An Apache Princess Part 2

"That would account for their taking the net," said he thoughtfully, "but what on earth would the guileless Tonto maiden do with a watch or with greenbacks? They wouldn't dare show with them at the agency! How far did you follow the tracks?"

"Only a rod or two. Once in the willows they can't well quit them till they reach the shallows above the pool, sir. We can guard there to-night and begin trailing at dawn."

"So be it then!" and presently the conference closed.

Seated on the adjoining gallery, alone and in darkness, stricken and sorrowing, a woman had been silently observant of the meeting, and had heard occasional s.n.a.t.c.hes of the talk. Presently she rose; softly entered the house and listened at a closed door on the northward side--Captain Wren's own room. An hour previous, tortured between his own thoughts and her well-meant, but unwelcome efforts to cheer him, he had begged to be left alone, and had closed his door against all comers.

Now, she as softly ascended the narrow stairway and paused for a moment at another door, also closed. Listening a while, she knocked, timidly, hesitatingly, but no answer came. After a while, noiselessly, she turned the k.n.o.b and entered.

A dim light was burning on a little table by the white bedside. A long, slim figure, white-robed and in all the abandon of girlish grief, was lying, face downward, on the bed. Tangled ma.s.ses of hair concealed much of the neck and shoulders, but, bending over, Miss Wren could partially see the flushed and tear-wet cheek pillowed on one slender white arm. Exhausted by long weeping, Angela at last had dropped to sleep, but the little hand that peeped from under the thick, tumbling tresses still clung to an odd and unfamiliar object--something the older woman had seen only at a distance before--something she gazed at in startled fascination this strange and solemn night--a slender, long-handled b.u.t.terfly net of filmy gauze.

CHAPTER IV

A STRICKEN SENTRY

Sentry duty at Camp Sandy along in '75 had not been allowed to bear too heavily on its little garrison. There was nothing worth stealing about the place, said Plume, and no p.a.w.n-shop handy. Of course there were government horses and mules, food and forage, arms and ammunition, but these were the days of soldier supremacy in that arid and distant land, and soldiers had a summary way of settling with marauders that was discouraging to enterprise. Larceny was therefore little known until the law, with its delays and circ.u.mventions, took root in the virgin soil, and people at such posts as Sandy seldom shut and rarely locked their doors, even by night. Windows were closed and blanketed by day against the blazing sun and torrid heat, but, soon after nightfall, every door and window was usually opened wide and often kept so all the night long, in order that the cooler air, settling down from _mesa_ and mountain, might drift through every room and hallway, licking up the starting dew upon the smooth, rounded surface of the huge _ollas_, the porous water jars that hung suspended on every porch, and wafting comfort to the heated brows of the lightly covered sleepers within. Pyjamas were then unknown in army circles, else even the single sheet that covered the drowsing soldier might have been dispensed with.

Among the quarters occupied by married men, both in officers' row and Sudsville under the plateau, doors were of little account in a community where the only intruder to be feared was heat, and so it had resulted that while the corrals, stables, and storehouses had their guards, only a single sentry paced the long length of the eastward side of the post, a single pair of eyes and a single rifle barrel being deemed amply sufficient to protect against possible prowlers the rear yards and entrances of the row. The westward front of the officers' homes stood in plain view, on bright nights at least, of the sentry at the guard-house, and needed no other protector. On dark nights it was supposed to look out for itself.

A lonely time of it, as a rule, had No. 5, the "backyard sentry," but this October night he lacked not for sensation. Lights burned until very late in many of the quarters, while at Captain Wren's and Lieutenant Blakely's people were up and moving about until long after midnight. Of course No. 5 had heard all about the dreadful affair of the early evening. What he and his fellows puzzled over was the probable cause of Captain Wren's furious a.s.sault upon his subaltern.

Many a theory was afloat, Duane, with unlooked-for discretion, having held his tongue as to the brief conversation that preceded the blow.

