Overland :: :: University of Virginia Library

It must be remembered that, while a doorway of the Casa was five feet in
depth, it was only four feet wide at the base and less than thirty inches at the
top, so that it was something in the way of a defile and easily defensible. The
moment Thurstane was inside, he placed himself behind one of the solid jambs
of the opening, and presented both sabre and revolver.

Immediately after him a dozen running Indians reached the portal, some of
them plunging into it and the others pushing and howling close around it.
Three successive shots and as many quick thrusts, all delivered in the darkness,
but telling at close quarters on naked chests and faces, cleared the passage in
half a minute. By this time Texas Smith, Coronado, and Shubert had leaped
up, got their senses about them, and commenced a fire of rifle shot, pistol shot,
and buck-and-ball. In another half minute nothing remained in the doorway
but two or three corpses, while outside there were howls as of wounded. The
attack here was repulsed, at least for the present.

But at the other door matters had gone differently, and, as it seemed, fatally
ill. There had been no one fully awakened to keep the assailants at bay until the
other defenders could rouse themselves and use their weapons. Half a dozen
Apaches, holding their lances before them like pikes, rushed over the sleeping
Sweeny and burst clean into the room before Meyer and his men were fairly
on their feet. In the profound darkness not a figure could be distinguished;
and there was a brief trampling and yelling, during which no one was hurt.
Lances and bows were useless in a room fifteen feet by ten, without a ray of
light. The Indians threw down their long weapons, drew their knives, groped
hither and thither, struck out at random, and cut each other. Nevertheless,
they were masters of the ground. Meyer and his people, crouching in corners,
could not see and dared not fire. Sweeny, awakened by a kneading of Apache
boots, was so scared that he lay perfectly still, and either was not noticed or
was neglected as dead. His Mexican comrade had rushed along with the assailants,
got ahead of them, gained the inner rooms, and hastened up to the roof.
In short, it was a completely paralyzed defence.

Had the mass of the Apaches promptly followed their daring leaders, the
garrison would have been destroyed. But, as so often happens in night attacks,
there was a pause of caution and investigation. Fifty warriors halted around

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the doorway, some whooping or calling, and others listening, while the five or six
within, probably fearful of being hit if they spoke, made no answer. The sentinel
on the roof fired down without seeing any one, and had arrows sent back at
him by men who were as blinded as himself. The darkness and mystery crippled
the attack almost as completely as the defence.

Sweeny was the first to break the charm. A warrior who attempted to enter
the doorway struck his boot against a pair of legs, and stooped down to feel if
they were alive. By a lucky intuition of scared self-defence, the little Paddy
made a furious kick into the air with both his solid army shoes, and sent the invader
reeling into the outer darkness. Then he fired his gun just as it lay, and
brought down one of the braves inside with a broken ankle. The blaze of the
discharge faintly lighted up the room, and Meyer let fly instantly, killing another
of the intruders. But the Indians also had been able to see. Those who survived
uttered their yell and plunged into the corners, stabbing with their knives.
There was a wild, blind, eager scuffling, mixed with another shot or two, oaths,
whooping, screams, tramplings, and aimless blows with musket-butts.

Reinforcements arrived for both parties, four or five more Apaches stealing
into the room, while Thurstane and Shubert came through from Coronado's
side. Hitherto, it did not seem that the garrison had lost any killed except the
sentry who had fallen outside; but presently the lieutenant heard Shubert cry out
in that tone of surprise, pain, and anger, which announces a severe wound.

The scream was followed by a fall, a short scuffle, repeated stabbings, and
violent breathing mixed with low groans. Thurstane groped to the scene of
combat, put out his left hand, felt a naked back, and drove his sabre strongly
and cleanly into it. There was a hideous yell, another fall, and then silence.

After that he stood still, not knowing whither to move. The trampling of
feet, the hasty breathing of struggling men, the dull sound of blows upon living
bodies, the yells and exclamations and calls, had all ceased at once. It seemed
to him as if everybody in the room had been killed except himself. He could
not hear a sound in the darkness besides the beating of his own heart, and an occasional
feeble moan rising from the floor. In all his soldierly life he had never
known a moment that was anything like so horrible.

At last, after what seemed minutes, remembering that it was his duty as an
officer to be a rallying point, he staked his life on his very next breath and called
out firmly, “Meyer!”

“Here!” answered the sergeant, as if he were at roll-call.

“Where are you?”

“I am near the toorway, Leftenant. Sweeny is with me.”

“'Yis I be,” interjected Sweeny.

