It was barely midnight when Plume"s big black wagon, the Concord, all spring and hickory, as said the post quartermaster, went whirling away behind its strapping team of four huge Missouri mules. It was 12.30 by the guard-house clock and the call of the sentries when Wren came home to find Angela, her long, luxuriant hair tumbling down over her soft, white wrapper, waiting for him at the front door. From her window she had seen him coming; had noted the earlier departure of the wagon; had heard the voice of Major Plume bidding good-by, and wondered what it meant--this midnight start of the senior officer of the post. She had been sitting there silent, studying the glittering stars, and wondering would there be an answer to her note? Would he be able to write just yet? Was there reason, really, why he _should_ write, after all that had pa.s.sed? Somehow she felt that write he certainly would, and soon, and the thought kept her from sleeping. It was because she was anxious about Mullins, so she told herself and told her father, that she had gone fluttering down to meet him at the door. But no sooner had he answered, "Still delirious and yet holding his own,"
than she asked where and why Major Plume had gone.
"The general wired for him," answered Wren. "And what is my tall girlie doing, spiering from windows this time of night? Go to bed, child." She may be losing beauty sleep, but not her beauty, thought he fondly, as she as fondly kissed him and turned to obey. Then came a heavy footfall on the gallery without, and a dark form, erect and soldierly, stood between them and the dim lights of the guard-house.
It was a corporal of the guard.
"No. 4, sir, reports he heard shots--two--way up the valley."
"Good G.o.d!" Wren began, then throttled the expletive half spoken.
Could they have dared waylay the major--and so close to the post? A moment more and he was hurrying over to his troop quarters; five minutes, and a sergeant and ten men were running with him to the stables; ten, and a dozen horses, swiftly saddled, were being led into the open starlight; fifteen, and they were away at a lunging bronco lope, a twisting column of twos along the sandy road, leaving the garrison to wake and wonder. Three, four, five miles they sped, past Boulder Point, past Rattlesnake Hill, and still no sign of anything amiss, no symptom of night-raiding Apache, for indeed the Apache dreads the dark. Thrice the sergeant had sprung from his horse, lighted a match, and studied the trail. On and on had gone the mules and wagon without apparent break or interruption, until, far beyond the bluff that hid the road from sight of all at Sandy, they had begun the long, tortuous climb of the divide to Cherry Creek. No. 4 might have heard shots, but, if intended for the wagon, they had been harmless. It was long after one when Wren gave the word to put back to the post, and as they remounted and took the homeward trail, they rode for the first five minutes almost directly east, and, as they ascended a little slant of hillside, the sergeant in advance reined suddenly in. "Look there!" said he.
Far over among the rocky heights beyond the valley, hidden from the south from Sandy by precipitous cliffs that served almost as a reflector toward the reservation, a bright blaze had shot suddenly heavenward--a signal fire of the Apache. Some of them, then, were in the heart of that most intractable region, not ten miles northeast of the post, and signaling to their fellows; but the major must have slipped safely through.
Sending his horse to stable with the detachment, Wren had found No. 4 well over toward the east end of his post, almost to the angle with that of No. 5. "Watch well for signal fires or prowlers to-night," he ordered. "Have you seen any?"
"No signal fires, sir," answered the sentry. "Welch, who was on before me, thought he heard shots--"
"I know," answered Wren impatiently. "There was nothing in it. But we did see a signal fire over to the northeast, so they are around us, and some may be creeping close in to see what we"re doing, though I doubt it. You"ve seen nothing?"
"Well, no, sir; we can"t see much of anything, it"s so dark. But there"s a good many of the post people up and moving about, excited, I suppose. There were lights there at the lieutenant"s, Mr. Blakely"s, a while ago, and--voices." No. 4 pointed to the dark gable end barely forty yards away.
"That"s simple enough," said Wren. "People would naturally come up to this end to see what had become of us, why we had gone, etc. They heard of it, I dare say, and some were probably startled."
"Yes, sir, it sounded like--somebody cryin"."
Wren was turning away. "What?" he suddenly asked.
