At five o"clock of this cloudless October morning Colonel Montgomery Byrne, "of the old Army, sir," was reviling the fates that had set him the task of unraveling such a skein as he found at Sandy. At six he was blessing the stars that sent him. Awakened, much before his usual hour, by half-heard murmur of scurry and excitement, so quickly suppressed he believed it all a dream, he was thinking, half drowsily, all painfully, of the duty devolving on him for the day, and wishing himself well out of it, when the dream became real, the impression vivid. His watch told him reveille should now be sounding. His ears told him the sounds he heard were not those of reveille, yet something had roused the occupants of Officers" Row, and then, all on a sudden, instead of the sweet strains of "The Dawn of the Day" or "Bonnie La.s.s o" Gawrie" there burst upon the morning air, harsh and bl.u.s.tering, the alarum of the Civil War days, the hoa.r.s.e uproar of the drum thundering the long roll, while above all rang the loud clamor of the cavalry trumpet sounding "To Horse."
"Fitz James was brave, but to his heart The life blood leaped with sudden start."
Byrne sprang from his bed. He was a soldier, battle-tried, but this meant something utterly new to him in war, for, mingling with the gathering din, he heard the shriek of terror-stricken women. Daly"s bed was empty. The agent was gone. Elise aloft was jabbering _patois_ at her dazed and startled mistress. Suey, the Chinaman, came clattering in, all flapping legs and arms and pigtail, his face livid, his eyes staring. "Patcheese! Patcheese!" he squealed, and dove under the nearest bed. Then Byrne, shinning into boots and breeches and shunning his coat, grabbed his revolver and rushed for the door.
Across the parade, out of their barracks the "doughboys" came streaming, no man of them dressed for inspection, but rather, like sailors, stripped for a fight; and, never waiting to form ranks, but following the lead of veteran sergeants and the signals or orders of officers somewhere along the line, went sprinting straight for the eastward _mesa_. From the cavalry barracks, the northward sets, the troopers, too, were flowing, but these were turned stableward, back of the post, and Byrne, with his nightshirt flying wide open, wider than his eyes, bolted round through the s.p.a.ce between the quarters of Plume and Wren, catching sight of the arrested captain standing grim and gaunt on his back piazza, and ran with the foremost sergeants to the edge of the plateau, where, in his cool white garb, stood Plume, shouting orders to those beneath.
There, down in the Sandy bottom, was explanation of it all. Two soldiers were bending over a prostrate form in civilian dress. Two swarthy Apaches, one on his face, the other, ten rods away, writhing on his side, lay weltering in blood. Out along the sandy barren and among the clumps of mezquite and greasewood, perhaps as many as ten soldiers, members of the guard, were scattering in rude skirmish order; now halting and dropping on one knee to fire, now rushing forward; while into the willows, that swept in wide concave around the flat, a number of forms in dirty white, or nothing at all but streaming breechclout, were just disappearing.
Northward, too, beyond the post of No. 4, other little squads and parties could be faintly seen scurrying away for the shelter of the willows, and as Byrne reached the major"s side, with the to-be-expected query "Whatinh.e.l.l"sthematter?" the last of the fleeing Apaches popped out of sight, and Plume turned toward him in mingled wrath and disgust:
"That--a.s.s of an agent!" was all he could say, as he pointed to the prostrate figure in pepper and salt.
Byrne half slid, half stumbled down the bank and bent over the wounded man. Dead he was not, for, with both hands clasped to his breast, Daly was cradling from side to side and saying things of Apaches totally unbecoming an Indian agent and a man of G.o.d. "But who did it? and how?--and why?" demanded Byrne of the ministering soldiers.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "NOW HALTING, DROPPING ON ONE KNEE TO FIRE"]
"Tried to "rest two Patchie girls, sir," answered the first, straightening up and saluting, "and her feller wouldn"t stand it, I reckon. Knifed the agent and Craney, too. Yonder"s the feller."
Yonder lay, face downward, as described, a sinewy young brave of the Apache Mohave band, his newer, cleaner shirt and his gayly ornamented sash and headgear telling of superior rank and station among his kind.
With barely a glance at Craney, squatted beside a bush, and with teeth and hands knotting a kerchief about a bleeding arm, Byrne bent over the Apache and turned the face to the light.
"Good G.o.d!" he cried, at the instant, "it"s Quonathay--Raven Shield!
Why, _you_ know him, corporal!"--this to Casey, of Wren"s troop, running to his side. "Son of old Chief Quonahelka! I wouldn"t have had this happen for all the girls on the reservation. Who were they? Why did he try to arrest them? Here! I"ll have to ask him--stabbed or not!" And, anxious and angering, the colonel hastened over toward the agent, now being slowly aided to his feet. Plume, too, had come sidelong down the sandy bank with Cutler, of the infantry, asking where he should put in his men. "Oh, just deploy across the flats to stand off any possible attack," said Plume. "Don"t cross the Sandy, and, d.a.m.n it all! get a bugler out and sound recall!" For now the sound of distant shots came echoing back from the eastward cliffs. The pursuit had spread beyond the stream. "I don"t want any more of those poor devils hurt. There"s mischief enough already," he concluded.
