Tonio-Son of the Sierras

by King, Charles

  Stannard sighed as he closed his signal glass and turned again to the duty in hand. "What's the trouble?" he bluntly asked his faithful sergeant; lieutenants at the moment he had none.

  "Check, sir. All rock and half a dozen gullies. Scouts are trying three of them. Don't seem to know which way they went from here. Even a mule shoe makes no print."

  The troop, following its leader's example, without sound or signal had dismounted, and stood in long column of files adown the ravine. 'Tonio and his fellow-scouts had disappeared somewhere in the stony labyrinth ahead. Up this way, before the dawn, the dusky band must have led or driven their captives, two of Bennett's mules having been pressed into service. Up this way, not an hour behind them, must have followed Harris and his handful of allies, four Indians in all. Up this way, swift and unerring thus far, 'Tonio, backed by half a dozen half-naked young braves, had guided the cavalry, and never before, so said old Farrier Haney, who had 'listed in the troop at Prescott, and had served here with the previous regiment in '69—never before had he known 'Tonio so excited, so vehement. Beyond all question, 'Tonio's heart was in the chase to-day.

  Scrambling down the adjacent slope every man for himself.

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  But this delay was most vexatious. Every moment lost to the pursuit was more than a minute gained by the pursued. Lighter by far and trained to mountain climbing, the Apache covers ground with agility almost goatlike. It was long after seven, said Stannard's watch, and not a glimpse had they caught of Indian other than their own. It was just half past the hour, and Stannard with an impatient snap of the watch-case was about thrusting it back in his pocket, when, far to the front, reëchoing, resounding among the rocks, two shots sounded in quick succession, followed in sudden sputter by half a dozen more. "Turn your horses over to Number Four, men!" shouted Stannard. "Sergeant Schreiber, remain in charge. The rest of you come on."

  Scrambling up a rocky hillside, he led on to the divide before him—the crest between two steep ravines—his men coming pell-mell and panting after, every now and then dislodging a stone and sending it clattering to the depths below. Two hundred yards ahead, at a sharp, angular point, one of the Yuma scouts stood frantically waving his hand, and thither Stannard turned his ponderous way. No lightweight he, and the pace and climb began to tell. Eager young soldiers were at his heels, but grim old Stauffer, the first sergeant, growled his orders not to crowd; hearing which their captain half turned with something like a grin: "Tumble ahead if you want to," was all he said, and tumble they did, for the firing was sharp and fierce and close at hand, augmented on a sudden as 'Tonio's little party reached the scene and swelled the clamor with their Springfields. Another moment and, springing from rock to rock, spreading out to the right and left as they came in view of a little fastness along the face of a cliff, the troopers went scrambling down the adjacent slope and, every man for himself, opened on what could be seen of the foe. Some men, possibly, never knew what they were firing at, but the big-barrelled Sharp's carbine made a glorious chorus to the sputtering fire of the scouts. Five hundred yards away, bending double, dodging from bowlder to bowlder, several swarthy Indians could be seen in full flight, apparently. Then old 'Tonio threw up a hand from across the stony chasm, signalled to his friends to cease, sprang over a low barrier of rock, disappeared one moment from view, then a few yards farther signalled "Come on." And on they went and came presently upon an excited, jabbering group at a little cleft in the hillside. A mule lay kicking in death agony down the slope. Another lay dead among the bowlders. An Apache warrior, face downward in a pool of blood, was sprawled in front of the cleft, and presently, from the cavelike entrance, came Lieutenant Harris and 'Tonio, bearing between them the form of an unconscious woman, and Stannard, as he came panting to the spot, ordering everybody to fall back and give her air, and somebody to bring a canteen, slapped Harris a hearty whack on the shoulder, whereat that silent young officer suddenly wilted and dropped like a log, and not until then was it seen he was shot—that his sleeve and shirt were dripping with blood.

  And just about that hour, less than thirty miles away, based on Lieutenant Willett's verbal report, the commanding officer of Camp Almy was writing a despatch to go by swift courier to department head-quarters—a report which closed with these words:

  "The presence at this juncture of Lieutenant Willett, aide-de-camp to the department commander, was of great value and importance, and I trust that his decision to remain may meet approval. On the other hand, it is with regret that I am constrained to express my disapproval of the action of Lieutenant Harris, commanding scouts, who left the post with his men immediately after the alarm and without conference with me; was only overtaken by Lieutenant Willett after going several miles, and, when informed of my instructions, practically refused to be guided by them. Persuading a few of the scouts to follow him, he left the detachment, in spite of Lieutenant Willett's remonstrance, and started in pursuit of the marauders. As these must largely outnumber him, it is not only impossible that he should rescue the captives, but more than probable he has paid for his rashness with his life."

  CHAPTER VIII.

