Home > Authors Index > Charles King > Tonio, Son of the Sierras: A Story of the Apache War > This page
Tonio, Son of the Sierras: A Story of the Apache War, a novel by Charles King |
||
Chapter 1 |
||
| Table of content |
Next > |
|
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER I "Does it never rain here?" asked the Latest Arrival, with sudden shift of the matter under discussion. "How is that, Bentley?" said the officer addressed to the senior present, the surgeon. "You've been here longest." "Don't know, I'm sure," was the languid answer. "I've only been here three years. Try 'Tonio there. He was born hereabouts." So the eyes of the six men turned to the indicated authority, an Apache of uncertain age. He looked to be forty and might be nearer sixty. He stood five feet ten in his tiptoed moccasins, and weighed less than little Harris, who could not touch the beam at five feet five. Harris was the light weight of the --th Cavalry, in physique, at least, and by no means proud of the distinction. To offset the handicap of lack of stature and weight, and of almost cat-like elasticity of frame and movement, he saw fit to cultivate a deliberation and dignity of manner that in his cadet days had started the sobriquet of "Heavy," later altered to "Hefty"; and Hefty Harris he was to the very hour this story opens--a junior first lieutenant with four years' record of stirring service in the far West, in days when the telegraph had not yet strung the Arizona deserts, and the railway was undreamed of. He had only just returned to the post from a ten days' scout, 'Tonio, the Apache, being his chief trailer and chosen companion on this as on many a previous trip. The two made an odd combination, having little in common beyond that imperturbable self-poise and dignity. The two elsewhere had met with marked success in "locating" rancherias of the hostile bands, and in following and finding marauding parties. The two were looked upon in southern Arizona as "the best in the business," and now, because other leaders had tried much and accomplished little, it had pleased the general commanding the Division of the Pacific to say to his subordinate, the general commanding the Department of Arizona, that as the "Tonto" Apaches and their fellows of the Sierra Blanca seemed too wily for his scouting parties sent out from Whipple Barracks, and the valley garrisons of McDowell and Verde, it might be well to detach Lieutenant Harris from his troop at old Camp Bowie and send him, with 'Tonio, to report to the commanding officer at Camp Almy. Now the commanding general of Arizona had thought of that project himself, and rejected it for two reasons: first, that the officers and men on duty at Almy would possibly take it as a reflection; second, that 'Tonio would probably take it as an affront to himself. 'Tonio, be it understood, was of the Apache Mohave tribe, whose hunting grounds had long been the upper Verde and adjacent mountains. 'Tonio had no scruples as to scouting and shooting Chiricahuas and Sierra Blancas or the roving bands of Yaquis that sometimes ventured across the "Gadsden Purchase" from Mexico. 'Tonio had done vengeful work among these fellows. But now he was brought face to face with a far different proposition. The renegades of northern Arizona in the earliest of the seventies were mainly Tontos, but many a young brave of the Apache Mohave tribe had cast his lot with them. Many had taken their women and children, and 'Tonio would be hunting, possibly, his own flesh and blood. The junior general had ventured to remonstrate by letter, even when issuing the order indicated, but the senior stood to his prerogative with a tenacity that set the junior's teeth on edge, and started territorial and unbecoming comparisons between the division commander's firmness on the fighting line a decade earlier, and far behind it now. San Francisco was perhaps five hundred miles from the scene of hostilities, and those farthest away seldom fail to see clearer than those on the spot, and to think they know better, so Harris and his dusky henchman came up to Almy with little by way of welcome, and back from their first scout with nothing by way of result. Therefore, the sextette of officers that had been but lukewarm at the start became lavish in cordiality at the close. The failure of Harris, the favorite of the chieftain of the big Division, meant that no further criticism could attach to them. If Harris could accomplish nothing worth mention, what could be expected of others? Therefore, while awaiting the return of the courier sent up to Prescott, with report of what Harris had not accomplished, and asking instructions as to what the gentleman would have next, the commanding officer of the old post, built by California volunteers during the Civil War and garrisoned later by reluctant regulars, set a good example to his subordinates by doing his best to console the "casuals," as visitors were officially rated, and his subordinates loyally followed suit. But Harris seemed unresponsive. Harris seemed almost sulky. Harris had added silence to dignity, and spent long hours of a sunny day sprawled in a hammock, smoking his pipe and studying 'Tonio, who squatted in the shade at the end of the narrow porch of the old officers' mess building, still more silent and absorbed than his young commander. And this was the condition of things when the Latest Arrival appeared on the scene, fresh from head-quarters, some ninety miles northwest and two thousand feet higher. He had come late the previous afternoon. He had skated down the flinty scarp of Misery Hill, with the wheels of his buckboard locked, and hauled up at the adjutant's in a cloud of dust and misapprehension, with barely time for a bath and a shave before dinner. He was a new aide-de-camp of the department commander. He had served him well and won his notice on Indian campaigns afar to the