Foes in Ambush Part 17

Once then he met and cursed me, but I did not mind, I had acted only to save mother. How could I suppose that her a.s.sailant was her own brother? Then finally with sobs and tears she told me the story, how he had been their mother's darling, how wild and reckless was his youth, how her mother's last thought seemed to be for him, and how on her knees she, my own mother, promised to take care of poor Freddie and s.h.i.+eld him from every ill, and this promise she repeated to me, bidding me help her keep it and to conceal as far as I could her brother's misdeeds. For a few months things went a little better.

Uncle Fred got a commission in a California regiment towards the close of the war and was sent down to Arizona. Then came more tears and trouble. I couldn't understand it all then, but I do now. Uncle Fred was gambling again, drawing on her for means to meet his losses. The old home went under the hammer, and we moved down to San Diego, where father had once invested and had left a little property. And then came the news that Uncle Fred had been dismissed, all on account of drink and gambling and misappropriation of funds. Miss Harvey knows all about this, lieutenant, for mother told her and had reason to. And next came forgery, and we were stranded. We heard that he had gone after that with a wagon-train to Texas. I got employment on a ranch, and then mother married again, married a man who had long befriended us and who could give her a comfortable home. She is now Mrs. Malcomb Bland, of San Francisco, and Mr. Bland offered to take me into his store, but I loved the open air and independence. Mr. Bland and Mr.

Harvey had business relations, and when Uncle Fred was next heard from he was 'starving to death,' he said, 'actually dying.' He wrote to mother from Yuma. Mother wired me to go to him at once, and I did. He was considerably out at elbows, but in no desperate need yet. Just then Mr. Harvey offered him a good salary to take charge of his freight-train. We all knew how that must have been brought about, and I felt that it would only be a matter of time when he would rob his new employer. He did; was discharged, but Mr. Bland made the amount good, and the matter was hushed up. Then he drove stage awhile and then disappeared. Mother has written me time and again to find him or find out what has become of him, and I promised I would leave no stone unturned. Tell her I have kept my word. Tell her I found him. But tell her for G.o.d's sake to think no more of him. Tell her not to strive to find him or to ask what he is or even where he is beyond that he has gone to Sonora."

"Lieutenant," said Patterson, suddenly appearing at the opening, "could you step here a moment?"

Drummond springs up.

"One moment, Mr. Drummond," whispers Wing, weakly; "I must say one word to you--alone."

"I'll return in a minute, sergeant. Let me see what Patterson wants."

Miss Harvey and Ruth have risen; the former is very pale and evidently trembling under some strong emotion. Once more she bends over him.

"Drink this, Mr. Wing, and now talk no more than you absolutely have to."

Then renewing the cooling bandage on his forehead, her hands seem to linger--surely her eyes do--as she rises once more to her feet.

Meantime the lieutenant has stepped out into the canon.

"What is it, Patterson? quick!"

"That was some of our fellows, sir, a squad of four; but they turned all of a sudden and galloped back out of sight. It looks to me as though they were attacked."

"How far away were they? How many miles down the desert?"

"Oh, at least six or eight miles down, sir; down beyond where you met them yesterday."

"How about our trail? Anybody in sight there?"

"n.o.body, sir, not even a thing, not even a whiff of dust."

"Very well. Keep on the alert. It's good to know that all the Apaches are not around us yet. Neither bullet nor arrow can get down here so long as we man the rocks above. I'll be out in a moment."

Then once more he kneels by Wing.

"Lieutenant, did you ever see a girl behave with greater bravery? Do you know what she has undergone?--Miss Harvey, I mean?"

"Both are behaving like heroines, Wing, and I think I am beginning to see through this plot at last."

"Never let mother know it,--promise me, sir,--but when Harvey discharged him--my uncle, I mean--he swore he'd be revenged on the old man, and 'twas he----"

"The double-dyed villain! I know, I understand now, Wing; you needn't tell me. He has been in the pay of the Morales gang for months. He enlisted so as to learn all the movements of officers and scouting-parties. He enlisted under his benefactor's name. He has forged that, too, in all probability, and then, deserting, it was he who sought to carry away these precious girls, and he came within an ace of succeeding. By the Eternal, but there will be a day of reckoning for him if ever 'C' troop runs foul of him again! No wonder you couldn't sleep, poor fellow, for thinking of that mother. This caps the climax of his scoundrelism. Where,--when did you see him last?--since he enlisted?"