No. 4 repeated his statement. Wren pondered a moment, started to speak, to question further, but checked himself and trudged thoughtfully away through the yielding sand. The nearest path led past the first quarters, Blakely"s, on the eastward side, and as the captain neared the house he stopped short. Somewhere in the shadows of the back porch low, murmuring voices were faintly audible. One, in excited tone, was not that of a man, and as Wren stood, uncertain and surprised, the rear door was quickly opened and against the faint light from within two dark forms were projected. One, the taller, he recognized beyond doubt as that of Neil Blakely; the other he did not recognize at all. But he had heard the tone of the voice. He knew the form to be, beyond doubt, that of a young and slender woman. Then together the shadows disappeared within and the door was closed behind them.
CHAPTER XI
A STOP--BY WIRE
Three days later the infantry guard of the garrison were in sole charge. Wren and Sanders, with nearly fifty troopers apiece, had taken the field in compliance with telegraphic orders from Prescott. The general had established field headquarters temporarily at Camp McDowell, down the Verde Valley, and under his somewhat distant supervision four or five little columns of horse, in single file, were boring into the fastnesses of the Mogollon and the Tonto Basin. The runners had been unsuccessful. The renegades would not return. Half a dozen little nomad bands, forever out from the reservation, had eagerly welcomed these malcontents and the news they bore that two of their young braves had been murdered while striving to defend Natzie and Lola. It furnished all that was needed as excuse for instant descent upon the settlers in the deep valleys north of the Rio Salado, and, all unsuspecting, all unprepared, several of these had met their doom. Relentless war was already begun, and the general lost no time in starting his hors.e.m.e.n after the hostiles. Meantime the infantry companies, at the scattered posts and camps, were left to "hold the fort," to protect the women, children, and property, and Neil Blakely, a sore-hearted man because forbidden by the surgeon to attempt to go, was chafing, fuming, and r.e.t.a.r.ding his recovery at his lonely quarters. The men whom he most liked were gone, and the few among the women who might have been his friends seemed now to stand afar off.
Something, he knew not what, had turned garrison sentiment against him.
For a day or two, so absorbed was he in his chagrin over Graham"s verdict and the general"s telegraphic orders in the case, Mr. Blakely never knew or noticed that anything else was amiss. Then, too, there had been no opportunity of meeting garrison folk except the few officers who dropped in to inquire civilly how he was progressing. The bandages were off, but the plaster still disfigured one side of his face and neck. He could not go forth and seek society. There was really only one girl at the post whose society he cared to seek. He had his books and his bugs, and that, said Mrs. Bridger, was "all he demanded and more than he deserved." To think that the very room so recently sacred to the son and heir should be transformed into what that irate little woman called a "beetle shop"! It was one of Mr.
Blakely"s unpardonable sins in the eyes of the s.e.x that he found so much to interest him in a pursuit that neither interested nor included them. A man with brains and a bank account had no right to live alone, said Mrs. Sanders, she having a daughter of marriageable age, if only moderately prepossessing. All this had the women to complain of in him before the cataclysm that, for the time at least, had played havoc with his good looks. All this he knew and bore with philosophic and whimsical stoicism. But all this and more could not account for the phenomenon of averted eyes and constrained, if not freezing, manner when, in the dusk of the late autumn evening, issuing suddenly from his quarters, he came face to face with a party of four young women under escort of the post adjutant--Mrs. Bridger and Mrs. Truman foremost of the four and first to receive his courteous, yet half embarra.s.sed, greeting. They had to stop for half a second, as they later said, because really he confronted them, all unsuspected. But the other two, Kate Sanders and Mina Westervelt, with bowed heads and without a word, scurried by him and pa.s.sed on down the line. Doty explained hurriedly that they had been over to the post hospital to inquire for Mullins and were due at the Sanders" now for music, whereupon Blakely begged pardon for even the brief detention, and, raising his cap, went on out to the sentry post of No. 4 to study the dark and distant upheavals in the Red Rock country, where, almost every night of late, the signal fires of the Apaches were reported.
Not until he was again alone did he realize that he had been almost frigidly greeted by those who spoke at all. It set him to thinking.