It was after eleven when the doctor paid his last visit for the night, and the attendant came out on the rear porch for a pitcher of cool water from the _olla_. It was long after twelve when the light in the upstairs room at Captain Wren's was turned low, and for two hours thereafter, with bowed head, the captain himself paced nervously up and down, wearing in the soft and sandy soil a mournful pathway parallel with his back porch. It was after three, noted Private Mullins, of that first relief, when from the rear door of the major's quarters there emerged two forms in feminine garb, and, there being no hindering fences, away they hastened in the dim starlight, past Wren's, Cutler's, Westervelt's, and Truman's quarters until they were swallowed up in the general gloom about Lieutenant Blakely's. Private Mullins could not say for certain whether they had entered the rear door or gone around under the deep shadows of the veranda. When next he saw them, fifteen minutes later, coming as swiftly and silently back, Mullins was wondering whether he ought not to challenge and have them account for themselves. His orders were to allow inmates of the officers' quarters to pa.s.s in or out at night without challenge, provided he "recognized them to be such." Now, Mullins felt morally certain that these two were Mrs. Plume and Mrs. Plume's vivacious maid, a French-Canadian damsel, much admired and sought in soldier circles at the post, but Mullins had not seen their faces and could rightfully insist it was his duty and prerogative to do so. The question was, how would the "commanding officer's lady" like and take it? Mullins therefore shook his head. "I hadn't the nerve," as he expressed it, long afterwards. But no such frailty oppressed the occupant of the adjoining house. Just as the two had reached the rear of Wren's quarters, and were barely fifty steps from safety, the captain himself, issuing again from the doorway, suddenly appeared upon the scene, and in low, but imperative tone accosted them. "_Who_ are you?" said he, bending eagerly, sternly over them. One quick look he gave, and, almost instantly recoiling, exclaimed "Mrs. Plume! I beg--" Then, as though with sudden recollection, "No, madam, I do _not_ beg your pardon," and, turning on his heel, abruptly left them.

Without a word, but with the arm of the maid supporting, the taller woman sped swiftly across the narrow intervening s.p.a.ce and was lost again within the shadows of her husband's home.

Private Mullins, silent and probably unseen witness of this episode, slowly tossed his rifle from the port to the shoulder; shook his puzzled head; stared a moment at the dim figure of Captain Wren again in the starlit morning, nervously tramping up and down his narrow limit; then mechanically sauntered down the roadway, pondering much over what he had seen and heard during the brief period of his early morning watch. Reaching the south, the lower, end of his post, he turned again. He had but ten minutes left of his two-hour tramp. The second relief was due to start at 3.30, and should reach him at 3.35.

He was wondering would the officer of the day "come nosin' round"

within that time, asking him his orders, and was everything all right on his post? And had he observed anything unusual? There was Captain Wren, like a caged tiger, tramping up and down behind his quarters.

At least he had been, for now he had disappeared. There were, or rather had been, the two ladies in long cloaks flitting in the shadows from the major's quarters to those of the invalid lieutenant. Mullins certainly did not wish to speak about them to any official visitor, whatever he might whisper later to Norah Shaughnessy, the saddler sergeant's daughter--Norah, who was nurse girl at the Trumans', and knew all the ins and outs of social life at Sandy--Norah, at whose window, under the north gable, he gazed with love in his eyes as he made his every round. He was a good soldier, was Mullins, but glad this night to get off post. Through the gap between the second and third quarters he saw the lights at the guard-house and could faintly see the black silhouette of armed men in front of them. The relief was forming sharp on time, and presently Corporal Donovan would be bringing Trooper Schultz, of "C" Troop, straight across the parade in search of him. The major so allowed his sentry on No. 5 to be relieved at night. Mullins thanked the saints with pious fervor that no more ladies would be like to flit across his vision, that night at least, when, dimly through the dusk, against the spangled northern sky, he sighted another figure crouching across the upper end of his post and making straight for the lighted entrance at the rear of the lieutenant's quarters. Someone else, then, had interest at Blakely's--someone coming stealthily from without. A minute later certain wakeful ears were startled by a moaning cry for aid.

Just what happened, and how it happened, within the minute, led to conflicting stories on the morrow. First man examined by Major Plume was Lieutenant Truman of the Infantry, who happened to be officer of the day. He had been over at Blakely's about midnight, he said; had found the patient sleeping under the influence of soothing medicine, and, after a whispered word with Todd, the hospital attendant, had tiptoed out again, encountering Downs, the lieutenant's striker, in the darkness on the rear porch. Downs said he was that excited he couldn't sleep at all, and Mr. Truman had come to the conclusion that Downs's excitement was due, in large part, to local influences totally disconnected with the affairs of the early evening. Downs was an Irishman who loved the "craytur," and had been known to resort to unconventional methods of getting it. At twelve o'clock, said Mr.

