CHAPTER X.

Without event of material importance, it has been said, the journey from Prescott to Sandy was effected. Yet the journey was not devoid of interest.

For two or three days previous Mr. Truscott had seen little or nothing of Grace Pelham. He had been stunned by the angry words that both he and the general’s wife had overheard when Lady Pelham’s door was opened for that one brief instant, he had pondered over them that night after going to bed, and the more he thought the more his blood boiled within him at the idea of this coarse, imperious woman daring to speak so shamefully of his gentle little friend. Next morning Grace did not appear at all, as we have seen, and it was all Truscott could to do to behave with common civility to her ladyship. As for their hostess, it must be confessed that she absolutely snubbed Mrs. Pelham on two or three occasions, kept out of her way as much as possible, and when the time for starting came she kissed Miss Pelham warmly and affectionately, begged her to come up and spend the Christmas holidays with her, but not a word of invitation did she extend to her mother. “Good-day, Mrs. Pelham, I trust you have enjoyed your visit,” was all she vouchsafed her ladyship, and that lady readily comprehended that she had offended her hostess, and, true to nature, hated her accordingly.

Only in company had Truscott met Miss Pelham since that night until the morning of their start. Then he suddenly encountered her alone, he returning from a visit to the corral to inspect the condition of the ambulances that were to convey the party to Sandy, she from the infantry quarters on the other side of the garrison, whither she had been to say good-by to a baby pet of hers, the daughter of one of the officers here stationed.

Truscott greeted her cordially and complimented her upon such very early rising. Her reply was a nervous and embarrassed platitude, and she hurried along with bent head and downcast eyes up the very path which she and Glenham had taken the night of the “Pelham Ball.” All her old frank, bright manner had disappeared; she would not even look at him. Stung to the quick by her evident wish to avoid him, he presently raised his forage-cap, and turning at a side-path, said,—

“Pardon my not escorting you home, Miss Pelham; there are some matters I must arrange before we can start.”

Then for an instant her eyes met his, she faltered when she marked the pain and surprise in his face. She almost held out her hand to him, but as though suddenly recollecting herself, simply bowed, said in a low tone something that sounded like “Good-b—morning, Mr.——” and scurried away up the path like a frightened fawn. With a sadder brow than we have yet seen in Truscott he turned aside, and by a circuitous route regained the house, where he found them all at an early breakfast.

Half an hour afterwards and they were off. Mrs. and Miss Pelham and her ladyship’s homesick maid occupying one ambulance, Mesdames Turner, Raymond, and Wilkins another, while Mrs. Tanner with Rosalie and one of the young ladies from Sandy were bestowed in a third,—Captain Tanner’s own; for Tanner was a man of substance, and had money enough to buy out the rest of the regiment, Glenham perhaps excepted. A fourth ambulance contained a small guard of infantry-men, while two or three trailers, left behind in the rush for the Apaches, the mail messenger, and two scouts, who had come in with despatches, accompanied the party as escort.

Amid the fluttering of handkerchiefs and cheery _au revoirs_ the party rattled off, cracking whips and whistling drivers sending the lively little mule-teams along at a spanking gait. Truscott paused one moment to hold out both hands to his kind hostess and with something of a tremor in his voice to say farewell. She looked up in his face and seized the outstretched hands,—“Jack, don’t you worry. _It’ll come out all right yet, and I know it._” He turned quickly, mounted his horse, and, with a wave of the hand, cantered off down the slope after his convoy.

The journey to the Agua Fria was accomplished without incident. It was a dismal party that rode in her ladyship’s vehicle. She was in execrable humor herself, ready to snap at anybody. As a consequence Grace sat silently and wistfully gazing out on the pine-covered heights, the maid was in tears most of the way, and Lady Pelham, echoing the sniffling from the front seat, sniffed at her smelling-salts, and finally inquired for the sherry-flask. Twice or thrice at difficult parts of the road Grace saw Truscott, seated on his horse, cautioning the driver of each ambulance as in turn they came to the spot, but ordinarily he was well to the front, and only at sharp curves of the road could she catch sight of him, the guard ambulance being just in front of them. Then she looked with all her eyes, for well as he looked at all times it was in the saddle Jack Truscott was at his best. She worshipped fine horsemanship, and never had she seen anything to equal the grace and ease of Truscott’s. Half angry at herself, she yet could not withstand the fascination that kept her gaze fixed upon him at every opportunity.

