An Apache Princess Part 6

Shortly after retreat on the --th inst. I was suddenly accosted in my quarters by Captain Robert Wren, ----th Cavalry, and accused of an act of treachery to him;--an accusation which called forth instant and indignant denial.

He had, as I now have cause to know, most excellent reason for believing his charge to be true, and the single blow he dealt me was the result of intense and natural wrath. That the consequences were so serious he could not have foreseen.

As the man most injured in the affair, I earnestly ask that no charges be preferred. Were we in civil life I should refuse to prosecute, and, if the case be brought before a court-martial it will probably fail--for lack of evidence.

Very Respectfully,

Your Obedient Servant,

NEIL D. BLAKELY,

1st Lieut., ----th Cavalry.

Now, Doty had been known to hold his tongue when a harmful story might be spread, but he could no more suppress his rejoicing over this than he could the impulse to put it in slang. "Say, aint this just a corker?" said this ingenuous youth, as he spread it on his desk for Graham's grimly gleaming eyes. Plume had read it in dull, apathetic, unseeing fas.h.i.+on. It was the morning after the Apache _emeute_. Plume had stared hard at his adjutant a moment, then, whipping up the sun hat that he had dropped on his desk, and merely saying, "I'll return--shortly," had sped to his darkened quarters and not for an hour had he reappeared. Then the first thing he asked for was that letter of Mr. Blakely's, which, this time, he read with lips compressed and twitching a bit at the corners. Then he called for a telegraph blank and sent a wire to intercept Byrne at the agency. "I shall turn over command to Wren at noon. I'm too ill for further duty," was all he said. Byrne read the rest between the lines.

But Graham went straightway to the quarters of Captain Wren, a rough pencil copy of that most unusual paper in his hand. "R-robert Wren,"

said he, as he entered, unknocking and unannounced, "will ye listen to this? Nay, Angela, la.s.s, don't go." When strongly moved, as we have seen, our doctor dropped to the borderland of dialect.

In the dim light from the shaded windows he had not at first seen the girl. She was seated on a footstool, her hands on her father's knee, her fond face gazing up into his, and that strong, bony hand of his resting on her head and toying with the ribbon, the "snood," as he loved to call it, with which she bound her abundant tresses. At sound of the doctor's voice, Janet, ever apprehensive of ill, had come forth from the dining room, silver brush and towel in hand, and stood at the doorway, gazing austerely. She could not yet forgive her brother's friend his condemnation of her methods as concerned her brother's child. Angela, rising to her full height, stood with one hand on the back of her father's chair, the other began softly stroking the grizzled crop from his furrowed forehead.

No one spoke a word as Graham began and slowly, to the uttermost line, read his draft of Blakely's missive. No one spoke for a moment after he had finished. Angela, with parted lips and dilated eyes, had stood at first drinking in each syllable, then, with heaving bosom, she slowly turned, her left hand falling by her side. Wren sat in silence, his deep-set eyes glowering on the grim reader, a dazed look on his rugged face. Then he reached up and drew the slim, tremulous hand from his forehead and snuggled it against his stubbly cheek, and still he could not speak. Janet slowly backed away into the darkness of the dining room. The situation had softening tendencies and Janet's nature revolted at sentiment. It was Graham's voice that again broke the silence.

"For a vain carpet knight, 'whose best boast was to wear a braid of his fair lady's hair,' it strikes me our b.u.t.terfly chaser has some points of a gentleman," said he, slowly folding his paper. "I might say more," he continued presently, retiring toward the hall. Then, pausing at the doorway, "but I won't," he concluded, and abruptly vanished.

An hour later, when Janet in person went to answer a knock at the door, she glanced in at the parlor as she pa.s.sed, and that peep revealed Angela again seated on her footstool, with her bonny head pillowed on her father's knee, his hand again toying with the glossy tresses, and both father and child looked up, expectant. Yes, there stood the young adjutant, officially equipped with belt and sword and spotless gloves. "Can I see the captain?" he asked, lifting his natty _kepi_, and the captain arose and strode to the door.

"Major Plume presents his compliments--and this letter, sir,"

stammered the youth, blus.h.i.+ng, too, at sight of Angela, beaming on him from the parlor door. "And--you're in command, sir. The major has gone on sick report."

