FOES IN AMBUSH.

Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 29, 13 October 1894, Page 13

FOES IN AMBUSH.

BY CAPTAIN CHARLES KING. Author ‘ The Deserter,’ '’The Colonel Daughter? 1 A Soldier s Secret ,’ Bfc.

[ALL EIGHTS RESERVED.]

CHAPTER X

Another day had dawned, and another patient was added to Miss Harvey’s hospital list at the caves. The original plan of starting on the return soon after daybreak had now to be abandoned, as Drummond explained, because here was a man who could not stand the journey. Surely there would not be many hours before the relief party from Stoneman would come speeding from Stoneman, following their trail, and bringing to the wounded the needed surgical skill and attention, bringing to the Harvey girls their devoted father. The only question in the young lieutenant’s mind as the sun rose, a burning, dazzling disc over the distant mountains to the east, was, which will be first to reach us—friends or foes P Wearied and shattered though he was, and replete as the night had been with anxiety and vigil, Drummond climbed the goat track that led to the sentry’s perch feeling - full of hope and pluck and fight. He and his men had divided the night into watches, one being awake and astir, not even permitting himself to sit a moment, while the others slept. The fact that he was able to send back to the caves, have an ambulance hitched in and driven to where NVlng lay wounded, and to bear him slowly carefully back to shelter, reaching the caves without further, molestation before darkness set in, had served to convince the young commander that he could count on reasonable security for the night. Unless they knew their prey to be puny and well - nigh defenceless, Apaches make no assault in the darkness, and so, with the coming of the dawn, he had about him for service a squad of seven troopers, most of them seasoned mountain fighters. His main anxiety was now for Wing, whose wound was severe, the bullet having gone clear through, just grazing the bone, and Avho, despite the fact that Fanny Harvey early in the night had every now and then crept noiselessly in to cool his fevered head, seemed strangely affected mentally, seemed unnaturally flighty and wandering, seemed oppressed or excited alternately in a way that baffled Drummond completely, for no explanation was plausible. Two or three times he had been heard during the night moaning, and yet the moment Drummond or, as once happened, Miss Harvey hastened to his side, he declared it was nothing. ‘ I must have been dozing, and imagined the pain greater than it was.’ Awake and conscious, so stout a soldier as he would be the last to give way to childish exhibition of suffering, yet twiceDrummondknew him to be a wake despite his protestation of dozing, and he did not like it that Wing should bury his face in his arms, hiding it from all. What could have occurred to change this buoyant, joyous, highspirited trooper all on a sudden into a sighing, moaning, womanish fellow F Surely not a wound of which, however painful, any soldier might be

proud. Somewhere along - towards four o’clock, when it was again Petersen’s watch and Drummond arose from his blanket after a refreshing sleep of nearly two hours and he and his faithful sentry were standing just outside the mouth of the cave, they distinctly heard the same moan of distress. ‘ Is there anything we can do to ease the' sergeant, sir?’ whispered Patterson. ‘ This makes the second time I have heard him groaning, and it’s so unlike him.’ ‘ We have no opiates, and I douht if he would use one if we had. He declares there is no intense pain.’ ‘ Well, first off, sir, I thought he was dreaming, hut he was "wide awake, and Miss Harvey came in only a moment after I got to him. Could those

devils poison a bullet as they do an arrow, and could that make him go into a fever so soon ?’

‘ I hardly think so; but why did you say dreaming ?’ ‘ Because once it was ‘ mother ’ he called, and again just now I thought he said ‘ mother.’ ’ The lieutenant turned, looking straight at his soldierly subordinate. ‘ By Jove ! Patterson, so did I.’ There was a little stir across the canyon. Moreno was edging aoout uneasily, and beginning to mutter blasphemy at his bonds. ‘ That fellow begged very hard to be moved down into that wolf-hole of a place where the Mexican women are, with those two bunged-up bandits to take care of. Nice time we d have, sir, if the three of them was able to move. The boys’d make short work of them now, the way they’re feeling. I went in and took a look at those two fellows. One of ’em is a goner, but sure they’re dead game, both of ’em. Neither one has a word ta say. ‘ No,’ answered Drummond, ‘ they refused to give their names to mesaid it made no earthly consequence what names we put over their graves, the right sort of fellows would be along after a while and do them all the "honour they cared for. How were the Moreno women behaving ?’

‘ The girl was asleep, sir, I should judge. The old hag was rocking to and fro, croning to herself until one of the two —the live one, I should call him—hurled a curse at her in Spanish and told her to dry up or he’d kill her. All a bluff, for he can’t move a peg.’ ‘ Watch them, well, Patterson, all the same. Hush!’