north in the Columbia valley, where gum boots and slickers were as indispensable as here they were superfluous. He had never been, he said, so dry in his life as when he scrambled from his mud-colored chariot to the steps of the official residence. The temporal wants had been spiritually removed, but not the impression. Now, some eighteen hours later, he wished to know if it never rained at Almy, and there was no white man could tell him. So, one and all, they looked to 'Tonio, whose earliest recollections were of the immediate neighborhood. And 'Tonio proved a reluctant witness. Urged by Stannard, the senior captain referred to, Harris put the question in "Pidgin" Apache, and 'Tonio, squatting still, gazed dreamily away toward the huge bulwark of Squadron Peak, and waited for respectful cessation of all talk before he would answer. At last he rose to his full height and, with a sweeping gesture the length of his arm, pointed to the domelike summit, dazzling in the slant of the evening sunshine, that seemingly overhung the dun-colored adobe corrals on the flats to the south, yet stood full five miles away. 'Tonio so seldom opened his lips to speak that the six men listened with attention they seldom gave to one another. Yet what 'Tonio said was translatable only by Harris: "When the picacho hides his head in the clouds, then look for rain." "Lord," said the doctor, "I doubt if ever I've seen a cloud above it--much less on it! If it weren't for the creek yonder the whole post would shrivel up and blow away. Even the hygrometer's dead of disuse--or dry rot. But, talk of drying up, did you ever see the beat of him?" and the doctor was studying anatomy as displayed in this particular Apache. Five feet ten 'Tonio stood before them, not counting the thatch of his matted black hair, bound with white cotton turban. Five feet ten in height, but so gaunt and wiry that the ribs and bones seemed breaking through the tawny skin, that in flank and waist and the long sweep of his sinewy, fleshless legs, he rivalled the greyhound sprawled at his feet. "'Tonio has not half an ounce of fat in his hide," said Harris, in explaining his tireless work on the trail. "'Tonio can go sixty miles without a gulp of water and come out fresh as a daisy at the end." 'Tonio's eminently fit condition had been something Harris ever held in envy and emulation, yet on this recent scout even 'Tonio had failed him. 'Tonio had complained. To look at him as he stood there now, erect, slender, with deep chest and long, lank arms and legs, trammelled only by the white cotton breechclout that looped over the waist belt and trailed, fore and aft, below the bony knee, his back and shoulders covered by white camisa unfastened at the throat and chest, his feet cased in deerskin moccasins, the long leggings of which hung in folds at the ankles, one could liken him only to the coyote--the half-famished wolf of the sage plain and barren, for even the greyhound knew thirst and fatigue,--knew how to stretch at full length and luxury in the shade, whereas 'Tonio, by day at least, stood or squatted. Never in all their long prowlings, by day or night, among the arid deserts or desolate ranges along the border, had Harris known his chief trailer and scout to hint at such a thing as weariness. Yet, within the week gone by, thrice had he declared himself unable to go farther. Did it mean that at last 'Tonio would purposely fail him, now that there were some of his own people among the renegades? 'Tonio had stoutly denied such a weakness. The few young men with the hostiles, said he, were more Tonto than Mohave--fools who had offended their brothers and dishonored their tribe. Chiefs, medicine men, even the women, he said, disowned them. The braves would kill, and the women spurn, them on sight. 'Tonio pointed to the "hound" scouts with the Verde company--Hualpais, some of them--splendid specimens from the mountains; Apache Yumas, some of them, not quite the peer of the Hualpais; but many of them--most of them, in fact--Apache Mohaves, fiercest, surest trailers of the wild Red Rock country, familiar with every canon and crag in all the rude range from Snow Lake to the Sierra Blanca. "All brothers," protested 'Tonio. "All soldiers. All braves, unafraid of a thousand Tontos, eager only to meet and punish their traitor fellows who had taken the White Chief's pay and bread, pledged their best services and then gone renegading to the fastnesses of the Mogollon," adding with scorn unspeakable, "taking other women with them." And still Harris was not content. Harris had sent a runner back when the scout was but half finished, with a note to be relayed to Prescott, to tell the general of his ill success and his evil suspicions, and the chief being himself out a-hunting, what did his chief of staff do but order the Newly Arrived down to Almy to meet the home-coming party and see for himself--and his general! And of all men chosen to meddle in matters concerning "Hefty" Harris, perhaps the latest suitable, in some ways, was his classmate and comrade lieutenant, though in different arms of the service--Hal Willett of "The Lost and Strayed," so called from the fact that they had been sent to desert wilds in '65, scattered over three territories, and despite some hard fighting and many hard knocks, had never, said their detractors, been heard from since. Rivals they had been in cadet days and more than one pursuit. Rivals they still were in the field of arms, for the name Harris had won for himself in Arizona Willett had matched in the Columbia, and now, fresh from the ill-starred campaign of the Lava Beds, was one of the few men to get something better than hard knocks, censure and criticism. Until the previous evening, not since the day they parted at West Point had they set eyes one on the other, and, knowing nothing of what had gone before and never dreaming of what would come to