Tonio, Son of the Sierras. Charles King

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СКАЧАТЬ impatiently to the words of the young aide-de-camp, who seemed far less at ease than when he trod the boards of the general's quarters some six hours earlier in the night.

      "Do I understand you then," and Stannard spoke with a certain asperity, "that Mr. Harris, with just two or three scouts, has gone out hunting on his own hook?—that even 'Tonio isn't with him?"

      "He claimed the right to go, and I told him to take half a dozen—half a score of the scouts, if need be, and leave the other half with me, only I drew the line at 'Tonio. I needed him here. He is the only Indian in the lot who understands enough English to catch my meaning and to translate. I could let Harris go, or 'Tonio, separately, but not both together. That left me powerless. Oh, yes, he objected. He said 'Tonio had always been his right bower—always had worked with him and for him. But 'Tonio, not Harris, is the chief of scouts, the man they look to and obey. Now he and most of his followers are here to do your bidding. If Harris had been allowed his way, I'd have been probably alone."

      Stannard sniffed. "Which way'd he go?" he bluntly asked.

      "I'm not sure. We were going to trail the moment it was light enough to see. One thing is certain, they did not start in the direction of the signals, though they may have veered off that way. 'Tonio is the only one who claims to know anything. 'Tonio says 'Apache Tonto' was the murderer, not Apache-Mohave, and 'Tonio's in the sulks. Look at him!"

      Stannard glanced an instant toward the gaunt figure of the Apache, standing dejectedly apart from all others and gazing fixedly toward the dawn. The light was stronger now. The red was in the orient sky. The distant butte was all aglow with the radiance of the rising yet invisible sun. Stannard seemed more concerned in the whereabouts of Mr. Harris than in the worries of Mr. Willett. Again he returned to his questions.

      "Well, did Harris give any inkling of his purpose—whether he meant to follow the trail till he found captives and captors, or only till he found where it probably led to? I've got to act, and lose no time. Sergeant, tell the men to hurry with their coffee," he called, to the brown-eyed, dark-featured soldier who was coming forward at the moment. A salute was the only answer, as the sergeant turned about in his tracks and signalled to the boy trumpeter, holding his own and the captain's horse. Another moment and Stannard was in saddle.

      "Harris didn't say," was the guarded answer. "You know, I suppose, that he left the post without consulting the general, and he took it much amiss that, in compliance with the general's orders, I exercised certain authority after reaching him. Now you are here to take entire charge, I turn over the whole business to you. There's what's left of the scouts; there's what's left of the ranch; and there," with a glance at the blanket-shrouded form, "is what's left of the Bennetts. I'll jog back to the post by and by."

      "Oh, then you're not going on with us?" said Stannard, relieved in mind, he hardly knew why.

      "No, sir, I only rode out here to investigate and report. We, of course, hoped to save something."

      "Pity you hadn't spared yourself and not spoiled the pie," thought Stannard as he looked about him over the scene of desolation. The men were snapping their tin mugs and the refilled canteens to the saddle rings. The captain rode over to 'Tonio, a kindly light in his blue-gray eyes. He whipped off the right gauntlet and held forth his hand.

      "No Apache-Mohave!" said he stoutly. "Apache Tonto. Si! Now catch 'em Teniente Harris." Poor lingo that "pidgin" Indian of the desert and the long ago, but it served its purpose. 'Tonio grasped the proffered hand, a grateful gleam in his black eyes; warned with the other hand the captain's charger from certain tracks he had been jealously guarding; then pointed eagerly, here, there, in half a dozen places, where footprints were still unmarred in the powdery dust. "Si—si—Apache Tonto!" and the long, skinny finger darted, close to the ground, from one print to the other. "No Apache-Mohave! No!"

