CHAPTER VIII
"APACHE KNIVES DIG DEEP!"
At five o'clock of this cloudless October morning Colonel MontgomeryByrne, "of the old Army, sir," was reviling the fates that had set himthe task of unraveling such a skein as he found at Sandy. At six hewas blessing the stars that sent him. Awakened, much before his usualhour, by half-heard murmur of scurry and excitement, so quicklysuppressed he believed it all a dream, he was thinking, half drowsily,all painfully, of the duty devolving on him for the day, and wishinghimself well out of it, when the dream became real, the impressionvivid. His watch told him reveille should now be sounding. His earstold him the sounds he heard were not those of reveille, yet somethinghad roused the occupants of Officers' Row, and then, all on a sudden,instead of the sweet strains of "The Dawn of the Day" or "Bonnie Lasso' Gawrie" there burst upon the morning air, harsh and blustering, thealarum of the Civil War days, the hoarse uproar of the drum thunderingthe long roll, while above all rang the loud clamor of the cavalrytrumpet sounding "To Horse."
"Fitz James was brave, but to his heart The life blood leaped with sudden start."
Byrne sprang from his bed. He was a soldier, battle-tried, but thismeant something utterly new to him in war, for, mingling with thegathering din, he heard the shriek of terror-stricken women. Daly'sbed was empty. The agent was gone. Elise aloft was jabbering _patois_at her dazed and startled mistress. Suey, the Chinaman, cameclattering in, all flapping legs and arms and pigtail, his face livid,his eyes staring. "Patcheese! Patcheese!" he squealed, and dove underthe nearest bed. Then Byrne, shinning into boots and breeches andshunning his coat, grabbed his revolver and rushed for the door.
Across the parade, out of their barracks the "doughboys" camestreaming, no man of them dressed for inspection, but rather, likesailors, stripped for a fight; and, never waiting to form ranks, butfollowing the lead of veteran sergeants and the signals or orders ofofficers somewhere along the line, went sprinting straight for theeastward _mesa_. From the cavalry barracks, the northward sets, thetroopers, too, were flowing, but these were turned stableward, back ofthe post, and Byrne, with his nightshirt flying wide open, wider thanhis eyes, bolted round through the space between the quarters of Plumeand Wren, catching sight of the arrested captain standing grim andgaunt on his back piazza, and ran with the foremost sergeants to theedge of the plateau, where, in his cool white garb, stood Plume,shouting orders to those beneath.
There, down in the Sandy bottom, was explanation of it all. Twosoldiers were bending over a prostrate form in civilian dress. Twoswarthy Apaches, one on his face, the other, ten rods away, writhingon his side, lay weltering in blood. Out along the sandy barren andamong the clumps of mezquite and greasewood, perhaps as many as tensoldiers, members of the guard, were scattering in rude skirmishorder; now halting and dropping on one knee to fire, now rushingforward; while into the willows, that swept in wide concave around theflat, a number of forms in dirty white, or nothing at all butstreaming breechclout, were just disappearing.
Northward, too, beyond the post of No. 4, other little squads andparties could be faintly seen scurrying away for the shelter of thewillows, and as Byrne reached the major's side, with theto-be-expected query "Whatinhell'sthematter?" the last of the fleeingApaches popped out of sight, and Plume turned toward him in mingledwrath and disgust:
"That--ass of an agent!" was all he could say, as he pointed to theprostrate figure in pepper and salt.
Byrne half slid, half stumbled down the bank and bent over the woundedman. Dead he was not, for, with both hands clasped to his breast, Dalywas cradling from side to side and saying things of Apaches totallyunbecoming an Indian agent and a man of God. "But who did it? andhow?--and why?" demanded Byrne of the ministering soldiers.
"NOW HALTING, DROPPING ON ONE KNEE TO FIRE"]
"Tried to 'rest two Patchie girls, sir," answered the first,straightening up and saluting, "and her feller wouldn't stand it, Ireckon. Knifed the agent and Craney, too. Yonder's the feller."
Yonder lay, face downward, as described, a sinewy young brave of theApache Mohave band, his newer, cleaner shirt and his gayly ornamentedsash and headgear telling of superior rank and station among his kind.With barely a glance at Craney, squatted beside a bush, and with teethand hands knotting a kerchief about a bleeding arm, Byrne bent overthe Apache and turned the face to the light.
"Good God!" he cried, at the instant, "it's Quonathay--Raven Shield!Why, _you_ know him, corporal!"--this to Casey, of Wren's troop,running to his side. "Son of old Chief Quonahelka! I wouldn't have hadthis happen for all the girls on the reservation. Who were they? Whydid he try to arrest them? Here! I'll have to ask him--stabbed ornot!" And, anxious and angering, the colonel hastened over toward theagent, now being slowly aided to his feet. Plume, too, had comesidelong down the sandy bank with Cutler, of the infantry, askingwhere he should put in his men. "Oh, just deploy across the flats tostand off any possible attack," said Plume. "Don't cross the Sandy,and, damn it all! get a bugler out and sound recall!" For now thesound of distant shots came echoing back from the eastward cliffs. Thepursuit had spread beyond the stream. "I don't want any more of thosepoor devils hurt. There's mischief enough already," he concluded.
"I should say so," echoed the colonel. "What was the matter, Mr.Daly? Whom did you seek to arrest?--and why?"
"Almost any of 'em," groaned Daly. "There were a dozen there I'drefused passes to come again this week. They were here in defiance ofmy orders, and I thought to take that girl Natzie,--she that led Lolaoff,--back to her father at the agency. It would have been a goodlesson. Of course she fought and scratched. Next thing I knew a dozenof 'em were atop of us--some water, for God's sake!--and lift me outof this!"
Then with grave and watch-worn face, Graham came hurrying to the spot,all the way over from Mullins's bedside at the hospital and breathinghard. Dour indeed was the look he gave the groaning agent, now gulpingat a gourd held to his pale lips by one of the men. The policy ofDaly's predecessor had been to feather his own nest and let the Indianshift for himself, and this had led to his final overthrow. Daly,however, had come direct from the care of a tribe of the Pueblopersuasion, peace-loving and tillers of the soil, meek as the Pimasand Maricopas, natives who fawned when he frowned and cringed at thecrack of his whip. These he had successfully, and not dishonestly,ruled, but that very experience had unfitted him for duty over themountain Apache, who cringed no more than did the lordly Sioux orCheyenne, and truckled to no man less than a tribal chief. Blakely,the soldier, cool, fearless, and resolute, but scrupulously just, theybelieved in and feared; but this new blusterer only made them laugh,until he scandalized them by wholesale arrest and punishment. Thentheir childlike merriment changed swiftly to furious and scowlinghate,--to open defiance, and finally, when he dared lay hands on achosen daughter of the race, to mutiny and the knife. Graham, servinghis third year in the valley, had seen the crisis coming and sought towarn the man. But what should an army doctor know of an Apache Indian?said Daly, and, fatuous in his own conceit, the crisis found himunprepared.
"Go you for a stretcher," said the surgeon, after a quick look intothe livid face. "Lay him down gently there," and kneeling, busiedhimself with opening a way to the wound. Out over the flats swung thelong skirmish line, picturesque in the variety of its undress, Cutlerstriding vociferous in its wake, while a bugler ran himself out ofbreath, far to the eastward front, to puff feeble and abortive breathinto unresponsive copper. And still the same flutter of distant,scattering shots came drifting back from the brakes and canons in therocky wilds beyond the stream. The guard still pursued and the Indiansstill led, but they who knew anything well knew it could not be longbefore the latter turned on the scattering chase, and Byrne strodeabout, fuming with anxiety. "Thank God!" he cried, as a prodigiousclatter of hoofs, on hollow and resounding wood, told of cavalrycoming across the _acequia_, and Sanders galloped round the sandypoint in search of the foe--or orders. "Thank God! Here,Sanders--pardon me, major, there isn't an instant to lose
--Rush yourmen right on to the front there! Spread well out, but don't fire ashot unless attacked in force! Get those--chasing idiots and bringthem in! By God, sir, we'll have an Indian war on our hands as it is!"And Sanders nodded and dug spurs to his troop horse, and sang out:"Left front into line--gallop!" and the rest was lost in a cloud ofdust and the blare of cavalry trumpet.
Then the colonel turned to Plume, standing now silent and soretroubled. "It was the quickest way," he said apologetically."Ordinarily I should have given the order through you, of course. Butthose beggars are armed to a man. They left their guns in the crevicesof yonder rocks, probably, when they came for the morning music. Wemust have no fight over this unless they force it. I wish to heaven wehadn't killed--these two," and ruefully he looked at the starkforms--the dead lover of Natzie, the gasping tribesman just beyond,dying, knife in hand. "The general has been trying to curb Daly forthe last ten days," continued he, "and warned him he'd bring ontrouble. The interpreter split with him on Monday last, and there'sbeen mischief brewing ever since. If only we could have kept Blakelythere--all this row would have been averted!"
If only, indeed! was Plume thinking, as eagerly, anxiously he scannedthe eastward shore, rising jagged, rocky, and forbidding from thewillows of the stream bed. If only, indeed! Not only all this row ofwhich Byrne had seen so much, but all this other row, this row withina row, this intricacy of mishaps and misery that involved the socialuniverse of Camp Sandy, of which as yet the colonel, presumably, knewso very little; of which, as post commander, Plume had yet to tellhim! An orderly came running with a field glass and a scrap of paper.Plume glanced at the latter, a pencil scrawl of his wife's inseparablecompanion, and, for aught he knew, confidante. "Madame," he could makeout, and "_affreusement_" something, but it was enough. The orderlysupplemented: "Leece, sir, says the lady is very bad--"
"Go to her, Plume," with startling promptitude cried the colonel."I'll look to everything here. It's all coming out right," for with atantara--tantara-ra-ra Sanders's troop, spreading far and wide, werescrambling up the shaly slopes a thousand yards away. "Go to your wifeand tell her the danger's over," and, with hardly another glance atthe moaning agent, now being limply hoisted on a hospital stretcher,thankfully the major went. "The lady's very bad, is she?" growledByrne, in fierce aside to Graham. "That French hag sometimes speakstruth, in spite of herself. How d'you find him?" This with a toss ofthe head toward the vanishing stretcher.
"Bad likewise. These Apache knives dig deep. There's Mullins now--"
"Think _that_ was Apache?" glared Byrne, with sudden light in hiseyes, for Wren had told his troubles--all.
"Apache _knife_--yes."
"What the devil do you mean, Graham?" and the veteran soldier, whoknew and liked the surgeon, whirled again on him with eyes that lookednot like at all.
The doctor turned, his somber gaze following the now distant figure ofthe post commander, struggling painfully up the yielding sand of thesteep slope to the plateau. The stretcher bearers and attendants werestriding away to hospital with the now unconscious burden. The fewmen, lingering close at hand, were grouped about the dead Apaches. Thegathering watchers along the bank were beyond earshot. Staff officerand surgeon were practically alone and the latter answered:
"I mean, sir, that if that Apache knife had been driven in by anApache warrior, Mullins would have been dead long hours ago--which heisn't."
Byrne turned a shade grayer.
"Could _she_ have done that?" he asked, with one sideward jerk of hishead toward the major's quarters.
"I'm not saying," quoth the Scot. "I'm asking was there anyone else?"