Tonio, Son of the Sierras. Charles King

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ perhaps—and sat speechless and startled, for noiseless and stealthy as a cat, with long strides, 'Tonio had skirted the edge of the veranda, and with agile spring was at the back of Lilian's chair. There he swooped instantly. There was sound of strident, rasping sk-r-r-r-rr: then a lightning snap, as of a whip. Something black and writhing went flying into the sand, and then squirming blindly away, and 'Tonio straightened to his full height, and without a word strode from the veranda.

      "In God's name, what was that?" cried the general, springing from his chair and hastening to his daughter's side.

      "Nothing but a snake, sir," said Harris quietly, strolling toward them. "That one's done for, anyhow!"

CHAPTER IV.

       Table of Contents

      An hour later the lights were out among the barracks, and the silence of the summerlike winter's night had settled on the garrison. Over at the Mess and office buildings all was darkness. Along the log and adobe façade of the officers' quarters, from occasional open doorways the gleam of lantern was thrown across the wooden verandas. The moonbeams flooded the sandy parade and the rough-hewn roofs and walls with tender, silvery radiance that put to shame the twinkling lights, down at the store on the lower flats, and the bleary eye of the big, triangular, glass-faced, iron-bound cresset at the log guard-house, perched at the edge of the mesa. Afar off, through dim vistas of the valley, the silver ribbon of the stream wound and twisted among the willows, but the heights, as a rule, were wrapped in the shadows of their own pines. A game of goodly proportion was going on down at the card room, a brace of ranchmen and prospectors, a venturesome "sub" and the "contract doctor" making up the party, but the general, his household and near neighbors had retired or were retiring for the night. Only the guard and the "owls" were "on deck." Army folk in those days and regions had a way of turning out at dawn for the cool of the morning, turning in at taps for the needed six hours' beauty sleep, lunching lightly at noon, snoozing drowsily an hour or two, then after tub and fresh linen, venturing forth, those who had to, for the afternoon duties. All social enjoyment, as a rule, began when the sun could not see, but had dropped back of the screen of the mountains.

      But there was still faint stir at the camp of the scouts, out beyond the corrals. Rations had been drawn at tattoo, and a limited portion issued to the lithe, swarthy fellows, squatted in semicircle in front of their chief, patiently awaiting their share, no man of their number opening so much as the end of a package, either of cartridge or cracker, until the last had his dole and all were served. It was known that before dawn they were again to set forth, whither, not even 'Tonio had been told, and 'Tonio had noted and felt it. Hitherto there had been counsel between his young commander and himself. This night there had been none. Instead, only half an hour after the exciting episode at the commanding officer's and the despatching of the intruding rattler, 'Tonio had been summoned to the adjutant's office and then questioned by Lieutenant Willett, with cargador Muñoz, not Lieutenant Harris, serving as interpreter. Hitherto 'Tonio had conducted his conference with the Great Father's captains with Lieutenant Harris translating. It was significant both to that officer and to 'Tonio that this time a pack train employé had been selected, his name having been suggested at head-quarters at Prescott, and an orderly sent for him early by way of caution, for Muñoz loved monte and mescal. Another significant thing was that Harris had declined an invitation to be present at 'Tonio's examination. "If Mr. Willett has any question to ask me," he said, "he'll find me at Dr. Bentley's," whither, indeed, he had repaired, as it were, awaiting summons.

      Moreover, it was patent to Stannard and Turner and Dr. Bentley, too, that Harris took it much amiss that Willett should at last disclose the fact that he was there to "investigate." He had said nothing of it the night before. He had put up at the adjutant's, after quite a long session at the Mess, an affair attended by Harris only an hour or so, and even then only as an absorbed listener, with other fellow-soldiers, to Willett's brilliant description of the recent campaign in the lava beds, culminating as it had in the brutal massacre by the Modocs of their would-be best friends, the peace commissioners, and General Canby. After taps, however, despite his long and dusty buckboard ride, Willett saw fit to "sit in" to the game almost always in progress down at the trader's store. Whereupon Stannard, Turner and Harris, non-participants ever, took themselves off to bed. It was not much of a game, said Strong, who was there, only Willett, Craney, Watson, Briggs and himself, and was remarkable for only one fact, that Case, the bookkeeper, who never before had seemed to care to play, had happened in late, looked curiously on a moment, and then, without having been presented to Willett, seemed desirous of taking a hand. Craney wondered if Case had been drinking again, but Willett took no notice. Willett was feeling very jolly, said Strong, and it was quite late when they finally quit.

      Harris was up with the sun looking over his pack train and observing 'Tonio and his fellows. Willett did not turn out until office hours, when he had a conference with General Archer, ending in his expressing a wish to "look about" him for the day. He had asked no questions of Harris; had met him heartily, as classmates should, but with just a suspicion of superiority of manner that Harris could not like, and without a word of appreciation of the capital soldier work Harris had been doing.

      There was another reason why Harris resented Willett's investigating his scout that second evening. A total abstainer himself from boyhood, reared by a careful mother and aware for many a year that his father's occasional lapses were her perennial dread, Harris had set his canon against the practice from the day he doffed the gray at West Point, and never swerved from his creed after donning the blue. Not so with Willett. Not so with nine-tenths of his associates. Harris had seen, without remark, that Willett enjoyed the occasional beverages mixed for him at the Mess in the late afternoon, and again had noted that his comrade did quite his share this second evening toward finishing the doctor's sherry, though it was the "Old Man," after all, who "got away with" most of the Bordeaux. Twice after dinner Archer had ushered his guests within doors, once to try what was left of the claret, and later, after the snake episode, when some nerves might be in need of bracing, to sample some phenomenal Monongahela. Then when Harris was through, after saying good-night, he was presently followed by Willett, flushed in face and abrupt in manner. Miss Archer had been spirited off by her mother, and presumably gone to bed. She'd get used to snakes if she stayed long in Arizona, said Willett. What was the sense in scaring her, anyway? Why hadn't Harris quietly given him the tip? He could have snapped Mr. Rattler's head off without anybody being the wiser, and Harris saw that the night-caps, taken on top of all that preceded, had tangled Willett's ideas, despite which fact Willett now announced that he had summoned the interpreter and desired Harris to send 'Tonio to the office for investigation at once.

      And Willett represented the commanding general, who knew nothing of what was going on, and Harris could only obey.

      It was a dramatic scene as it opened. Willett had not failed to hand a copy of his instructions to the post commander and had left entirely to his judgment the question as to whether the officers should be present. Archer had decided against it. 'Tonio might be alarmed. It were better, he said, that no one except the post adjutant, the interpreter, and Lieutenants Willett and Harris appear, and then Harris, whose letter from the field announcing the ill success of the scout was the original cause of the investigation, said he preferred to be excused. Harris did not wish to appear to 'Tonio in the light of an accuser, and Willett was secretly better content that his classmate should stay away.

      Down in the bottom of his heart Willett felt that four years of such experiences as Harris had encountered made him a far better judge of Apache methods and motives than he, Willett, could expect to be. Moreover, he knew well that, were he in Harris's place, he should resent it that an officer no higher in grade, and inferior in Arizona craft, should be sent to inquire into the conduct of his scout. It was just one of those things a tactless chief of staff would sometimes do; but, even though Willett appreciated, none the less did he welcome the order. It put him at once in position of ascendency over a classmate of whose СКАЧАТЬ