Charles King - Foes in Ambush

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FOES IN AMBUSH.

BY

CAPT. CHARLES KING, U. S. A.,

AUTHOR OF

"THE COLONEL'S DAUGHTER," "MARION'S FAITH," "KITTY'S CONQUEST,"
"A SOLDIER'S SECRET," ETC.

PHILADELPHIA:

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.

1893.

COPYRIGHT, 1892,

BY

CHARLES KING.

FOES IN AMBUSH.

I.

The sun was just going down, a hissing globe of fire and torment.
Already the lower limb was in contact with the jagged backbone of the
mountain chain that rimmed the desert with purple and gold. Out on the
barren, hard-baked flat in front of the corral, just where it had been
unhitched when the paymaster and his safe were dumped soon after dawn,
a weather-beaten ambulance was throwing unbroken a mile-long shadow
towards the distant Christobal. The gateway to the east through the
Santa Maria, sharply notched in the gleaming range, stood a day's
march away,--a day's march now only made by night, for this was
Arizona, and from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same
anywhere south of that curdling mud-bath, the Gila, the only human
beings impervious to the fierceness of its rays were the Apaches. "And
they," growled the paymaster, as he petulantly snapped the lock of his
little safe, "they're no more human than so many hyenas."

A big man physically was the custodian and disburser of government
greenbacks,--so big that, as he stepped forth through the aperture in
the hot adobe wall, he ducked his head to avert unwilling contact with
its upper edge. Green-glass goggles, a broad-brimmed straw hat, a
pongee shirt, loose trousers of brown linen, and dust-colored canvas
shoes made up the outer man of a personality as distinctly unmilitary
as it was ponderous. Slow and labored in movement, the major was
correspondingly sluggish in speech. He sauntered out into the glare of
the evening sunshine and became slowly conscious of a desire to swear
at what he saw: that, though in a minute or two the day-god would
"douse his glim" behind the black horizon, no preparation whatever had
been made for a start. There stood the ambulance, every bolt and link
and tire hot as a stove-lid, but not a mule in sight. Turning to his
left, he strolled along towards a gap in the adobe wall, and entered
the dusty interior of the corral. One of the four quadrupeds drowsing
under the brush shelter languidly turned an inquiring eye and
interrogative ear in his direction, and conveyed, after the manner of
the mule, a suggestion as to supper. A Mexican boy sprawling in the
shade of a bale of government hay, and clad in cotton shirt and
trousers well-nigh as brown as the skin that peeped through occasional
gaps, glanced up at him with languid interest an instant, and then
resumed the more agreeable contemplation of the writhings of an
impaled tarantula. Under another section of the shed two placid little
burros were dreamily blinking at vacancy, their grizzled fronts
expressive of that ineffable peace found only in the faces of saints
and donkeys. In the middle of the enclosure a rude windlass coiled
with rope stood stretching forth a decrepit lever-arm. The
whippletree, dangling from the end over the beaten circular track,
seemed cracked with heat and age. The stout rope that stretched tautly
from the coil passed over a wooden wheel, and disappeared through a
broad-framed aperture into the bowels of the earth. Close at hand in
the shade of a brush-covered "leanto" hung three or four huge _ollas_,
earthen water-jars, swathed in gunny sack and blanket. Beyond them,
warped out of all possibility of future usefulness, stood what had
once been the running gear of a California buck-board. Behind it
dangled from dusty pegs portions of leather harness, which all the
neat's-foot oil of the military pharmacopoeia could never again
restore to softness or pliability. A newer edition of the same class
of vehicle was covered by a canvas "'paulin." A huge stack of barley
bags was piled at the far end of the corral, guarded from depredation
(quadrupedal) by a barrier of wooden slats, mostly down, and by a
tattered biped, very sound asleep.

"Where's the sergeant?" queried the paymaster, slowly, addressing no
one in particular, but looking plaintively around him.

Still leaning a brown chin on a nearly black hand, and stirring up his
spider with the forked stick he held in the other paw, the boy simply
tilted his head towards the dark opening under the farther end of the
shed, an aperture that seemed to lead to nothing but blackness beyond.

"What's he doing?"

"No sa-a-abe," drawled the boy, never lifting his handsome eyes from
the joys before him.

"Why hasn't he harnessed up?"

A shrug of the shoulders was the only reply.

"Hey?"

"No sa-a-abe," slowly as before.

"What's your name?"

"Jose."

"Well, here, Jose, you go and tell him I want him."