Mrs. Plume was still confined to her room. The major had returned from Prescott and, despite the fact that the regiment was afield and a clash with the hostiles imminent, was packing up preparatory to a move. Books, papers, and pictures were being stored in chests, big and little, that he had had made for such emergencies. It was evident that he was expecting orders for change of station or extended leave, and they who went so far as to question the grave-faced soldier, who seemed to have grown ten years older in the last ten days, had to be content with the brief, guarded reply that Mrs. Plume had never been well since she set foot in Arizona, and even though he returned, she would not. He was taking her, he said, to San Francisco. Of this unhappy woman"s nocturnal expedition the others seldom spoke now and only with bated breath. "Sleep-walking, of course!" said everybody, no matter what everybody might think. But, now that Major Plume knew that in her sleep his wife had wandered up the row to the very door--the back door--of Mr. Blakely"s quarters, was it not strange that he had taken no pains to prevent a recurrence of so compromising an excursion, for strange stories were afloat. Sentry No. 4 had heard and told of a feminine voice, "somebody cryin" like" in the darkness of midnight about Blakely"s, and Norah Shaughnessy--returned to her duties at the Trumans", yet worrying over the critical condition of her trooper lover, and losing thereby much needed sleep--had gained some new and startling information. One night she had heard, another night she had dimly seen, a visitor received at Blakely"s back door, and that visitor a woman, with a shawl about her head. Norah told her mistress, who very properly bade her never refer to it again to a soul, and very promptly referred to it herself to several souls, one of them Janet Wren. Janet, still virtuously averse to Blakely, laid the story before her brother the very day he started on the warpath, and Janet was startled to see that she was telling him no news whatever. "Then, indeed," said she, "it is high time the major took his wife away," and Wren sternly bade her hold her peace, she knew not what she was saying! But, said Camp Sandy, who could it have been but Mrs. Plume or, possibly, Elise? Once or twice in its checkered past Camp Sandy had had its romance, its mystery, indeed its scandals, but this was something that put in the shade all previous episodes; this shook Sandy to its very foundation, and this, despite her brother"s prohibition, Janet Wren felt it her duty to detail in full to Angela.
To do her justice, it should be said that Miss Wren had striven valiantly against the impulse,--had indeed mastered it for several hours,--but the sight of the vivid blush, the eager joy in the sweet young face when Blakely"s new "striker" handed in a note addressed to Miss Angela Wren, proved far too potent a factor in the undoing of that magnanimous resolve. The girl fled with her prize, instanter, to her room, and thither, as she did not reappear, the aunt betook herself within the hour. The note itself was neither long nor effusive--merely a bright, cordial, friendly missive, protesting against the idea that any apology had been due. There was but one line which could be considered even mildly significant. "The little net,"
wrote Blakely, "has now a value that it never had before." Yet Angela was snuggling that otherwise unimportant billet to her cheek when the creaking stairway told her portentously of a solemn coming. Ten minutes more and the note was lying neglected on the bureau, and Angela stood at her window, gazing out over dreary miles of almost desert landscape, of rock and shale and sand and cactus, with eyes from which the light had fled, and a new, strange trouble biting at her girlish heart. Confound No. 4--and Norah Shaughnessy!
It had been arranged that when the Plumes were ready to start, Mrs.
Daly and her daughter, the newly widowed and the fatherless, should be sent up to Prescott and thence across the desert to Ehrenberg, on the Colorado. While no hostile Apaches had been seen west of the Verde Valley, there were traces that told that they were watching the road as far at least as the Agua Fria, and a sergeant and six men had been chosen to go as escort to the little convoy. It had been supposed that Plume would prefer to start in the morning and go as far as Stemmer"s ranch, in the Agua Fria Valley, and there rest his invalid wife until another day, thus breaking the fifty-mile stage through the mountains.
To the surprise of everybody, the Dalys were warned to be in readiness to start at five in the morning, and to go through to Prescott that day. At five in the morning, therefore, the quartermaster"s ambulance was at the post trader"s house, where the recently bereaved ones had been harbored since poor Daly"s death, and there, with their generous host, was the widow"s former patient, Blakely, full of sympathy and solicitude, come to say good-bye. Plume"s own Concord appeared almost at the instant in front of his quarters, and presently Mrs. Plume, veiled and obviously far from strong, came forth leaning on her husband"s arm, and closely followed by Elise. Then, despite the early hour, and to the dismay of Plume, who had planned to start without farewell demonstration of any kind, lights were blinking in almost every house along the row, and a flock of women, some tender and sympathetic, some morbidly curious, had gathered to wish the major"s wife a pleasant journey and a speedy recovery. They loved her not at all, and liked her none too well, but she was ill and sorrowing, so that was enough. Elise they could not bear, yet even Elise came in for a kindly word or two. Mrs. Graham was there, big-hearted and br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with helpful suggestion, burdened also with a basket of dainties.
