An Apache Princess

Then the colonel turned to Plume, standing now silent and sore

troubled. "It was the quickest way," he said apologetically.

"Ordinarily I should have given the order through you, of course. But

those beggars are armed to a man. They left their guns in the crevices

of yonder rocks, probably, when they came for the morning music. We

must have no fight over this unless they force it. I wish to heaven we

hadn't killed--these two," and ruefully he looked at the stark

forms--the dead lover of Natzie, the gasping tribesman just beyond,

dying, knife in hand. "The general has been trying to curb Daly for

the last ten days," continued he, "and warned him he'd bring on

trouble. The interpreter split with him on Monday last, and there's

been mischief brewing ever since. If only we could have kept Blakely

there--all this row would have been averted!"

If only, indeed! was Plume thinking, as eagerly, anxiously he scanned

the eastward shore, rising jagged, rocky, and forbidding from the

willows of the stream bed. If only, indeed! Not only all this row of

which Byrne had seen so much, but all this other row, this row within

a row, this intricacy of mishaps and misery that involved the social

universe of Camp Sandy, of which as yet the colonel, presumably, knew

so very little; of which, as post commander, Plume had yet to tell

him! An orderly came running with a field glass and a scrap of paper.

Plume glanced at the latter, a pencil scrawl of his wife's inseparable

companion, and, for aught he knew, confidante. "Madame," he could make

out, and "affreusement" something, but it was enough. The orderly

supplemented: "Leece, sir, says the lady is very bad--"

"Go to her, Plume," with startling promptitude cried the colonel.

"I'll look to everything here. It's all coming out right," for with a

tantara--tantara-ra-ra Sanders's troop, spreading far and wide, were

scrambling up the shaly slopes a thousand yards away. "Go to your wife

and tell her the danger's over," and, with hardly another glance at

the moaning agent, now being limply hoisted on a hospital stretcher,

thankfully the major went. "The lady's very bad, is she?" growled

Byrne, in fierce aside to Graham. "That French hag sometimes speaks

truth, in spite of herself. How d'you find him?" This with a toss of

the head toward the vanishing stretcher.

"Bad likewise. These Apache knives dig deep. There's Mullins now--"

"Think that was Apache?" glared Byrne, with sudden light in his

eyes, for Wren had told his troubles--all.