That evening a solemn _cortege_ filed away down the winding road to the northward flats and took the route to the little cemetery, almost all the garrison following to the grave all that was mortal of the hapless agent. Byrne, returned from the agency, was there to represent the general commanding the department. Wren stalked solemnly beside him as commander of the post. Even the women followed, tripping daintily through the sand. Graham watched them from the porch of the post hospital. He could not long leave Mullins, tossing in fever and delirium. He had but recently left Lieutenant Blakely, sitting up and placidly busying himself in patching b.u.t.terfly wings, and Blakely had even come to the front door to look at the distant gathering of decorous mourners. But the bandaged head was withdrawn as two tall, feminine forms came gravely up the row, one so prim and almost antique, the other so lithe and lissome. He retreated to the front room, and with the one available eye at the veiled window, followed her, the latter, until the white flowing skirt was swept from the field of his vision. He had stood but a few hours previous on the spot where he had received that furious blow five nights before, and this time, with cordial grasp, had taken the huge hand that dealt it between his white and slender palms. "Forgive us our trespa.s.ses as we forgive those," Wren had murmured, as he read the deeply regretful words of his late accuser and commander, for had not he in his turn, and without delay, also to eat humble pie? There was something almost pathetic in the att.i.tude of the big soldier as he came to the darkened room and stood before his junior and subordinate, but the latter had stilled the broken, clumsy, faltering words with which this strong, masterful man was striving to make amend for bitter wrong. "I won't listen to more, Captain Wren," he said. "You had reasons I never dreamed of--then. Our eyes have been opened" (one of his was still closed). "You have said more than enough. Let us start afresh now--with better understanding."

"It--it is generous in you, Blakely. I misjudged everything--everybody, and now,--well, you know there are still Hotspurs in the service. I'm thinking some man may be a.s.s enough to say you got a blow without resenting--"

Blakely smiled, a contorted and disunited smile, perhaps, and one much trammeled by adhesive plaster. Yet there was placid unconcern in the visible lines of his pale face. "I think I shall know how to answer,"

said he. And so for the day, and without mention of the name uppermost in the thoughts of each, the two had parted--for the first time as friends.

But the night was yet to come.

CHAPTER X.

"WOMAN-WALK-IN-THE-NIGHT" AGAIN

So swift had been the succession of events since the first day of the week, few of the social set at Sandy could quite realize, much less fathom, all that had happened, and as they gathered on the verandas, in the cool of the evening after Daly's funeral, the trend of talk was all one way. A man who might have thrown light on certain matters at issue had been spirited away, and there were women quite ready to vow it was done simply to get him beyond range of their questioning.

Sergeant Shannon had been sent to the agency on some mission prescribed by Colonel Byrne. It was almost the last order issued by Major Plume before turning over the command.

Byrne himself still lingered at the post, "watching the situation," as it was understood, and in constant telegraphic correspondence with the general at Prescott and the commander of the little guard over the agency buildings at the reservation--Lieutenant Bridger, of the Infantry. With a sergeant and twenty men that young officer had been dispatched to that point immediately after the alarming and unlooked-for catastrophe of the reveille outbreak. Catastrophe was what Byrne called it, and he meant what he said, not so much because it had cost the life of Daly, the agent, whose mistaken zeal had precipitated the whole misunderstanding, but rather because of the death of two such prominent young warriors as "s.h.i.+eld" and his friend, who had fallen after dealing the fatal blow to him who had laid violent hands, so they regarded it, on two young girls, one a chieftain's daughter and both objects of reverent and savagely sentimental interest. "If war doesn't come at once," said Byrne, "it will be because the Apache has a new sense or a deep-laid scheme. Look out for him."

No news as yet had come from the runners sent forth in search of the scattered fugitives, who would soon be flocking together again in the fastnesses of the Mogollon to the east or the Red Rock country northward--the latter probably, as being nearer their friends at the reservation and farther from the few renegade Tontos lurking in the mountains toward Fort Apache. Byrne's promise to the wanderers, sent by these runners, was to the effect that they would be safe from any prosecution if they would return at once to the agency and report themselves to the interpreter and the lieutenant commanding the guard.

He would not, he said, be answerable for what might happen if they persisted in remaining at large. But when it was found that, so far from any coming in, there were many going out, and that Natzie's father and brother had already gone, Byrne's stout heart sank. The message came by wire from the agency not long after the return of the funeral party, and while the evening was yet young. He sent at once for Wren, and, seated on the major's front piazza, with an orderly hovering just out of earshot, and with many an eye anxiously watching them along the row, the two veterans were holding earnest conference.

Major Plume was at the bedside of his wife, so said Graham when he came down about eight. Mrs. Plume, he continued, was at least no worse, but very nervous. Then he took himself back to the hospital.