Thurstane, feeling his way cautiously, advanced to the entrance and found
the two men standing on one side of it.

“Where are the Indians?” he whispered.

“I think they are all out, except the tead ones, Leftenant.”

Thurstane gave an order: “All forward to the door.”

Steps of men stealing from the inner room responded to this command.

“Call the roll, Sergeant,” said Thurstane.

In a low voice Meyer recited the names of the six men who belonged to his
squad, and of Shubert. All responded except the last.

“I am avraid Shupert is gone, Leftenant,” muttered the sergeant; and the
officer replied, “I am afraid so.”

All this time there had been perfect silence outside, as if the Indians also

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were in a state of suspense and anxiety. But immediately after the roll-call had
ceased, a few arrows whistled through the entrance and struck with short sharp
spats into the hard-finished partition within.

“Yes, they are all out,” said Thurstane. “But we must keep quiet till daybreak.”

There followed a half hour which seemed like a month. Once Thurstane
stole softly through the Casa to Coronado's room, found all safe there, and returned,
stumbling over bodies both going and coming. At last the slow dawn
came and sent a faint, faint radiance through the door, enabling the benighted
eyes within to discover one dolorous object after another. In the centre of the
room lay the boy Shubert, perfectly motionless and no doubt dead. Here and
there, slowly revealing themselves through the diminishing darkness, like horrible
waifs left uncovered by a falling river, appeared the bodies of four Apaches,
naked to the breechcloth and painted black, all quiet except one which twitched
convulsively. The clay floor was marked by black pools and stains which were
undoubtedly blood. Other fearful blotches were scattered along the entrance,
as if grievously wounded men had tottered through it, or slain warriors had been
dragged out by their comrades.

While the battle is still in suspense a soldier looks with but faint emotion,
and almost without pity, upon the dead and wounded. They are natural; they
belong to the scene; what else should he see? Moreover, the essential sentiments
of the time and place are, first, a hard egoism which thinks mainly of
self-preservation, and second, a stern sense of duty which regulates it. In the
fiercer moments of the conflict even these feelings are drowned in a wild excitement
which may be either exultation or terror. Thus it is that the ordirary
sympathies of humanity for the suffering and for the dead are suspended.

Looking at Shubert, our lieutenant simply said to himself, “I have lost a
man. My command is weakened by so much.” Then his mind turned with
promptness to the still living and urgent incidents of the situation. Could he
peep out of the doorway without getting an arrow through the head? Was the
roof of the Casa safe from escalade? Were any of his people wounded?

This last question he at once put in English and Spanish. Kelly replied,
“Slightly, sir,” and pointed to his left shoulder, pretty smartly laid open by the
thrust of a knife. One of the Indian muleteers, who was sitting propped up in
a corner, faintly raised his head and showed a horrible gash in his thigh. At
a sign from Thurstane another muleteer bound up the wound with the sleeve of
Shubert's shirt, which he slashed off for the purpose. Kelly said, “Never mind
me, sir; it's no great affair, sir.”

“Two killed and two wounded,” thought the lieutenant. “We are losing
more than our proportion.”

As soon as it was light enough to distinguish objects clearly, a lively fire
opened from the roof of the Casa. Judging that the attention of the assailants
would be distracted by this, Thurstane cautiously edged his head forward
and peeped through the doorway. The Apaches were still in the plaza; he discovered
something like fifty of them; they were jumping about and firing arrows
at the roof. He inferred that this could not last long; that they would
soon be driven away by the musketry from above; that, in short, things were
going well.

After a time, becoming anxious lest Clara should expose herself to the missiles,
he went to Coronado's room, sent one of the Mexicans to reinforce Meyer,
and then climbed rapidly to the tower, taking along sabre, rifle, and revolver.

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He was ascending the last of the stepped sticks, and had the trap-door of the
isolated room just above him, when he heard a shout, “Come up here, somebody!”

It was the snuffling utterance of Phineas Glover, who slept on the roof as
permanent guard of the ladies. Tumbling into the room, Thurstane found the
skipper and two muleteers defending the doorway against five Apaches, who had
reached the roof, three of them already on their feet and plying their arrows,
while the two others were clambering over the ledge. Clara and Mrs. Stanley
were crouched on their beds behind the shelter of the wall.

