University of Virginia Library

24. CHAPTER XXIV.

When Thurstane, turning his back on the torture scene, had ascended to the
roof of the Casa, he found the ladies excited and anxious.

“What is the matter?” asked Clara at once, taking hold of his sleeve with
the tips of her fingers, in a caressing, appealing way, which was common with
her when talking to those she liked.

Ordinarily our officer was a truth-teller; indeed, there was nothing which
came more awkwardly to him than deception; he hated and despised it as if it
were a personage, a criminal, an Indian. But here was a case where he must
stoop to falsification, or at least to concealment.

“The Apaches are just below,” he mumbled. “Not one of you women must
venture out. I will see to everything. Be good now.”

She gave his sleeve a little twitch, smiled confidingly in his face, and sat
down to do some much-needed mending.

Having posted Sweeny at the foot of the ladders, with instructions to let none
of the women descend, Thurstane hastened back to the exterior wall, drawn by
a horrible fascination. With his field-glass he could distinguish every action of
the tragedy which was being enacted on the plain. Pepita, entirely stripped of
her clothing, was already bound to the sapling which stood by the side of the
rivulet, and twenty or thirty of the Apaches were dancing around her in a circle,
each one approaching her in turn, howling in her ears and spitting in her face.
The young man had read and heard much of the horrors of that torture-dance,
which stamps the American Indian as the most ferocious of savages; but he
had not understood at all how large a part insult plays in this ceremony of deliberate
cruelty; and, insulting a woman! he had not once dreamed it. Now,
when he saw it done, his blood rushed into his head and he burst forth in choked
incoherent curses.

“I can't stand this,” he shouted, advancing upon Coronado with clenched
fists. “We must charge.”

The Mexican shook his head in a sickly, scared way, and pointed to the left.
There was a covering party of fifty or sixty warriors; it was not more than a
quarter of a mile from the eastern end of the enclosure; it was in position to
charge either upon that, or upon the flank of any rescuing sally.

“We can do it,” insisted the lieutenant, who felt as if he could fight twenty
men.

“We can't,” replied Coronado. “I won't go, and my men shan't go.”

Thurstane thought of Clara, covered his face with his hands, and sobbed
aloud. Texas Smith stared at him with a kind of contemptuous pity, and offered
such consolation as it was in his nature to give.

“Capm, when they've got through this job they'll travel.”

The hideous prelude continued for half an hour. The Apaches in the dance
were relieved by their comrades in the covering party, who came one by one to
take their turns in the round of prancing, hooting, and spitting. Then came a
few minutes of rest; then insult was followed by outrage.

The girl was loosed from the sapling and lifted until her head was even with
the lower branches, three warriors holding her while two others extended her
arms and fixed them to two stout limbs. What the fastenings were Thurstane
could guess from the fact that he saw blows given, and heard the long shrill
scream of a woman in uttermost agony. Then there was more hammering
around the sufferer's feet, and more shrill wailing. She was spiked through the
palms and the ankles to the tree. It was a crucifixion.

“By —!” groaned Thurstane, “I never will spare an Indian as long as
I live.”

“Capm, I'm with you,” said Texas Smith. “I seen my mother fixed like
that. I seen it from the bush whar I was a hidin'. I was a boy then. I've
killed every Injun I could sence.”

Now the dance was resumed. The Apaches pranced about their victim to
the music of her screams. The movement quickened; at last they ran around
the tree in a maddened crowd; at every shriek they stamped, gestured, and
yelled demoniacally. Now and then one of them climbed the girl's body and appeared
to stuff something into her mouth. Then the lamentable outcries sank

to a gasping and sobbing which could only be imagined by the spectators on
the hill.

“Can't you hit some of them?” Thurstane asked Texas Smith.

“Better let 'em finish,” muttered the borderer. “The gal can't be helped.
She's as good as dead, Capm.”

After another rest came a fresh scene of horror. Several of the Apaches, no
doubt chiefs or leading braves, caught up their bows and renewed the dance.
Running in a circle at full speed about the tree, each one in turn let fly an arrow
at the victim, the object being to send the missile clear through her.

“That's the wind-up,” muttered Texas Smith. “It's my turn now.”

