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Tonio, Son of the Sierras: A Story of the Apache War, a novel by Charles King |
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Chapter 17 |
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_ CHAPTER XVII As was to be expected, Lieutenant Harris was somewhat worse when time came for inspection Sunday morning, but Bentley said complete rest would soon restore him. The other interesting invalid, Lieutenant Willett, was correspondingly better, and was to sit up awhile later in the day. Inspection was held under arms and in fighting kit instead of full dress--the two companies looking like a pair of scanty platoons, so heavy was the drain for guard duty. From earliest dawn lookouts had been stationed on top of the adjutant's office at the south, and the hospital at the north edge of the parade, Bucketts having built for them a little wooden platform, with bench, shelf and sunshade, and there, with signal-service glasses, they scoured the barren wilds in every direction for sign of coming friend or foe. It was eleven o'clock when Bentley came forth with Mrs. Stannard from his morning visit to Willett. "Oh, he's doing as well as an overfed, under-trained animal has any right to," said he, in response to the inquiry in her soft blue eyes. "I still think some men have too much luck in this world of ours. Here's Willett, who doesn't begin to deserve it, getting everything that is good, and Harris, who deserves all the good that the army affords, gets all the hard knocks and setbacks. Here's Willett swearing that 'Tonio's a renegade, hostile, spy and a traitor, and Harris convinced that he is stanch and loyal--that Willett must be mistaken in saying he shot at him, and though everything I know of the Apaches or ever heard, and every bit of evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of Willett's statement, just from what I've seen of these two men I'm deciding with Harris." "You don't--feel confidence in Mr. Willett's--judgment?" she asked. For a moment he hesitated, then turned and squarely faced her. "I don't feel confidence in Mr. Willett. There, Mrs. Stannard! There are not ten women in the army to whom I'd trust myself to speak of this--or five women out of it--but I am not happy over the way things are going." "Don't you think he'll--learn to appreciate her?" "He shouldn't have to learn! He should see it all at a glance, and thank God for the unmerited blessing." "Perhaps he does," said she, ever gentle, helpful, hopeful. "It is lovely the way he speaks to her--and I'm quite eager to see them this afternoon." What woman would not be? What man would not have been at his best at such a time, under such circumstances? The realization that he had won the fervent love of that fresh, pure, exquisite young heart was enough to thrill even a nature so utterly selfish as Willett's. It is the shallowest soul that most readily thrills, and what could be sweeter than the shy, yet rapturous love in the downcast eyes of Lilian Archer, when, as he had implored her mother, she was led that afternoon to the darkened room in which he sat, and, like knight of old, he took and bent over and kissed her trembling little hand. "I would kneel, too," he murmured, even as her mother stood beside her, with swimming eyes, and as he looked up into the blushing face his own eyes were filled with unfeigned homage, admiration, even love, his deep voice with emotion that was sweet to woman's ear. "Heaven never made a lovelier lover than Hal Willett," once said a famous belle and beauty. "That's why so many of us like to listen." But these earnest, honest, inexperienced two--the whole-hearted army wife who had lived well-nigh quarter of a century in the undivided sunshine of an honest soldier's love, and this sweet, simple-hearted army girl who had never dreamed of or thought to know any love to compare with this--listened, spellbound, to Willett's almost eloquent avowal, and the last doubt or fear that Mrs. Archer entertained vanished like the morning mists before the sunshine. "I declare," she said to Mrs. Stannard, "I'm almost as much in love as Lilian," and indeed it seemed so, and might well be so, for never was queen's courtier so exquisite in deference, homage, tact, as, in that blissful week of honeymooning, was Hal Willett to the mother of his dainty love. As for Lilian, the arid, breezeless day was soft with scented zephyrs; the unpeopled air was athrill with the melody of countless song birds; the unsightly desert flowered with exquisite millions of buds and blossoms that craved the caress of her dainty hand, the pressure of her pretty foot. The sunburned square of the lonely little garrison, environed with swarthy foemen, cut off from the world, was alive with heroic knights in glittering armor and ladies in lace and loveliness, and all were her loyal, devoted subjects, revelling in her happiness, rejoicing in her smiles, serving her in homage and on bended knee, their thrice-blessed, beautiful, beloved queen. God never made a more radiantly happy girl than was our fairy Lilian that wonderful week. God be thanked it was so utterly blissful, since it had to be so brief! All day long the watchmen clung to their glaring stations, and Sunday went by without either alarm or excursion. All Sunday--Monday night, they scanned the dark depths of eastward basin, the lone reaches of the valley, the tumbling heights to the west. It was nine in the morning of the second day since the signalling from Squadron Peak when the cry went up from the roof of the office, "Signal smoke south-east!" and every glass at Almy was brought to bear within the minute, and half the garrison lined the lower edge of the mesa, and all men were listening for further tidings, when from the hospital came the stirring shout: "Smoke answer, west!" And there, plainly visible, and not five miles away among the pine-bearded foothills, in little puffs, singly and distinct, thick wreaths of gray-white smoke were sailing straight aloft. The waiting