"An" what did ye fetch to bring him _to_ wid?" asked the corporal.
Hart touched lightly the breast of his coat, then clucked to his team.
"Faith, there"s more than wan way of tappin" it then," said Quirk, but the cavalcade moved on.
The crescent moon had long since sunk behind the westward range, and trailing was something far too slow and tedious. They spurred, therefore, for the nearest ranch, five miles down stream, making their first inquiry there. The inmates were slow to arise, but quick to answer. Blakely had neither been seen nor heard of. Downs they didn"t wish to know at all. Indians hadn"t been near the lower valley since the "break" at the post the previous week. One of the inmates declared he had ridden alone from Camp McDowell within three days, and there wasn"t a "Patchie west of the Mat.i.tzal. Hart did all the questioning.
He was a business man and a brother. Soldiers, the ranchmen didn"t like--soldiers set too much value on government property.
The trail ran but a few hundred yards east of the stream, and close to the adobe walls of the ranch. Strom, the proprietor, got out his lantern and searched below the point where the little troop had turned off. No recent hoof-track, southbound, was visible. "He couldn"t have come this far," said he. "Better put back!" Put back they did, and by the aid of Hart"s lantern found the fresh trail of a government-shod horse, turning to the east nearly two miles toward home. Quirk said a bad word or two; borrowed the lantern and thoughtfully included the flask; bade his men follow in file and plunged through the underbrush in dogged pursuit. Hart and his team now could not follow. They waited over half an hour without sign or sound from the trailers, then drove swiftly back to the post. There was a light in the telegraph office, and thither Hart went in a hurry. Lieutenant Doty, combining the duties of adjutant and officer of the day, was up and making the rounds. The sentries had just called off three o"clock.
"Had your trouble for nothing, Hart," hailed the youngster cheerily.
"Where"re the men?"
"Followed his trail--turned to the east three miles below here,"
answered the trader.
"Three miles _below_! Why, man, he wasn"t below. He met them up Beaver Creek, an" brought "em in."
"Brought who in?" asked Hart, dropping his whip. "I don"t understand."
"Why, the scouts, or runners! Wren sent "em in. He"s had a sharp fight up the mountains beyond Snow Lake. Three men wounded. You couldn"t have gone a mile before Blakely led "em across No. 4"s post. Ahorah and another chap--"Patchie-Mohaves. We clicked the news up to Prescott over an hour ago."
The tin reflector at the office window threw the light of the gla.s.s-framed candle straight upon Hart"s rubicund face, and that face was a study. He faltered a bit before he asked:
"Did Blakely seem all right?--not used up, I mean?"
"Seemed weak and tired, but the man is mad to go and join his troop now--wants to go right out with Ahorah in the morning, and Captain Cutler says no. Oh, they had quite a row!"
They had had rather more than quite a row, if truth were told. Doty had heard only a bit of it. Cutler had been taken by surprise when the Bugologist appeared, two strange, wiry Apaches at his heels, and at first had contented himself with reading Wren"s dispatch, repeating it over the wires to Prescott. Then he turned on Blakely, silently, wearily waiting, seated at Doty"s desk, and on the two Apaches, silently, stolidly waiting, squatted on the floor. Cutler wished to know how Blakely knew these couriers were coming, and how he came to leave the post without permission. For a moment the lieutenant simply gazed at him, unanswering, but when the senior somewhat sharply repeated the question, in part, Blakely almost as sharply answered: "I did not know they were coming nor that there was wrong in my going.