Captain and Mrs. Cutler, Captain and Mrs. Westervelt, the Trumans both, Doty, the young adjutant, Janet Wren, of course, and the ladies of the cavalry, the major"s regiment, without exception, were on hand to bid the major and his wife good-bye. Angela Wren was not feeling well, explained her aunt, and Mr. Neil Blakely was conspicuous by his absence.
It had been observed that, during those few days of hurried packing and preparation, Major Plume had not once gone to Blakely"s quarters.
True, he had visited only Dr. Graham, and had begged him to explain that anxiety on account of Mrs. Plume prevented his making the round of farewell calls; but that he was thoughtful of others to the last was shown in this: Plume had asked Captain Cutler, commander of the post, to order the release of that wretch Downs. "He has been punished quite sufficiently, I think," said Plume, "and as I was instrumental in his arrest I ask his liberation." At tattoo, therefore, the previous evening "the wretch" had been returned to duty, and at five in the morning was found hovering about the major"s quarters. When invited by the sergeant of the guard to explain, he replied, quite civilly for him, that it was to say good-by to Elise.
"Me and her," said he, "has been good friends."
Presumably he had had his opportunity at the kitchen door before the start, but still he lingered, feigning professional interest in the condition of the sleek mules that were to haul the Concord over fifty miles of rugged road, up hill and down dale before the setting of the sun. Then, while the officers and ladies cl.u.s.tered thick on one side of the black vehicle, Downs sidled to the other, and the big black eyes of the Frenchwoman peered down at him a moment as she leaned toward him, and, with a whispered word, slyly dropped a little folded packet into his waiting palm. Then, as though impatient, Plume shouted "All right. Go on!" The Concord whirled away, and something like a sigh of relief went up from a.s.sembled Sandy, as the first kiss of the rising sun lighted on the bald pate of Squaw Peak, huge sentinel of the valley, looming from the darkness and shadows and the mists of the shallow stream that slept in many a silent pool along its ma.s.sive, rocky base. With but a few hurried, embarra.s.sed words, Clarice Plume had said adieu to Sandy, thinking never to see it again. They stood and watched her past the one unlighted house, the northernmost along the row. They knew not that Mr. Blakely was at the moment bidding adieu to others in far humbler station. They only noted that, even at the last, he was not there to wave a good-by to the woman who had once so influenced his life. Slowly then the little group dissolved and drifted away. She had gone unchallenged of any authority, though the fate of Mullins still hung in the balance. Obviously, then, it was not she whom Byrne"s report had implicated, if indeed that report had named anybody. There had been no occasion for a coroner and jury.
There would have been neither coroner nor jury to serve, had they been called for. Camp Sandy stood in a little world of its own, the only civil functionary within forty miles being a ranchman, dwelling seven miles down stream, who held some Territorial warrant as a justice of the peace.
But Norah Shaughnessy, from the gable window of the Trumans" quarters, shook a hard-clinching Irish fist and showered malediction after the swiftly speeding ambulance. "Wan "o ye," she sobbed, "dealt Pat Mullins a coward and cruel blow, and I"ll know which, as soon as ever that poor bye can spake the truth." She would have said it to that hated Frenchwoman herself, had not mother and mistress both forbade her leaving the room until the Plumes were gone.
Three trunks had been stacked up and secured on the hanging rack at the rear of the Concord. Others, with certain chests and boxes, had been loaded into one big wagon and sent ahead. The ambulance, with the Dalys and the little escort of seven hors.e.m.e.n, awaited the rest of the convoy on the northward flats, and the cloud of their combined dust hung long on the scarred flanks as the first rays of the rising sun came gilding the rocks at Boulder Point, and what was left of the garrison at Sandy turned out for reveille.
That evening, for the first time since his injury, Mr. Blakely took his horse and rode away southward in the soft moonlight, and had not returned when tattoo sounded. The post trader, coming up with the latest San Francisco papers, said he had stopped a moment to ask at the store whether Schandein, the ranchman justice of the peace before referred to, had recently visited the post.