"I should say so," echoed the colonel. "What was the matter, Mr.
Daly? Whom did you seek to arrest?--and why?"
"Almost any of "em," groaned Daly. "There were a dozen there I"d refused pa.s.ses to come again this week. They were here in defiance of my orders, and I thought to take that girl Natzie,--she that led Lola off,--back to her father at the agency. It would have been a good lesson. Of course she fought and scratched. Next thing I knew a dozen of "em were atop of us--some water, for G.o.d"s sake!--and lift me out of this!"
Then with grave and watch-worn face, Graham came hurrying to the spot, all the way over from Mullins"s bedside at the hospital and breathing hard. Dour indeed was the look he gave the groaning agent, now gulping at a gourd held to his pale lips by one of the men. The policy of Daly"s predecessor had been to feather his own nest and let the Indian shift for himself, and this had led to his final overthrow. Daly, however, had come direct from the care of a tribe of the Pueblo persuasion, peace-loving and tillers of the soil, meek as the Pimas and Maricopas, natives who fawned when he frowned and cringed at the crack of his whip. These he had successfully, and not dishonestly, ruled, but that very experience had unfitted him for duty over the mountain Apache, who cringed no more than did the lordly Sioux or Cheyenne, and truckled to no man less than a tribal chief. Blakely, the soldier, cool, fearless, and resolute, but scrupulously just, they believed in and feared; but this new bl.u.s.terer only made them laugh, until he scandalized them by wholesale arrest and punishment. Then their childlike merriment changed swiftly to furious and scowling hate,--to open defiance, and finally, when he dared lay hands on a chosen daughter of the race, to mutiny and the knife. Graham, serving his third year in the valley, had seen the crisis coming and sought to warn the man. But what should an army doctor know of an Apache Indian?
said Daly, and, fatuous in his own conceit, the crisis found him unprepared.
"Go you for a stretcher," said the surgeon, after a quick look into the livid face. "Lay him down gently there," and kneeling, busied himself with opening a way to the wound. Out over the flats swung the long skirmish line, picturesque in the variety of its undress, Cutler striding vociferous in its wake, while a bugler ran himself out of breath, far to the eastward front, to puff feeble and abortive breath into unresponsive copper. And still the same flutter of distant, scattering shots came drifting back from the brakes and canons in the rocky wilds beyond the stream. The guard still pursued and the Indians still led, but they who knew anything well knew it could not be long before the latter turned on the scattering chase, and Byrne strode about, fuming with anxiety. "Thank G.o.d!" he cried, as a prodigious clatter of hoofs, on hollow and resounding wood, told of cavalry coming across the _acequia_, and Sanders galloped round the sandy point in search of the foe--or orders. "Thank G.o.d! Here, Sanders--pardon me, major, there isn"t an instant to lose--Rush your men right on to the front there! Spread well out, but don"t fire a shot unless attacked in force! Get those--chasing idiots and bring them in! By G.o.d, sir, we"ll have an Indian war on our hands as it is!"
And Sanders nodded and dug spurs to his troop horse, and sang out: "Left front into line--gallop!" and the rest was lost in a cloud of dust and the blare of cavalry trumpet.
Then the colonel turned to Plume, standing now silent and sore troubled. "It was the quickest way," he said apologetically.
"Ordinarily I should have given the order through you, of course. But those beggars are armed to a man. They left their guns in the crevices of yonder rocks, probably, when they came for the morning music. We must have no fight over this unless they force it. I wish to heaven we hadn"t killed--these two," and ruefully he looked at the stark forms--the dead lover of Natzie, the gasping tribesman just beyond, dying, knife in hand. "The general has been trying to curb Daly for the last ten days," continued he, "and warned him he"d bring on trouble. The interpreter split with him on Monday last, and there"s been mischief brewing ever since. If only we could have kept Blakely there--all this row would have been averted!"
If only, indeed! was Plume thinking, as eagerly, anxiously he scanned the eastward sh.o.r.e, rising jagged, rocky, and forbidding from the willows of the stream bed. If only, indeed! Not only all this row of which Byrne had seen so much, but all this other row, this row within a row, this intricacy of mishaps and misery that involved the social universe of Camp Sandy, of which as yet the colonel, presumably, knew so very little; of which, as post commander, Plume had yet to tell him! An orderly came running with a field gla.s.s and a sc.r.a.p of paper.
Plume glanced at the latter, a pencil scrawl of his wife"s inseparable companion, and, for aught he knew, confidante. "Madame," he could make out, and "_affreus.e.m.e.nt_" something, but it was enough. The orderly supplemented: "Leece, sir, says the lady is very bad--"
"Go to her, Plume," with startling prompt.i.tude cried the colonel.
"I"ll look to everything here. It"s all coming out right," for with a tantara--tantara-ra-ra Sanders"s troop, spreading far and wide, were scrambling up the shaly slopes a thousand yards away. "Go to your wife and tell her the danger"s over," and, with hardly another glance at the moaning agent, now being limply hoisted on a hospital stretcher, thankfully the major went. "The lady"s very bad, is she?" growled Byrne, in fierce aside to Graham. "That French hag sometimes speaks truth, in spite of herself. How d"you find him?" This with a toss of the head toward the vanishing stretcher.