The boy slowly pulled himself together and found his feet; started
reluctantly to obey; glanced back at his captive, now scuttling off
for freedom; turned again, scotched him with his forked stick, and
then with a vicious "huh!" drove the struggling Araneid into the sandy
soil. This done, he lounged off towards the dark corner in the wall of
the ranch and dove out of sight.

Presently there slowly issued from this recess a sturdy form in dusty
blue blouse, the sleeves of which were decorated with chevrons in
far-faded yellow. Under the shabby slouch hat a round, sun-blistered,
freckled face, bristling with a week-old beard, peered forth at the
staff official with an expression half of languid tolerance, half of
mild irritation. In most perfunctory fashion the soldier just touched
the hat-rim with his forefinger, then dropped the hand into a
convenient pocket. It was plain that he felt but faint respect for the
staff rank and station of the man in goggles and authority.

"Sergeant Feeny, I thought I told you I wanted everything ready to
start at sunset."

"You did, sir, and then you undid it," was the prompt and sturdy
reply.

The paymaster stood irresolute. Through the shading spectacles of
green his eyes seemed devoid of any expression. His attitude remained
unchanged, thumbs in the low-cut pockets of his wide-flapping
trousers, shoulders meek and drooping.

"W-e-ll," he finally drawled, "you understood I wanted to get on to
Camp Stoneman by sunrise, didn't you? Didn't my clerk, Mr. Dawes, tell
you?"

"He did, yes, sir, and you don't want to get there no more than I do,
major. But I told you flat-footed if you let Donovan and those other
men go back on the trail they'd find some excuse to stop at
Ceralvo's, and, damn 'em, they've done it."

"Don't you s'pose they'll be along presently?"

"S'pose?" and the sun-blistered face of the cavalryman seemed to grow
a shade redder as he echoed almost contemptuously the word of his
superior. "S'pose? Why, major, look here!" And the short, swart
trooper took three quick strides, then pointed through the western gap
in the adobe wall to the gilded edge of the range where the sun had
just slipped from view. "It's ten mile to that ridge, it's ten minutes
since I got the last wig-wag of the signal-flag at the pass. They
hadn't come through then. What chance is there of their getting here
in time to light out at dark? You did tell me to have everything ready
to start, and then you undid it by sending half the escort back.
You've been here in hell's half-acre three days and I've been here
three years. You've never been through Canon Diablo; I've been through
a dozen times and never yet without a fight or a mighty good chance of
one. Now you may think it's fun to run your head into an ambuscade,
but I don't. You can get 'em too easy without trying here. I'm an old
soldier, major, and too free spoken, perhaps, but I mean no
disrespect, only I wish to God you'd listen to me next time."

"You wouldn't have had me leave those women in the lurch back at the
crossing, would you?" queried the paymaster, half apologetically.

"Why, I don't believe that story at all," flatly answered Feeny; "it's
some damned plant that fellow Donovan's springing on you,--a mere
excuse to ride back so they could drink and gamble with those thugs at
Ceralvo's. They've just been paid off and had no chance for any fun at
all before they were ordered out on this escort duty. That money's
been burning in their pockets now for three whole nights, and they
just can't stand it so long as a drop of liquor's to be had by hard
riding. No soldier is happy till he's dead broke, major, leastwise
none I ever see."

"What makes you doubt the story, sergeant? It came straight enough."

"It came too damned straight, sir; that's just the trouble. It came
straight from Chihuahua Pete's monte mill. It's only a hook to draw
'em back, and they played it on you because they saw you were new to
the country and they knew I was asleep; and now, unless Lieutenant
Drummond should happen in with his troop, there's no help for it but
to wait for to-morrow night, and no certainty of getting away then."

"Well, if Mr. Drummond were here, don't you suppose he'd have gone or
sent back to protect those people?"

"Oh, he'd have gone,--certainly,--that's his business, but it isn't
yours, major. You've got government money there enough to buy up every
rum-hole south of the Gila. You're expected to pay at Stoneman, Grant
and Goodwin and Crittenden and Bowie, where they haven't had a cent
since last Christmas and here it is the middle of May. You ought to
have pushed through with all speed, so none of these jay-hawkers could
get wind of your going, let alone the Apaches. Every hour you halt is
clear gain to them, and here you've simply got to stay twenty-four
hours all along of a cock-and-bull story about some stage-load of
frightened women fifteen miles back at Gila Bend. It's a plant, major,
that's what I believe."

Old Plummer kicked the toe of his shoe into the sandy soil and hung a
reflective head. "I wish you hadn't shut your eyes," he drawled at
length.

