An Apache Princess

"I should say so," echoed the colonel. "What was the matter, Mr.

Daly? Whom did you seek to arrest?--and why?"

"Almost any of 'em," groaned Daly. "There were a dozen there I'd

refused passes to come again this week. They were here in defiance of

my orders, and I thought to take that girl Natzie,--she that led Lola

off,--back to her father at the agency. It would have been a good

lesson. Of course she fought and scratched. Next thing I knew a dozen

of 'em were atop of us--some water, for God's sake!--and lift me out

of this!"

Then with grave and watch-worn face, Graham came hurrying to the spot,

all the way over from Mullins's bedside at the hospital and breathing

hard. Dour indeed was the look he gave the groaning agent, now gulping

at a gourd held to his pale lips by one of the men. The policy of

Daly's predecessor had been to feather his own nest and let the Indian

shift for himself, and this had led to his final overthrow. Daly,

however, had come direct from the care of a tribe of the Pueblo

persuasion, peace-loving and tillers of the soil, meek as the Pimas

and Maricopas, natives who fawned when he frowned and cringed at the

crack of his whip. These he had successfully, and not dishonestly,

ruled, but that very experience had unfitted him for duty over the

mountain Apache, who cringed no more than did the lordly Sioux or

Cheyenne, and truckled to no man less than a tribal chief. Blakely,

the soldier, cool, fearless, and resolute, but scrupulously just, they

believed in and feared; but this new blusterer only made them laugh,

until he scandalized them by wholesale arrest and punishment. Then

their childlike merriment changed swiftly to furious and scowling

hate,--to open defiance, and finally, when he dared lay hands on a

chosen daughter of the race, to mutiny and the knife. Graham, serving

his third year in the valley, had seen the crisis coming and sought to

warn the man. But what should an army doctor know of an Apache Indian?

said Daly, and, fatuous in his own conceit, the crisis found him

unprepared.

"Go you for a stretcher," said the surgeon, after a quick look into

the livid face. "Lay him down gently there," and kneeling, busied

himself with opening a way to the wound. Out over the flats swung the

long skirmish line, picturesque in the variety of its undress, Cutler

striding vociferous in its wake, while a bugler ran himself out of

breath, far to the eastward front, to puff feeble and abortive breath

into unresponsive copper. And still the same flutter of distant,

scattering shots came drifting back from the brakes and cañons in the

rocky wilds beyond the stream. The guard still pursued and the Indians

still led, but they who knew anything well knew it could not be long

before the latter turned on the scattering chase, and Byrne strode

about, fuming with anxiety. "Thank God!" he cried, as a prodigious

clatter of hoofs, on hollow and resounding wood, told of cavalry

coming across the acequia, and Sanders galloped round the sandy

point in search of the foe--or orders. "Thank God! Here,

Sanders--pardon me, major, there isn't an instant to lose--Rush your

men right on to the front there! Spread well out, but don't fire a

shot unless attacked in force! Get those--chasing idiots and bring

them in! By God, sir, we'll have an Indian war on our hands as it is!"

And Sanders nodded and dug spurs to his troop horse, and sang out:

"Left front into line--gallop!" and the rest was lost in a cloud of

dust and the blare of cavalry trumpet.