Before the sun reached the meridian Truscott conducted his train into the court of Olson’s ranch, and politely notified her ladyship that here they would rest an hour and then push on. The ladies were assisted from the ambulances, and were welcomed with much red-faced embarrassment by Mrs. Olson, who showed them into her best rooms. The ladies of the —th she knew well. They had often stopped with her, but the stony grandeur with which her ladyship glared around the bare walls and rude furniture, sniffing at everything, overawed and upset her completely. None the less did she hasten to sacrifice her pet chickens and produce the freshest eggs, in order that the ladies who were so grand in her eyes might be regaled with the best her larder could command.

Something like twenty minutes had the ladies been resting and chatting among themselves when Truscott came striding up from the corrals, whither he had been to superintend the refreshment of his horses and mules. Seeing him approach, Mrs. Tanner quietly laid her sleeping Rosalie upon the bed, rose and went out to meet him. Two or three of the ladies exchanged glances, then looked at Mrs. Pelham. Taking Truscott’s arm, Mrs. Tanner walked with him slowly through the ranch-yard, past the corrals, and, with the eyes of every woman in the party except Grace’s upon them, they strolled up the bank of the stream, and were soon out of sight from the windows.

“Come with me a moment,” said Mrs. Pelham, abruptly, to her daughter, who rose without a word and followed her mother out into the court and around the corner. The elder lady silently pointed up the stream, and Grace, looking, beheld Mrs. Tanner leaning on Truscott’s arm, and both of them, some three hundred yards away, were walking farther. Another moment and they disappeared from sight around a little knoll.

Then Lady Pelham slowly turned, and impressively the words fell from her lips, “Grace, what did I tell you?”

When, half an hour later, Jack Truscott extended his hand to assist Miss Pelham to her seat in the ambulance, as he had been assisting the others, she passed it without notice, seized the door frames with both hands, and with the agile spring of the mountain deer popped up into her place. Truscott calmly closed and fastened the door, nodded to the driver, and away went the Pelham equipage.

The sun was setting behind the great range to the west, and the ambulances had halted for a moment at a point where the road wound around a precipitous ledge, when Truscott rode up to the door of the Pelham equipage, and, pointing far down in the valley below and some miles to the south, quietly remarked, “Mrs. Pelham, there is Camp Sandy,” then rode on to the head of column. Eagerly gazing, Grace could see rows of what looked like toy-houses painted a dismal brown, but Mrs. Pelham was cross and tired, and the sherry had been a little too strong or too frequent, or both, she did not care to look. An hour more and Grace was in her father’s arms, while her gracious mother was turning up her nose at the parlor furniture. Soon afterwards, Grace, delightedly examining her own dainty little room, heard her father’s voice hailing from the piazza below,—

“Truscott! oh, Truscott! that you?”

A voice from the darkness out on the parade replied,—

“Yes, colonel.”

And Grace stood still—yes—to listen.

“Been to dinner or supper yet?”

“Not yet, sir; I’ve had several things to attend to.”

“Then come and take high tea with us.”

“I would with pleasure, sir, but—I’ve promised Mrs. Tanner.”

A tap at Grace’s door, and her ladyship swept in.

“You heard that, I suppose. How much confirmation do you require, may I ask?”

And all that evening Grace Pelham was feverishly gay.

The general, it seems, had gone out into the Mogollon after the troops; he had spent a day at the agency with Tanner, and then, on his renowned saddle-mule, had struck eastward for the trail leading to the Colorado Chiquito. Every hour the renegades were sneaking back into their limits, and the next day were begging around camp as persistently as ever and with that childlike expression of innocence and utter lack of guile in which the Apache excels. In the brief conversation Colonel Pelham had enjoyed with Truscott after tea, when the latter had betaken himself to the office and was working away by candle-light, the adjutant learned that the entire command was on its way back, having had only one or two unimportant brushes with the Indians, who had scattered all over the Territory on finding themselves pursued by so large a force. Then the colonel went back to his quarters to enjoy the unaccustomed luxury of the society of his wife and daughter; but Truscott remained at his desk “straightening out” the regimental papers until long after midnight. Grace Pelham, going to her room after a long, loving talk with her father, had thrown open her window and stood there gazing out into the starlit night. Way across the dark parade she saw towards her right the dim lights of the guard-house. She knew it to be such, because, even as she gazed, there came from that point the prolonged call of the sentry, “Nu-mber One. Ha-lf pa-st twelve o’clock.” Then way beyond, over towards the corrals, a shrill Hibernian tenor responded for Number Two, and added, “A-a-ll’s w-ell!” and so the watch-call went the rounds, echoing back from the foot-hills until it again reached the guard-house. Grace thought it lovely. But what was that brilliant light off to her left? She could make out the outlines of a low one-story building that seemed to stand by itself, and from two windows broad beams of light streamed forth and illuminated the parade. Hearing her father’s step on the stairway, she called him in. “I’m so interested in it all, father; the sentries have just been calling off. Now that’s the guard-house over there; but what is this bright light here to the left?”

The colonel peered over her shoulder. “That! It’s the adjutant’s office, and that confounded Jack Truscott is sitting up there at work when, with his shoulder, he ought to have been in bed long ago. By Jove, I’ll go and send him!”

Then he turned, took her in his arms, and looked proudly, fondly, down into the sweet upraised face.

“I wonder if you dream, my little girl, what a joy it is to your old father to have you here? God bless and guard you, my child!” With that he kissed tenderly her white forehead, and the next minute she heard him tramping across the parade to the office. She was about to close her blind, when the sound of hoof-beats and voices coming into the garrison from the north attracted her attention. At rapid lope the riders came, and in a moment flashed into view in the lights from the adjutant’s office. Then came her father’s cheery voice,—

“Why, Ray, is that you? You, too, Glenham? Welcome back, boys!”

Then she heard Truscott’s deep baritone and Ray’s and Glenham’s mingled greetings, and the “old fellows” and hearty slaps on back and shoulder with which the comrades of the frontier are wont to welcome one another; and then she did close her blind, and for a while sat there in the darkness thinking, thinking.

Two days more and the entire command was once more in garrison. Rough, stubbly beards were shaven off, ragged hair trimmed to soldier style, scouting-rigs were stowed away, and on the following Sunday morning six fine troops of the —th formed line, mounted and in full dress, for inspection. The band, too, had returned from a visit to the southern posts of the Territory, and for three days the rank and file had been cleaning, polishing, and scrubbing generally, for “Old Catnip” was a stickler for drill, discipline, and neatness in every particular.

Much of the time the officers had been occupied superintending the overhauling of the barracks and stables, but such hours as Captain Canker would allow him Arthur Glenham had spent at Grace’s side. _Was_ it hope that fathered the thought, he wondered, or was she really more gracious, more encouraging in her manner towards him? Mrs. Pelham was everything that was delightful to him, inviting him there to tea, affording him frequent opportunity for uninterrupted interviews with Grace, and eagerly inquiring how soon Ranger would be ready for the promised rides. Tanner, too, had come in with his troop, and Ranger had been duly inspected and delightedly praised by Grace, but the captain preferred that she should not ride until after the general inspection. Of Truscott the ladies at Colonel Pelham’s saw nothing except at a distance. He spent all his time at the office, and in going thither or returning to his quarters kept way out in the middle of the parade, for he lived at the extreme northern end of officers’ row, and the colonel’s house was at the other end. Officers old and young and all the ladies had called to welcome the Pelhams to Sandy, but just as at Prescott, when Ray, Hunter and other ineligibles attempted to converse to any length with Grace, the “confounded old tabby” would swoop down upon them and monopolize the talk herself.

Oh, how superb the sight was to Grace when, early Sunday morning, the whole command appeared in full uniform, the martial-looking helmets with their long horse-hair plumes, the bright colors of the stripes and facings, the blue and gold and glittering sabres of the officers, and the handsome equipments of their steeds! She stood on the piazza watching it all,—officer after officer mounting in front of his quarters and trotting off to join his troop. (Of course, Glenham came down the line to exhibit himself and his beautiful horse to her before joining his captain.) Then the four stately non-commissioned officers, the guard of the standard, each with his war chevrons and his bronze medal for bravery, rode up in line and received their charge from her father’s hands. Then came the stirring adjutant’s call, and the thrilling burst of martial music from the band, and troop after troop rode steadily into line; and then from the right there came at full gallop a stalwart form she had grown to recognize instantly in any dress. The horsemanship was unmistakable, and still at full gallop on his powerful black charger he darted out to the front until midway to where the colonel sat on old “Rappahannock,” when with sudden halt and wheel he reined about, and at the deep, ringing baritone, that resounded along the line, the sabres flashed in air, and, again wheeling, his own sabre rose and was lowered in graceful salute. Grace Pelham gazed with all her eyes, eagerly interested in everything, but then the ladies who had seen that sort of thing a hundred times gathered around her, and she saw no more of the ceremony that so delighted her.