  "The Gray Fox" had but just received his promotion to the star, jumping every colonel in the army. He had been doing mighty work among the recalcitrant Apaches at a time when other commanders were having hard luck in their respective fields—one, indeed, forfeiting his own honored and valued life through heeding the sophistries of the Peace Commissioners rather than the appeals of officers and men who long had known the Modocs. For long years the warriors of the Arizona deserts and mountains had bidden defiance to the methods of department commanders who fought them from their desks at Drum Barracks, or the Occidental, but George Crook came from years of successful campaigning after other tribes, and in person led his troopers to the scene of action. One after another the heads of noted chiefs were bowed, or laid, at his feet. The pioneers, the settlers, the ranchmen and miners took heart and hope again, and the marauders to the mountains. Then came "our friends the enemy," from the far East, with petition and prayer. Suspension of hostilities, on part of the troops at least, was ordered, while most excellently pious emissaries arrived inviting the warriors to come in, to be reasoned with, taught the error of their ways and persuaded to promise to be good. The astute Apache had no objection to such proceedings. He was certainly willing to have the soldier quit fighting, just as willing to come and hear exhortation and prayer, when coupled with presents and plenty to eat; most Indians would be. So the new general stepped aside, as ordered, and left the elders a fair field. "The Gray Fox" went hunting bear and deer, and while the Apache chieftains went down to the Gila to reap what they could from the lavish hands of the good and the gentle, their young men swooped on the stage roads and scattered ranches, and made hay after their own fashion while shone the sun of peace and promise. So happened it along the Verde and Salado that the Apache came down like the wolf on the fold, and so Harris had come up from the Southern Sierra, and 'Tonio had sworn that, all signs to the contrary notwithstanding, his people were not, as the agent declared, the pillagers and pirates. "Apache-Mohave? No! No!!"

  "The Gray Fox" had ventured to give his views to the War Department, which in turn had ventured to express itself to the Secretary of the Interior. But let us lose no time in following further. The Eastern press, and such of the Eastern public as had any leisure to devote to the subject, persisted in looking upon Indian affairs from the viewpoint and remoteness of Boston, where once upon a time Miles Standish and our Puritan forbears handled such matters in a manner anything but Puritanical. Nothing was left to the military arm of the Government but temporary submission, so, as has been said, "the Gray Fox" went off on a hunt for bear, mountain lions, and such big game as was reported to be awaiting him toward the Grand Cañon to the north. An adjutant-general of the old school was left in charge of the desk and the department, and all on a sudden found that while Peace and its commissioners held their sway far to the south, grim-visaged
War had burst upon the northward valleys, and chaos had come again.

  The couriers bearing Archer's report to Prescott found others, similarly burdened, from the upper reservation, from Camp Sandy, and even from points to the west and south of department head-quarters, all telling of death and depredation. So, while the chief of staff ruefully digested these tidings at the office, the couriers proceeded to have a time in town, to the end that, when replies and instructions were in readiness to be sent out, only two of the six were in shape to take them, and Archer's runner—one of the frontier scouts, half Mexican, half Apache—was one of the two.

  Now, the chief of staff had been nearly three years in Arizona, had served in similar capacity to predecessors of "the Gray Fox," and naturally thought he understood the Apache, and the situation, far better than did his new commander, and the fact that he had allowed this conviction to be known had led to a degree of official friction between himself and the one aide-de-camp left that was fast verging on the personal. Bright, almost invariably the companion of the general in his journeyings, was even now with him, lost in the mountains ninety miles in one direction; Willett, the newly appointed aide-de-camp, was with the commander of Camp Almy, ninety miles away in another, while black-bearded Wickham stood alone at Prescott. Wickham had not been consulted when Willett was sent with confidential instructions to Almy. Wickham would have disapproved, and the chief of staff knew it. Wickham had to be shown Archer's despatch, though the adjutant-general would gladly have concealed it, and now, in chagrin at the outcome of affairs at Almy, and in consternation at the ebullition all around him, the adjutant-­general was quite at a loss what to do. Wickham, if asked, would have said at once, "Send for General Crook," but that would be confession that he, the experienced, did not know how to handle the situation. So again he took no counsel with Wickham, but issued instructions in the name of the department commander and ordered them carried out forthwith.

  Then it transpired that only two couriers were fit to go. Thereupon, the commanding officer of the one cavalry troop at the post was ordered to detail three non-commissioned officers, with a brace of troopers apiece, as bearers of despatches to Date Creek, Wickenberg, Sandy and the reservation, while Sanchez, the Mexican-Apache Mercury, was ordered to hasten back to Almy by way of the Mazatzal. It was then but ten a.m., and to the annoyance of the adjutant-general, Sanchez shook his black mane and said something that sounded like hasta la noche—he wouldn't start till night. Asked why, the interpreter said he feared Apache Tontos, and being assured by the adjutant-general that no Tonto could be west of the Verde, intimated his conviction of the officer's misinformation by the only sign he knew as bearing on the matter—that of the forked tongue, which called for no interpreter, as it concisely said, You lie. Sanchez meant neither insult nor insolence, but the adjutant-general regarded it as both, ordered another sergeant and two men got ready at once to ride to Almy, and bade the interpreter take Sanchez to the post guard-house and turn him over for discipline to the officer of the day. The sergeant started forty minutes later, with his two men at his back, and just thirty-five minutes behind Sanchez, who left the station on the spur of the moment, and the interpreter with a cleft weasand. It is a mistake for one man to attempt the incarceration of an armed half-blood of the Indian race. Sanchez started in the lead, afoot, and, in spite of his fear of Tontos, kept it all the way to the Mazatzal, where, as was later learned, he abandoned the paths of rectitude and the trail to Almy, and joining a party of twenty young renegades, complacently watched the coming of that sergeant and detachment from behind the sheltering bowlders of Dead Man's Cañon, and thus it happened that the orders Archer had been expecting three long days and nights were destined never to get to him.