Apache of the Mazatzal was signalling the coming brother from the dark clefts of the Sierra Ancha. One hour later, just as ten was striking on the spiral of the office clock, two sudden shots were heard on the flats to the north-west, and the little herd of horses and mules, not two dozen in all, grazing under cover of the rifles of Sentries 3 and 4, came limping, lumbering in, fast as hoppled feet would permit and without sign of a herdsman. Number Three, a veteran of the war days, let drive with his fifty calibre Springfield, the gun of the day, and sent up a yell for "The Guard!" "Join your companies, men," said the general, in his placid way, whereat most of them went with a rush. "The north side first, Bonner," he added, as the captain came hurrying to his chief. "They've sneaked up on the herd guard, I fancy. Send the picked shots out to the pits." Out on the flats to the west of the Verde road, full five hundred yards away from rock, tree or shelter, other than mere clump of cactus, pumpkin size, or bunch of dirty weed, there was lying a little heap of dingy white and brown, with a cow pony kicking at empty air in a shallow ditch--what was left of the half-breed herd guard and his mount. With most of the cavalry gone, the quartermaster had supplied their place with such mounted men as he could make available, and in broad daylight, within long rifle-shot of the sentry lines, the Apaches had squirmed out, snake-like, on their bellies, unseen, unsuspected; had picked off one of two watchers and stampeded the other. The skirmish line stumbled over the survivor, quaking among the willows in the stream bed, and kicked him out into the open to help bear home his murdered brother; then pushed out as far as the first ridge in hopes of a shot, and were rewarded with nothing better than a glimpse of vanishing breech-clouts. Falling slowly back, toward noon, Bonner posted two men in each of a dozen rifle-pits, some fifty yards outside the sentry lines, as a rule, and wherever view of the approaches could be had. Two of these were on little knolls to the south of the store, and here were Craney & Co. in full force, every man armed with a Henry rifle and a war-model Colt, "Mr. Case-Keeper Book," as Sergeant Clancy jovially hailed him, quite as formidable as his fellows, and every whit as cool. Craney held that he and his men had a right to be counted in among those told off to hold the fort, and Bonner smilingly assented. "You two seem to hit it off pretty well together," said he to Case and Clancy. "I reckon we'll Cossack you over yonder," and he pointed to a scooped-out little hummock nearest the stream, commanding much of the southward road and the trail along the willows, now facetiously termed the "Ghost Walk." It was an unusual assignment, or distribution, but it seemed to strike the fancy of both. In times of peril and at the fore-posts men think less of rank and more of repute. Clancy was known far and wide as a fearless Apache fighter, with a Gaines's Mill-Gettysburg record behind him. Case had never before been heard of afield, but his one exploit in the card room stamped him unerringly, said these frontier experts, as "a man of nerve." Clancy held out his big red hand. "Are ye with me?" said he. "Yours truly," said Case. "Then come on, Pitkeeper," said Clancy, "and we'll leave Book and Case behind." The general came jogging down at the moment, bestriding one of Bucketts's general utility beasts, watching the posting of the post defenders, and he screwed his eyelids down to a slit as he glared from under the brim of his then unorthodox slouch hat, and squinted after the combination of soldier and civilian stalking away to the assigned station. "What have you there, Bonner?" he asked, as he reined in. "'Erin go unum, E pluribus bragh,' sir, as Derby would have it." "The Celt and the Casekeeper," he added to himself. "Clancy and Case going gunning together as amicably as if they had never squabbled over a sutler's bill." "Queer lot--that man Case!" said the commanding officer reflectively. "His face bothers me sometimes, as though I must have seen or known him before, yet he tells me that he did not come to Vancouver until after I had left that department. Is he all straight again?" "Straight as the new toadsticker, general, and"--with a rueful look at that slender appendage--"a damned sight more useful. His ghost-herding spree was no end important. I've an idea Case can handle a gun as well as"--another sotto voce now--"he can play a worthless hand." "Well," said Archer, as he glanced about him, "I don't believe, as a rule, in putting any but soldiers on post, but," as he considered the slender rank of infantry standing patiently at ease, barely a dozen all told, and then smiled at Craney and his belligerent force, only four in number, but each man a walking arsenal with two weapons and five shots to the soldiers' one, "there are no non-combatants in Indian warfare. Every man, woman and child may have to fight." Yet Archer felt no measure whatever of apprehension. One hundred good men and true, at least, were left to guard the post, and many of them battle-tried veterans. Not since the war days had the Apaches mustered in sufficient force and daring to attack a garrison. Still, Archer knew that if they only realized their strength in point of numbers, their skill in creeping close to their prey, their swiftness of foot, and the ease with which they could escape, all they needed was dash, determination and a leader, to enable them to creep upon the post in the darkness, and in one terrific moment swoop upon the officers' quarters, massacre every soul, and be off across the stream before the men in the barracks could rush to the rescue. They had talked it over at officers' mess--the general and Bonner and Bucketts and all, and figured out just how fifty white desperadoes could plan and accomplish the feat. It would be no trick at all to come up the valley in the screen of the willows, creep to the west bank, divide into six different squads, one for