An Apache Princess

Another topic of talk along the line was Blakely's watch and its

strange recovery, and many were the efforts to learn what Blakely

himself had to say about it. The officers, nearly all of them, of

course, had been at intervals to see Blakely and inquire if there were

not something that they could do, this being the conventional and

proper thing, and they who talked with him, with hardly an exception,

led up to the matter of the watch and wished to know how he accounted

for its being there on the post of No. 5. It was observed that, upon

this topic and the stabbing of Private Mullins, Mr. Blakely was oddly

reticent. He had nothing whatever to suggest as explanation of either

matter. The watch was taken from the inner pocket of his thin white

coat as he lay asleep at the pool, of this he felt confident, but by

whom he would not pretend to say. Everybody knew by this time that

Angela Wren had seen him sleeping, and had, in a spirit of playful

mischief, fetched away his butterfly net, but who would accuse Angela

of taking his watch and money? Of course such things had been, said

one or two wise heads, but--not with girls like Angela.

But who could say what, all this while, Angela herself was thinking?

Once upon a time it had been the way of our young folk well over the

North and West to claim forfeit in the game of "Catching the weasel

asleep." There had been communities, indeed, and before co-education

became a fad at certain of our great universities, wherein the maid

caught napping could hold it no sin against watchful swain, or even

against her, that he then and there imprinted on her lips a kiss. On

the other hand, the swain found sleeping might not always expect a

kiss, but must pay the penalty, a pair of dainty gloves. Many a

forfeit, both lip and glove, had there been claimed and allowed in

army days whereof we write, and Angela, stealing upon Blakely as he

dozed beneath the willows, and liking him well and deploring her

father's pronounced aversion to him--perhaps even resenting it an

undutiful bit--had found it impossible to resist the temptation to

softly disengage that butterfly net from the loosely clasping fingers,

and swiftly, stealthily, delightedly to scamper away with it against

his waking. It was of this very exploit, never dreaming of the fateful

consequences, she and Kate Sanders were so blissfully bubbling over,

fairly shaking with maiden merriment when the despoiled victim,

homeward bound, caught sight of them upon the mesa. Ten minutes

more, and in full force she had been made to feel the blow of her

father's fierce displeasure. Twenty minutes more, and, under the blow

of her father's furious wrath, Blakely had been felled like a log.