But now Wing's face is again averted. He is covering it with his arms.

"Wing, answer me!" exclaims Drummond, springing suddenly to his feet.

"By heaven, I demand to know!" Then down on his knees he goes again, seizing and striving to pull away the nearest arm. "You need not try, you cannot conceal it now. I see it all,--all. Miss Harvey," he cries, looking up into the face of the trembling girl, who has hastened in at sound of the excitement in his voice,--"Miss Harvey, think of it; 'twas no Apache who shot him, 'twas a worse savage,--his own uncle."

"Promise me mother shall not know," pleads poor Wing, striving to rise upon his elbow, striving to restrain the lieutenant, who again has started to his feet. "Promise me, Miss f.a.n.n.y; you know how she loved him, how she plead with you."

"I promise you this, Wing," says Drummond, through his clinching teeth, "that there'll be no time for prayer if ever we set eyes on him again; there'll be no mercy."

"You can't let your men kill him in cold blood, lieutenant. I could not shoot him."

"No, but, by the G.o.d of heaven, I could!"

And now as Wing, exhausted, sinks back to his couch his head is caught on f.a.n.n.y Harvey's arm and next is pillowed in her lap.

"Hus.h.!.+" she murmurs, bending down over him as mother might over sleeping child. "Hus.h.!.+ you must not speak again. I know how her heart is bound up in you, and I'm to play mother to you now."

And as Drummond, tingling all over with wrath and excitement, stands spellbound for the moment, a light step comes to his side, a little hand is laid on the bandaged arm, and Ruth Harvey's pretty face, two big tears trickling down her cheeks, is looking up in his.

"You, too, will be ill, Mr. Drummond. Oh, why can't you go and lie down and rest? What will we do if both of you are down at once with fever?"

She is younger by over two years than her brave sister. Tall though she has grown, Ruth is but a child, and now in all her excitement and anxiety, worn out with the long strain, she begins to cry. She strives to hide it, strives to control the weakness, and, failing in both, strives to turn away. All to no purpose. An arm in a sling is of little avail at such a moment. Whirling quickly about, Drummond brings his other into action. Before the weeping little maid is well aware what is happening her waist is encircled by the strong arm in the dark-blue sleeve, and how can she see that she is drawn to his breast, since now her face is buried in both her hands and those hands in the flannel of his hunting-s.h.i.+rt,--just as high as his heart? Small wonder is it that Corporal Costigan, hurrying in at the mouth of the cave, stops short at sight of this picturesque _partie carree_. Any other time he would have sense enough to face about and tiptoe whence he came, but now there's no room left for sentiment. _Tableaux-vivants_ are lovely in their way, even in a cave lighted dimly by a hurricane-lamp, but sterner scenes are on the curtain. Drummond's voice is murmuring soothing, yes, caressing words to his sobbing captive. Drummond's bearded lips, unrebuked, are actually pressing a kiss upon that childish brow when Costigan, with a preliminary clearing of his throat that sounds like a landslide and makes the rock walls ring again, startles Ruth from her blissful woe and brings Drummond leaping to the mouth of the cave.

"Lieutenant, there's something coming out over our trail."

"Thank G.o.d!" sighs Wing, as he raises his eyes to those of his fair nurse. "Thank G.o.d! for your sakes!"

"Thank G.o.d, Ruth!" cries f.a.n.n.y, extending one hand to her sister while the other is unaccountably detained. "Thank G.o.d! it's father and the Stoneman party and Doctor Gray."

And Ruth, throwing herself upon her knees by her sister's side, buries her head upon her shoulder and sobs anew for very joy.

And then comes sudden start. All in an instant there rings, echoing down the canon, the sharp, spiteful crack of rifles, answered by shrieks of terror from the cave where lie the Moreno women, and by other shots out along the range. Three faces blanch with sudden fear, though Wing looks instantly up to say,--

"They can't harm you, and our men will be here in less than no time."

Out in the gorge men are springing to their feet and seizing their ready arms; horses are snorting and stamping; mules braying in wild terror. Two of the ambulance mules, breaking loose from their fastenings, come charging down the resounding rock, nearly annihilating Moreno, who, bound and helpless, praying and cursing by turns, has rolled himself out of his nook and lies squarely in the way of everything and everybody. But above all the clamor, the ring of carbine, the hiss and spat of lead flattening upon the rocks, Drummond's voice is heard clear and commanding, serene and confident.