"I wouldn't, sir, if I hadn't thought you'd keep yours open. You slept
all night, sir, you and Mr. Dawes, while I rode alongside with finger
on trigger every minute."

Absorbed in their gloomy conversation, neither man noticed that the
wooden shutter in the adobe wall close at hand had been noiselessly
opened from within, just an inch or two. Neither knew, neither could
see that behind it, in the gathering darkness of the short summer
evening, a shadowy form was crouching.

"Then you think we must stay here, do you?" queried the paymaster.

"Think? I know it. Why, the range ahead is alive with Apaches, and we
can't stand 'em off with only half a dozen men. Your clerk's no
'count, major."

Old Plummer stood irresolute. His clerk, a consumptive and broken-down
relative, was at that moment lying nerveless on a rude bunk within the
ranch, bemoaning the fate that had impelled him to seek Arizona in
search of health. He was indeed of little "'count," as the paymaster
well knew. After a moment's painful thought the words rose slowly to
his lips.

"Well, perhaps you know best, so here we stay till to-morrow night, or
at least until they get back."

One could almost hear the whisper in the deep recess of the retaining
wall,--sibilant, gasping. Some one crouching still farther back in the
black depths of the interior _did_ hear.

"_Santa Maria!_"

But when a moment later the proprietor of this roadside ranch, this
artificial oasis in a land of desolation, strolled into the big bare
room where half a dozen troopers were dozing or gambling, it was with
an air of confidential joviality that he whispered to the corporal in
charge,--

"Our fren', the major, he riffuse me sell you aguardiente,--mescal;
but wait--to-night."

"Oh, damn it, Moreno, we'll be half-way to Stoneman by that time,"
interrupted the trooper, savagely. "Who's to know where we got the
stuff? We'll make 'em believe Donovan's squad brought it in from
Ceralvo's. Give me a drink now anyhow, you infernal Greaser; I'm all
burnt out with such a day as this. We've got to start the moment they
get back, and there won't be any time then."

"Hush, caballero; they come not to-night. You will rest here."

"Why, how in blazes do you know?"

"Softly!--I know not. I know noting; yet, _mira!_--I know. They talk
long in the corral,--the major and that pig of a sergeant;--for him I
snap my finger. Look you!" And Moreno gave a flip indicative of
combined defiance and disdain.

"Don't you count on his not finding out, Moreno. It's all easy enough
so far as the major's concerned, but that blackguard Feeny's
different, I tell you. He'd hear the gurgle of the spigot if he were
ten miles across the Gila, and be here to bust things before you could
serve out a gill,--damn him! He's been keen enough to put that
psalm-singing Yankee on guard over your liquor. How're you going to
get at it, anyhow?"

For all answer the Mexican placed the forefinger of his left hand upon
his lips and with that of the right hand pointed significantly to the
hard-beaten earthen floor.

"Ah--I have a mine," he whispered. "You will not betray, eh? Shu-u!
Hush! He comes now."

The gruff voice of Sergeant Feeny broke up the colloquy.

"Corporal Murphy, take what men you have here and groom at once. Feed
and water too.--Moreno, I want supper cooked for eight in thirty
minutes.--Drop those cards now, you men; you should have been sleeping
as I told you, so as to be ready for work to-night."

"Shure we don't go to-night, sergeant?"

"Who says that?" demanded Feeny, quickly, whirling upon his
subordinates. The corporal looked embarrassed and turned to Moreno for
support. Moreno, profoundly calm, was as profoundly oblivious.

"Moreno there," began Murphy, finding himself compelled to speak.

"I?" gravely, courteously protested the Mexican, with deprecatory
shrug of his shoulders and upward lift of eyebrow. "I? What know I? I
do but say the Corporal Donovan is not come. How know I you go not out
to-night?"

"Neither you nor the likes of you knows," was Feeny's stern retort.
"We go when we will and no questions asked. As for you, Murphy, you be
ready, and it's me you'll ask, not any outsider, when we go. I've had
enough to swear at to-day without you fellows playing off on me. Go or
no go--no liquor, mind you. The first man I catch drinking I'll tie by
the thumbs to the back of the ambulance, and he'll foot it to
Stoneman."

