it was not quite an all-summer campaign. the united states government drove the hostiles over the border into the provinces of the mexican government, which understood the problem rather better than ourselves, and hunted the apache, as we the coyote, with a bounty upon his scalp.
thereafter some of the troops sat down at the water-holes along the border to watch, and to write back pathetic requests for all the delicacies supplied by the commissariat, from anchovy paste and caviare to tinned mushrooms and cove oysters. a man may live upon bacon and beans and camp bread, or upon even less, when his duty to his country demands, but it is not in the articles of war that he should continue to do so any longer than lack of transportation compels.
others of the troops were ordered in, and among them was landor's. it had gone out for a twenty days' scout, and had been in the field two months. it was ragged and all but barefoot, and its pack-train was in a pitiable way. weeks of storm in the mogollons and days of quivering heat on the plains had brought its clothing and blankets to the last stages.
moreover, landor was very ill. in the mogollons he had gathered and pressed specimens of the gorgeous[pg 134] wild flowers that turn the plateaux into a million-hued eden, and one day there had lurked among the blossoms a sprig of poison weed, with results which were threatening to be serious. he rode at the head of his column, however, as it made for home by way of the aravaypa ca?on.
were the ca?on of the aravaypa in any other place than arizona, which, as the intelligent public knows, is all one wide expanse of dry and thirsty country, a parched place in the wilderness, a salt land, and not inhabited; were it in any other place, it would be set forth in railway folders, and there would be camping privileges and a hotel, and stages would make regular trips to it, and one would come upon groups of excursionists on burros, or lunching among its boulders. already it has been in a small way discovered, and is on the road to being vulgarized by the camera. the lover of nature, he who loves the soul as well as the face of her, receives when he sees a photograph of a fine bit of scenery he had felt in a way his own property until then, something the blow that the lover of a woman does when he learns that other men than he have known her caresses.
but in the days of victorio and his predecessors and successors, aravaypa ca?on was a fastness. men went in to hunt for gold, and sometimes they came out alive, and sometimes they did not. occasionally apaches met their end there as well.
there was one who had done so now. the troops looking up at him, rejoiced. he was crucified upon an[pg 135] improvised cross of unbarked pine branches, high up at the top of a sheer peak of rock. he stood out black and strange against the whitish blue of the sky. his head was dropped upon his fleshless breast, and there was a vulture perched upon it, prying its hooked bill around in the eye sockets. two more, gorged and heavy, balanced half asleep upon points of stone.
it was all a most charming commentary upon the symbol and practice of christianity, in a christian land, and the results thereof as regarded the heathen of that land—if one happened to see it in that way.
but the men did not. it was hardly to be expected that they should, both because the abstract and the ethical are foreign to the major part of mankind, in any case; and also because, with this particular small group of mankind, there was too fresh a memory of a dead woman lying by the bodies of her two children in a smouldering log cabin among the mountains and the pines.
they rode on, along the trail, at a walk and by file, and directly they came upon the other side of the question. landor's horse stopped, with its forefeet planted, and a snort of fright. landor had been bent far back, looking up at a shaft of rock that rose straight from the bottom and pierced the heavens hundreds of feet above, and he was very nearly unseated. but he caught himself and held up his hand as a signal to halt.
there were two bodies lying across the trail in front of him. he dismounted, and throwing his reins to the[pg 136] trumpeter went forward to investigate. it was not a pleasant task. the men had been dead some time and their clothing was beginning to fall away in shreds. some of their outfit was scattered about, and he could guess from it that they had been prospectors. a few feet away was the claim they had been working. only their arms had been stolen, otherwise nothing appeared to be missing. there was even in the pockets considerable coin, in gold and silver, which landor found, when he took a long knife from his saddle bags, and standing as far off as might be, slit the cloth open.
the knife was one he had brought from home, seizing it from the kitchen table at the last minute. it was very sharp and had been felipa's treasured bread cutter. it came in very well just now, chiefly because of its length.
he called the first sergeant to his aid. brewster was in the rear of the command, and, as had occurred with increasing frequency in the last two months, showed no desire to be of any more use than necessary. as for cairness, who had been more of a lieutenant to landor than the officer himself, he had left the command two days before and gone back to the san carlos reservation.