"Every man to his post now. Remember your orders."

Gazing out into the canon with dilated eyes, Ruth sees him nimbly clamber up the opposite side towards the point where Walsh is kneeling behind a rock,--Walsh with his Irish mug expanded in a grin of delight, the smoke just drifting from the muzzle of his carbine as he points with his left hand somewhere out along the cliffs. She sees her soldier boy, crouching low, draw himself to Walsh's side, sees him glancing eagerly over the rocks, then signalling to some one on their own side, pointing here and there along the wooded slope beyond her vision; sees him now, with fierce light in his eyes, suddenly clutch Walsh's sleeve and nod towards some invisible object to the south; sees Walsh toss the b.u.t.t of his carbine to the shoulder and with quick aim send a bullet driving thither; sees Drummond take the field-gla.s.s and, resting it on the eastward ledge, gaze long and fixedly out over the eastward way; sees him start, draw back the gla.s.s, wipe the lenses with his silken kerchief, then peer again; sees him drop them with a gesture almost tragic, but she cannot hear the moan that rises to his lips.

"My G.o.d! those are Apaches, too."

XI.

Ten o'clock on a blazing Arizona morning. The hot sun is pouring down upon the jagged front of a range of heights where occasional clumps of pine and cedar, scrub oak and juniper, seemed the only vegetable products hardy enough to withstand the alternations of intense heat by day and moderate cold by night, or to find sufficient sustenance to eke out a living on so barren a soil. Out to the eastward, stretching away to an opposite range, lies a sandy desert dotted at wide intervals with little black bunches of "scrub mezquite" and blessed with only one redeeming patch of foliage, the copse of willows and cottonwood here at the mouth of a rock-ribbed defile where a little brook, rising heaven knows how or where among the heights to the west, comes frothing and tumbling down through the windings of the gorge only to bury itself in the burning sands beyond the shade. So narrow and tortuous is the canon, so precipitous its sides, as to prove conclusively that by no slow process, but by some sudden spasm of nature, was it rent in the face of the range. And here in its depths, just around one of the sharpest bends, honey-combed out of the solid rock are half a dozen deep lateral fissures and caves where the sunbeams never penetrate, where the air is reasonably cool and still, where on this scorching May morning, far away from home and relatives, two young girls are sheltered by the natural roofs and walls against the fiery suns.h.i.+ne and by a little band of resolute men against the fury of the Apaches.

Down in the roomiest of the caves f.a.n.n.y and Ruth Harvey are listening in dread anxiety to the sounds of savage warfare echoing from crag to crag along the range, while every moment or two the elder turns to moisten the cloth she holds to a wounded trooper's burning, tossing head. Sergeant Wing is fevered indeed by this time, raging with misery at thought of his helplessness and the scant numbers of the defence.

It is a bitter pill for the soldier to swallow, this of lying in hospital when every man is needed at the front. At nine o'clock this morning a veteran Indian fighter, crouching in his sheltered lookout above the caves and scanning with practised eye the frowning front of the range, declared that not an Apache was to be seen or heard within rifle-shot, yet was in no wise surprised when, a few minutes later, as he happened to show his head above the rocky parapet, there came zipping a dozen bullets about his ears and the cliffs fairly crackled with the sudden flash of rifles hidden up to that instant on every side. Indians who can creep upon wagon-train or emigrant camp in the midst of an open and unsheltered plain find absolutely no difficulty in surrounding unsuspected and unseen a bivouac in the mountains.

Inexperienced officers or men would have been picked off long before the opening of the general attack, but the Apaches themselves are the first to know that they have veteran troopers to deal with, for up to this moment only one has shown himself at all. At five minutes after nine o'clock Lieutenant Drummond, glancing exultingly around upon his little band of fighters, had blessed the foresight of Pasqual Morales and his gang that they had so thoroughly fortified their lair against sudden a.s.sault. Three on the southern, two on the northern brink of the gorge and behind impenetrable shelter, and two more in reserve in the canon, his puny garrison was in position and had replied with such spirit and prompt.i.tude to the Apache attack that only at rare intervals now is a shot necessary, except when for the purpose of drawing the enemy and locating his position a hat is poked up on the muzzle of a carbine. The a.s.sailants' fire, too, is still, but that, as Drummond's men well know, means only "look out for other devilment."

Out on the eastward desert, still far over towards the other side, a little party of Apaches is hurrying to join the fray. Two are riding.