Foes in Ambush Part 16

Wearied and shattered though he was and replete as the night had been with anxiety and vigil, Drummond climbed the goat-track that led to the sentry's perch feeling full of hope and pluck and fight. He and his men had divided the night into watches, one being awake and astir, not even permitting himself to sit a moment, while the others slept.

The fact that he was able to send back to the caves, have an ambulance hitched in and driven down to where Wing lay wounded, and to bear him slowly, carefully, back to shelter, reaching the caves without further molestation before darkness set in, had served to convince the young commander that he could count on reasonable security for the night. Unless they know their prey to be puny and well-nigh defenceless, Apaches make no a.s.sault in the darkness, and so, with the coming of the dawn, he had about him fit for service a squad of seven troopers, most of them seasoned mountain fighters. His main anxiety now was for Wing, whose wound was severe, the bullet having gone clear through, just grazing the bone, and who, despite the fact that f.a.n.n.y Harvey early in the night had every now and then crept noiselessly in to cool his fevered head, seemed strangely affected mentally, seemed unnaturally flighty and wandering, seemed oppressed or excited alternately in a way that baffled Drummond completely, for no explanation was plausible. Two or three times during the night he had been heard moaning, and yet the moment Drummond or, as once happened, Miss Harvey hastened to his side, he declared it was nothing. "I must have been dozing and imagined the pain was greater than it was." Awake and conscious, so stout a soldier as he would be the last to give way to childish exhibition of suffering, yet twice Drummond knew him to be awake despite his protestation of dozing, and he did not at all like it that Wing should bury his face in his arms, hiding it from all. What could have occurred to change this buoyant, joyous, high-spirited trooper all on a sudden into a sighing, moaning, womanish fellow? Surely not a wound of which, however painful, any soldier might be proud.

Somewhere along towards four o'clock, when it was again Patterson's watch and Drummond arose from his blanket after a refres.h.i.+ng sleep of nearly two hours and he and his faithful sentry were standing just outside the mouth of the cave, they distinctly heard the same moan of distress.

"Is there nothing we can do to ease the sergeant, sir?" whispered Patterson. "This makes the second time I have heard him groaning, and it's so unlike him."

"We have no opiates, and I doubt if he would use one if we had. He declares there is no intense pain."

"Well, first off, sir, I thought he was dreaming, but he was wide awake, and Miss Harvey came in only a moment after I got to him. Could those devils poison a bullet as they do their arrows, and could that make him go into fever so soon?"

"I hardly think so; but why did you say dreaming?"

"Because once it was 'mother' he called, and again--just now--I thought he said mother."

The lieutenant turned, looking straight at his soldierly subordinate.

"By Jove! Patterson, so did I."

There was a little stir across the canon. Moreno was edging about uneasily and beginning to mutter blasphemy at his bonds.

"That fellow begged very hard to be moved down into that wolf-hole of a place where the Mexican women are, lieutenant, with those two bunged-up bandits to take care of. Nice time we'd have, sir, if the three of them was able to move. The boys'd make short work of them now, the way they're feeling. I went in and took a look at those two fellows. One of 'em is a goner, sure, but they're dead game, both of 'em. Neither one has a word to say."

"No," answered Drummond, "they refused to give their names to me,--said it was no earthly consequence what name we put over their graves, the right set of fellows would be along after a while and do them all the honor they cared for. How were the Moreno women behaving?"

"The girl was asleep, I should judge, sir. The old hag was rocking to and fro, crooning to herself until one of the two--the live one, I should call him--hurled a curse at her in Spanish and told her to dry up or he'd kill her. All a bluff, for he can't move a peg."

"Watch them well, Patterson, all the same. Hus.h.!.+"

Again from within the deep shelter of the rocky cave came the low moan of anguish,--

"Mother! mother! if you knew--"

"Here, Patterson, I can't stand this. I'm going in to him." And, picking up the dim lantern which he had taken from the Harvey wagon, Drummond stole in on tiptoe and knelt again beside his wounded comrade.

"Wing! sergeant! Look up, man. Speak to me. You must be in distress, mental or bodily. Do let me help you in some way."

For a moment no reply whatever. Wing's face was hidden. Then he looked gently upward.

"Lieutenant, I'm ashamed to be giving you so much trouble. Please go and lie down again, sir; you're worse hurt than I am,--only I suppose I get to dozing off and then turn on that side."

"No, it isn't that, sergeant. There's something wrong, and it has all come on you since yesterday morning. Where is your mother?"

Again Wing turned away, burying his face in his arms.

"Listen, sergeant; we hope to get you out of this by to-night. Dr.

Gray ought surely to reach us by that time, and while we may have to keep up a field hospital here a day or two, my first duty will be to write and tell your mother how bravely you have served us, and she shall be told that you are wounded, but not in such a way as to alarm her."

Out came a restraining hand.

"Lieutenant, she must not know at all."

"Well, she can't, so far as I'm concerned, as I don't know her address. But think a moment; you know and I know--Hold on, wait!"

And Drummond rose and tiptoed to a cleft in the rock through which shone a dim light; it was the entrance to the remote inner cave where the Harvey girls were sleeping. a.s.sured that his words could reach there no listening ears, Drummond returned, kneeling again by the sergeant's side. "Just think, man; any moment after daybreak the Apaches may be upon us, and, who knows? it may be my last fight. Of course I believe that our fellows can stand them off until rescue comes, but a bullet may find me any moment, and then who is there to report your conduct and secure the recognition due you, or, if the doctor should be late in coming and fever set in and this wound prove too much for your strength, is there nothing that ought to be said to her for you?"

Again only painful silence. At last Wing spoke.