Truman, the striker had obviously been priming. Now Plume's standing orders were that no liquor should be sold to Downs at the store and none to other soldiers except in "pony" gla.s.ses and for use on the spot. None could be carried away unconsumed. The only legitimate spirits, therefore, to which Downs could have access were those in Blakely's locked closet--spirits. .h.i.therto used only in the preservation of specimens, and though probably not much worse than the whisky sold at the store, disdainfully referred to by votaries as "Blakely's bug juice." Mr. Truman, therefore, demanded of Downs the possession of the lieutenant's keys, and, with aggrieved dignity of mien, Downs had referred him to the doctor, whose suspicions had been earlier aroused. Intending to visit his sentries after the change of guard at 1.30, Truman had thrown himself into a reclining chair in his little parlor, while Mrs. Truman and the little Trumans slumbered peacefully aloft. After reading an hour or so the lieutenant fell into a doze from which he awoke with a start. Mrs. Truman was bending over him. Mrs. Truman had been aroused by hearing voices in cautious, yet excited, colloquy in the shadows of Blakely's back porch. She felt sure that Downs was one and thought from the sound that he must be intoxicated, so Truman shuffled out to see, and somebody, bending double in the dusk, scurried away at his approach. He heard rather than saw. But there was Downs, at least, slinking back into the house, and him Truman halted and accosted. "Who was that with you?" he asked, and Downs thickly swore he hadn't seen a soul. But all the while Downs was clumsily stuffing something into a side pocket, and Truman, seizing his hand, dragged it forth into the light. It was one of the hospital six-ounce bottles, bearing a label indicative of glycerine lotion, but the color of the contained fluid belied the label. A sniff was sufficient. "Who gave you this whisky?" was the next demand, and Downs declared 'twas a hospital "messager" that brought it over, thinking the lieutenant might need it. Truman, filled with wrath, had dragged Downs into the dimly lighted room to the rear of that in which lay Lieutenant Blakely, and was there upbraiding and investigating when startled by the stifled cry that, rising suddenly on the night from the open _mesa_ just without, had so alarmed so many in the garrison. Of what had led to it he had then no more idea than the dead.

Corporal Donovan, next examined, said he was marching Schultz over to relieve Mullins on No. 5, just after half-past three, and heading for the short cut between the quarters of Captains Wren and Cutler, which was about where No. 5 generally met the relief, when, just as they were halfway between the flagstaff and the row, Schultz began to limp and said there must be a pebble in his boot. So they halted. Schultz kicked off his boot and shook it upside down, and, while he was tugging at it again, they both heard a sort of gurgling, gasping cry out on the _mesa_. Of course Donovan started and ran that way, leaving Schultz to follow, and, just back of Captain Westervelt's, the third house from the northward end, he almost collided with Lieutenant Truman, officer of the day, who ordered him to run for Dr. Graham and fetch him up to Lieutenant Blakely's quick. So of what had taken place he, too, was ignorant until later.

It was the hospital attendant, Todd, whose story came next and brought Plume to his feet with consternation in his eyes. Todd said he had been sitting at the lieutenant's bedside when, somewhere about three o'clock, he had to go out and tell Downs to make less noise. Downs was completely upset by the catastrophe to his officer and, somehow, had got a few comforting drinks stowed away, and these had started him to singing some confounded Irish keen that grated on Todd's nerves. He was afraid it would disturb the patient and he was about to go out and remonstrate when the singing stopped and presently he heard Downs's voice in excited conversation. Then a woman's voice in low, urgent, persuasive whisper became faintly audible, and this surprised Todd beyond expression. He had thought to go and take a look and see who it could be, when there was a sudden swish of skirts and scurry of feet, and then Mr. Truman's voice was heard. Then there was some kind of sharp talk from the lieutenant to Downs, and then, in a sort of a lull, there came that uncanny cry out on the _mesa_, and, stopping only long enough to see that the lieutenant was not roused or disturbed, Todd hastened forth. One or two dim figures, dark and shadowy, were just visible on the eastward _mesa_, barely ten paces away, and thither the attendant ran. Downs, lurching heavily, was just ahead of him. Together they came upon a little group. Somebody went running southward--Lieutenant Truman, as Todd learned later--hurrying for the doctor. A soldier equipped as a sentry lay moaning on the sand, clasping a b.l.o.o.d.y hand to his side, and over him, stern, silent, but agitated, bent Captain Wren.