Again from within the deep shelter of the rocky cave came the low moan of anguish — ‘ Mother ! mother! if you knew —’ ‘ Here, Patterson, I can’t stand this. I’m going in to him.’ And, picking up the dim lantern which he had taken from the Harvey waggon, Drummond stole in on tiptoes and knelt again beside his wounded comrade.

‘ Wing ! sergeant! Look up, man. Speak to me. You must be in distress, mental or bodily. Do let me help you in some way.’ For a moment no reply whatever. Wing’s face was hidden. Then he looked gently upward. ‘ Lieutenant, I’m ashamed to be giving you so much trouble. Please go and lie down again, sir ; you’re worse hurt than I am —only I suppose I get to dozing off, and then turn on that side.’

‘ No, it isn’t that sergeant There’s something wrong, and it hasn t come on you since yesterday morning. Where is your mother ?’ Again Wing turned away, burying his face in his arms.

‘ Listen, sergeant; we hope to get you out of this by to-night. Dr. Gray ought surely to reach us by that time, and while we may have to keep up a field hospital here a day or two, my first duty will be to write and tell your mother how bravely you have served us, and she shall be told that you are wounded, but not in such a way as to alarm her !’ Out came a restraining hand. ‘ Lieutenant, she must not know at all.’

‘ Well, she can’t so far as I’m concerned, as I don’t know her address. But think a moment; you know, and I know ——— Hold on, wait !’ And Drummond rose and tiptoed to a cleft in the rock through which shone a dim light; it was the entrance to the remote inner cave where the Harvey girls were sleeping. Assured that his word could reach there no listening ears Drummond returned, kneeling again by the sergeant’s side. “ Just think, man ; any moment after daybreak the Apaches may be upon us, and, who knows ? it may be my last fight. Of course, I believe that our fellows can stand them off until rescue comes, but a bullet may find me any moment, and then who is there to report your conduct and secure the recognition due you ; or, if the doctor should be late in coming, and fever set in, and this wound prove too much for your strength, is there nothing that ought to be said to

her for you ?’ Again only painful silence. At last Wing spoke. ‘I understand. I appreciate all you say. But I’ve got to think it over, lieutenant. Give me an hour or so. Don’t ask me to tell you now.’

‘So be it, man. Now rest all you possibly can. It’s almost day. The crags are beginning to light up back of us here already. Yes, and the sentry is calling me now. I’ll be back by and by. What is it, Patterson ?’ he whispered, going to the mouth of the cave.

‘ I’ve just come down from the tree up there, sir. You can see quite a way down the range now, though the light is dim, and what I take to be a signal-fire leaped up not three miles below us, certainly this side of where Wing was shot.’ ‘So soon ? All right, then get back to the post just as quick as you can. I’ll rouse the man who has slept longest. All must be astir in half an hour, but you keep watch there.’

And half an hour later it is that, field glass in hand, the young officer is there by Patterson’s side, peering eastward almost into the eye of the sun, searching with anxiety inexpressible for any sign of dust-cloud rising along the trail on'which they came, for the sight he had seen down the range, now brilliant in the morning light; had filled his heart with the first real dread it has yet known. In three places, not more than four or five miles apart, down along the sunlit side of this wild and picturesque mountain chain, signal smokes have been puffing straight up skyward, the nearest only a couple of miles from this lone picket post, but all on the same side of the valley. Last evening the answer came from across the broad desert. They have come over, therefore, and are hastening up the chain to join the eager advance here so close to their hidingplace. Beyond a doubt watchful spies are already lurking among those heights to the west, striving to get close enough to peer into the rocky fortress and estimate the strength of the garrison. Great they well knew it cannot be for did not their keen eyes count nearly twenty ceasing those hated brigands far down towards Sonora Pass, and of that number how many have returned ? only three. Did they not see the flurry and excitement when that sergeant was shot from ambush ? Now, therefore, is the time to strike now while the main body is far away. Whatsoever booty there may be obtainable in that rocky canyon ’tis well worth the attempt. And so from north to south the puff-balls of blue-white smoke go sailing upward through the pines, and it all means speed ! speed ! At seven o’clock the little command had had coffee and a hearty breakfast. No lack of provender here in this hitherto undiscovered robbers’ roost. Drummond, cool, confident, had had his men about him where none others could see or hear, has assigned them the stations which they are to take the instant of alarm, and has given them their instructions. Walsh it is who is now on lookout, and he is peering away down southward so intently that some comrade is prompted to call up to him in a low tone, — ‘ See anything ?’ To which, without removing the glass from under his hat-brim, the Irish trooper merely shakes his head. ‘ Any more smokes p ‘ Sorra a smoke have I seen at all.’ ‘ Well, then, what are you staring at ?’