Major Plume required nothing of the kind when we were merely going out for a ride."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "BLAKELY LED "EM ACROSS NO. 4"S POST"]
This nettled Cutler. He had always said that Plume was lax, and here was proof of it. "I might have wanted you--I _did_ want you, hours ago, Mr. Blakely, and even Major Plume would not countenance his officers spending the greater part of the night away from the post, especially on a government horse," and there had Cutler the whip hand of the scientist, and Blakely had sense enough to see it, yet not sense enough to accept. He was nervous and irritable, as well as tired. Graham had told him he was too weak to ride, yet he had gone, not thinking, of course, to be gone so long, but gone deliberately, and without asking the consent of the post commander. "My finding the runners was an accident," he said, with some little asperity of tone and manner. "In fact, I didn"t find them. They found me. I had known them both at the reservation. Have I your permission, sir"--this with marked emphasis--"to take them for something to eat. They are very hungry,--have come far, and wish to start early and rejoin Captain Wren,--as I do, too."
"They will start when _I_ am ready, Mr. Blakely," said Cutler, "and you certainly will not start before. In point of fact, sir, you may not be allowed to start at all."
It was now Blakely"s turn to redden to the brows. "You surely will not prevent my going to join my troop, now that it is in contact with the enemy," said he. "All I need is a few hours" sleep. I can start at seven."
"You cannot, with my consent, Mr. Blakely," said the captain dryly.
"There are reasons, in fact, why you can"t leave here for any purpose unless the general himself give contrary orders. Matters have come up that--you"ll probably have to explain."
And here Doty entered, hearing only the captain"s last. At sight of his adjutant the captain stopped short in his reprimand. "See to it that these runners have a good supper, Mr. Doty," said Cutler. "Stir up my company cook, if need be, but take them with you now." Then, turning again on Blakely, "The doctor wishes you to go to bed at once, Mr. Blakely, and I will see you in the morning, but no more riding away without permission," he concluded, and thereby closed the interview. He had, indeed, other things to say to, and inquire of, Blakely, but not until he had further consulted Graham. He confidently expected the coming day would bring instructions from headquarters to hold both Blakely and Trooper Downs at the post, as a result of his dispatches, based on the revelation of poor Pat Mullins. But Downs, forewarned, perhaps, had slipped into hiding somewhere--an old trick of his, when punishment was imminent. It might be two or three days before Downs turned up again, if indeed he turned up at all, but Blakely was here and could be held. Hence the "horse order" of the earlier evening.
It was nearly two when Blakely reached his quarters, rebuffed and stung. He was so nervous, however, that, in spite of serious fatigue, he found it for over an hour impossible to sleep. He turned out his light and lay in the dark, and the atmosphere of the room seemed heavily charged with rank tobacco. His new "striker" had sat up, it seems, keeping faithful vigil against his master"s return, but, as the hours wore on, had solaced himself with pipe after pipe, and wandering about to keep awake. Most of the time, he declared, he had spent in a big rocking chair on the porch at the side door, but the scent of the weed and of that veteran pipe permeated the entire premises, and the Bugologist hated dead tobacco. He got up and tore down the blanket screen at the side windows and opened all the doors wide and tried his couch again, and still he wooed the drowsy G.o.d in vain. "Nor poppy nor mandragora" had he to soothe him. Instead there were new and anxious thoughts to vex, and so another half hour he tossed and tumbled, and when at last he seemed dropping to the borderland, perhaps, of dreams, he thought he must be ailing again and in need of new bandages or cooling drink or something, for the m.u.f.fled footfalls, betrayed by creaking pine rather than by other sound, told him drowsily that the attendant or somebody, cautioned not to disturb him, was moving slowly across the room. He might have been out on the side porch to get cool water from the _olla_, but he needn"t be so confoundedly slow and cautious, though he couldn"t help the creaking. Then, what could the attendant want in the front room, where were still so many of the precious gla.s.s cases unharmed, and the Bugologist"s favorite books and his big desk, littered with papers, etc.? Blakely thought to hail and warn him against moving about among those brittle gla.s.s things, but reflected that he, the new man, had done the reshifting under his, Blakely"s, supervision, and knew just where each item was placed and how to find the pa.s.sage way between them. It really was a trifle intricate. How could he have gone into the spare room at Captain Wren"s, and there made his home as--she--Mrs. Plume had first suggested? There would not have been room for half his plunder, to say nothing of himself. "What on earth can Nixon want?" he sleepily asked himself, "fumbling about there among those cases? Was that a crack or a snap?" It sounded like both, a splitting of gla.s.s, a wrenching of lock spring or something. "Be careful there!" he managed to call. No answer. Perhaps it was some one of the big hounds, then, wandering restlessly about at night. They often did, and--why, yes, that would account for it. Doors and windows were all wide open here, what was to prevent? Still, Blakely wished he hadn"t extinguished his lamp. He might then have explored. The sound ceased entirely for a moment, and, now that he was quite awake, he remembered that the hospital attendant was no longer with him. Then the sounds must have been made by the striker or the hounds. Blakely had no dogs of his own. Indeed they were common property at the post, most of them handed down with the rest of the public goods and chattels by their predecessors of the ----th.