No words were wasted in remonstrance or reply. These were indeed "the
days of the empire" in Arizona,--days soon after the great war of the
rebellion, when men drank and swore and fought and gambled in the
rough life of their exile, but obeyed, and obeyed without question,
the officers appointed over them. These were the days when veteran
sergeants like Feeny--men who had served under St. George Cooke and
Sumner and Harney on the wide frontier before the war, who had ridden
with the starry guidons in many a wild, whirling charge under Sheridan
and Merritt and Custer in the valley of Virginia--held almost despotic
powers among the troopers who spent that enlistment in the isolation
of Arizona. Rare were the cases when they abused their privilege.
Stern was their rule, rude their speech, but by officers and men alike
they were trusted and respected. As for Feeny, there were not lacking
those who declared him spoiled. Twice that day had the paymaster been
on the point of rebuking his apparent indifference. Twice had he
withheld his censure, knowing, after all, Feeny to be in the right and
himself in the wrong. And now in the gathering shades of night, as he
stood in silence watching the brisk process of grooming, and noted how
thorough and business-like, even though sharp and stern, was Feeny,
the paymaster was wishing he had not ventured to disregard the caution
of so skilled a veteran.

And yet the paymaster, having a human heart in his breast, had been
sorely tried, for the appeal that came for help was one he could not
well resist. Passing Ceralvo's at midnight and pushing relentlessly
ahead instead of halting there as the men had hoped, the party was
challenged in the Mexican tongue.

"_Que viene?_"

To which unlooked-for and uncalled-for demand the leading trooper,
scorning Greaser interference in American territory, promptly
answered,--

"Go to hell!"

All the same he heard the click of lock and was prompt to draw his own
Colt, as did likewise the little squad riding ahead of the creaking
ambulance. The two leaders of the mules whirled instantly about and
became tangled up with the wheel team, and the paymaster was pitched
out of a dream into a doubled-up mass on the opposite seat. To his
startled questions the driver could only make reply that he didn't
know what was the matter; the sergeant had gone ahead to see.
Presently Feeny shouted "Forward!" and on they went again, and not
until Ceralvo's was a mile behind could the major learn the cause of
the detention. "Some of Ceralvo's people," answered Feeny, "damn their
impudence! They thought to stop us and turn us in there by stories of
Indian raids just below us,--three prospectors murdered twenty-four
miles this side of the Sonora line. Cochises's people never came this
far west of the Chiricahua Range. It's white cut-throats maybe, and
we'll need our whole command."

And yet in the glaring sunshine of that May morning, after they had
unsaddled at Moreno's, after the sergeant, wearied with the vigils of
two successive nights, had gone to sleep in the coolest shade he could
find, there came riding across the sun-baked, cactus-dotted plain at
the west a young man who had the features of the American and the
grave, courteous bearing of the Mexican.

"My name is Harvey," said he. "My sisters, who have been in San
Francisco at school, are with me on the way to visit our parents in
Tucson. Father was to have met us at the Bend with relays of mules. We
have waited forty-eight hours and can wait no longer. For God's sake
let half a dozen of your men ride out and escort them down here.
There is no doubt in the world the Apaches are in the mountains on
both sides, and I'm trembling for fear they've already found our camp.
None of my party dared make the ride, so I had to come."

What was Plummer to do? He didn't want to rouse the sergeant. This
wasn't going back to Ceralvo's, but riding northward to the rescue of
imperilled beauty. He simply couldn't refuse, especially when Donovan
and others were eager to go. From Mr. Harvey he learned that his
father had married into an old Spanish Mexican family at Havana, had
been induced by them to take charge of certain business in Matamoras,
and that long afterwards he had removed to Guaymas and thence to
Tucson. The children had been educated at San Francisco, and the
sisters, now seventeen and fifteen years of age respectively, were
soon to go to Cuba to visit relatives of their mother, but were
determined once more to see the quaint old home at Tucson before so
doing; hence this journey under his charge. The story seemed straight
enough. Plummer had never yet been to Tucson, but at Drum Barracks and
Wilmington he had often heard of the Harveys, and Donovan swore he
knew them all by sight, especially the old man. The matter was settled
before Plummer really knew whether to take the responsibility or not,
and the cavalry corporal with five men rode back into the fiery heat
of the Arizona day and was miles away towards the Gila before Feeny
awoke to a realizing sense of what had happened. Then he came out and
blasphemed. There in that wretched little green safe were locked up
thousands enough of dollars to tempt all the outlawry of the Occident
to any deed of desperation that might lead to the capture of the
booty, and with Donovan and his party away Feeny saw he had but half a
dozen men for defence.

