Part 17 (2/2)

”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.

<script>