The Captain's Defiance

: An Apache Princess

Within ten minutes of Todd's arrival at the spot the soft sands of the

mesa were tramped into bewildering confusion by dozens of trooper

boots. The muffled sound of excited voices, so soon after the

startling affair of the earlier evening, and hurrying footfalls

following, had roused almost every household along the row and brought

to the spot half the officers on duty at the post. A patrol of the

guard had come in dou le time, and soldiers had been sent at speed to

the hospital for a stretcher. Dr. Graham had lost no moment of time in

reaching the stricken sentry. Todd had been sent back to Blakely's

bedside and Downs to fetch a lantern. They found the latter, five

minutes later, stumbling about the Trumans' kitchen, weeping for that

which was lost, and the sergeant of the guard collared and cuffed him

over to the guard-house--one witness, at least, out of the way. At

four o'clock the doctor was working over his exhausted and unconscious

patient at the hospital. Mullins had been stabbed twice, and

dangerously, and half a dozen men with lanterns were hunting about the

bloody sands where the faithful fellow had dropped, looking for a

weapon or a clew, and probably trampling out all possibility of

finding either. Major Plume, through Mr. Doty, his adjutant, had felt

it necessary to remind Captain Wren that an officer in close arrest

had no right to be away from his quarters. Late in the evening, it

seems, Dr. Graham had represented to the post commander that the

captain was in so nervous and overwrought a condition, and so

distressed, that as a physician he recommended his patient be allowed

the limits of the space adjoining his quarters in which to walk off

his superabundant excitement. Graham had long been the friend of

Captain Wren and was his friend as well as physician now, even though

deploring his astounding outbreak, but Graham had other things to

demand his attention as night wore on, and there was no one to speak

for Wren when the young adjutant, a subaltern of infantry, with

unnecessary significance of tone and manner, suggested the captain's

immediate return to his proper quarters. Wren bowed his head and went

in stunned and stubborn silence. It had never occurred to him for a

moment, when he heard that half-stifled, agonized cry for help, that

there could be the faintest criticism of his rushing to the sentry's

aid. Still less had it occurred to him that other significance, and

damning significance, might attach to his presence on the spot, but,

being first to reach the fallen man, he was found kneeling over him

within thirty seconds of the alarm. Not another living creature was in

sight when the first witnesses came running to the spot. Both Truman

and Todd could swear to that.



In the morning, therefore, the orderly came with the customary

compliments to say to Captain Wren that the post commander desired to

see him at the office.



It was then nearly nine o'clock. Wren had had a sleepless night and

was in consultation with Dr. Graham when the summons came. "Ask that

Captain Sanders be sent for at once," said the surgeon, as he pressed

his comrade patient's hand. "The major has his adjutant and clerk and

possibly some other officers. You should have at least one friend."



"I understand," briefly answered Wren, as he stepped to the hallway to

get his sun hat. "I wish it might be you." The orderly was already

speeding back to the office at the south end of the brown rectangle of

adobe and painted pine, but Janet Wren, ministering, according to her

lights, to Angela in the little room aloft, had heard the message and

was coming down. Taller and more angular than ever she looked as, with

flowing gown, she slowly descended the narrow stairway.



"I have just succeeded in getting her to sleep," she murmured. "She

has been dreadfully agitated ever since awakened by the voices and the

running this morning, and she must have cried herself to sleep last

night. R-r-r-obert, would it not be well for you to see her when she

wakes? She does not know--I could not tell her--that you are under

arrest."



Graham looked more "dour" than did his friend of the line. Privately

he was wondering how poor Angela could get to sleep at all with Aunt

Janet there to soothe her. The worst time to teach a moral lesson,

with any hope of good effect, is when the recipient is suffering from

sense of utter injustice and wrong, yet must perforce listen. But it

is a favorite occasion with the "ower guid." Janet thought it would be

a long step in the right direction to bring her headstrong niece to

the belief that all the trouble was the direct result of her having

sought, against her father's wishes, a meeting with Mr. Blakely. True,

Janet had now some doubt that such had been the case, but, in what she

felt was only stubborn pride, her niece refused all explanation.

