Fire!

: An Apache Princess

"It was not so much his wounds as his weakness," Dr. Graham was

saying, later still that autumn night, "that led to my declaring

Blakely unfit to take the field. He would have gone in spite of me,

but for the general's order. He has gone now in spite of me, and no

one knows where."



It was then nearly twelve o'clock, and "the Bugologist" was still

abroad. Dinner, as usual since his mishap, had been sent ov r to him

from the officers' mess soon after sunset. His horse, or rather the

troop horse designated for his use, had been fed and groomed in the

late afternoon, and then saddled at seven o'clock and brought over to

the rear of the quarters by a stable orderly.



There had been some demur at longer sending Blakely's meals from mess,

now reduced to an actual membership of two. Sandy was a "much married"

post in the latter half of the 70's, the bachelors of the commissioned

list being only three, all told,--Blakely, and Duane of the Horse, and

Doty of the Foot. With these was Heartburn, the contract doctor, and

now Duane and the doctor were out in the mountains and Blakely on sick

report, yet able to be about. Doty thought him able to come to mess.

Blakely, thinking he looked much worse than he felt, thanks to his

plastered jowl, stood on his rights in the matter and would not go.

There had been some demur on part of the stable sergeant of Wren's

troop as to sending over the horse. Few officers brought eastern-bred

horses to Arizona in those days. The bronco was best suited to the

work. An officer on duty could take out the troop horse assigned to

his use any hour before taps and no questions asked; but the sergeant

told Mr. Blakely's messenger that the lieutenant wasn't for duty, and

it might make trouble. It did. Captain Cutler sent for old Murray, the

veteran sergeant, and asked him did he not know his orders. He had

allowed a horse to be sent to a sick man--an officer not on duty--and

one the doctor had warned against exercise for quite a time, at least.

And now the officer was gone, so was the horse, and Cutler, being

sorely torn up by the revelations of the evening and dread of ill

befalling Blakely, was so injudicious as to hint to a soldier who had

worn chevrons much longer than he, Cutler, had worn shoulder-straps,

that the next thing to go would probably be his sergeant's bars,

whereat Murray went red to the roots of his hair--which "continued the

march" of the color,--and said, with a snap of his jaws, that he got

those chevrons, as he did his orders, from his troop commander. A

court might order them stricken off, but a captain couldn't, other

than his own. For which piece of impudence the veteran went

straightway to Sudsville in close arrest. Corporal Bolt was ordered to

take over his keys and the charge of the stables until the return of

Captain Wren, also this order--that no government horse should be sent

to Lieutenant Blakely hereafter until the lieutenant was declared by

the post surgeon fit for duty.



There were left at the post, of each of the two cavalry troops, about

a dozen men to care for the stables, the barracks, and property. Seven

of these had gone with the convoy to Prescott, and, when Cutler

ordered half a dozen horsemen out at midnight to follow Blakely's

trail and try to find him, they had to draw on both troop stables, and

one of the designated men was the wretch Downs,--and Downs was not in

his bunk,--not anywhere about the quarters or corrals. It was nearly

one by the time the party started down the sandy road to the south,

Hart and his buckboard and a sturdy brace of mules joining them as

they passed the store. "We may need to bring him back in this," said

he, to Corporal Quirk.



"An' what did ye fetch to bring him to wid?" asked the corporal.

Hart touched lightly the breast of his coat, then clucked to his team.

"Faith, there's more than wan way of tappin' it then," said Quirk, but

the cavalcade moved on.



The crescent moon had long since sunk behind the westward range, and

trailing was something far too slow and tedious. They spurred,

therefore, for the nearest ranch, five miles down stream, making their

first inquiry there. The inmates were slow to arise, but quick to

answer. Blakely had neither been seen nor heard of. Downs they didn't

wish to know at all. Indians hadn't been near the lower valley since

the "break" at the post the previous week. One of the inmates declared

he had ridden alone from Camp McDowell within three days, and there

wasn't a 'Patchie west of the Matitzal. Hart did all the questioning.

He was a business man and a brother. Soldiers, the ranchmen didn't

like--soldiers set too much value on government property.