"Bad likewise. These Apache knives dig deep. There"s Mullins now--"
"Think _that_ was Apache?" glared Byrne, with sudden light in his eyes, for Wren had told his troubles--all.
"Apache _knife_--yes."
"What the devil do you mean, Graham?" and the veteran soldier, who knew and liked the surgeon, whirled again on him with eyes that looked not like at all.
The doctor turned, his somber gaze following the now distant figure of the post commander, struggling painfully up the yielding sand of the steep slope to the plateau. The stretcher bearers and attendants were striding away to hospital with the now unconscious burden. The few men, lingering close at hand, were grouped about the dead Apaches. The gathering watchers along the bank were beyond earshot. Staff officer and surgeon were practically alone and the latter answered:
"I mean, sir, that if that Apache knife had been driven in by an Apache warrior, Mullins would have been dead long hours ago--which he isn"t."
Byrne turned a shade grayer.
"Could _she_ have done that?" he asked, with one sideward jerk of his head toward the major"s quarters.
"I"m not saying," quoth the Scot. "I"m asking was there anyone else?"
CHAPTER IX
A CARPET KNIGHT, INDEED
The flag at Camp Sandy drooped from the peak. Except by order it never hung halfway. The flag at the agency fluttered no higher than the cross-trees, telling that Death had loved some shining mark and had not sued in vain. Under this symbol of mourning, far up the valley, the interpreter was telling to a circle of dark, sullen, and unresponsive faces a fact that every Apache knew before. Under the full-masted flag at the post, a civilian servant of the nation lay garbed for burial. Poor Daly had pa.s.sed away with hardly a chance to tell his tale, with only a loving, weeping woman or two to mourn him.
Over the camp the shadow of death tempered the dazzling sunshine, for all Sandy felt the strain and spoke only with sorrow. He meant well, did Daly, that was accorded him now. He only lacked "savvy" said they who had dwelt long in the land of Apache.
Over at the hospital two poor women wept, and twice their number strove to soothe. Janet Wren and Mrs. Graham were there, as ever, when sorrow and trouble came. Mrs. Sanders and Mrs. Cutler, too, were hovering about the mourners, doing what they could, and the hospital matron, busy day and night of late, had never left her patient until he needed her no more, and then had turned to minister to those he left behind--the widow and the fatherless. Over on the shaded verandas other women met and murmured in the soft, sympathetic drawl appropriate to funereal occasion, and men nodded silently to each other. Death was something these latter saw so frequently it brought but little of terror. Other things were happening of far greater moment that they could not fathom at all.
Captain Wren, after four days of close arrest, had been released by the order of Major Plume himself, who, pending action on his application for leave of absence, had gone on sick report and secluded himself within his quarters. It was rumored that Mrs. Plume was seriously ill, so ill, indeed, she had to be denied to every one of the sympathizing women who called, even to Janet, sister of their soldier next-door neighbor, but recently a military prisoner, yet now, by law and custom, commander of the post.
Several things had conspired to bring about this condition of affairs.
Byrne, to begin with, had been closely questioning Shannon, and had reached certain conclusions with regard to the stabbing of Mullins that were laid before Plume, already stunned by the knowledge that, sleeping as his friendly advisers declared, or waking, as his inner consciousness would have it, Clarice, his young and still beautiful wife, had left her pillow and gone by night toward the northern limit of the line of quarters. If Wren were tried, or even accused, that fact would be the first urged in his defense. Plume"s stern accusation of Elise had evoked from her nothing but a voluble storm of protest. Madame was ill, sleepless, nervous--had gone forth to walk away her nervousness. She, Elise, had gone in search and brought her home. Downs, the wretch, when as stoutly questioned, declared he had been blind drunk; saw n.o.body, knew nothing, and must have taken the lieutenant"s whisky. Plume shrank from asking Norah questions. He could not bring himself to talking of his wife to the girl of the laundresses" quarters, but he knew now that he must drop that much of the case against Wren.
Then came the final blow. Byrne had gone to the agency, making every effort through runners, with promises of immunity, to coax back the renegades to the reservation, and so avert another Apache war. Plume, in sore perplexity, was praying for the complete restoration of Mullins--the only thing that could avert investigation--when, as he entered his office the morning of this eventful day, Doty"s young face was eloquent with news.
One of the first things done by Lieutenant Blakely when permitted by Dr. Graham to sit and speak, was to dictate a letter to the post adjutant, the original of which, together with the archives of Camp Sandy, was long since buried among the hidden treasures of the War Department. The following is a copy of the paper placed by Mr. Doty in the major"s hands even before he could reach his desk:
CAMP SANDY, A. T.,
October --, 187--
LIEUTENANT J. J. DOTY,
8th U. S. Infantry,
Post Adjutant.
_Sir_: I have the honor to submit for the consideration of the post commander, the following: