CHAPTER XIV.
Three anxious, watchful days went by, with anxious, watchful nightsintervening, with no further tidings of 'Tonio or Stannard or Turner,of friend or foe from the outside world, and with only one attempt onpart of the invisibly, yet perceptibly, surrounded garrison tocommunicate with the field columns. "Hualpai 21," the only designationhe would own to (the real name, in the absence of some tribesman tospeak for him, one could rarely learn from an Indian), was given hisfill of food and rest, then, with a despatch to Turner, was sent forthMonday night south-eastward, the way he came, and bidden if he reachedthe rugged height known as El Caporal, some twelve miles to thesouth-east, and deemed it safe to do so, to send at sunrise three quickmirror flashes toward the flagstaff, repeating twice or thrice to besure of its attracting attention. Hualpai 21 took with him one of thosecheap little disks of looking-glass, cased in pewter, at that timefound at every frontier store. He took also the injunction to give hisdespatch to Captain Turner or one of his men, but to no Indianwhomsoever--'Tonio in particular. It was the last attempt of the week.
For, from dawn until the sun was an hour high, the watchers watched invain. Three signal glasses, telescope and binocular, were trained uponthe heights and no one of them caught the faintest spark of reflectedlight. The nearest approach to a signal was seen by a corporal of theguard and sentry Number Six an hour after midnight, when, in quicksuccession, two faint, firefly flashes, unrepeated, were visible afarout due east of the Picacho, and they could have been caused in onlytwo ways--somebody experimenting with a mirror and the moonbeams, themoon being then about three hours high and three-quarters full, orelse, as they were ruddier than moonshine, somebody taking two quickshots, probably at somebody else. The corporal counted seconds up totwenty and more, and even in that breathless silence, heard not a soundto warrant the belief.
Yet a few hours later that sun-blistered morning, the bookkeeper Case"blew in for a bottle," as he expressed it; remarked with engagingfrankness that he believed he had still a day or so in which to taper,and would be home and on deck if the Apaches didn't get him meantime;and, being delicately invited to state where he had spent the night,replied as frankly as before, "Down at Jose Sanchez's," meaning therebythe down-stream resort two miles distant, where prospectors, packersand occasionally men from the post, in peace times, at least, went forunlimited mescal and monte. Since the death of Comes Flying, thedisappearance of 'Patchie Sanchez (the runner, half-brother to Sanchez,the gambler), and the general outbreak among the Indians, it had beenshunned as utterly unsafe, and reported abandoned. When cautioned byWatts against returning thither, Mr. Case replied that now that theIndians spurned it, for not even 'Tonio would set foot anywhere aboutthe ranch, the ghost of the brother was seen there every night. He hadseen it and it was an honest ghost, and a convivial spirit, which waswhy last night's bottle had lasted no longer. Moreover, Case said thatwhen he was drinking he was only at home in half-bred society andcouldn't live up to the high tone of the post. When told of Mr.Willett's further mishap, Case sobered for a moment in manner, and saidMr. Willett was unwise taking so many chances, and Mr. Willett would bein big luck if he got away from Almy without further puncture. Somebodyelse had been shot at last night. He and the ghost had heard it.
This at the moment was regarded as semi-maudlin talk, but at morningoffice hour Watts was sent for, was told what the guard had seen, andasked what Case had really said, rumor being, as a rule, inaccurate.Then Archer rebuked Watts for letting Case go in his intoxicatedcondition, and it was decided to send a little party in search, inhopes of fetching him in and finding out more about the allegedshooting. The party found Case without any trouble. He sat singing tohimself and swinging his legs from the table in the abandoned rookery,the half-emptied bottle on one side and a "monkey" of spring water onthe other, scornful alike of danger or demands, but indomitablycourteous. The party took a drink with him as promptly invited, butfound him implacably bent on holding the position. Not until argumentand whiskey both were exhausted would he listen to reason and thesuggestion to return to the post. That being the only means to morewhiskey, he started affably enough, but before going half a miledeclared he had left or lent his revolver. "There's only one revolverat Camp Almy just like it," said he, with drunken dignity, and then,with sudden gravity, "an' that one--_isn't_ at Camp Almy."
The infantry sergeant in command of the little party tried to wheedleCase out of his whim, but it was useless. Back he would go, and they,half supporting, had to go with him. From the drawer of the batteredold table he drew the missing weapon to light, and it stoodrevealed--one of the famous Colt's 44, made soon after the Civil War toreplace the percussion-capped "Navy" carried by most officers of thearmy until late in the '60's. In the hands of the cavalry at themoment, and for experimental purposes, were nickel-plated Smith andWesson's of the same calibre, and nearly the same length of barrel,also one or two other patterns of the remodelled Colt. But, as Casesaid, this was a special make and model, differing slightly from anythat Sergeant Joyce had ever yet seen; but not until later did thesergeant or his comrades attach any significance to Case's statement,"there's only one at Almy just like it."
His weapon recovered, his mental balance slightly restored, and withthe further inspiration of replenished flask ahead, Case made thedifficult essay to tramp the two sandy miles back to the store and thestill more difficult task of there accounting for himself andexplaining his enigmatical sayings. Strong, as directed, strove to keephim to the point, but the one more drink Case declared indispensable onhis final arrival at dusk sent flitting the last filaments of reason,and the poor fellow maundered off to sleep on his little cot in thedarkened room, where he was bolted in and left for the night.
"Only one pistol like it at the post, and that--isn't at the post,"Strong found himself repeating again and again that night, as, afterMrs. Archer and Mrs. Stannard had read their patient into a doze andtaken their departure, the adjutant stood for a moment by Willet'sbedside. "And now Willett has lost his, and presumably the Tontos, orperhaps the Apache-Mohaves, have got it!"
They had wandered away in the darkness together, those two brave andtender-hearted army women, each with a keen anxiety of her own, eachstriving to be helpful to the other. Three invalids were there now atAlmy to whom they were giving many hours of care and nursing. Poor Mrs.Bennett gained little in mental or bodily health. The fearful scenes ofthat long night of horror and rapine still seemed vividly before her inher few hours of fitful slumber, and were this state of things tocontinue long, said the doctor, insanity would be a merciful refuge. Anhour or so each day these ministering angels gave to the youngofficers. Harris, severely shot, was mending fast, his perfect physicalcondition lending itself admirably to his restoration. Willett, butslightly injured, should be sitting up, with his shoulder in a frameand his arm in a sling, but he was mending only slowly, and had not alittle fever. Harris, accustomed to self-denial, seemed to require nophysical comforts. Willett, something of a Sybarite, craved iced drinksand cooling applications that gave more trouble, said Strong, thantwenty Harrises. Willett had even gone so far as to suggest that theladies must be tired of reading aloud, possibly Miss Lilian mightrelieve one or other, and possibly, hope whispered, both. Harris, whowould have welcomed that presence and possibility as he would no other,had ventured nothing beyond the expression of a hope that Miss Archerwas quite well.
As for Miss Archer herself, what man can say just what thoughts,emotions, hopes and fears were rioting in that gentle and innocent, yettroubled heart. A very unheroic little heroine is this of ours. It wasa time when she might well be thinking of the perils by which they andtheir defenders were encompassed round about, of the bereaved andbroken-hearted woman crying to heaven for her murdered husband and herstolen children, of the scouts and couriers shot down from ambush intheir efforts to reach them in their isolation or to creep through withmessages to the columns afield, of the wounded lying with but scantattention and puny guard, weary marches away, of the comr
ades killed ordied of wounds in fierce grapple with the warriors of the desert andthe mountains--even of this young soldier within their gates, sorestricken in daring rescue of a helpless woman, he to whose coolness andcommand of self--and others--had saved her from the rattler's fang.Very possibly she did think of it--and often--and tried to think ofthem still oftener, but all the time, it must be owned, in her heart ofhearts she was hearing again the soft, caressing tone of that deep,rich voice--"the words of love then spoken;" she saw again the lustrouseyes that shone and burned into hers despite their drooping lids, thegraceful, gallant form of that picture of the knight and gentlemanwhose swift wooing had made such wondrous way. Lilian Archer was but achild in spite of years and schooling. She spent her earliest yearswithin the shadow of the flag and the sound of the drum. She had seennothing of garrison life from that morning in '61, when she had justpassed her sixth birthday, when they were bundled aboard a wheezingriver stern wheeler and floated for many a day and many and many a longmile down a muddy, twisting stream--her father so grave and anxious,and some of the officers with him so urgent and appealing. She couldnot understand why her mother should so often sit with tear-brimmingeyes and clasp her to her bosom with the boy brother she so loved--andteased. Father's home was in a proud old border state, and they wentthere for a week or two, after that sorrowful day in St. Louis whenthree of father's old friends and comrades came for one last conferenceand then--a last good-by--two of them refusing his hand. They hadresigned and followed their state. They had striven to take him withthem to swell the ranks of the proud young army of the South. They hadloved him well and he them, but there was something floating overhead,from the white staff at the stern, he held still dearer. One officer,who was most urgent in his pleadings, was her bonny "Uncle Barney,"mother's own brother, and when he left, without kiss for her orhandclasp for the sad-faced soldier in the worn uniform of blue,mother's heart seemed almost breaking. Father took them to _his_father's old home, and left them there while he went to drillingmilitiamen north of the Ohio, and was presently made a colonel ofvolunteers. But the people who lived about them were all for the South,and they could not forgive mother for his taking sides against them;so, throughout the long bitter struggle, while he was at the front orsuffering in Southern prison, as happened once, and from Northernsuspicion, as happened much more than once, they lived in lodgings in aquiet little country town, where brother and she went hand in hand toschool and saw little of the outer world and nothing of the war. Thenat last came peace, and in '66 the reorganization of the army, andfather--in a general's uniform on a major's pay. Then in '69 GeneralGrant appointed brother a cadet, and all were so proud and hopeful whenhe left them for the Point. He was the image of Uncle Barney, who waskilled leading his splendid brigade in one of the earliest battles inVirginia, and, like Uncle Barney, brother was high-spirited andimpatient. Mathematics and demerit set him back in '70 and dropped himout entirely in '71, when father was weeks away across the deserts ofArizona, and they were in lodgings at San Francisco, and poor motherwas nearly distraught with grief and anxiety. Brother never came backto them. He went straight, it seems, to the Brooklyn Navy-Yard;enlisted in the Marines, and, within five months thereafter, jumpedfrom the deck of the "Yantic" in a swift tideway at Amoy, striving toaid a drowning shipmate, and was never seen again. That was the saddestChristmas they ever knew. Father had to return to his post, and allthat year of '72 they wore deep mourning and went nowhere. During thespring of '73 mother was rallying a little, and loving army friendsfrom the Presidio and Angel Islands, who used to come to see them sooften, now sought to have Lilian visit them; but wisely Mrs. Archerkept her at her studies and her music and away from possiblefascination of the garrison, and except, therefore, for two dancesgiven by the artillery, and one charming, rose-bowered afternoonreception at Angel Island, Lilian had seen nothing of army life andnext to nothing of army beaux, until in all the ardor and innocence ofsweet, winsome, wholesome girlhood--buoyant, beautiful and in exuberanthealth and spirits, she was suddenly landed here at this out of the waystation in uttermost Arizona, and brought face to face with love anddestiny.
For two days she had been hoping that mother would suggest that she,too, might come when they went for the afternoon visits to theirwounded. But, though mother had twice taken her to sit a few minutes bythe side of poor, frenzied Mrs. Bennett, there came no intimation thatshe might follow to the bedside of Lieutenant Willett, whose voice thechild was longing to hear again, whose face she craved to see. No womanof heroic mould, perhaps, was Mrs. Archer. Hers was one of those fond,clinging natures, capable of any sacrifice for the husband or child sheloved. She had turned her back on the home and the people so dear toher when unhesitatingly she followed the soldier husband sherapturously loved, and now, though she yearned to take her daughter toher heart and kiss away the wistful, pathetic, pleading look in thefond eyes that never before had appealed to her in vain, something toldher it were best to let her fight it out, even to suffer, alone, thanadmit, even to her, the possibility of a growing love for thisbrilliant and dangerous young gallant, as to whom she had unwittinglyheard such damning accusation. It had not taken Mrs. Archer long tolearn that Case, nerved by drink, had appeared at Harris's bedside thatSunday afternoon, asking to speak with him alone, only to be speedilyfollowed by Willett, and by the altercation she had overheard. Underthe circumstances, as known to her, Mrs. Archer was thankful that,since he could not leave the post, Lieutenant Willett could not evenleave his room. Not with her knowledge and consent should her gentleLilian be again brought within the sphere of his influence.
But Love that laughs at locksmiths was yet to find his way, and thatright soon.