Sancho held the fort as imperturbably as ever. The "family of
my brother" were reported gone to Hermosillo.
Those were years in which the steamer, plying every month between the
Colorado and the Bay of San Francisco, carried heavy burdens of freight,
stores, and supplies into the far territory, but took little out. Gold
being the monetary standard of California at the time, it cost a captain
a month's pay to take that two weeks' voyage. The government paid the
way into the territory in the case of officers going under orders, and
once landed there a man speedily found himself too poor to think of
returning. Therefore was the stout mariner who commanded the Idaho more
than surprised to find two army officers on his scanty passenger list.
Turnbull he had met before; Loring was a stranger.
"Make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen," said he; "you practically own
the ship till we get to Guaymas. There we pick up some Mexican families
going to 'Frisco, and two mighty pretty girls."
"Who are they?" asked Turnbull languidly, as he sat on the upper deck,
heels lifted on the taffrail, gazing out over an apparently limitless
plain, half dim vista of far-spreading sand, half of star-dotted,
flawless salt water, the smoke of his cigar curling lazily aloft as the
black hull rode at anchor.
"Daughters of old Ramon de la Cruz, for two that I know of, and some
cousin of theirs, I believe. They came aboard on our up trip. The old
man likes our tap of champagne and don't care what it costs. He has more
ready cash than any Mexican I know. You're a married man, colonel, but
how about the lieutenant here?"
Loring, still pallid and listless, smiled feebly and shook his head.
"Well, here's your chance, young man," said the bluff salt, unconscious
of giving offense. "No time like a voyage for love making, once the girl
gets her sea legs on. You ought to capture one of 'em before we're
halfway to the Golden Gate. They rate 'em at two hundred thousand
apiece. Don't know how long it takes a soldier to win a prize like that,
but give a sailor such a show and she'd strike her colors before we
sight St. Lucas. If you don't care for ducats and only want beauty,
there's that little cousin. She can sing and play your soul away; give
her half a chance and a good guitar."
"Who's she?" queried Turnbull, balancing his half-smoked cigar between
the fingers, as he blew a fragrant cloud to the cloudless vault above.
"Didn't get the family name--Pancha they called her, a slip of a
sixteen-year-old, going to school, perhaps." And the captain turned away
to answer a question from his steward, leaving the two soldiers looking
intently at each other, with new interest in their eyes.
"Blake's destroyer was a sixteen-year-old Pancha, wasn't she?" asked the
colonel in low tone. He had no mercy whatever on Blake, and was
outspoken in condemnation of what he called his idiocy.
Loring was silent a moment, then he drew a letter from an inner pocket.
It had come with Turnbull--the last news from Arizona. "Read that when
you've time, colonel," said he. "Perhaps had you been in Blake's place
at his age you'd have forgotten everything but the stage and the fight.
I think I should."
And as this was the longest speech Turnbull had ever heard from Loring's
lips, except his arraignment of Nevins before the court, the colonel
pondered over it not a little. He took the letter and read it when, an
hour later, the Idaho was plowing her lazy way southward through a dull
and leaden sea.
"I'm not the first man to be fooled by a slip of a girl, Loring," wrote
Blake. "It isn't the first time that a woman has got the better of me,
and it may not be the last. But the chagrin and misery I feel is not
because I have suffered so much, but because you have, and all through
my fault. I suppose you know the general has ordered me relieved and
sent back to my company as no longer worthy to be called a cavalryman.
All the same, one of these days I mean to get a transfer. My legs are
too long for the doughboys anyhow. Meantime, with all meekness I'll bear
my burden--I deserve it; but you'll believe me when I say it isn't the
punishment, the humiliation this has cost me that so weighs upon me now;
it is the thought of your loss and your prostration. One of these days I
may find means to show you how much I feel it. Just now I have only a
hint. Last year at this time my most cherished possession was my new
spring style, ten-dollar Amidon. A silk hat is as out of place in
Arizona as a sunshade in Sitka, yet my striker has just unpacked it and
asked, with a grin on his confounded mug, 'What'll I be doin' wid this,
sor?'"
"I know! Sole leather hat box and all, it goes by buckboard to your
address at division headquarters. Our heads are about of the same
caliber; the main difference is that yours seems loaded. The _Alta_
says silk hats are now worn on sunny mornings. Sport mine for me,
though it be of the vintage of a by-gone year. I shall not show my
face in civilization till I have lived down my shame. So now for two
years at least of Yuma and the consolation to be derived from the
solitary study of philosophy and Shakespeare.
"Yours in meekness of spirit,
"GERALD BLAKE.
"P. S.--They say that Sancho's brother's real name is Escalante. If
ever you come across one of that race keep your eyes peeled."
Another day and the billows of the gulf were breaking under the Idaho's
counter and hissing sternward in snowy foam, answering the rush of a
strong southwest wind. It was late at evening when the black hull went
reeling in toward the lights of Guaymas, and the massive anchor, with
prodigious splash dove for the sandy bottom, but late as it was the
shore boats and lighters came pulling to the gangway stairs, and
merchants, clerks and customs officers nimbly scrambled up the side, and
then followed a number of passengers, cigarette smoking and cackling
about the swarming deck, and Turnbull and the Engineer hung over the
rail and watched for the promised boatload of beauty and presently it
came. Two or three small boats were rowed alongside, and there were
glimpses of shrouded forms and there were sounds of joyous laughter and
murmured gallantries of dark-eyed, dark-skinned caballeros, and the
growling injunctions of, presumably, paterfamilias. And presently the
ladder-like stairs were cleared, and, one after another, woman after
woman was assisted up the narrow way, and came sailing into the zone of
light from the polished reflectors, elder women first, then slender,
sparkling-eyed damsels whose white teeth gleamed as they chatted with
their escorts. Two undeniably attractive, Spanish-looking girls were
objects of most assiduous care. Then came a third, younger, a mere slip
of a maid, with but a single cavalier, a grim, grizzled, stern-looking
Mexican, who glanced sharply about as he set foot on the solid deck, and
then, without a word, Loring's hand was placed on the colonel's arm, and
the lieutenant's eyes said "Look!" for as the girl's face was turned for
an instant toward them, there stood revealed the dusky little maid of
the Gila, Blake's siren--Pancha.