An Apache Princess

Dozens of the men were still hovering about old Shaughnessy's quarters

as the tall, gaunt form of the captain's sister came stalking through

the crowd, making straight for the doorway. The two senior officers,

Byrne and Plume, were, in low tones, interrogating Norah. Plume had

been shown the scarf and promptly seconded Norah. He knew it at

once--knew that, as Elise came forth that dismal morning and passed

under the light in the hall, she had this very scarf round her

throat--this that had been found upon the person of a wounded and

senseless girl. He remembered now that as the sun climbed higher and

the air grew warmer the day of their swift flight to Prescott, Elise

had thrown open her traveling sack, and he noticed that the scarf had

been discarded. He did not see it anywhere about the Concord, but that

proved nothing. She might easily have slipped it into her bag or under

the cushions of the seat. Both he and Byrne, therefore, watched with

no little interest when, after a brief glance at the feverish and

wounded Indian girl, moaning in the cot in Mrs. Shaughnessy's room,

Miss Wren returned to the open air, bearing the scarf with her. One

moment she studied it, under the dull gleam of the lantern of the

sergeant of the guard, and then slowly spoke: "Gentlemen, I have seen this worn by Elise and I believe I know how

it came to find its way back here--and it does not brighten the

situation. From our piazza, the morning of Major Plume's start for

Prescott, I could plainly see Downs hanging about the wagon. It

started suddenly, as perhaps you remember, and as it rolled away

something went fluttering to the ground behind. Everybody was looking

after the Concord at the moment--everybody but Downs, who quickly

stooped, picked up the thing, and turned hurriedly away. I believe he

had this scarf when he deserted and that he has fallen into the hands

of the Apaches."

Byrne looked at the post commander without speaking. The color had

mounted one moment to the major's face, then left him pallid as

before. The hunted, haggard, weary look about his eyes had deepened.

That was all. The longer he lived, the longer he served about this

woebegone spot in mid Arizona, the more he realized the influence for

evil that handmaid of Shaitan seemed to exert over his vain, shallow,

yet beautiful and beloved wife. Against it he had wrought and pleaded

in vain. Elise had been with them since her babyhood, was his wife's

almost indignant reply. Elise had been faithful to her--devoted to her

all her life. Elise was indispensable; the only being that kept her

from going mad with home-sickness and misery in that God-forsaken

clime. Sobs and tears wound up each interview and, like many a

stronger man, Plume had succumbed. It might, indeed, be cruel to rob

her of Elise, the last living link that bound her to the blessed

memories of her childhood, and he only mildly strove to point out to

her how oddly, yet persistently, her good name had suffered through

the words and deeds of this flighty, melodramatic Frenchwoman.

Something of her baleful influence he had seen and suspected before

ever they came to their exile, but here at Sandy, with full force he

realized the extent of her machinations. Clarice was not the woman to

go prowling about the quarters in the dead hours of the night, no

matter how nervous and sleepless at home. Clarice was not the woman to

be having back-door conferences with the servants of other households,

much less the "striker" of an officer with whose name hers, as a

maiden, had once been linked. He recalled with a shudder the events of

the night that sent the soldier Mullins to hospital, robbed of his

wits, if not of his life. He recalled with dread the reluctant

admissions of the doctor and of Captain Wren. Sleep-walking, indeed!

Clarice never elsewhere at any time had shown somnambulistic symptoms.

It was Elise beyond doubt who had lured her forth for some purpose he

could neither foil nor fathom. It was Elise who kept up this

discreditable and mysterious commerce with Downs,--something that had

culminated in the burning of Blakely's home, with who knows what

evidence,--something that had terminated only with Downs's mad

desertion and probable death. All this and more went flashing through

his mind as Miss Wren finished her brief and significant story, and it

dawned upon him that, whatever it might be to others, the death of

Downs--to him, and to her whom he loved and whose honor he

cherished--was anything but a calamity, a thing to mourn. Too

generous to say the words, he yet turned with lightened heart and met

Byrne's searching eyes, then those of Miss Wren now fixed upon him

with austere challenge, as though she would say the flight and fate of

this friendless soldier were crimes to be laid only at his door.