  It was this situation he had been puzzling over when at ten p.m. the officer of the day came in to say that new signal fires in the east were now being answered by others in the west, away over in the Mazatzal, and the general went forth to the northern edge of the "bench" to have a good look at them, wishing very much he had Stannard or Turner or "Capitan Chiquito"—little Harris—to help him guess their meaning.

  But Stannard, with his sturdy troop, was still far afield, scouting the fastnesses of the Mogollon in hopes still of overtaking the marauding band that had ruined Bennett's ranch, murdered its owner, and borne away into the wilds two helpless little settlers for whom a half-crazed, heart-broken woman at Almy was wailing night and day. Turner, following another route and clew, was exploring the Sierra Ancha south of Tonto Creek, and Lieutenant Harris, in fever and torment, was occupying an airy room in the post surgeon's quarters, the object of Bentley's ceaseless care, and of deep solicitude on part of the entire garrison.

  Borne in the arms of Stannard's men, poor young Mrs. Bennett, raving, had been carried back to the ruins, and thence by ambulance to the post. There now she lay with her reason almost gone, nursed by the hospital steward's wife, and visited frequently by three gentle women, whose hearts were wrung at sight of her grief. Mrs. Stannard sometimes spent hours in the effort to soothe and comfort her. Mrs. Archer was hardly less assiduous, but was beginning now to have anxieties of her own. Lilian, her beloved daughter, fancy free, as the mother had reason to know, up to the time of their coming to this far-away, out-of-the-way station, seemed dangerously near the point of losing her heart to that very attractive and presentable fellow, Willett, the aide-de-camp, and Mrs. Archer did not half like it.

  When the news was brought in to Almy that Mrs. Bennett had been recaptured, and that Lieutenant Harris was wounded in the fight which scattered her abductors, Willett was the first to mount and away to meet them. It was his orderly who came galloping back for the ambulance, and Willett who, before the arrival of the surgeon, had caused to be rigged up a capital litter on which, later, by easy stages his suffering classmate was borne to the post. Harris was indeed sorely hurt, so sorely that the faintest jar was agony. Harris was weak and pallid from suffering when lifted to his couch in the doctor's quarters, bearing it all with closed eyes and clinching teeth, suppressing every sound. The general was there to bear a hand and speak a word of cheer, all the time wishing it were possible to overtake the courier, by that time nearly twenty-four hours on his way to Prescott, that he might amend the wording of that report. He was for sending a "supplementary" that very evening, but who was there to send? Sanchez was the only available post courier. The scouts were away with the cavalry. Both troops were now afield. Barely a dozen horses were left at the post, and every able-bodied, ambitious cavalryman was with his comrades on the trail. They who remained were the extra duty men, or the weaklings. Moreover, when Archer spoke of it to Willett, the latter very diplomatically argued against it. Wait a day and something worth sending would surely turn up. Two such captains as Stannard and Turner could not fail to accomplish something. They could be counted on to find the hostiles and punish them wherever found. Moreover, as yet, there were only evil tidings to send, for so the wounding of Harris would be regarded, and the recapture of poor Mrs. Bennett without her children would hardly compensate. There was still another thing to be considered, but even Willett balked at saying this. He had said enough to induce Archer to hold his hand another day at least, so why use more ammunition until he had to?

  Two days, therefore, had gone by without news from the field column or further message to Prescott. Then it was easy to persuade Archer that it was best to wait the return of Sanchez, and, for Willett, those two days, especially the long, exquisite evenings, had been full of­ sweet and thrilling interest. "I should be more with Harris, I suppose you are thinking," he had said to Lilian Archer, "and there I would be, but—I cannot rid myself of the feeling that he would rather be alone. He always was peculiar, and I seem to worry rather than to help him."

  "But you were classmates," said she, "and I thought——"

  "Classmates, yes," he answered, "but never much together. Even classmates, you know, are not always intimates."

  "Still I should think that now—h
ere——" she began again, her hand straying listlessly over the strings of her guitar, her slender fingers trying inaudible chords.

  He glanced over his shoulder to where Mrs. Archer and Mrs. Stannard, fast becoming warm friends, were in chat near the open doorway. Then his handsome head was lowered, and with it the deep, melodious voice.

  "Can you not think that here, and now, I might have greater need of every moment? Any hour may bring my marching orders."