CHAPTER V

THE CAPTAIN'S DEFIANCE

Within ten minutes of Todd's arrival at the spot the soft sands of the _mesa_ were tramped into bewildering confusion by dozens of trooper boots. The m.u.f.fled sound of excited voices, so soon after the startling affair of the earlier evening, and hurrying footfalls following, had roused almost every household along the row and brought to the spot half the officers on duty at the post. A patrol of the guard had come in double time, and soldiers had been sent at speed to the hospital for a stretcher. Dr. Graham had lost no moment of time in reaching the stricken sentry. Todd had been sent back to Blakely's bedside and Downs to fetch a lantern. They found the latter, five minutes later, stumbling about the Trumans' kitchen, weeping for that which was lost, and the sergeant of the guard collared and cuffed him over to the guard-house--one witness, at least, out of the way. At four o'clock the doctor was working over his exhausted and unconscious patient at the hospital. Mullins had been stabbed twice, and dangerously, and half a dozen men with lanterns were hunting about the b.l.o.o.d.y sands where the faithful fellow had dropped, looking for a weapon or a clew, and probably trampling out all possibility of finding either. Major Plume, through Mr. Doty, his adjutant, had felt it necessary to remind Captain Wren that an officer in close arrest had no right to be away from his quarters. Late in the evening, it seems, Dr. Graham had represented to the post commander that the captain was in so nervous and overwrought a condition, and so distressed, that as a physician he recommended his patient be allowed the limits of the s.p.a.ce adjoining his quarters in which to walk off his superabundant excitement. Graham had long been the friend of Captain Wren and was his friend as well as physician now, even though deploring his astounding outbreak, but Graham had other things to demand his attention as night wore on, and there was no one to speak for Wren when the young adjutant, a subaltern of infantry, with unnecessary significance of tone and manner, suggested the captain's immediate return to his proper quarters. Wren bowed his head and went in stunned and stubborn silence. It had never occurred to him for a moment, when he heard that half-stifled, agonized cry for help, that there could be the faintest criticism of his rus.h.i.+ng to the sentry's aid. Still less had it occurred to him that other significance, and d.a.m.ning significance, might attach to his presence on the spot, but, being first to reach the fallen man, he was found kneeling over him within thirty seconds of the alarm. Not another living creature was in sight when the first witnesses came running to the spot. Both Truman and Todd could swear to that.

In the morning, therefore, the orderly came with the customary compliments to say to Captain Wren that the post commander desired to see him at the office.

It was then nearly nine o'clock. Wren had had a sleepless night and was in consultation with Dr. Graham when the summons came. "Ask that Captain Sanders be sent for at once," said the surgeon, as he pressed his comrade patient's hand. "The major has his adjutant and clerk and possibly some other officers. You should have at least one friend."

"I understand," briefly answered Wren, as he stepped to the hallway to get his sun hat. "I wish it might be you." The orderly was already speeding back to the office at the south end of the brown rectangle of adobe and painted pine, but Janet Wren, ministering, according to her lights, to Angela in the little room aloft, had heard the message and was coming down. Taller and more angular than ever she looked as, with flowing gown, she slowly descended the narrow stairway.

"I have just succeeded in getting her to sleep," she murmured. "She has been dreadfully agitated ever since awakened by the voices and the running this morning, and she must have cried herself to sleep last night. R-r-r-obert, would it not be well for you to see her when she wakes? She does not know--I could not tell her--that you are under arrest."

Graham looked more "dour" than did his friend of the line. Privately he was wondering how poor Angela could get to sleep at all with Aunt Janet there to soothe her. The worst time to teach a moral lesson, with any hope of good effect, is when the recipient is suffering from sense of utter injustice and wrong, yet must perforce listen. But it is a favorite occasion with the "ower guid." Janet thought it would be a long step in the right direction to bring her headstrong niece to the belief that all the trouble was the direct result of her having sought, against her father's wishes, a meeting with Mr. Blakely. True, Janet had now some doubt that such had been the case, but, in what she felt was only stubborn pride, her niece refused all explanation.