"I understand. I appreciate all you say. But I've got to think it over, lieutenant. Give me an hour or so. Don't ask me to tell you now."

"So be it, man. Now rest all you possibly can. It's almost day. The crags are beginning to light up back of us here already. Yes, and the sentry's calling me now. I'll be back by and by. What is it, Patterson?" he whispered, going to the mouth of the cave.

"I've just come down from the tree up there, sir. You can see quite a ways down the range now, though the light is dim, and what I take to be a signal-fire leaped up not three miles below us, certainly this side of where Wing was shot."

"So soon? All right, then get back to the post just as quick as you can. I'll rouse the man who has slept longest. All must be astir in half an hour, but you keep watch there."

And half an hour later it is that, field-gla.s.s in hand, the young officer is there by Patterson's side, peering eastward almost into the eye of the sun, searching with anxiety inexpressible for any sign of dust-cloud rising along the trail on which they came, for the sight he has seen down the range, now brilliant in the morning light, has filled his heart with the first real dread it has yet known. In three places, not more than four or five miles apart, down along the sunlit side of this wild and picturesque mountain-chain, signal-smokes have been puffing straight up skyward, the nearest only a couple of miles from this lone picket post, but all on the same side of the valley.

Last evening the answer came from across the broad desert. They have come over, therefore, and are hastening up the chain to join the eager advance here so close to their hiding-place. Beyond a doubt watchful spies are already lurking among those heights to the west, striving to get close enough to peer into the rocky fortress and estimate the strength of the garrison. Great they well know it cannot be, for did not their keen eyes count nearly twenty chasing those hated brigands far down towards Sonora Pa.s.s, and of that number how many have returned?--only three. Did they not see the flurry and excitement when that sergeant was shot from ambush? Now, therefore, is the time to strike,--now while the main body is far away. Whatsoever booty there may be obtainable in that rocky canon 'tis well worth the attempt. And so from north to south the puff-b.a.l.l.s of blue-white smoke go sailing upward through the pines, and it all means speed! speed!

At seven o'clock the little command has had coffee and a hearty breakfast. No lack of provender here in this. .h.i.therto undiscovered robbers' roost. Drummond, cool, confident, has had his men about him where none others could see or hear, has a.s.signed them the stations which they are to take the instant of alarm, and has given them their instructions. Walsh it is who is now on lookout, and he is peering away down southward so intently that some comrade is prompted to call up to him in a low tone,--

"See anything?"

To which, without removing the gla.s.s from under his hat-brim, the Irish trooper merely shakes his head.

"Any more smokes?"

"Sorra a smoke have I seen at all."

"Well, then, what in blazes are you staring at?"

"How can I tell ye till I find out?" is the Hibernian reply, and this is enough to send the corporal on a climb. Drummond at the moment is again kneeling by Wing, who has but just awakened from a fitful sleep, Miss Harvey being the first to hear him stir and sigh. Ruth and her sister, too, seem about to withdraw, but Wing, whose voice is weak now, begs them to remain.

"Has anything been seen yet--back on the trail--of the Stoneman party?" he asks.

"No, sergeant," replies Drummond; "but remember that we can only see some six miles of the trail, after that it is lost in that tortuous ravine down which we rode on the chase. Walsh is up there on lookout, and I'll ask if he can see anything now;" and calling to one of the men, Drummond bids him inquire. All eagerly await the reply.

At last it comes,--

"No dust on the back track, sir, but something that looks like it far to the south. We think it may be some of our fellows coming back, but it is too faint and far to make it out yet."

The corporal is the speaker, his resonant voice contrasting strongly with the feeble accents of his immediate superior, the wounded sergeant.

"Then I have something that must be told you, lieutenant, something Miss Harvey already has an inkling of, for she has met and known my dear mother. If this pain continue to increase, and fever set in, I may be unable to tell it later. Some of the men thought I had enlisted under an alias, lieutenant, but they were wrong. Wing is my rightful name. My father was chief officer of the old 'Flying Cloud' in the days when American clipper s.h.i.+ps beat the world. The gold fever seized him, though, and he quit sailing and went to mining in the early days of San Francisco, and there when I was a little boy of ten he died, leaving mother with not many thousand dollars to take care of herself and me. 'You will have your brother to help you' were words he spoke the last day of his life, and even then I noted how little comfort mother seemed to find in that fact. It was only a few months after father's death that Uncle Fred, from being an occasional visitor, came to living with us all the time, made his home there, though seldom within doors night or day. He was several years younger than mother.

He was the youngest, it seems, of the family, 'the baby,' and had been petted and spoiled from earliest infancy. I soon found why he came.

Mother was often in tears, Uncle Fred always begging or demanding money. The boys at school twitted me about my gambler uncle, though I've no doubt their fathers gambled as much as he. These were just before the early days of the great war that sprang up in '61 and that we boys out on the Pacific coast only vaguely understood. Sometimes Uncle Fred came home drunk and I could hear him threatening poor mother, and things went from bad to worse, and one night when I was just thirteen I was awakened from sound sleep by her scream. In an instant I flew to her room, catching up as I ran father's old bowie-knife that always hung by my door. In the dim light I saw her lying by the bedside, a man bending over and choking her. With all my strength I slashed at him just as he turned. I meant to kill, but the turn saved him. He sprang to his feet with an oath and cry and rushed to the wash-stand. I had laid Uncle Fred's cheek open from ear to chin.

"It was long before mother could check the flow of the blood. It sobered him, of course, and made him piteously weak. For days after that she nursed and cared for him, but forbade my entering the room.

Men came to see him,--insisted on seeing him,--and she would send me to the bank for gold and pay their claims and bid them go. At last he was able to walk out with that awful slash on his thin white face.