Another topic of talk along the line was Blakely's watch and its strange recovery, and many were the efforts to learn what Blakely himself had to say about it. The officers, nearly all of them, of course, had been at intervals to see Blakely and inquire if there were not something that they could do, this being the conventional and proper thing, and they who talked with him, with hardly an exception, led up to the matter of the watch and wished to know how he accounted for its being there on the post of No. 5. It was observed that, upon this topic and the stabbing of Private Mullins, Mr. Blakely was oddly reticent. He had nothing whatever to suggest as explanation of either matter. The watch was taken from the inner pocket of his thin white coat as he lay asleep at the pool, of this he felt confident, but by whom he would not pretend to say. Everybody knew by this time that Angela Wren had seen him sleeping, and had, in a spirit of playful mischief, fetched away his b.u.t.terfly net, but who would accuse Angela of taking his watch and money? Of course such things had been, said one or two wise heads, but--not with girls like Angela.

But who could say what, all this while, Angela herself was thinking?

Once upon a time it had been the way of our young folk well over the North and West to claim forfeit in the game of "Catching the weasel asleep." There had been communities, indeed, and before co-education became a fad at certain of our great universities, wherein the maid caught napping could hold it no sin against watchful swain, or even against her, that he then and there imprinted on her lips a kiss. On the other hand, the swain found sleeping might not always expect a kiss, but must pay the penalty, a pair of dainty gloves. Many a forfeit, both lip and glove, had there been claimed and allowed in army days whereof we write, and Angela, stealing upon Blakely as he dozed beneath the willows, and liking him well and deploring her father's p.r.o.nounced aversion to him--perhaps even resenting it an undutiful bit--had found it impossible to resist the temptation to softly disengage that b.u.t.terfly net from the loosely clasping fingers, and swiftly, stealthily, delightedly to scamper away with it against his waking. It was of this very exploit, never dreaming of the fateful consequences, she and Kate Sanders were so blissfully bubbling over, fairly shaking with maiden merriment when the despoiled victim, homeward bound, caught sight of them upon the _mesa_. Ten minutes more, and in full force she had been made to feel the blow of her father's fierce displeasure. Twenty minutes more, and, under the blow of her father's furious wrath, Blakely had been felled like a log.

When with elongated face and exaggerated gloom of manner Aunt Janet came to make her realize the awful consequences of her crime, Angela's first impulse had been to cry out against her father's unreasoning rage. When she learned that he was in close arrest,--to be tried, doubtless, for his mad a.s.sault,--in utter revulsion of feeling, in love and tenderness, in grief and contrition inexpressible, she had thrown herself at his feet and, clasping his knees, had sobbed her heart out in imploring his forgiveness for what she called her wicked, heedless, heartless conduct. No one saw that blessed meeting, that scene of mutual forgiveness, of sweet reconciliation; too sweet and serene, indeed, for Janet's stern and Calvinistic mold.

Are we ever quite content, I wonder, that others' bairnies should be so speedily, so entirely, forgiven? All because of this had all Janet's manifestations of sympathy for Robert to be tempered with a fine reserve. As for Angela, it would never do to let the child so soon forget that this should be an awful lesson. Aunt Janet's manner, therefore, when, b.u.t.terfly net in hand, she required of her niece full explanation of the presence in the room of this ravished trophy, was something fraught with far too much of future punishment, of wrath eternal. Even in her chastened mood Angela's spirit stood _en garde_.

"I have told father everything, auntie," she declared. "I leave it all to him," and bore in silence the comments, without the utterance of which the elder vestal felt she could not conscientiously quit the field. "Bold," "immodest," "unmaidenly," "wanton," were a choice few of Aunt Janet's expletives, and these were unresented. But when she concluded with "I shall send this--thing to him at once, with my personal apologies for the act of an irresponsible child," up sprang Angela with rebellion flas.h.i.+ng from her eyes. She had suffered punishment as a woman. She would not now be treated as a child. To Janet's undisguised amaze and disapprobation, Wren decided that Angela herself should send both apology and net. It was the first missive of the kind she had ever written, but, even so, she would not submit it for either advice or criticism--even though its composition cost her many hours and tears and sheets of paper. No one but the recipient had so much as a peep at it, but when Blakely read it a grave smile lighted his pallid and still bandaged face. He stowed the little note in his desk, and presently took it out and read it again, and still again, and then it went slowly into the inner pocket of his white sack coat and was held there, while he, the wearer, slowly paced up and down the veranda late in the starlit night. This was the evening of Daly's funeral, the evening of the day on which he and his captain had shaken hands and were to start afresh with better understanding.