At all events, he felt far too languid, inert, weak, indifferent or something. If the striker, he had doubtless come down for cool water. If the hounds, they were in search of something to eat, and in either case why bother about it? The incident had so far distracted his thoughts from the worries of the night that now, at last and in good earnest, he was dropping to sleep.
But in less than twenty minutes he was broad awake again, with sudden start--gasping, suffocating, listening in amaze to a volley of snapping and cracking, half-smothered, from the adjoining room. He sprang from his bed with a cry of alarm and flung himself through a thick, hot veil of eddying, yet invisible, smoke, straight for the communicating doorway, and was brought up standing by banging his head against the resounding pine, tight shut instead of open as he had left it, and refusing to yield to furious battering. It was locked, bolted, or barred from the other side. Blindly he turned and rushed for the side porch and the open air, stumbling against the striker as the latter came clattering headlong down from aloft. Then together they rushed to the parlor window, now cracking and splitting from the furious heat within. A volume of black fume came belching forth, driven and lashed by ruddy tongues of flame within, and their shouts for aid went up on the wings of the dawn, and the infantry sentry on the eastward post came running to see; caught one glimpse of the glare at that southward window; bang went his rifle with a ring that came echoing back from the opposite cliffs, as all Camp Sandy sprang from its bed in answer to the stentorian shout "Fire! No. 5!"
CHAPTER XIII
WHOSE LETTERS?
There is something about a night alarm of fire at a military post that borders on the thrilling. In the days whereof we write the buildings were not the substantial creations of brick and stone to be seen to-day, and those of the scattered "camps" and stations in that arid, sun-scorched land of Arizona were tinder boxes of the flimsiest and most inflammable kind.
It could hardly have been a minute from the warning shot and yell of No. 5--repeated right and left by other sentries and echoed by No. 1 at the guard-house--before bugle and trumpet were blaring their fierce alarm, and the hoa.r.s.e roar of the drum was rousing the inmates of the infantry barracks. Out they came, tumbling pell-mell into the accustomed ranks, confronted by the sight of Blakely"s quarters one broad sheet of flame. With incredible speed the blaze had burst forth from the front room on the lower floor; leaped from window to window, from ledge to ledge; fastened instantly on overhanging roof, and the shingled screen of the veranda; had darted up the dry wooden stairway, devouring banister, railing, and snapping pine floor, and then, billowing forth from every crack, crevice, and cas.e.m.e.nt of the upper floor streamed hissing and crackling on the blackness that precedes the dawn, a magnificent glare that put to shame the feeble signal fires lately gleaming in the mountains. Luckily there was no wind--there never was a wind at Sandy--and the flames leaped straight for the zenith, lashing their way into the huge black pillar of smoke cloud sailing aloft to the stars.
Under their sergeants, running in disciplined order, one company had sped for the water wagon and were now slowly trundling that unwieldy vehicle, pushing, pulling, straining at the wheels, from its night berth close to the corrals. Rushing like mad, in no order at all, the men of the other company came tearing across the open parade, and were faced and halted far out in front of officers" row by Blakely himself, barefooted and clad only in his pyjamas, but all alive with vim and energy.
