An Apache Princess

The late afternoon of an eventful day had come to camp Sandy--just

such another day, from a meteorological viewpoint, as that on which

this story opened nearly twenty-four hours earlier by the shadows on

the eastward cliffs. At Tuesday's sunset the garrison was yawning with

the ennui born of monotonous and uneventful existence. As

Wednesday's sunset drew nigh and the mountain shadows overspread the

valley, even to the opposite crests of the distant Mogollon, the

garrison was athrill with suppressed excitement, for half a dozen

things had happened since the flag went up at reveille.

In the first place Captain Wren's arrest had been confirmed and Plume

had wired department headquarters, in reply to somewhat urgent query,

that there were several counts in his indictment of the captain, any

one of which was sufficient to demand a trial by court-martial, but he

wished, did Plume, for personal and official reasons that the general

commanding should send his own inspector down to judge for himself.

The post sergeant major and the three clerks had heard with sufficient

distinctness every word that passed between the major and the accused

captain, and, there being at Sandy some three hundred inquisitive

souls, thirsting for truth and light, it could hardly be expected of

this quartette that it should preserve utter silence even though

silence had been enjoined by the adjutant. It was told all over the

post long before noon that Wren had been virtually accused of being

the sentry's assailant as well as Lieutenant Blakely's. It was

whispered that, in some insane fury against the junior officer, Wren

had again, toward 3.30, breaking his arrest, gone up the row with the

idea of once more entering Blakely's house and possibly again

attacking him.

It was believed that the sentry had seen and

interposed, and that, enraged at being balked by an enlisted man, Wren

had drawn a knife and stabbed him. True, no knife had been found

anywhere about the spot, and Wren had never been known to carry one.

But now a dozen men, armed with rakes, were systematically going over

the ground under the vigilant eye of Sergeant Shannon--Shannon, who

had heard the brief, emphatic interview between the major and the

troop commander and who had been almost immediately sent forth to

supervise this search, despite the fact that he had but just returned

from the conduct of another, the result of which he imparted to the

ears of only two men, Plume, the post commander, and Doty, his amazed

and bewildered adjutant. But Shannon had with him a trio of troopers,

one of whom, at least, had not been proof against inquisitive probing,

for the second sensation of the day was the story that one of the two

pairs of moccasin tracks, among the yielding sands of the willow

copse, led from where Mr. Blakely had been dozing to where the pony

Punch had been drowsing in the shade, for there they were lost, as the

maker had evidently mounted and ridden away. All Sandy knew that Punch

had no other rider than pretty Angela Wren.