Disappointed as she was at the interruption of her view of the inspection, Grace found it hard work to be cordial and courteous to her visitors. Ordinarily on each occasions the ladies swarmed about Captain Turner’s quarters, which, bring opposite the centre of the line when formed, afforded the best point of observation. Mrs. Turner with great self-complacency used to attribute this gathering to her powers of entertainment and conversation, and talked and chattered like a magpie; but on this particular Sunday, seeing Grace alone on the piazza of the commanding officer’s house, the meeting adjourned and proceeded _en masse_ to entertain her with garrison platitudes, Mrs. Wilkins being by no means the least voluble. As a consequence, when the jovial colonel rode up to the piazza after the dismissal of the command, his face all aglow with the unaccustomed exercise, and called out in his cheery way, “Well, daughter, what do you think of the —th?” she replied, with an air of serio-comic disappointment, “I could see nothing of them, father, except (_sotto voce_) the ladies.”

“Confound those women!” growled the colonel. “I might have known they would spoil the whole thing, and I particularly wanted you to see the regiment. Your mother isn’t visible yet, I suppose. She never did care for anything connected with my profession except the pay accounts,” he added to himself, with a weary sigh. Then he and Grace went in to breakfast.

Late that afternoon two grimy-looking, shaggy-bearded men, accompanied by Mr. Truscott, appeared at the colonel’s door, and were promptly ushered into the parlor, where Lady Pelham was yawning over a novel (for which the writer of this gives her full absolution) and her husband was snoozing on the lounge with a handkerchief over his face. In response to Truscott’s courteous bow, her ladyship rose from her chair, stared for an instant at the uncouth-looking bipeds who stood uneasily at the door, then, with an indignant “Well, I declare!” and without noticing Truscott in the least, she swept majestically into the adjoining room, slamming the door behind her.

The colonel woke with a start, and for an instant gazed stupidly at his visitors.

“What’s up, Truscott?” he asked.

“Fanshawe and Craig have come in to report, sir; they bring important news,” replied the adjutant.

“Fanshawe, hey! Craig, too! Good! Sit down, boys. What news do you bring?”

The taller of the two cleared his throat, while the other, “his pardner,” slowly twisted his old slouch hat in his hands and looked to his senior to do the talking. Wiping his face with a faded red bandanna, then stowing it away in the breast of his buckskin hunting-shirt, Fanshawe, with a voice like a cracked bassoon, began.

“We’ve treed ’em, colonel. There’s three big rancherias out yet. We follered ’em down from nigh Chevlon’s butte into the Tonto basin. There’s two on ’em there somewhere, close in under the Black Mesa, nigh the head o’ the creek. The other band cut loose and seemed to go over to the Chiquito. Craig and I wanted to go in farther and find just where they were, but old Kwonahelka and Charley,—Washington Charley, you know, colonel; Araháwa ’s his ’Patchie name,—they dasn’t resk it; so we come back. If the gin’ral will send out a couple of troops now, with fifteen days’ rations and ’Patchie-Mohave scouts, I reckon he can gobble the Tonto basin crowd, and it’ll only take a small detachment to corral the outfit that slid out over towards the Chiquito; there can’t be more’n forty bucks among ’em.”

“Where are Kwonahelka and Charley?” asked the colonel, after a moment’s thought.

“Right outside, sir,” said Fanshawe. “We didn’t like to bring ’em in.”

The colonel nodded to Truscott, who quickly stepped into the hall and signed to the two Apache Indians squatting on the piazza. They silently rose and entered the house.

An exclamation of “Goodness!” caused Truscott to glance to the head of the stairs. There stood Grace, her eyes opened in wonderment “What strange creatures are those, Mr. Truscott?” she asked.

“Apache scouts, Miss Pelham.”

“Oh, _may_ I come down and see them?”

“Most assuredly,” he answered.

So down she came, pausing irresolutely at the door until her father, catching sight of her, called out, “Come in, come in, Grace. You’ve never seen our Apaches. Gentlemen,” he continued, turning to Fanshawe and partner, “this is my daughter, just arrived in Arizona.” Whereat Fanshawe and partner arose in bewilderment and awkwardness and bobbed their heads, and grew redder under the bronze which desert suns and winds had painted on their faces.

Grace bowed and smiled a pleasant welcome, not knowing what to call them, and being quite uncertain as to whether she ought to shake hands or not.

“This will all interest Grace,” said her father, at once. “Truscott, you explain the situation to her. Now I want to question these aborigines.”

And so, despite herself, Grace was thrown into confidential relations with the man she had been trying to avoid, and yet—and yet—whom she had caught herself watching from her window, or gazing over at the midnight lights in his office, a dozen times in the last four days.