      "Then come! Mount!" called Stannard. "Leave a corporal and four men here as guard until the ambulance gets out from the post," he added, to the first sergeant. "Mount the troop, soon's you're ready. I'm going ahead with 'Tonio and the scouts. Ugashi, 'Tonio! Good-by, Mr. Willett. Take one of the men, if you need an orderly," he shouted back, over a flannel-shirted shoulder, innocent of badge or strap of any kind. In point of dress or equipment there was absolutely no difference between the captain of cavalry and his fifty men.

      A moment later, spreading out over the low ground like so many hounds throwing off for a scent, 'Tonio and his scouts were trotting away toward a dip in the rugged heights to the north-east, for thither, the moment it was light enough even faintly to see, the keen eyes of the Apaches had trailed the fugitives, and now with bounding feet they followed the sign, Tonio foremost, his mount discarded. Afoot, like his fellows, and bending low, pointing every now and then to half turned pebble, to broken twig or bruised weed, he drove ever eagerly forward, the stolid bearing of the Indian giving way with each successive minute to unusual, though repressed excitement. Thrice he signalled to Stannard and pointed to the crushed and beaten sand—to toe or heel or sole marks to which the Caucasian would have attached but faint importance had not the aborigine proclaimed rejoicefully "Apache-Mohave!" whereat Stannard shook his head and set his teeth and felt his choler rising.

      "Thought you swore Apache Tonto awhile ago," said Stannard wrathfully. "Now you're saying Apache Mohave!"

      "Si! Si! Apache Tonto—kill—shoot. Apache-Mohave good Indian. Look, see, carry," and with hands and arms in eager gesture he strove to illustrate.

      Could he mean that they who killed Bennett were hostile Tontos, and that these who bore the poor widowed creature were of the Mohave blood? If so, why should 'Tonio seem really to rejoice? Had he not strenuously denied that his people took any part in the outrage? Was he not now insisting that they were active in bearing her away—probably to captivity and a fate too horrible? Stannard, riding close at his heels, his men still following in loose skirmish order until they should reach the ravine, studied him with varying emotion. Harris had certainly betrayed a fear that 'Tonio was but half-hearted in the matter of scouting after Apache-Mohaves. Now the suspected scout was trailing for all he was worth, with the pertinacity of the bloodhound.

      Broad daylight again, and the sun peering down from the crest of the great Mesa, and the morning growing hot, and some new hands already pulling eagerly at the canteens, despite their older comrades' warning. And still the advance went relentlessly on. They were climbing a rugged, stony ravine now, with bare shoulders of bluff overhanging in places, and presently, from a projecting ledge, Stannard was able to look back over the rude landscape of the lowlands. There to the west, stretching north and south, was the long, pine-crested bulwark of the Mazatzal, the deep, ragged rift of Dead Man's Cañon toward the upper end. Winding away southward, in the midst of the broad valley, the stream shone like burnished silver in the shallow reaches, or sparkled over rocky beds. Far to the south-west, the dull, dun-colored roofs and walls of the post could barely be discerned, even with the powerful binocular, against the brown barren of the low "bench" whereon it lay. Only the white lance of the flagstaff, and the glint of tin about the chimneys, betrayed its position. From north to far south-east ran the palisade-like crest of the Black Mesa, while the Sierra Ancha bound the basin firmly at the southward side. Deep in the ravines of the foothills, where little torrents frothed and tumbled in the spring tide, scant, thread-like rivulets came trickling now to join the gentle flood of the lower Tonto and the East Fork of the Verde, and, at one or two points along the Mesa, signal smokes were still puffing into the breathless air. Below them, possibly six miles away, yet looking almost within long rifle-shot, the square outline of the abandoned corral, the blackened ruin of the ranch, with the adjacent patches, irrigated, tilled, carefully tended—all Bennett's hard and hopeful toil gone for nothing—told their incontrovertible tale of savage hate and treachery. It was a sorry ending this, a wretched reward for the years of saving, self-denial and steadfast labor of him who had lived so long at amity among these children of the mountain and desert, СКАЧАТЬ