"Father would not hear me at the time," she sobbed. "I am condemned without a chance to defend myself or--him." Yet Janet loved the bonny child devotedly and would go through fire and water to serve her best interests, only those best interests must be as Janet saw them. That anything very serious might result as a consequence of her brother's violent a.s.sault on Blakely, she had never yet imagined. That further complications had arisen which might blacken his record she never could credit for a moment. Mullins lay still unconscious, and not until he recovered strength was he to talk with or see anyone. Graham had given faint hope of recovery, and declared that everything depended on his patient's having no serious fever or setback. In a few days he might be able to tell his story. Then the mystery as to his a.s.sailant would be cleared in a breath. Janet had taken deep offense that the commanding officer should have sent her brother into close arrest without first hearing of the extreme provocation. "It is an utterly unheard-of proceeding," said she, "this confining of an officer and gentleman without investigation of the affair," and she glared at Graham, uncomprehending, when, with impatient shrug of his big shoulders, he asked her what had they done, between them, to Angela. It was his wife put him up to saying that, she reasoned, for Janet's Calvinistic dogmas as to daughters in their teens were ever at variance with the views of her gentle neighbor. If Angela had been harshly dealt with, undeserving, it was Angela's duty to say so and to say why, said Janet. Meantime, her first care was her wronged and misjudged brother. Gladly would she have gone to the office with him and stood proudly by his side in presence of his oppressor, could such a thing be permitted. She marveled that Robert should now show so little of tenderness for her who had served him loyally, if masterfully, so very long. He merely laid his hand on hers and said he had been summoned to the commanding officer's, then went forth into the light and left her.

Major Plume was seated at his desk, thoughtful and perplexed. Up at regimental headquarters at Prescott Wren was held in high esteem, and the major's brief telegraphic message had called forth anxious inquiry and something akin to veiled disapprobation. Headquarters could not see how it was possible for Wren to a.s.sault Lieutenant Blakely without some grave reason. Had Plume investigated? No, but that was coming now, he said to himself, as Wren entered and stood in silence before him.

The little office had barely room for the desks of the commander and his adjutant and the table on which were spread the files of general orders from various superior headquarters--regimental, department, division, the army, and the War Secretary. No curtains adorned the little windows, front and rear. No rug or carpet vexed the warping floor. Three chairs, kitchen pattern, stood against the pine part.i.tion that shut off the sight, but by no means the hearing, of the three clerks scratching at their flat-topped desks in the adjoining den.

Maps of the United States, of the Military Division of the Pacific, and of the Territory, as far as known and surveyed, hung about the wooden walls. Blue-prints and photographs of scout maps, made by their predecessors of the ----th Cavalry in the days of the Crook campaigns, were scattered with the order files about the table. But of pictures, ornamentation, or relief of any kind the gloomy box was dest.i.tute as the dun-colored flat of the parade. Official severity spoke in every feature of the forbidding office as well as in those of the major commanding.

There was striking contrast, too, between the man at the desk and the man on the rack before him. Plume had led a life devoid of anxiety or care. Soldiering he took serenely. He liked it, so long as no grave hards.h.i.+p threatened. He had done reasonably good service at corps headquarters during the Civil War; had been commissioned captain in the regulars in '61, and held no vexatious command at any time perhaps, until this that took him to far-away Arizona. Plume was a gentlemanly fellow and no bad garrison soldier. He really shone on parade and review at such fine stations as Leavenworth and Riley, but had never had to bother with mountain scouting or long-distance Indian chasing on the plains. He had a comfortable income outside his pay, and when he was wedded, at the end of her fourth season in society, to a prominent, if just a trifle _pa.s.see_ belle, people thought him a more than lucky man, until the regiment was sent to Arizona and he to Sandy. Gossip said he went to General Sherman with appeal for some detaining duty, whereupon that bluff and most outspoken warrior exclaimed: "What, what, what! Not want to go with the regiment? Why, here's Blakely begging to be relieved from Terry's staff because he's mad to go." And this, said certain St. Louis commentators, settled it, for Mrs. Plume declared for Arizona.