so the captain and the first sergeant took up the money and the loose papers, together with a couple of rings from the hands, and wrapping them in a poncho, carried them off to serve as possible means of identification, for it had got beyond all question of features. then two men moved the bodies from the[pg 137] trail, with long sticks, and covered them with a pile of stones. landor found a piece of board by the mouth of the claim and drew on it, with an end of charred stick, a skull and cross bones with a bow and arrow, and stood it up among the stones, in sign to all who might chance to pass thereby that since men had here died at the hands of the apaches, other men might yet meet a like fate.
on the next day they were in the flat, nearing the post. there was a dust storm. earlier in the morning the air had grown suddenly more dry, more close and lifeless than ever, suffocating, and a yellow cloud had come in the western sky. then a hot wind began to blow the horses' manes and tails, to snarl through the greasewood bushes, and to snap the loose ends of the men's handkerchiefs sharply. the cloud had thinned and spread, high up in the sky, and the light had become almost that of a sullen evening. black bits floated and whirled high overhead, and birds beat about in the gale. gradually the gale and the dust had dropped nearer to the earth, a sand mist had gone into every pore and choked and parched. and now the tepid, thick wind was moaning across the plain, meeting no point of resistance anywhere.
landor still rode at the head of his column, but his chin was sunk down on his red silk neckerchief, his face was swollen and distorted under its thick beard, and his eyes were glazed. they stared straight ahead into the sand whirl and the sulphurous glare. he had sent brewster on ahead some hours before. "you[pg 138] will want to see miss mclane as soon as possible," he had said, "and there is no need of both of us here."
brewster had taken an escort and disappeared down the vista of white sands and scrub growth, though it was landor himself who should have gone. he swayed now in the saddle, his thick lips hung open, and he moved in a mental cloud as dense as the one of dust that poured round him.
brewster reached the post some eighteen hours ahead of him. he reported, and saw miss mclane; then he made himself again as other men and went down to the post trader's, with a definite aim in view, that was hardly to be guessed from his loitering walk. there were several already in the officers' room, and they talked, as a matter of course, of the campaign.
"seen the way landor's been catching it?" they asked.
and brewster said he had not.
they went on to tell him that it was all in the tucson papers, which brewster knew, however, quite as well as they did themselves. he had made friends among the citizen volunteers of san tomaso on the night they had camped by the old lake bed, and they had seen that he was kept supplied with cuttings.
but he pleaded entire ignorance, and the others were at considerable pains to enlighten him.
it appeared that landor was accused of cowardice, and that his name was handled with the delicate sarcasm usual with western journalism—as fine and pointed as a stone-age axe.
[pg 139]
brewster poured himself a glass of beer and drank it contemplatively and was silent. then he set it down on the bare table with a sharp little rap, suggesting determination made. it was suggestive of yet more than this, and caused them to say "well?" with a certain eagerness. he shrugged his shoulders and changed the subject, refusing pointedly to be brought back to it, and succeeding altogether in the aim which had brought him down there.
but that same night he picked two for their reputation of repeating all they knew, and took them into his own rooms and told his story to them. and he met once again with such success that when landor rode into the post the next day at about guard-mounting, three officers, meeting him, raised their caps and passed on.
it struck even through landor's pain-blurred brain that it was odd. but the few faculties he could command still were all engaged in keeping himself in the saddle until he could reach his own house, where ellton and felipa were waiting to get him to his room.
he went upon the sick report at once, and for three days thereafter raved of crucified women with fair hair, of children lying dead in the ca?on, of the holes in his boot soles, and a missing aparejo, also of certain cursed citizens, and the bad quality of the canned butter.
then he began to come to himself and to listen to all that felipa had to tell him of the many things she had not put in her short and labored letters. he saw[pg 140] that she looked more beautiful and less well than when he had left her. there was a shadow of weariness on her face that gave it a soft wistfulness which was altogether becoming. he supposed it was because she had nursed him untiringly, as she had; but it did not occur to him to thank her, because she had done only what was a wife's duty, only what he would have done for her if the case had been reversed. toward the end of the day he began to wonder that no one had been to see him, and he spoke of it.
