An Apache Princess

There is something about a night alarm of fire at a military post that

borders on the thrilling. In the days whereof we write the buildings

were not the substantial creations of brick and stone to be seen

to-day, and those of the scattered "camps" and stations in that arid,

sun-scorched land of Arizona were tinder boxes of the flimsiest and

most inflammable kind.

It could hardly have been a minute from the warning shot and yell of

No. 5--repeated right and left by other sentries and echoed by No. 1

at the guard-house--before bugle and trumpet were blaring their fierce

alarm, and the hoarse roar of the drum was rousing the inmates of the

infantry barracks. Out they came, tumbling pell-mell into the

accustomed ranks, confronted by the sight of Blakely's quarters one

broad sheet of flame. With incredible speed the blaze had burst forth

from the front room on the lower floor; leaped from window to window,

from ledge to ledge; fastened instantly on overhanging roof, and the

shingled screen of the veranda; had darted up the dry wooden stairway,

devouring banister, railing, and snapping pine floor, and then,

billowing forth from every crack, crevice, and casement of the upper

floor streamed hissing and crackling on the blackness that precedes

the dawn, a magnificent glare that put to shame the feeble signal

fires lately gleaming in the mountains. Luckily there was no

wind--there never was a wind at Sandy--and the flames leaped straight

for the zenith, lashing their way into the huge black pillar of smoke

cloud sailing aloft to the stars.

Under their sergeants, running in disciplined order, one company had

sped for the water wagon and were now slowly trundling that unwieldy

vehicle, pushing, pulling, straining at the wheels, from its night

berth close to the corrals. Rushing like mad, in no order at all, the

men of the other company came tearing across the open parade, and were

faced and halted far out in front of officers' row by Blakely himself,

barefooted and clad only in his pyjamas, but all alive with vim and

energy.

"Back, men! back for your blankets!" he cried. "Bring ladders and

buckets! Back with you, lively!" They seemed to catch his meaning at

the instant. His soldier home with everything it contained was doomed.

Nothing could save it. But there stood the next quarters,--Truman's

and Westervelt's double set,--and in the intense heat that must

speedily develop, it might well be that the dry, resinous woodwork

that framed the adobe would blaze forth on its own account and spread

a conflagration down the line. Already Mrs. Truman, with Norah and the

children, was being hurried down to the doctor's, while Truman

himself, with the aid of two or three neighboring "strikers," had

stripped the beds of their single blanket and, bucketing these with

water, was slashing at the veranda roof and cornice along the

northward side.