The young man's first desperate impulse was to rush out and fight hand to
hand. But remembering the dexterity of Indians in single combat, he halted
just in time to escape a flight of missiles, placed himself behind the jamb of the
doorway, and fired his rifle. At that short distance Sweeny would hardly have
missed; and the nearest Apache, leaning forward with outspread arms, fell
dead. Then the revolver came into play, and another warrior dropped his bow,
his shoulder shattered. Glover and the muleteers, steadied by this opportune
reinforcement, reloaded and resumed their file-firing. Guns were too much for
archery; three Indians were soon stretched on the roof; the others slung themselves
over the eaves and vanished.

“Darned if they didn't reeve a tackle to git up,” exclaimed Glover in amazement.

It appeared that the savages had twisted lariats into long cords, fastened
rude grapples to the end of them, flung them from the wall below the Casa, and
so made their daring escalade.

“Look out!” called Thurstane to the investigating Yankee. But the warning
came too late; Glover uttered a yell of surprise, pain, and rage; this time it
was not his nose, but his left ear.

“Reckon they'll jest chip off all my feeturs 'fore they git done with me,” he
grinned, feeling of the wounded part. “Git my figgerhead smooth all round.”

To favor the escalade, the Apaches in the plaza had renewed their war-whoop,
sent flights of arrows at the Casa, and made a spirited but useless charge on the
doorways. Its repulse was the signal for a general and hasty flight. Just as
the rising sun spread his haze of ruddy gold over the east, there was a despairing
yell which marked the termination of the conflict, and then a rush for the
gaps in the wall of the enclosure. In one minute from the signal for retreat the
top of the hill did not contain a single painted combatant. No vigorous pursuit;
the garrison had had enough of fighting; besides, ammunition was becoming
precious. Texas Smith alone, insatiably bloodthirsty and an independent
fighter, skulked hastily across the plaza, ambushed himself in a crevice of the
ruin, and took a couple of shots at the savages as they mounted their ponies at
the foot of the hill and skedaddled loosely across the plain.

When he returned he croaked out, with an unusual air of excitement, “Big
thing!”

“What is a pig ding?” inquired Sergeant Meyer.

“Never see Injuns make such a fight afore.”

“Nor I,” assented Meyer.

“Stranger, they fowt first-rate,” affirmed Smith, half admiring the Apaches.
“How many did we save?”

“Here are vour in our room, und the leftenant says there are three on the
roof, und berhabs we killed vour or vive outside.”

“A dozen!” chuckled Texas, “besides the wounded. Let's hev a look at
the dead uns.”

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Going into Meyer's room, be found one of the Apaches still twitching, and
immediately cut his throat. Then he climbed to the roof, gloated over the three
bodies there, dragged them one by one to the ledge, and pitched them into the
plaza.

“That'll settle 'em,” he remarked with a sigh of intense satisfaction, like that
of a baby when it has broken its rattle. Coming down again, he looked all the
corpses over again, and said with an air of disappointment which was almost
sentimental, “On'y a dozen!”

“I kin keer for the Injuns,” he volunteered when the question came up of
burying the dead. “I'd rather keer for 'em than not.”

Before Thurstane knew what was going on, Texas had finished his labor of
love. A crevice in the northern wall of the enclosure looked out upon a steep
slope of marl, almost a precipice, which slanted sheer into the boiling flood of
the San Juan. To this crevice Texas dragged one naked carcass after another,
bundled it through, launched it with a vigorous shove, and then watched it with
a pantherish grin, licking his chops as it were, as it rolled down the steep,
splashed into the river, and set out on its swift voyage toward the Pacific.

“I s'pose you'll want to dig a hole for him,” he said, coming into the Casa
and looking wistfully at the body of poor young Shubert.

Sergeant Meyer motioned him to go away. Thurstane was entering in his
journal an inventory of the deceased soldier's effects having already made a
minute of the date and cause of his death. These with other facts, such as name,
age, physical description, birthplace, time of service, amount of pay due, balance
of clothing-account and stoppages, must be more or less repeated on various
records, such as the descriptive book of the company, the daily return, the
monthly return, the quarterly return, the muster-roll from which the name would
be dropped, and the final statements which were to go to the Adjutant-General
and the Paymaster-General. Even in the desert the monstrous accountability
system of the army lived and burgeoned.

Nothing of importance happened until about noon, when the sentinel on the
outer wall announced that the Apaches were approaching in force, and Thurstane
gave orders to barricade one of the doors of the Casa with some large blocks of
adobe, saying to himself, “I ought to have done it before.”

This work well under way, he hastened to the brow of the hill and reconnoitred
the enemy.

“They are not going to attack,” said Coronado. “They are going to torture
the girl Pepita.”

Thurstane turned away sick at heart, observing, “I must keep the women in
the Casa.”