At his interposition the major had at least done one thing,--warned
Moreno not to sell a drop of his fiery mescal to any one of the men;
and, when the Mexican expressed entire willingness to acquiesce,
Feeny's suspicions were redoubled, and he picked out Trooper Latham, a
New Englander whom some strange and untoward fate had led into the
ranks, and stationed him in the bullet-scarred bar-room of the ranch,
with strict orders to allow not a drop to be drawn or served to any
one without the sanction of Sergeant Feeny or his superior officer,
the major. Even the humiliation of this proceeding had in no wise
disturbed Moreno's suavity. "All I possess is at your feet," he had
said to the major, with Castilian grace and gravity; "take or withhold
it as you will."

"Infernal old hypocrite!" swore Feeny, between his strong, set teeth.
"I believe he'd like nothing better than to get the escort drunk and
turn us over bag and baggage to the Morales gang."

Thrice during the hot afternoon had Feeny scouted the premises and
striven to find what number and manner of men Moreno might have in
concealment there. Questioning was of little use. Moreno was ready to
answer to anything, and was never known to halt at a lie. Old Miguel,
the half-breed, who did odd jobs about the well and the corral,
expressed profound ignorance both of the situation and Feeny's
English. The Mexican boy had but one answer to all queries: "No
sa-a-abe." Other occupants there were, but these even Feeny's sense of
duty could not prompt him to disturb. Somewhere in the depths of the
domestic portion of the ranch, where the brush on the flat roof was
piled most heavily and the walls were jealously thick, all
scouting-parties or escorts well knew that Moreno's wife and daughter
were hidden from prying eyes, and rumor had it that often there were
more than two feminine occupants; that these were sometimes joined by
three or four others,--wives or sweethearts of outlawed men who rode
with Pasqual Morales, and all Arizona knew that Pasqual Morales had
little more Mexican blood in his veins than had Feeny himself. He was
an Americano, a cursed Gringo for whom long years ago the sheriffs of
California and Nevada had chased in vain, who had sought refuge and a
mate in Sonora, and whose swarthy features found no difficulty in
masquerading under a Mexican name when the language of love had made
him familiar with the Mexican tongue.

Slow to action, slow of speech as was the paymaster, he was not slow
to see that Sergeant Feeny was anxious and ill at ease, and if a
veteran trooper whom his captain had pronounced the coolest,
pluckiest, and most reliable man in the regiment, could be so
disturbed over the indications, it was high time to take precaution.
What was the threatened danger? Apaches? They would never assault the
ranch with its guard of soldiers, whatsoever they might do in the
canons in the range beyond. Outlaws? They had not been heard of for
months. He had inquired into all this at Yuma, at the stage stations,
by mail of the commanding officers at Lowell and Bowie and Grant. Not
for six months had a stage been "held up" or a buck-board "jumped"
south of the turbid Gila. True, there was rumor of riot and
lawlessness among the miners at Castle Dome and the customary shooting
scrape at Ehrenberg and La Paz, but these were river towns, far behind
him now as he looked back over the desert trail and aloft into the
star-studded, cloudless sky. Nothing could be more placid, nothing
less prophetic of peril or ambush than this exquisite summer night.
Somewhere within the forbidden region of Moreno's harem a guitar was
beginning to tinkle softly. That was all very well, but then a woman's
voice, anything but soft, took up a strange, monotonous refrain. Line
after line, verse after verse it ran, harsh, changeless. He could not
distinguish the words,--he did not wish to; the music was bad enough
in all conscience, whatsoever it might become when sung by youth or
beauty. As it fell from the lips of Senora Moreno the air was a
succession of vocal nasal disharmonies, high-pitched, strident,
nerve-wracking.

[Illustration: Music]

Unable to listen after the third repetition, Plummer slowly retired
from the corral and once more appeared at the front, just in time for
a sensation. Two troopers, two of the men who had ridden back with
Donovan, came lurching into the lighted space before the main
entrance. At sight of the paymaster one of them stiffened up and with
preternatural gravity of mien executed the salute. The other, with an
envelope in his hand, reeled out of saddle, failed to catch his
balance, plunged heavily into the sand and lay there. Corporal Murphy
sprang eagerly forward, the first man to reach him, and turned the
prostrate trooper over on his back.

"What's the matter?" queried Plummer. "Is he sick?"

"Sick is it?" was the quick retort, as the corporal sniffed at the
tainted breath of the sufferer. "Be the powers! I only wish I had half
his disayse."

And then came Feeny, glaring, wrathful.

"Come down off the top of that horse, Mullan," he ordered, fiercely.
"How--how'd ye get here? Which way'd ye come? Where's the rest?"

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