He leaped from the wall to the ground, ran sixty or eighty yards down the
hill, halted, aimed, and fired. One of the warriors, a fellow in a red shirt who
had been conspicuous in the torture scene, rolled over and lay quiet. The
Apaches, who had been completely absorbed by their frantic ceremony, and who
had not looked for an attack at the moment, nor expected death at such a distance,
uttered a cry of surprise and dismay. There was a scramble of ten or fifteen
screaming horsemen after the audacious borderer. But immediately on
firing he had commenced a rapid retreat, at the same time reloading. He turned
and presented his rifle; just then, too, a protecting volley burst from the rampart;
another Apache fell, and the rest retreated.

“Capm, it's all right,” said Texas, as he reascended the ruin. “We're squar
with 'em.”

“We might have broken it up,” returned Thurstane sullenly.

“No, Capm. You don't know 'em. They'd got thar noses p'inted to torture
that gal. If they didn't do it thar, they'd a done it a little furder off. They was
bound to do it. Now it's done, they'll travel.”

Warned by their last misadventure, the Indians presently retired to their
usual camping ground, leaving their victim attached to the sapling.

“I'll fotch her up,” volunteered Texas, who had a hyena's hankering after
dead bodies. “Reckon you'd like to bury her.”

He mounted, rode slowly, and with prudent glances to right and left, down
the hill, halted under the tree, stood up in his saddle and worked there for some
minutes. The Apaches looked on from a distance, uttering yells of exultation
and making opprobrious gestures. Presently Texas resumed his seat and cantered
gently back to the ruins, bearing across his saddle-bow a fearful burden,
the naked body of a girl of eighteen, pierced with more than fifty arrows, stained
and streaked all over with blood, the limbs shockingly mangled, and the mouth
stuffed with rags.

While nearly every other spectator turned away in horror, he glared steadily
and calmly at the corpse, repeating, “That's Injin fun, that is. That's what
they brag on, that is.”

“Bury her outside the wall,” ordered Thurstane, with averted face. “And
listen, all you people, not a word of this to the women.”

“We shall be catechised,” said Coronado.

“You must do the lying,” replied the officer. He was so shaken by what he
had witnessed that he did not dare to face Clara for an hour afterward, lest his
discomposure should arouse her suspicions. When he did at last visit the tower,
she was quiet and smiling, for Coronado had done his lying, and done it well.

“So there was no attack,” she said. “I am so glad!”

“Only a little skirmish. You heard the firing, of course.”

“Yes. Coronado told us about it. What a horrible howling the Indians
made! There were some screams that were really frightful.”

“It was their last demonstration. They will probably be gone in the morning.”

“Poor Pepita! She will be carried off,” said Clara, a tear or two stealing
down her cheek.

“Yes, poor Pepita!” sighed Thurstane.

The muleteer who had been killed in the assault was already buried. At
sundown came the funeral of the soldier Shubert. The body, wrapped in a
blanket, was borne by four Mexicans to the grave which had been prepared for
it, followed by his three comrades with loaded muskets, and then by all the
other members of the party, except Mrs. Stanley, who looked down from her
roof upon the spectacle. Thurstane acted as chaplain, and read the funeral service
from Clara's prayer-book, amidst the weeping of women and the silence of
men. The dead young hero was lowered into his last resting-place. Sergeant
Meyer gave the order: “Shoulder arms—ready—present—aim—fire!” The
ceremony was ended; the muleteers filled the grave; a stone was placed to
mark it; so slept a good soldier.

Now came another night of anxiety, but also of quiet. In the morning, when
eager eyes looked through the yellow haze of dawn over the plain, not an
Apache was to be seen.

“They are gone,” said Coronado to Thurstane, after the two had made the
tour of the ruins and scrutinized every feature of the landscape. “What next?”

Thurstane swept his field-glass around once more, searching for some outlet
besides the horrible cañon, and searching in vain.

“We must wait a day or so for our wounded,” he said. “Then we must
start back on our old trail. I don't see anything else before us.”

“It is a gloomy prospect,” muttered Coronado, thinking of the hundred miles
of rocky desert, and of the possibility that Apaches might be ambushed at the
end of it.