‘ How can I tell ye till I find out ?’ is the Hibernian reply, and this is enough to to send the corporal on a climb. Drummond at the moment is again kneeling by Wing, who has but just awakened from a fitful sleep, Miss Harvey being the first to hear him stir and sigh. Ruth and her sister, too, seem about to withdraw, but Wing, whose voice is weak now, begs them to remain. ‘ Has anything been seen yet —back on the trail of the Stoneman party ?’ he asks.

‘ No, Sergeant,’ replies Drummond; ‘ but remember that we can only see

some six miles on the trail, after that it is lost in that tortuous ravine down which we rode on the chase. Walsh is up here on lookout, and I’ll ask if he can see anything now ; and calling to one* of the men, Drummond bids him inquire. All eagerly await the reply. At last it comes, — £ !No dust on the hack track, sir,, but something that looks like it far to the south. We think it may be some of our fellows coming back, but it is too faint and far to make it out yet.’ -The corporal is the speaker, his resonant voice contrasting strongly with the feeble accents of his immediate superior, the wounded sergeant.

‘ Then I have something that must be told you. Lieutenant, something Miss Harvey already has an inkling of, for she has met and known ray dear mother. If the pain continues to increase, and fever set in, I maybe unable to tell it later. Some of the men thought I had enlisted under an alias, lieutenant, but they were wrong. Wing is my rightful name. My father was chief officer of the old ‘ Flying Cloud ’ in the days when American clipper ships beat the world. The gold fever seized him, though, and he quit sailing and went to mining in the early days of gan Francisco, and there when I was a little boy of ten he died, leaving mother with not many thousand dollars to take care of herself and me. ‘ You will have your brother to help you ’ were words he spoke the last day of his life and even then I noted how little comfort mother seemed to find in that fact. It was only a few months after father’s death that Uncle Fred, from being an occasional visitor, came to live with us all the time—made his home there, though seldom within-doors night or day. He was the youngest, it seems, of the family,‘the baby,’ and had been petted and spoiled from earliest infancy. I soon found why he came. Mother was often in tears, Uncle Fred al w ays begging and demaudingmoney. The boys at school twitted me about my gambler uncle, though I’ve no doubt their fathers gambled as much as he. These were just before the early days of the great'war that sprang up in ’6l and we boys out on the Pacific coast only vaguely understood. Sometimes Uncle Fred came home drunk and I could hear him threatening' poor mother, and things went from bad to worse, and one night when I was just thirteen I was awakened from a sound sleep by her scream. In an instant I flew to her room, catching up as I ran father’s old bowieknife that always hung by my door. In the dim light I saw her lying by the bedside, a man bending over and choking her. With all my strength I slashed at him just as he turned. I meant to kill but the turn saved him. He sprang to his feet with an oath and cry and rushed to the washstand. I had laid Uncle Fred’s cheek open from ear to chin. It was long before mother could check the flow of blood. It sobered him, of course, and made him piteously weak. For days after that she nursed and cared for him, but forbade my entering the room. Men came to see him —insisted on seeing him, and she would send me to the bank for gold and pay their claims and bid them o-o. At last he was able to walk out with that awful slash on his thin white face. Once then he met and cursed me, but I did not mind, I had acted only to save mother. How could I know that her assailant was her own brother. Then finally with sobs and tears she told me the story, how he had been their mother’s darling, how wild and reckless was his youth, how her mother’s last though seemed to be for him, and how on her knees she, my own mother, promised to take care of poor Freddie and shield himfrom every ill, and this promise she repeated to me, bidding me help her to keep it, and to conceal as far as I could her brother’s misdeeds. For a few months things went a little better. Uncle Fred got a commission in a California regiment towards the close of the war and was sent down to Arizona. Then came more tears and trouble. I couldn’t