"Back, men! back for your blankets!" he cried. "Bring ladders and buckets! Back with you, lively!" They seemed to catch his meaning at the instant. His soldier home with everything it contained was doomed.
Nothing could save it. But there stood the next quarters,--Truman"s and Westervelt"s double set,--and in the intense heat that must speedily develop, it might well be that the dry, resinous woodwork that framed the adobe would blaze forth on its own account and spread a conflagration down the line. Already Mrs. Truman, with Norah and the children, was being hurried down to the doctor"s, while Truman himself, with the aid of two or three neighboring "strikers," had stripped the beds of their single blanket and, bucketing these with water, was slashing at the veranda roof and cornice along the northward side.
Somebody came with a short ladder, and in another moment three or four adventurous spirits, led by Blakely and Truman, were scrambling about the veranda roof, their hands and faces glowing in the gathering heat, spreading blankets over the shingling and cornice. In five minutes all that was left of Blakely"s little homestead was gone up in smoke and fierce, furious heat and flame, but the daring and well-directed effort of the garrison had saved the rest of the line. In ten minutes nothing but a heap of glowing beams and embers, within four crumbling walls of adobe, remained of the "beetle shop." Bugs, b.u.t.terflies, books, chests, desk, trunks, furniture, papers, and such martial paraphernalia as a subaltern might require in that desert land, had been reduced to ashes before their owner"s eyes. He had not saved so much as a shoe. His watch, lying on the table by his bedside, a silk handkerchief, and a little sc.r.a.p of a note, written in girlish hand and carried temporarily in the breast pocket, were the only items he had managed to bring with him into the open air. He was still gasping, gagging, half-strangling, when Captain Cutler accosted him to know if he could give the faintest explanation of the starting of so strange and perilous a fire, and Blakely, remembering the stealthy footsteps and that locked or bolted door, could not but say he believed it incendiary, yet could think of no possible motive.
It was daybreak as the little group of spectators, women and children of the garrison, began to break up and return to their homes, all talking excitedly, all intolerant of the experiences of others, and centered solely in the narrative of their own. Leaving a dozen men with buckets, readily filled from the acequia which turned the old water wheel just across the post of No. 4, and sending the big water wagon down to the stream for another liquid load, the infantry went back to their barracks and early coffee. The drenched blankets, one by one, were stripped from the gable end of Truman"s quarters, every square inch of the paint thereon being now a patch of tiny blisters, and there, as the dawn broadened and the pallid light took on again a tinge of rose, the officers gathered about Blakely in his scorched and soaked pyjamas, extending both condolence and congratulation.
"The question is, Blakely," remarked Captain Westervelt dryly, "will you go to Frisco to refit now, or wait till Congress reimburses?"
whereat the scientist was observed to smile somewhat ruefully. "The question is, Bugs," burst in young Doty irrepressibly, "will you wear this rig, or Apache full dress, when you ride after Wren? The runners start at six," whereat even the rueful smile was observed to vanish, and without answer Blakely turned away, stepping gingerly into the heated sand with his bare white feet.
"Don"t bother about dousing anything else, sergeant," said he presently, to the soldier supervising the work of the bucket squad.
"The iron box should be under what"s left of my desk--about there,"
and he indicated a charred and steaming heap, visible through a gap in the doubly baked adobe that had once been the side window. "Lug that out as soon as you can cool things off. I"ll probably be back by that time." Then, turning again to the group of officers, and ignoring Doty--Blakely addressed himself to the senior.
"Captain Cutler," said he, "I can fit myself out at the troop quarters with everything I need for the field, at least, and wire to San Francisco for what I shall need when we return. I shall be ready to go with Ahorah at six."