She colored, then turned and became absorbed in contemplation of the Indians, strange objects indeed to her. Their swarthy features, glittering, bead-like eyes; their coarse, matted black hair, for all the world like a Shetland pony’s mane and forelock, falling in masses like an immense “bang” over their foreheads and down to the eyes in front, hanging in tangled clumps to the neck behind; their slender but sinewy legs and arms; their rude dress,—not an ornament or a patch of paint, things she supposed inseparable from the red warriors, no gracefully-draped blanket, no eagle’s-feather war-bonnet, none of the accessories she had supposed were always to be seen with the Indians. But here were two noted men of their tribes,—Kwonahelka, a chief of the Apache-Mohaves; Araháwa, sub-chief and interpreter of the Apache-Yumas,—and dirty white cotton turbans, shirts, and breech-clouts, with substantial moccasins, constituted their costume.

Araháwa had once been taken to Washington,—hence his nickname,—and having been kept some time at San Francisco, had picked up a little English, not unlike the “pidgin-English” of the Chinese. It was “Charley” whom the colonel was now questioning.

“But what I want to know is, whose bands are these down in the basin?” said he, impatiently.

“Mebbe so Deltchay; mebbe so ’Skiminzin; no can tell,” replied Charley, volubly.

“Ask Kwonahelka; he knows,” said Fanshawe. So Charley and his associate held a brief confab, in which much gesticulation was used on both sides. Finally Charley turned.

“Kwonahelka he say ’Skeltetsee by Mogeyone. ’Skeltetsee got plenty Tonto.”

And so the strange colloquy went on, and Grace, her curiosity getting the better of her reserve, finally turned to the silent soldier by her side and inquired, “What _does_ it all mean, Mr. Truscott?”

“Briefly this,” he replied, still keeping his eyes fixed on Charley. “There are still some hostile Apaches scattered over the country to the east of us, and these scouts were sent to discover their lair if possible. They have succeeded in tracing three of the bands, and have come in to report.”

“And what will be done now?” she anxiously inquired.

“Their report will be telegraphed to the general at Prescott, and then, probably, scouting-parties will be sent from here to hunt them to their holes and fight it out.”

Grace’s face paled visibly. She was about to speak, when Glenham entered the room, and, barely glancing at the others, addressed himself to her,—

“Everything is ready now, Miss Gracie. Tanner has given me Ranger. Will you ride with me to-morrow?”

And as she answered, “Gladly, Mr. Glenham,” a close observer could have seen a contraction of the brows and a twitch of the muscles about Jack Truscott’s stern, set mouth, but his eyes were fixed upon his colonel’s face.

A moment more and that gentleman rose. “Well, that settles it,” he said. “Come to the office, Truscott, and bring them along.” And so Grace and Glenham were left alone.

That evening the colonel sent his orderly with his compliments to Captain Canker, and the information that he, Canker, should command at dress-parade. And taking Grace’s arm in his as the adjutant’s call sounded, and the companies came marching out to the line dismounted, he strode up beyond Turner’s quarters, grimly declining the dozen invitations to “come and sit down on our piazza,” and led his daughter out beyond the chattering groups to a point in the parade whence she could witness the ceremony undisturbed. She gazed with pride and delight at the long solid line, the six companies standing at parade-rest as the band—a glorious band the old —th had in those days—“trooped” down the front and back to its place on the right. Then came the stirring “retreat” upon the trumpets, the roar of the evening gun, the fluttering folds of the great garrison flag to the ground as though its halliards were shot away; and then from the distant flank the same deep, glorious voice rang along the line, and the tall, soldierly form came stalking out to the front. She could not take her eyes off him, but watched his every movement,—quick, agile, yet erect and stately. She marked the vehement contrast between his rich voice and Canker’s reedy twang as the latter put the battalion through the manual; but when the officers closed on the centre, and some sixteen of them came marching to the front to the stirring music of “_En Avant_,” and as one man saluted the commanding officer, she could not but see that in stature, carriage, grace, and dignity there was not his peer among them.

“Grace,” said her father suddenly, “I’ve got the finest adjutant in the United States army, and he is as noble a man as he is a soldier.” She looked up in surprise, for his voice trembled, and tears had started to his eyes. He had received a letter that day from Ralph and had not shown it to them, but he struck his cane sharply upon the stony ground, tossed his head, and was all joviality when, as though with one accord, the officers came crowding around Grace to welcome her to her first parade. All but one; Truscott went straight to his quarters.