understand it all then, but I do now. Uncle Fred was gambling again, drawing on her for means to meet his losses. The old home went under the hammer, and we moved down to San Diego, where father had once invested and had left a little property. And then came the news that Uncle Fred had been dismissed, all on account of drink and gambling, and misappropriation of funds. Miss Harvey knows all about this, lieutenant, for mother told her and had reason to. And next came forgery, and we were stranded. We heard that he had gone after that with a waggon train to Texas. I got employment on a ranch, and then mother married again, married a man who had long befriended us and who could give her a comfortable home. She is now Mrs Malcolm Bland, of San Francisco, and Mr Bland offered to take me into his store, but I loved the.open air and independence. Mr Bland and Mr Harvey had business relations, and when Uncle Fred was next heard from he was ‘ starviug to death,’ he said ‘ actually dying.’ He wrote to mother from Yuma. Mother 'wired me to go to him at once, and I did. He was considerably out at elbows, but in no desperate need, yet, just then Mr Harvey offered him a good salary to take charge of his freight train. We all knew how that must have been broug’ht about, and I felt that it would only be a matter of time when he would 10b his new employer. He did; was discharged, but Mr Bland made the amount good, and the matter was hushed up. Then he drove stage awhile and then disappeared. Mother has written me time and again to find him or find out what has become of him, and I promised 1 would leave no stone unturned Tell her I have kept my word. Tell her I found him. But tell her for any sake to think no more of him. Tell her not to strive to find him. or to ask what he is or even where he is beyond that he has gone to Sonora.’ ‘ Lieutenant,’ said Patterson, suddenly appearing at the opening, ‘ could you step here a moment ?’ Drummond springs up. ‘ One moment, Mr Drummond,’ whispers Wing, weakly. ‘I must say one word to you —alone.’ • I’ll return in a minute, sergeant. Let me see what Patterson wants.’ Miss Harvey and Buth have risen; the former is very pale, and evidently trembling under some strong emotion. Once more she bends over him. ‘ Drink this, Mr Wing, and now talk no moxe than you absolutely have to.’ Then renewing the cooling bandage on his forehead, her hands seems to linger —surely her eyes do as she rises once more to her feet. Meantime the lieutenant has stepped out in the canyon. ‘ What is it, Patterson —quick ?’ ‘ That was some of our fellows, sir, a squad of four ; but they turned all of a sudden and galloped back out of sight. It looks to me as though they were attacked.’ ‘ How far away were they ? How many miles down the desert ?’ ‘Oh; at least six or eight miles down, sir; down beyond where you met them yesterday.’ ‘ How about our trail—anybody in sight there ?’ ‘ Nobody, sir; not even a thing—not even a whiff of dust.’ , Very well, kept on the alert. It’s good to know that the Apaches are not around us yet. Neither bullet nor arrow can get down here so long as we man the rocks above. I’ll be out in a moment.’ Then once more he kneels by Wing, But now Wing’s face is again averted. He is covering it with his arms. ‘ Wing, answer me!’ exclaimed Drummond, suddenly springing to his feet. ‘ By heaven, I demand to know!’ Then down on his knees he goes again, seizing and striving to pull away the nearest arm. t You need not try, you cannot conceal it now. I see it all—all. Miss Harvey.’ he cries, looking up into the face of the trembling girl, who has hastened in at sound of the excitement in his voice—‘Miss Harvey, think of it, ’twas no Apache

who shot him, ’twas a worse savage —his own uncle.

‘ Promise me mother shall not know,’ pleads poor Wing, trying to rise upon his elbow, striving to restrain the lieutenant, who again has started to his feet. ‘ Promise me, Miss Fanny ; yon know how she loved him, how she pleaded with you.’ ‘ Lieutenant, did you ever see a girl behave with greater bravery ? Do you know what she has undergone ? Miss Harvey, I mean.’ ‘ Both are behaving like heroines, Wing, and I think I am beginning to see through this plot at last.’ ‘Never let mother know it—promise me, sir. But when Harvey discharged him —my uncle, I mean —he swore he’d be revenged on the old man, and ’twas he ’ ‘ The double-dyed villain ! I know, I understand now, Wing ; you needn’t tell me. He has been in the pay of the Morales gang for months. He enlisted so as to learn all the movements of officers and scouting parties. He enlisted under his benefactor’s name. He has forged that, too, in all probability, and then, deserting, it was he who sought to carry away these precious girls, and he came within an ace of succeeding. There will be a day of reckoning for him if ever ‘ C ’ troop runs foul of him again. No wonder you couldn’t sleep, poor fellow, for thinking of that mother. This caps the climax of his scoundrelism. Wi^ere —when did you see him last F —since he enlisted ?’ ‘ I promise you this Wing,’ said Drummond, through his clinching teeth, ‘ that there’ll be no time for prayer if ever we set eyes on him again ; there’ll be no mercy.’ ‘ You can’t let your men kill him in cold blood, lieutenant. -I could not shoot him.’ “ No, but I could.’ And now as Wing, exhausted, sinks back to his couch, his head is caught on Fanny Harvey’s arm and next is pillowed in her lap. ‘ Hush !’ she murmurs, bending down over him as mother might over a sleeping child. 1 Hush ! you must not speak again. I know how her heart is bound up in you, and I’m to play mother to you now.'’ And as Drummond, tingling all over with wrath and excitement, stands spellbound for the moment, a light step comes to his side, a little hand is laid on the bandaged arm, and Ruth Harvey’s pretty face, two big tears trickling down her cheeks, is looking up in his. ‘ You, too, will’ be ill, Mr Drummond. Oh, why can’t you go and lie down and rest ? What will we do if both of you are down at once with fever F”

