An Apache Princess

At five o'clock of this cloudless October morning Colonel Montgomery

Byrne, "of the old Army, sir," was reviling the fates that had set him

the task of unraveling such a skein as he found at Sandy. At six he

was blessing the stars that sent him. Awakened, much before his usual

hour, by half-heard murmur of scurry and excitement, so quickly

suppressed he believed it all a dream, he was thinking, half drowsily,

all painfully, of the duty devolving on him for the day, and wishing

himself well out of it, when the dream became real, the impression

vivid.

His watch told him reveille should now be sounding. His ears

told him the sounds he heard were not those of reveille, yet something

had roused the occupants of Officers' Row, and then, all on a sudden,

instead of the sweet strains of "The Dawn of the Day" or "Bonnie Lass

o' Gawrie" there burst upon the morning air, harsh and blustering, the

alarum of the Civil War days, the hoarse uproar of the drum thundering

the long roll, while above all rang the loud clamor of the cavalry

trumpet sounding "To Horse."

"Fitz James was brave, but to his heart

The life blood leaped with sudden start."

Byrne sprang from his bed. He was a soldier, battle-tried, but this

meant something utterly new to him in war, for, mingling with the

gathering din, he heard the shriek of terror-stricken women. Daly's

bed was empty. The agent was gone. Elise aloft was jabbering patois

at her dazed and startled mistress. Suey, the Chinaman, came

clattering in, all flapping legs and arms and pigtail, his face livid,

his eyes staring. "Patcheese! Patcheese!" he squealed, and dove under

the nearest bed. Then Byrne, shinning into boots and breeches and

shunning his coat, grabbed his revolver and rushed for the door.

Across the parade, out of their barracks the "doughboys" came

streaming, no man of them dressed for inspection, but rather, like

sailors, stripped for a fight; and, never waiting to form ranks, but

following the lead of veteran sergeants and the signals or orders of

officers somewhere along the line, went sprinting straight for the

eastward mesa. From the cavalry barracks, the northward sets, the

troopers, too, were flowing, but these were turned stableward, back of

the post, and Byrne, with his nightshirt flying wide open, wider than

his eyes, bolted round through the space between the quarters of Plume

and Wren, catching sight of the arrested captain standing grim and

gaunt on his back piazza, and ran with the foremost sergeants to the

edge of the plateau, where, in his cool white garb, stood Plume,

shouting orders to those beneath.