"Father would not hear me at the time," she sobbed. "I am condemned

without a chance to defend myself or--him." Yet Janet loved the bonny

child devotedly and would go through fire and water to serve her best

interests, only those best interests must be as Janet saw them. That

anything very serious might result as a consequence of her brother's

violent assault on Blakely, she had never yet imagined. That further

complications had arisen which might blacken his record she never

could credit for a moment. Mullins lay still unconscious, and not

until he recovered strength was he to talk with or see anyone. Graham

had given faint hope of recovery, and declared that everything

depended on his patient's having no serious fever or setback. In a few

days he might be able to tell his story. Then the mystery as to his

assailant would be cleared in a breath. Janet had taken deep offense

that the commanding officer should have sent her brother into close

arrest without first hearing of the extreme provocation. "It is an

utterly unheard-of proceeding," said she, "this confining of an

officer and gentleman without investigation of the affair," and she

glared at Graham, uncomprehending, when, with impatient shrug of his

big shoulders, he asked her what had they done, between them, to

Angela. It was his wife put him up to saying that, she reasoned, for

Janet's Calvinistic dogmas as to daughters in their teens were ever at

variance with the views of her gentle neighbor. If Angela had been

harshly dealt with, undeserving, it was Angela's duty to say so and to

say why, said Janet. Meantime, her first care was her wronged and

misjudged brother. Gladly would she have gone to the office with him

and stood proudly by his side in presence of his oppressor, could such

a thing be permitted. She marveled that Robert should now show so

little of tenderness for her who had served him loyally, if

masterfully, so very long. He merely laid his hand on hers and said he

had been summoned to the commanding officer's, then went forth into

the light and left her.



Major Plume was seated at his desk, thoughtful and perplexed. Up at

regimental headquarters at Prescott Wren was held in high esteem, and

the major's brief telegraphic message had called forth anxious inquiry

and something akin to veiled disapprobation. Headquarters could not

see how it was possible for Wren to assault Lieutenant Blakely without

some grave reason. Had Plume investigated? No, but that was coming

now, he said to himself, as Wren entered and stood in silence before

him.



The little office had barely room for the desks of the commander and

his adjutant and the table on which were spread the files of general

orders from various superior headquarters--regimental, department,

division, the army, and the War Secretary. No curtains adorned the

little windows, front and rear. No rug or carpet vexed the warping

floor. Three chairs, kitchen pattern, stood against the pine partition

that shut off the sight, but by no means the hearing, of the three

clerks scratching at their flat-topped desks in the adjoining den.

Maps of the United States, of the Military Division of the Pacific,

and of the Territory, as far as known and surveyed, hung about the

wooden walls. Blue-prints and photographs of scout maps, made by their

predecessors of the ----th Cavalry in the days of the Crook campaigns,

were scattered with the order files about the table. But of pictures,

ornamentation, or relief of any kind the gloomy box was destitute as

the dun-colored flat of the parade. Official severity spoke in every

feature of the forbidding office as well as in those of the major

commanding.



There was striking contrast, too, between the man at the desk and the

man on the rack before him. Plume had led a life devoid of anxiety or

care. Soldiering he took serenely. He liked it, so long as no grave

hardship threatened. He had done reasonably good service at corps

headquarters during the Civil War; had been commissioned captain in

the regulars in '61, and held no vexatious command at any time

perhaps, until this that took him to far-away Arizona. Plume was a

gentlemanly fellow and no bad garrison soldier. He really shone on

parade and review at such fine stations as Leavenworth and Riley, but

had never had to bother with mountain scouting or long-distance Indian

chasing on the plains. He had a comfortable income outside his pay,

and when he was wedded, at the end of her fourth season in society, to

a prominent, if just a trifle passee belle, people thought him a

more than lucky man, until the regiment was sent to Arizona and he to

Sandy. Gossip said he went to General Sherman with appeal for some

detaining duty, whereupon that bluff and most outspoken warrior

exclaimed: "What, what, what! Not want to go with the regiment? Why,

here's Blakely begging to be relieved from Terry's staff because he's

mad to go." And this, said certain St. Louis commentators, settled it,

for Mrs. Plume declared for Arizona.



Well garbed, groomed, and fed was Plume, a handsome, soldierly figure.