He had been so anxious about himself for a few days that he had cared for little
else. He had been humble, submissive to Thurstane, and almost entirely indifferent
about Clara.

“We ought at least to try something in the way of explorations,” continued
the lieutenant. “To begin with, I shall sound the river. I shall be thought a
devil of a failure if I don't carry back some information about the topography of
this region.”

“Can you paddle your boat against the current?” asked Coronado.

“I doubt it. But we can make a towing cord of lariats and let it out from
the shore; perhaps swing it clear across the river in that way—with some paddling,
you know.”

“It is an excellent plan,” said Coronado.

The day passed without movement, excepting that Texas Smith and two
Mexicans explored the cañon for several miles, returning with a couple of lame
ponies and a report that the Apaches had undoubtedly gone southward. At
night, however, the animals were housed and sentries posted as usual, for Thurstane
feared lest the enemy might yet return and attempt a surprise.

The next morning, all being quiet, the Buchanan boat was launched. A
couple of fairish paddles were chipped out of bits of driftwood, and a towline a
nundred feet long was made of lariats. Thurstane further provisioned the cockle-shell
with fishing tackle, a soundling line, his own rifle, Shubert's musket and accoutrements,
a bag of hard bread, and a few pounds of jerked beef.

“You are not going to make a voyage!” stared Coronado.

“I am preparing for accidents. We may get carried down the river.”

“I thought you proposed to keep fast to the shore.”

“I do. But the lariats may break.”

Coronado said no more. He lighted a cigarito and looked on with an air of
dreamy indifference. He had hit upon a plan for getting rid of Thurstane.

The next question was, who could handle a boat? The lieutenant wanted
two men to keep it out in the current while he used the sounding line and recorded
results.

“Guess I'll do 's well 's the nex' hand,” volunteered Captain Glover. “Got
a sore ear, 'n' a hole in my nose, but reckon I'm 'n able-bodied seaman for all
that. Hev rowed some in my time. Rowed forty mile after a whale onct, 'n'
caught the critter—fairly rowed him down. Current's putty lively. Sh'd say 't
was tearin' off 'bout five knots an hour. But guess I'll try it. Sh'd kinder like
to feel water under me agin.”

“Captain, you shall handle the ship,” smiled Thurstane. “I'll mention you
by name in my report. Who next?”

“Me,” yelped Sweeny.

“Can you row, Sweeny?”

“I can, Liftinant.”

“You may try it.”

“Can I take me gun, Liftinant?” demanded Sweeny, who was extravagantly
fond and proud of his piece, all the more perhaps because he held it in awe.

“Yes, you can take it, and Glover can have Shubert's. Though, 'pon my
honor, I don't know why we should carry firearms. It's old habit, I suppose.
It's a way we have in the army.”

The lieutenant had no sort of anxiety on the score of his enterprise. His
plan was to swing out into the current, and, if the boat proved perfectly manageable,
to cut loose from the towline and paddle across, sounding the whole
breadth of the channel. It seemed easy enough and safe enough. When he left
the Casa Grande after breakfast he contrived to kiss Clara's hand, but it did not
once occur to him that it would be proper to bid her farewell. He was very far
indeed from guessing that in the knot of the lariat which was fast to the bow of
his coracle there was a fatal gash. It was not suspicion of evil, but merely a
habit of precaution, a prudential tone of mind which he had acquired in service,
that led him at the last moment to say (making Coronado tremble in his boots),
“Mr. Glover, have you thoroughly overhauled the cord?”

“Give her a look jest before we went up to breakfast,” replied the skipper.
“She'll hold.”

Coronado, who stood three feet distant, blew a quiet little whiff of smoke
through his thin purple lips, meanwhile dreamily contemplating the speaker.

“Git in, you paddywhack,” said Glover to Sweeny. “Grab yer paddle.
T'other end; that's the talk. Now then. All aboard that's goin'. Shove off.”

In a few seconds, impelled from the shore by the paddles, the boat was at the
full length of the towline and in the middle of the boiling current.

“Will it never break?” thought Coronado, smoking a little faster than usual,
but not moving a muscle.

Yes. It had already broken. At the first pause in the paddling the mangled
lariat had given way.

In spite of the renewed efforts of the oarsmen, the boat was flying down the
San Juan.