The trail ran but a few hundred yards east of the stream, and close to

the adobe walls of the ranch. Strom, the proprietor, got out his

lantern and searched below the point where the little troop had turned

off. No recent hoof-track, southbound, was visible. "He couldn't have

come this far," said he. "Better put back!" Put back they did, and by

the aid of Hart's lantern found the fresh trail of a government-shod

horse, turning to the east nearly two miles toward home. Quirk said a

bad word or two; borrowed the lantern and thoughtfully included the

flask; bade his men follow in file and plunged through the underbrush

in dogged pursuit. Hart and his team now could not follow. They waited

over half an hour without sign or sound from the trailers, then drove

swiftly back to the post. There was a light in the telegraph office,

and thither Hart went in a hurry. Lieutenant Doty, combining the

duties of adjutant and officer of the day, was up and making the

rounds. The sentries had just called off three o'clock.



"Had your trouble for nothing, Hart," hailed the youngster cheerily.

"Where're the men?"



"Followed his trail--turned to the east three miles below here,"

answered the trader.



"Three miles below! Why, man, he wasn't below. He met them up Beaver

Creek, an' brought 'em in."



"Brought who in?" asked Hart, dropping his whip. "I don't understand."



"Why, the scouts, or runners! Wren sent 'em in. He's had a sharp fight

up the mountains beyond Snow Lake. Three men wounded. You couldn't

have gone a mile before Blakely led 'em across No. 4's post. Ahorah

and another chap--'Patchie-Mohaves. We clicked the news up to Prescott

over an hour ago."



The tin reflector at the office window threw the light of the

glass-framed candle straight upon Hart's rubicund face, and that face

was a study. He faltered a bit before he asked:



"Did Blakely seem all right?--not used up, I mean?"



"Seemed weak and tired, but the man is mad to go and join his troop

now--wants to go right out with Ahorah in the morning, and Captain

Cutler says no. Oh, they had quite a row!"



They had had rather more than quite a row, if truth were told. Doty

had heard only a bit of it. Cutler had been taken by surprise when the

Bugologist appeared, two strange, wiry Apaches at his heels, and at

first had contented himself with reading Wren's dispatch, repeating it

over the wires to Prescott. Then he turned on Blakely, silently,

wearily waiting, seated at Doty's desk, and on the two Apaches,

silently, stolidly waiting, squatted on the floor. Cutler wished to

know how Blakely knew these couriers were coming, and how he came to

leave the post without permission. For a moment the lieutenant simply

gazed at him, unanswering, but when the senior somewhat sharply

repeated the question, in part, Blakely almost as sharply answered: "I

did not know they were coming nor that there was wrong in my going.

Major Plume required nothing of the kind when we were merely going out

for a ride."






This nettled Cutler. He had always said that Plume was lax, and here

was proof of it. "I might have wanted you--I did want you, hours

ago, Mr. Blakely, and even Major Plume would not countenance his

officers spending the greater part of the night away from the post,

especially on a government horse," and there had Cutler the whip hand

of the scientist, and Blakely had sense enough to see it, yet not

sense enough to accept. He was nervous and irritable, as well as

tired. Graham had told him he was too weak to ride, yet he had gone,

not thinking, of course, to be gone so long, but gone deliberately,

and without asking the consent of the post commander. "My finding the

runners was an accident," he said, with some little asperity of tone

and manner. "In fact, I didn't find them. They found me. I had known

them both at the reservation. Have I your permission, sir"--this with

marked emphasis--"to take them for something to eat. They are very

hungry,--have come far, and wish to start early and rejoin Captain

Wren,--as I do, too."



"They will start when I am ready, Mr. Blakely," said Cutler, "and

you certainly will not start before. In point of fact, sir, you may

not be allowed to start at all."



It was now Blakely's turn to redden to the brows. "You surely will not

prevent my going to join my troop, now that it is in contact with the

enemy," said he. "All I need is a few hours' sleep. I can start at

seven."



"You cannot, with my consent, Mr. Blakely," said the captain dryly.

"There are reasons, in fact, why you can't leave here for any purpose

unless the general himself give contrary orders. Matters have come up

that--you'll probably have to explain."



And here Doty entered, hearing only the captain's last. At sight of

his adjutant the captain stopped short in his reprimand. "See to it

that these runners have a good supper, Mr. Doty," said Cutler. "Stir

up my company cook, if need be, but take them with you now." Then,

turning again on Blakely, "The doctor wishes you to go to bed at once,

Mr. Blakely, and I will see you in the morning, but no more riding

away without permission," he concluded, and thereby closed the

interview. He had, indeed, other things to say to, and inquire of,

Blakely, but not until he had further consulted Graham. He confidently

expected the coming day would bring instructions from headquarters to

hold both Blakely and Trooper Downs at the post, as a result of his

dispatches, based on the revelation of poor Pat Mullins. But Downs,

forewarned, perhaps, had slipped into hiding somewhere--an old trick

of his, when punishment was imminent. It might be two or three days

before Downs turned up again, if indeed he turned up at all, but

Blakely was here and could be held. Hence the "horse order" of the

earlier evening.