Young Duane was officer of the day and, after the tattoo inspection of his little guard, had gone for a few minutes to the hospital where Mullins lay muttering and tossing in his feverish sleep; then, meeting Wren and Graham on the way, had tramped over to call on Blakely, thinking, perhaps, to chat a while and learn something. Soon after "taps" was sounded, however, the youngster joined the little group gossiping in guarded tones on the porch at Captain Sanders', far down the row, and, in response to question, said that "Bugs"--that being Blakely's briefest _nom de guerre_--must be convalescing rapidly, he "had no use for his friends," and, as the lad seemed somewhat ruffled and resentful, what more natural than that he should be called upon for explanation? Sanders and his wife were present, and Mrs. Bridger, very much alive with inquiry and not a little malicious interest.

Kate, too, was of the party, and Doty, the adjutant, and Mesdames Cutler and Westervelt--it was so gloomy and silent, said these latter, at their end of the row. Much of the talk had been about Mrs. Plume's illness and her "sleep-walking act," as it had been referred to, and many had thought, but few had spoken, of her possible presence on the post of No. 5 about the time that No. 5 was stabbed. They knew _she_ couldn't have done it, of course, but then how strange that she should have been there at all! The story had gained balloon-like expanse by this time, and speculation was more than rife. But here was Duane with a new grievance which, when put into Duane's English, reduced itself to this: "Why, it was like as if Bugs wanted to get rid of me and expected somebody else," and this they well remembered later. n.o.body else was observed going to Blakely's front door, at least, but at eleven o'clock he himself could still be dimly heard and seen pacing steadily up and down his piazza, apparently alone and deep in thought.

His lights, too, were turned down, a new man from the troop having asked for and a.s.sumed the duties formerly devolving on the wretch Downs, now doing time within the garrison prison. Before eleven, however, this new martial domestic had gone upstairs to bed and Blakely was all alone, which was as he wished it, for he had things to plan and other things to think of that lifted him above the possibility of loneliness.

Down the line of officers' quarters only in two or three houses could lights be seen. Darkness reigned at Plume's, where Byrne was still rooming. Darkness reigned at Wren's and Graham's, despite the fact that the lords of these manors were still abroad, both at the bedside of Trooper Mullins. A dozen people were gathered by this time at Sanders'. All the other verandas, except Blakely's with its solitary watcher, seemed deserted. To these idlers of the soft and starlit night, sitting bareheaded about the gallery and chatting in the friendly way of the frontier, there came presently a young soldier from the direction of the adjutant's office at the south end. "The night operator," he explained. "Two dispatches have just come for Colonel Byrne, and I thought maybe--"

"No, Ca.s.sidy," said Doty. "The colonel is at his quarters. Dispatch, is it? Perhaps I'd better go with you," and, rising, the young officer led the way, entering on tiptoe the hall of the middle house where, far back on a table, a lamp was burning low. Tapping at an inner door, he was bidden to enter. Byrne was in bed, a single sheet over his burly form, but he lay wide awake. He took the first dispatch and tore it open eagerly. It was from Bridger at the agency:

Runners just in say Natzie and Lola had turned back from trail to Montezuma Well, refusing to go further from their dead. Can probably be found if party go at dawn or sooner.

Alchisay with them. More Indians surely going out from here.

Byrne's brow contracted and his lips compressed, but he gave no other sign. "Is Captain Wren still up?" he briefly asked, as he reached for the other dispatch.

"Over at the hospital, sir," said Doty, and watched this famous campaigner's face as he ripped open the second brown envelope. This time he was half out of bed before he could have half finished even that brief message. It was from the general:

News of trouble must have reached Indians at San Carlos.

Much excitement there and at Apache. Shall start for Camp McDowell to-morrow as soon as I have seen Plume. He should come early.

The colonel was in his slippers and inexpressibles in less than no time, but Plume aloft had heard the m.u.f.fled sounds from the lower floor, and was down in a moment. Without a word Byrne handed him the second message and waited until he had read, then asked: "Can you start at dawn?"

"I can start now," was the instant reply. "Our best team can make it in ten hours. Order out the Concord, Mr. Doty." And Doty vanished.

"But Mrs. Plume--" began the colonel tentatively.

"Mrs. Plume simply needs quiet and to be let alone," was the joyless answer. "I think perhaps--I am rather in the way."

"Well, I know the general will appreciate your promptness. I--did not know you had asked to see him," and Byrne looked up from under his s.h.a.ggy brows.

"I hadn't exactly, but my letter intimated as much. There is so very much I--I cannot write about--that of course he's bound to hear,--I don't mean you, Colonel Byrne,--and he ought to know the--facts. Now I'll get ready at once and--see you before starting."

"Better take an escort, Plume."

"One man on driver's seat. That's all, sir. I'll come in presently, in case you have anything to send," said Plume, and hurried again upstairs.