Well garbed, groomed, and fed was Plume, a handsome, soldierly figure.

Very cool and placid was his look in the spotless white that even then by local custom had become official dress for Sandy; but beneath the snowy surface his heart beat with grave disquiet as he studied the strong, rugged, somber face of the soldier on the floor.

Wren was tall and gaunt and growing gray. His face was deeply lined; his close-cropped beard was silver-stranded; his arms and legs were long and sinewy and powerful; his chest and shoulders burly; his regimental dress had not the cut and finish of the commander's. Too much of bony wrist and hand was in evidence, too little of grace and curve. But, though he stood rigidly at attention, with all semblance of respect and subordination, the gleam in his deep-set eyes, the twitch of the long fingers, told of keen and pent-up feeling, and he looked the senior soldier squarely in the face. A sergeant, standing by the adjutant's desk, tiptoed out into the clerk's room and closed the door behind him, then set himself to listen. Young Doty, the adjutant, fiddled nervously with his pen and tried to go on signing papers, but failed. It was for Plume to break the awkward silence, and he did not quite know how. Captain Westervelt, quietly entering at the moment, bowed to the major and took a chair. He had evidently been sent for.

"Captain Wren," presently said Plume, his fingers trembling a bit as they played with the paper folder, "I have felt constrained to send for you to inquire still further into last night's affair--or affairs.

I need not tell you that you may decline to answer if you consider your interests are--involved. I had hoped this painful matter might be so explained as to--as to obviate the necessity of extreme measures, but your second appearance close to Mr. Blakely's quarters, under all the circ.u.mstances, was so--so extraordinary that I am compelled to call for explanation, if you have one you care to offer."

For a moment Wren stood staring at his commander in amaze. He had expected to be offered opportunity to state the circ.u.mstances leading to his now deeply deplored attack on Mr. Blakely, and to decline the offer on the ground that he should have been given that opportunity before being submitted to the humiliation of arrest. He had intended to refuse all overtures, to invite trial by court-martial or investigation by the inspector general, but by no manner of means to plead for reconsideration now; and here was the post commander, with whom he had never served until they came to Sandy, a man who hadn't begun to see the service, the battles, and campaigns that had fallen to his lot, virtually accusing him of further misdemeanor, when he had only rushed to save or succor. He forgot all about Sanders or other witnesses. He burst forth impetuously:

"Extraordinary, sir! It would have been most extraordinary if I hadn't gone with all speed when I heard that cry for help."

Plume looked up in sudden joy. "You mean to tell me you didn't--you weren't there till after--the cry?"

Wren's stern Scottish face was a sight to see. "Of what can you possibly be thinking, Major Plume?" he demanded, slowly now, for wrath was burning within him, and yet he strove for self-control. He had had a lesson and a sore one.

"I will answer that--a little later, Captain Wren," said Plume, rising from his seat, rejoicing in the new light now breaking upon him.

Westervelt, too, had gasped a sigh of relief. No man had ever known Wren to swerve a hair's breadth from the truth. "At this moment time is precious if the real criminal is to be caught at all. You were first to reach the sentry. Had you seen no one else?"

In the dead silence that ensued within the room the sputter of hoofs without broke harshly on the ear. Then came spurred boot heels on the hollow, heat-dried boarding, but not a sound from the lips of Captain Wren. The rugged face, twitching with pent-up indignation the moment before, was now slowly turning gray. Plume stood facing him in growing wonder and new suspicion.

"You heard me, did you not? I asked you did you see anyone else during--along the sentry post when you went out?"

A fringed gauntlet reached in at the doorway and tapped. Sergeant Shannon, straight as a pine, stood expectant of summons to enter and his face spoke eloquently of important tidings, but the major waved him away, and, marveling, he slowly backed to the edge of the porch.

"Surely you can answer that, Captain Wren," said Plume, his clear-cut, handsome face filled with mingled anxiety and annoy. "Surely you _should_ answer, or--"

The ellipsis was suggestive, but impotent. After a painful moment came the response:

"Or--take the consequences, major?" Then slowly--"Very well, sir--I must take them."