pass, a benighted bureau officer had sent the one down to find out what was the matter with the other. And thereby hangs this tale. For, as luck would have it, there was even then stationed in that far-away land a luckless lieutenant-colonel of infantry who had started with good prospects in the Civil War, had early been given command of a brigade of volunteers and within the month had had his raw concourse of undrilled, undisciplined levies swept from under him in the first fierce onset at Shiloh. What else could have been expected of men to whom arms had been issued but ten days before, and who had not yet learned which end to bite from the cartridge? Hurled from his terrified horse, the general had been picked up senseless, to see no more of fighting until Stone's River, eight months later, where with a more seasoned command the same thing happened. And still he persisted, when well of an ugly wound, and, while juniors in years and length of service were now heading corps and divisions, with double stars on their shoulders, and he had to begin again with a brigade, he got into line for Chickamauga with his usual luck just within range of the fatal gap left by a senior in command--the gap through which poured the impetuous gray torrent of the Southland--and for the third time everything crumbled away in spite of him, while he was left for dead upon the field. He had done his best, as had other men, and had fared only the worst. It was a case of three times and out. The impatient North had no more use for names linked only with disaster. When, finally exchanged, he limped back to duty, they put him on courts, boards and other back-door business until the war was over, then sent him to the Pacific Slope, with the blanket brevet of March, 1865, and here he was, eight long years thereafter, "The General" by way of title, without the command; silver leaves where once gleamed the stars on his shoulders; silver streaks where once rippled chestnut and gold; wrinkled of visage and withered in shank; kindly, patient, yet pathetic; "functioning" a four-company post in a far-away desert, with grim mountain chains on east and west, and waters on every side of him, four long weeks and four thousand miles by mail route from home, and much longer by sea; with nothing to do but send out scouts, sign papers, sing an old song or two when the spirit moved him; with not a thing in his soldier past to be ashamed of, nothing much in his soldier present to rejoice in, nothing whatever in his soldier future to hope for, finding his companionship in the comrades about him, and his sweetest comfort in the unswerving love of a devoted wife, and their one unstinted pride and delight, Lilian, their only daughter--their only surviving child. Many of these eight years of what then was exile, while he, at first as a major of foot, was campaigning in regions long since reclaimed from savagery, and rusticating at frontier forts long since forgotten, Lilian and her mother had dwelt in lodgings at "The Bay" that the child might have the advantage of San Francisco's schools. Only once each year, until of late, had he been able to visit them, usually at Christmas-tide, but by every runner, courier, stage or post there came to them his cheery letters, bearing such old-time, outlandish post-marks or headings as "Lapwai," "Three Forks, Owyhee," and later "Hualpai," or "Hassayampa," until finally it became mild, civilized, pacific, even "Almy." The uniform of a general, that the law had let him wear just as long in peace as had been the war in years, was finally packed in camphorated hope of resurrection, and the garb of actual rank resumed in 1870. He could bear the title ad infinitum, but not the sign. The silver leaf, as said, had come to replace the worn and tarnished gold by '73, then mountain fever had seized and laid him by the heels, and then all the Indians in Arizona, or the army women out of it, could not dissuade Mrs. Archer from her duty. She and Lilian were the heroines of a buckboard ride from Drum Barracks to the Colorado, from the Colorado to Prescott, from Prescott down through wild and tortuous canons to and beyond the valley of the Verde--to the wondering eyes of the waiting garrison and the welcoming arms of the fond husband and father at Almy. And this was but the week gone by, just before the "Newly Arrived" had reached Prescott--just before "Hefty" Harris had returned from scout. Not until this very morning--the first since their reunion of that warm, yet winter's evening of the previous day--had the two classmates set eyes on Miss Archer (it was as she rode away by her father's side for a canter up the valley), and not until this late afternoon, as the sun was dipping behind the black range of the Mazatzal, did they have opportunity to speak with her. Even as 'Tonio stood, silent and statuesque, while the doctor went on record as to the rainfall of the Verde watershed, there came suddenly into view, jogging quietly up the winding road from the lower ford, three riders, followed by half a pack of lagging, yapping hounds--"The Old Man," the maiden and the orderly--and all men on the wooden porch of the unpainted mess building, rose to their feet in deference to the united "powers above," rank and age, youth and beauty, and presently the commander was saying for the benefit of the two new-comers: "My daughter, gentlemen. Lilian, Mr. Harris, Mr. Willett." Inadvertently he had named them in the inverse order of rank--a small matter, though Willett had been promoted to his bar a year ahead of Harris. Otherwise, it was with a fair field and no favor the old-time rivals of cadet days stood for the first time in the presence of the only army girl at that moment to be found in the far-flung shadow of the Mazatzal--stood side by side, facing both the starter and the prize in what was destined to be the last great contest of their lives. _ |
||