An Apache Princess

To do her justice, it should be said that Miss Wren had striven

valiantly against the impulse,--had indeed mastered it for several

hours,--but the sight of the vivid blush, the eager joy in the sweet

young face when Blakely's new "striker" handed in a note addressed to

Miss Angela Wren, proved far too potent a factor in the undoing of

that magnanimous resolve. The girl fled with her prize, instanter, to

her room, and thither, as she did not reappear, the aunt betook

herself within the hour. The note itself was neither long nor

effusive--merely a bright, cordial, friendly missive, protesting

against the idea that any apology had been due. There was but one line

which could be considered even mildly significant. "The little net,"

wrote Blakely, "has now a value that it never had before." Yet Angela

was snuggling that otherwise unimportant billet to her cheek when the

creaking stairway told her portentously of a solemn coming. Ten

minutes more and the note was lying neglected on the bureau, and

Angela stood at her window, gazing out over dreary miles of almost

desert landscape, of rock and shale and sand and cactus, with eyes

from which the light had fled, and a new, strange trouble biting at

her girlish heart. Confound No. 4--and Norah Shaughnessy!

It had been arranged that when the Plumes were ready to start, Mrs.

Daly and her daughter, the newly widowed and the fatherless, should be

sent up to Prescott and thence across the desert to Ehrenberg, on the

Colorado. While no hostile Apaches had been seen west of the Verde

Valley, there were traces that told that they were watching the road

as far at least as the Agua Fria, and a sergeant and six men had been

chosen to go as escort to the little convoy. It had been supposed that

Plume would prefer to start in the morning and go as far as Stemmer's

ranch, in the Agua Fria Valley, and there rest his invalid wife until

another day, thus breaking the fifty-mile stage through the mountains.

To the surprise of everybody, the Dalys were warned to be in readiness

to start at five in the morning, and to go through to Prescott that

day. At five in the morning, therefore, the quartermaster's ambulance

was at the post trader's house, where the recently bereaved ones had

been harbored since poor Daly's death, and there, with their generous

host, was the widow's former patient, Blakely, full of sympathy and

solicitude, come to say good-bye. Plume's own Concord appeared almost

at the instant in front of his quarters, and presently Mrs. Plume,

veiled and obviously far from strong, came forth leaning on her

husband's arm, and closely followed by Elise. Then, despite the early

hour, and to the dismay of Plume, who had planned to start without

farewell demonstration of any kind, lights were blinking in almost

every house along the row, and a flock of women, some tender and

sympathetic, some morbidly curious, had gathered to wish the major's

wife a pleasant journey and a speedy recovery. They loved her not at

all, and liked her none too well, but she was ill and sorrowing, so

that was enough. Elise they could not bear, yet even Elise came in for

a kindly word or two. Mrs. Graham was there, big-hearted and brimming

over with helpful suggestion, burdened also with a basket of dainties.

Captain and Mrs. Cutler, Captain and Mrs. Westervelt, the Trumans

both, Doty, the young adjutant, Janet Wren, of course, and the ladies

of the cavalry, the major's regiment, without exception, were on hand

to bid the major and his wife good-bye. Angela Wren was not feeling

well, explained her aunt, and Mr. Neil Blakely was conspicuous by his

absence.