That evening, too, for the first time since his dangerous wound, Trooper Mullins awoke from his long delirium, weak as a little child; asked for Norah, and what in the world was the matter with him--in bed and bandages, and Dr. Graham, looking into the poor lad"s dim, half-opening eyes, sent a messenger to Captain Cutler"s quarters to ask would the captain come at once to hospital. This was at nine o"clock.
Less than two hours later a mounted orderly set forth with dispatches from the temporary post commander to Colonel Byrne at Prescott. A wire from that point about sundown had announced the safe arrival of the party from Camp Sandy. The answer, sent at ten o"clock, broke up the game of whist at the quarters of the inspector general. Byrne, the recipient, gravely read it, backed from the table, and vainly strove not to see the anxious inquiry in the eyes of Major Plume, his guest.
But Plume cornered him.
"From Sandy?" he asked. "May I read it?"
Byrne hesitated just one moment, then placed the paper in his junior"s hand. Plume read, turned very white, and the paper fell from his trembling fingers. The message merely said:
Mullins recovering and quite rational, though very weak. He says two women were his a.s.sailants. Courier with dispatches at once.
(Signed) CUTLER, Commanding.
CHAPTER XII
FIRE!
"It was not so much his wounds as his weakness," Dr. Graham was saying, later still that autumn night, "that led to my declaring Blakely unfit to take the field. He would have gone in spite of me, but for the general"s order. He has gone now in spite of me, and no one knows where."
It was then nearly twelve o"clock, and "the Bugologist" was still abroad. Dinner, as usual since his mishap, had been sent over to him from the officers" mess soon after sunset. His horse, or rather the troop horse designated for his use, had been fed and groomed in the late afternoon, and then saddled at seven o"clock and brought over to the rear of the quarters by a stable orderly.
There had been some demur at longer sending Blakely"s meals from mess, now reduced to an actual membership of two. Sandy was a "much married"
post in the latter half of the 70"s, the bachelors of the commissioned list being only three, all told,--Blakely, and Duane of the Horse, and Doty of the Foot. With these was Heartburn, the contract doctor, and now Duane and the doctor were out in the mountains and Blakely on sick report, yet able to be about. Doty thought him able to come to mess.
Blakely, thinking he looked much worse than he felt, thanks to his plastered jowl, stood on his rights in the matter and would not go.
There had been some demur on part of the stable sergeant of Wren"s troop as to sending over the horse. Few officers brought eastern-bred horses to Arizona in those days. The bronco was best suited to the work. An officer on duty could take out the troop horse a.s.signed to his use any hour before taps and no questions asked; but the sergeant told Mr. Blakely"s messenger that the lieutenant wasn"t for duty, and it might make trouble. It did. Captain Cutler sent for old Murray, the veteran sergeant, and asked him did he not know his orders. He had allowed a horse to be sent to a sick man--an officer not on duty--and one the doctor had warned against exercise for quite a time, at least.
And now the officer was gone, so was the horse, and Cutler, being sorely torn up by the revelations of the evening and dread of ill befalling Blakely, was so injudicious as to hint to a soldier who had worn chevrons much longer than he, Cutler, had worn shoulder-straps, that the next thing to go would probably be his sergeant"s bars, whereat Murray went red to the roots of his hair--which "continued the march" of the color,--and said, with a snap of his jaws, that he got those chevrons, as he did his orders, from his troop commander. A court might order them stricken off, but a captain couldn"t, other than his own. For which piece of impudence the veteran went straightway to Sudsville in close arrest. Corporal Bolt was ordered to take over his keys and the charge of the stables until the return of Captain Wren, also this order--that no government horse should be sent to Lieutenant Blakely hereafter until the lieutenant was declared by the post surgeon fit for duty.
There were left at the post, of each of the two cavalry troops, about a dozen men to care for the stables, the barracks, and property. Seven of these had gone with the convoy to Prescott, and, when Cutler ordered half a dozen hors.e.m.e.n out at midnight to follow Blakely"s trail and try to find him, they had to draw on both troop stables, and one of the designated men was the wretch Downs,--and Downs was not in his bunk,--not anywhere about the quarters or corrals. It was nearly one by the time the party started down the sandy road to the south, Hart and his buckboard and a st.u.r.dy brace of mules joining them as they pa.s.sed the store. "We may need to bring him back in this," said he, to Corporal Quirk.