It was nearly two when Blakely reached his quarters, rebuffed and

stung. He was so nervous, however, that, in spite of serious fatigue,

he found it for over an hour impossible to sleep. He turned out his

light and lay in the dark, and the atmosphere of the room seemed

heavily charged with rank tobacco. His new "striker" had sat up, it

seems, keeping faithful vigil against his master's return, but, as the

hours wore on, had solaced himself with pipe after pipe, and wandering

about to keep awake. Most of the time, he declared, he had spent in a

big rocking chair on the porch at the side door, but the scent of the

weed and of that veteran pipe permeated the entire premises, and the

Bugologist hated dead tobacco. He got up and tore down the blanket

screen at the side windows and opened all the doors wide and tried his

couch again, and still he wooed the drowsy god in vain. "Nor poppy nor

mandragora" had he to soothe him. Instead there were new and anxious

thoughts to vex, and so another half hour he tossed and tumbled, and

when at last he seemed dropping to the borderland, perhaps, of dreams,

he thought he must be ailing again and in need of new bandages or

cooling drink or something, for the muffled footfalls, betrayed by

creaking pine rather than by other sound, told him drowsily that the

attendant or somebody, cautioned not to disturb him, was moving

slowly across the room. He might have been out on the side porch to

get cool water from the olla, but he needn't be so confoundedly slow

and cautious, though he couldn't help the creaking. Then, what could

the attendant want in the front room, where were still so many of the

precious glass cases unharmed, and the Bugologist's favorite books and

his big desk, littered with papers, etc.? Blakely thought to hail and

warn him against moving about among those brittle glass things, but

reflected that he, the new man, had done the reshifting under his,

Blakely's, supervision, and knew just where each item was placed and

how to find the passage way between them. It really was a trifle

intricate. How could he have gone into the spare room at Captain

Wren's, and there made his home as--she--Mrs. Plume had first

suggested? There would not have been room for half his plunder, to say

nothing of himself. "What on earth can Nixon want?" he sleepily asked

himself, "fumbling about there among those cases? Was that a crack or

a snap?" It sounded like both, a splitting of glass, a wrenching of

lock spring or something. "Be careful there!" he managed to call. No

answer. Perhaps it was some one of the big hounds, then, wandering

restlessly about at night. They often did, and--why, yes, that would

account for it. Doors and windows were all wide open here, what was to

prevent? Still, Blakely wished he hadn't extinguished his lamp. He

might then have explored. The sound ceased entirely for a moment, and,

now that he was quite awake, he remembered that the hospital attendant

was no longer with him. Then the sounds must have been made by the

striker or the hounds. Blakely had no dogs of his own. Indeed they

were common property at the post, most of them handed down with the

rest of the public goods and chattels by their predecessors of the ----th.

At all events, he felt far too languid, inert, weak, indifferent or

something. If the striker, he had doubtless come down for cool water. If

the hounds, they were in search of something to eat, and in either case

why bother about it? The incident had so far distracted his thoughts

from the worries of the night that now, at last and in good earnest, he

was dropping to sleep.



But in less than twenty minutes he was broad awake again, with sudden

start--gasping, suffocating, listening in amaze to a volley of

snapping and cracking, half-smothered, from the adjoining room. He

sprang from his bed with a cry of alarm and flung himself through a

thick, hot veil of eddying, yet invisible, smoke, straight for the

communicating doorway, and was brought up standing by banging his head

against the resounding pine, tight shut instead of open as he had left

it, and refusing to yield to furious battering. It was locked, bolted,

or barred from the other side. Blindly he turned and rushed for the

side porch and the open air, stumbling against the striker as the

latter came clattering headlong down from aloft. Then together they

rushed to the parlor window, now cracking and splitting from the

furious heat within. A volume of black fume came belching forth,

driven and lashed by ruddy tongues of flame within, and their shouts

for aid went up on the wings of the dawn, and the infantry sentry on

the eastward post came running to see; caught one glimpse of the glare

at that southward window; bang went his rifle with a ring that came

echoing back from the opposite cliffs, as all Camp Sandy sprang from

its bed in answer to the stentorian shout "Fire! No. 5!"