There was a moment of silence. Embarra.s.sment showed plainly in almost every face. When Cutler spoke it was with obvious effort. Everybody realized that Blakely, despite severe personal losses, had been the directing head in checking the progress of the flames. Truman had borne admirable part, but Blakely was at once leader and actor. He deserved well of his commander. He was still far from strong. He was weak and weary. His hands and face were scorched and in places blistered, yet, turning his back on the ruins of his treasures, he desired to go at once to join his comrades in the presence of the enemy. He had missed every previous opportunity of sharing perils and battle with them. He could afford such loss as that no longer, in view of what he knew had been said. He had every right, so thought they all, to go, yet Cutler hesitated. When at last he spoke it was to temporize.
"You"re in no condition for field work, Mr. Blakely," said he. "The doctor has so a.s.sured me, and just now things are taking such shape I--need you here."
"You will permit me to appeal by wire, sir?" queried Blakely, standing attention in his bedraggled night garb, and forcing himself to a semblance of respect that he was far from feeling.
"I--I will consult Dr. Graham and let you know," was the captain"s awkward reply.
Two hours later Neil Blakely, in a motley dress made up of collections from the troop and trader"s stores--a combination costume of blue flannel shirt, bandanna kerchief, cavalry trousers with machine-made saddle piece, Tonto moccasins and leggings, fringed gauntlets and a broad-brimmed white felt hat, strode into the messroom in quest of eggs and coffee. Doty had been there and vanished. Sick call was sounding and Graham was stalking across the parade in the direction of the hospital, too far away to be reached by human voice, unless uplifted to the pitch of attracting the whole garrison. The telegraph operator had just clicked off the last of half a dozen messages scrawled by the lieutenant--orders on San Francisco furnishers for the new outfit demanded by the occasion, etc., but Captain Cutler was still mured within his own quarters, declining to see Mr. Blakely until ready to come to the office. Ahorah and his swarthy partner were already gone, "started even before six," said the acting sergeant major, and Blakely was fuming with impatience and sense of something much amiss. Doty was obviously dodging him, there could be no doubt of that, for the youngster was between two fires, the post commander"s positive orders on one hand and Blakely"s urgent pleadings on the other.
Over at "C" Troop"s quarters was the lieutenant"s saddle, ready packed with blanket, greatcoat, and bulging saddle-bags. Over in "C" Troop"s stables was Deltchay--the lieutenant"s bronco charger, ready fed and groomed, wondering why he was kept in when the other horses were out at graze. With the saddle kit were the troop carbine and revolver, Blakely"s personal arms being now but stockless tubes of seared and blistered steel. Back of "C" Troop"s quarters lolled a half-breed Mexican packer, with a brace of mules, one girt with saddle, the other in shrouding aparejo--diamond-hitched, both borrowed from the post trader with whom Blakely"s note of hand was good as a government four per cent.--all ready to follow the lieutenant to the field whither right and duty called him. There, too, was Nixon, the new "striker,"
new clad as was his master, and full panoplied for the field, yet bemoaning the loss of soldier treasures whose value was never fully realized until they were irrevocably gone. Six o"clock, six-thirty, six-forty-five and even seven sped by and still there came no summons to join the soldier master. There had come instead, when Nixon urged that he be permitted to lead forth both his own troop horse and Deltchay, the brief, but significant reply: "Shut yer gab, Nixon.
There"s no horse goes till the captain says so!"
At seven o"clock, at last, the post commander came forth from his doorway; saw across the glaring level of the parade the form of Mr.
Blakely impatiently pacing the veranda at the adjutant"s office, and, instead of going thither, as was his wont, Captain Cutler turned the other way and strode swiftly to the hospital, where Graham met him at the bedside of Trooper patient Patrick Mullins. "How is he?" queried Cutler.
"Sleeping--thank G.o.d--and not to be wakened," was the Scotchman"s answer. "He had a bad time of it during the fire."
"What am I to tell Blakely?" demanded Cutler, seeking strength for his faltering hand. "You"re bound to help me now, Graham."
"Let him go and you _may_ make it worse," said the doctor, with a clamp of his grizzled jaws. "Hold him here and you"re sure to."