She is younger by over two years than her brave sister. Tall though she has grown, Ruth is but a child, and now in all her excitement anxiety, worn out with the long strain, she begins to cry. She strives to hide it, strives to control the weakness, and, failing in both, strives to turn away. All to no purpose. An arm in a sling is of little avail at such a moment. Whirling quickly about, Drummond brings his other info action. Before the w r eeping little maid is well aware what is happening, her waist is encircled by the strong arm in the darkblue sleeve, and how can she see that she is drawn to his breast, since now her face is buried in both her hands and those hands in the flannel of his hunting-shirt just as high as his heart ? Small wonder is it that Corporal Costigan, hurrying in at the mouth of the cave, stops short at sight of this picturesque parti carree. Any other time he would have had sense enough to face about and tiptoe whence he came, but now there’s no room left for sentiment. Tableaux-vivants are lovely in their way, even in a cave lighted dimly by a hurricane lamp, but sterner scenes are on the curtain. Drummond’s voice is murmuring soothing, ves, caressing words to his sobbing captive. Drummond’s bearded lips, unrebuked, are actually pressing a kiss upon that childish brow when Costigan, with a preliminary clearing of his throat that sounds like a landslide and makes the rock walls ring again, startles Ruth from her blissful

woe, and brings Drummond leaping to the mouth of the cave.

‘ Lieutenant, there’s something coming out over our trail.’ ‘ Thank God !’ sighs Wing, as he raises his eyes to those of his fair nurse. ‘ Thank God ! for your sakes!’ ‘ Thank God, Ruth !’ cries Fanny, extending one hand to her sister, while the other is unaccountably detained. Thank God! it’s father and the Stoneman party and Doctor Gray.’ And Ruth, throwing herself upon her knees by her sister’s side, buries her head upon her shoulder and sobs anew for very joy.

And then comes a sudden start. All in an instant there rings, echoingdown the canyon, the sharp, spiteful crack of rifles, answered by shrieks of terror from the cave where lie the Moreno women, and by other shots out along the range. Three faces blanch with sudden fear; though Wing looks instantly up to say — 1 They can’t harm you, and our men will be here in less than no time.’

Out in the gorge men are springing to their feet and seizing their readyarms ; horses are snorting and stamping ; mules braying in wild terror. Two of the ambulance mules, breaking loose from their fastenings, come charging down the resounding rock, nearly annihilating Moreno, who, bound and helpless, praying and cursing by turns, has rolled himself out of his nook andlies squarely in the way of everything’ and everybody. But above all the clamour, the ring of carbine, the hiss and spat of lead flattening among the rocks, Drummond’s voice is heard clear and commanding, serene and confident. ‘ Every man to his post now. Remember our orders.’

Gazing out into the canyon with dilated eyes, Ruth sees him nimbly clamber up the opposite side towards the point where Walsh is kneeling behind a rock, —Walsh with his face expanded in a grin of delight, the Smoke*just drifting from the muzzle of his carbine as he points with his left hand somewhere out along the cliffs. She sees her soldier boy, crouching low, draw himself to Walsh’s side, sees him glancing eagerly over the rocks, pointing hare and there along the wooded slope beyond her vision; sees him now, with fierce light in his eyes, suddenly clutch Walsh’s sleeve and nod towards some invisible object to the south; sees Walsh toss the butt of his carbine to his shoulder and with quick aim send a bullet driving thither sees Drummond take the field glass, and, resting it on the eastward ledge, gaze long and fixedly out over the eastward way ; sees him start, drawback the glass , wipe the lenses with his silken kerchief, then peer again ; sees him drop them with a gesture almost tragic, but she cannot hear the moan that rises to his lips. ‘ Heavens ! those are Apaches, too!’ (To be continued.)