each set of quarters, crawl to the post of the drowsy sentry, shoot him full of arrows before he could cry out or load, then, all together, charge up the slope and into the flimsy houses, pistols in hand and knives in their teeth, and simply butcher the occupants as they lay in their beds. Doors, even if closed or bolted, which rarely happened, could be smashed in an instant--matches would light their way. It would be all over in much less time than it takes to tell it, and it might well happen but for two things--the Apache's dread of the dark and his fear of a possible hand-to-hand fight. Yet if Deltchay and Eskiminzin, with all their warriors were to reeforce these about them, with five hundred braves to the garrison's one hundred, even that dread might be overcome. And by Monday's sundown it was known that numbers of Apaches had crossed the valley ten miles away to the south--the telescope had told that--and not a word or sign had been vouchsafed by Turner, and Tuesday brought no better news. Then 'Tonio, said many a man, had played them false. Just at four o'clock Archer had arranged the dispositions for the night. Mrs. Stannard, with Mrs. Archer and Lilian, were to occupy the ground floor, north-west, room of his quarters--the one least exposed to flying bullets in case of attack. Mrs. Bennett and the matron were moved into a little room in the hospital. The soldiers' wives and children were to assemble in the barracks in case of alarm. The men in the outlying posts and pits were to be doubled at dusk--Bonner's company attending to that, while Briggs and his fellows were to sleep on their arms within the post. It now lacked but a few minutes of sunset. No further demonstration had occurred. Not an Indian had been seen within a radius of six miles, when, all on a sudden, there came a shot--then two, almost together, then a quick crackle and sputter of small-arms afar down the stream. "By Jove!" cried Bonner, from a perch by the lookout at the office. "They've opened on Case and Clancy!" And that was but the opening, for within a minute, from on every side, from far out among the rocks to the west, from the sandhills across the stream, from little heaps of brush and weed and cactus in the flats, from the distant screen of the willows in the stream bed, little puffs of white sulphur smoke jutted into the slanting sunshine, and the pulseless air of declining day was suddenly set to stir and throb by the crackle of encircling musketry. And then was seen the wisdom of the veteran's defence. Few of the hostiles, as yet, had other than old-fashioned muzzle-loading rifles, and few that they owned were effective over six hundred yards. By stationing his better shots in rifle pits well forward from the buildings on every side, Archer easily held the foe at a distance so long as they dare not "rush" his outposts. Only on the east side were there pits less than three hundred yards from the mesa, but here there was a dismal flat beyond the creek, affording a minimum of cover, and hardly a bullet whistled in from any direction so as to reach the quarters. Once in a while a little puff of dust flew up from the sandy slope without, but even that was enough to demand that the women folk should keep under shelter, and at the moment the firing began Lilian and her mother were seated by Willett's reclining chair, and then Mrs. Stannard joined them, and, the windows being shaded, they never saw, among the first to reach the general at the mesa edge, Harris, the wounded officer, revolver in his unfettered hand. The first volleying over, only in single and scattered shots, as they reloaded, came the Indian fire. If the hope had been to strike dismay with a volume of sound such as native ears had not heard, the Apache was doomed to disappointment. Men who had heard the crash of Spottsylvania and Cold Harbor laughed at the puny crackle of two hundred muskets. Then presently the Springfields began deliberate reply, only an occasional shot, for only very rarely did so much as the tip of a turban appear, and then the sun had dropped below the Mazatzal and the valley was in shadow, and old Archer stood with grim, whimsical smile on his weather-beaten face, as, field-glass to his eyes, he scanned his outposts at the south where the firing seemed heaviest. It was a moment or two before he noticed Harris at all. When he did it was to utter a mild rebuke. "You should not be here, lad. You need rest. This is only fun." Yet not all fun. Strong came presently thumping back from beyond the store. He had borrowed Craney's Pinto pony and had been visiting the southward posts, and Pinto had been clipped by a bullet and was half frantic with the smart and scare combined. Moreover, Strong's fighting face was red and mad, as he thrashed the lagging pony up the slope. "It's Deltchay, sir, easy enough," said he, with sweeping salute, "and that isn't all"--this with almost challenging glance at Harris, who had dropped his pistol and was gazing intently through his binocular at an open, slanting space far out to the south-east, still blazing in the rays of the setting sun. "The man of all others that oughtn't to be there stood at that point of rocks not ten minutes ago--the man we sent for Turner, general--'Tonio himself!" Then both men, the gray-mustached commander, the angering adjutant, turned on the silent little subaltern, who stood there without having so much as changed his attitude or lowered his glass. "You hear that, Harris?" demanded Archer. And with calm respect, yet almost exasperating drawl, came the unlooked-for answer: "I was about to mention it--myself, sir. 'Tonio was certainly there--and Turner close behind him. Look for yourself, sir!" Look, indeed! Riding steadily down into the valley, still a long four miles away, came the extended line of half a cavalry troop in skirmish order, with the supports and reserves dotting the slope to their rear. "Turner, as sure as shooting," said the general--"and 'Tonio as his guide!" _ |
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