Very cool and placid was his look in the spotless white that even then

by local custom had become official dress for Sandy; but beneath the

snowy surface his heart beat with grave disquiet as he studied the

strong, rugged, somber face of the soldier on the floor.



Wren was tall and gaunt and growing gray. His face was deeply lined;

his close-cropped beard was silver-stranded; his arms and legs were

long and sinewy and powerful; his chest and shoulders burly; his

regimental dress had not the cut and finish of the commander's. Too

much of bony wrist and hand was in evidence, too little of grace and

curve. But, though he stood rigidly at attention, with all semblance

of respect and subordination, the gleam in his deep-set eyes, the

twitch of the long fingers, told of keen and pent-up feeling, and he

looked the senior soldier squarely in the face. A sergeant, standing

by the adjutant's desk, tiptoed out into the clerk's room and closed

the door behind him, then set himself to listen. Young Doty, the

adjutant, fiddled nervously with his pen and tried to go on signing

papers, but failed. It was for Plume to break the awkward silence, and

he did not quite know how. Captain Westervelt, quietly entering at the

moment, bowed to the major and took a chair. He had evidently been

sent for.



"Captain Wren," presently said Plume, his fingers trembling a bit as

they played with the paper folder, "I have felt constrained to send

for you to inquire still further into last night's affair--or affairs.

I need not tell you that you may decline to answer if you consider

your interests are--involved. I had hoped this painful matter might be

so explained as to--as to obviate the necessity of extreme measures,

but your second appearance close to Mr. Blakely's quarters, under all

the circumstances, was so--so extraordinary that I am compelled to

call for explanation, if you have one you care to offer."



For a moment Wren stood staring at his commander in amaze. He had

expected to be offered opportunity to state the circumstances leading

to his now deeply deplored attack on Mr. Blakely, and to decline the

offer on the ground that he should have been given that opportunity

before being submitted to the humiliation of arrest. He had intended

to refuse all overtures, to invite trial by court-martial or

investigation by the inspector general, but by no manner of means to

plead for reconsideration now; and here was the post commander, with

whom he had never served until they came to Sandy, a man who hadn't

begun to see the service, the battles, and campaigns that had fallen

to his lot, virtually accusing him of further misdemeanor, when he had

only rushed to save or succor. He forgot all about Sanders or other

witnesses. He burst forth impetuously:



"Extraordinary, sir! It would have been most extraordinary if I hadn't

gone with all speed when I heard that cry for help."



Plume looked up in sudden joy. "You mean to tell me you didn't--you

weren't there till after--the cry?"



Wren's stern Scottish face was a sight to see. "Of what can you

possibly be thinking, Major Plume?" he demanded, slowly now, for wrath

was burning within him, and yet he strove for self-control. He had had

a lesson and a sore one.



"I will answer that--a little later, Captain Wren," said Plume, rising

from his seat, rejoicing in the new light now breaking upon him.

Westervelt, too, had gasped a sigh of relief. No man had ever known

Wren to swerve a hair's breadth from the truth. "At this moment time

is precious if the real criminal is to be caught at all. You were

first to reach the sentry. Had you seen no one else?"



In the dead silence that ensued within the room the sputter of hoofs

without broke harshly on the ear. Then came spurred boot heels on the

hollow, heat-dried boarding, but not a sound from the lips of Captain

Wren. The rugged face, twitching with pent-up indignation the moment

before, was now slowly turning gray. Plume stood facing him in growing

wonder and new suspicion.



"You heard me, did you not? I asked you did you see anyone else

during--along the sentry post when you went out?"



A fringed gauntlet reached in at the doorway and tapped. Sergeant

Shannon, straight as a pine, stood expectant of summons to enter and

his face spoke eloquently of important tidings, but the major waved

him away, and, marveling, he slowly backed to the edge of the porch.



"Surely you can answer that, Captain Wren," said Plume, his clear-cut,

handsome face filled with mingled anxiety and annoy. "Surely you

should answer, or--"



The ellipsis was suggestive, but impotent. After a painful moment came

the response:



"Or--take the consequences, major?" Then slowly--"Very well, sir--I

must take them."