"mr. ellton was here this morning," felipa told him, "and he will be in again before retreat."
but he was not satisfied. his entry into the post and the cool greeting of the three officers began to come back to him.
felipa could be untruthful with an untroubled soul and countenance to those she disliked. in her inherited code, treachery to an enemy was not only excusable, but right. but not even in order to save her husband worry could she tell him a shadow of an untruth. she did her best, which was far from good, to evade, however. the others would probably come, now that he could see them.
but had they come? he insisted.
the commandant had sent his orderly with a note.
he raised himself from the pillows too abruptly for a very weak man. "what is the matter, felipa?" he demanded.
she told him that she did not know, and tried to coax him back to quietness.
[pg 141]
"there is something," he insisted, dropping his head down again wearily.
"perhaps there is," she admitted unwillingly.
he lay thinking for a while, then had her send the striker for ellton, who promptly, and awkwardly, replied to the anxious question as to what might be the trouble, that he was not quite sure, but perhaps it had to do with these—"these" being a small roll of newspaper clippings he took from his portfolio.
landor looked them over and gave them back contemptuously. "well?" he said, "there's nothing new in all that. it's devilish exasperating, but it's old as hamilcar. i made an enemy of a fellow from tucson, reporter named stone, over at the san carlos agency a few years ago. he's been waiting to roast me ever since. there must be something else."
the adjutant agreed reluctantly. "i think there is. it wouldn't surprise me if some one had been talking. i can't get at it. but you must not bother about it. it will blow over."
as an attempt at consolation, it failed. landor fairly sprang into a sitting posture, with a degree of impulsiveness that was most unusual with him. his eyes glistened from the greenish circles around them. "blow over! good lord! do you suppose i'll let it blow over? it's got to be sifted to the bottom. and you know that as well as i do." he lay weakly back again, and felipa came to the edge of the bed and, sitting upon it, stroked his head with her cool hand.
ellton ventured some assistance. "i do know this[pg 142] much, that the c. o. got a telegram from some eastern paper, asking if the reports of your cowardice as given in the territorial press were true."
landor asked eagerly what he had answered.
"i didn't see the telegram, but it was in effect that he had no knowledge of anything of the sort, and put no faith in it."
"doesn't he, though? then why doesn't he come around and see me when i'm lying here sick?" he was wrathful and working himself back into a fever very fast.
felipa shook her head at ellton. "don't get yourself excited about it, jack dear," she soothed, and ellton also tried to quiet him.
"he will come, i dare say. and so will the others, now that you are able to see them. brewster inquired."
the captain's lips set.
ellton wondered, but held his peace. and the commandant did go to landor's quarters within the next few hours. which was ellton's doings.
"i don't know what has been said, major, but something more than just what's in the papers must have gotten about. that sort of mud-slinging is too common to cause comment, even. it must be some spite work. there's no reason to suppose, surely, that after a quarter of a century of gallant service he's been and shown the white feather. he's awfully cut up, really he is. he's noticed it, of course, and it's too deuced bad, kicking a man when he's down sick and can't help himself."
[pg 143]
the major stopped abruptly in his walk to and fro and faced him. "do you know more about it, then, than brewster who was with him?"
ellton fairly leaped in the air. "brewster! so it's brewster! the in—" then he recollected that brewster was going to be the major's son-in-law, and he stopped short. "no wonder he keeps away from there," he simmered down.
"he told me it was because he and landor had had some trouble in the field, and weren't on the best of terms."
"i say, major, if he's got any charges to prefer why doesn't he put them on paper and send them in to you, or else shut up his head?" he was losing his temper again.
the major resumed his walk and did not answer.
ellton went on, lapsing into the judicial. "in the meantime, anyway, a man's innocent until he's proven guilty. i say, do go round and see him. the others will follow your lead. he's awfully cut up and worried, and he's sick, you know."
so that evening when all the garrison was upon its front porches and the sidewalk, the major and the lieutenant went down the line to landor's quarters. and their example was followed. but some hung back, and constraint was in the air.
because of which landor, as soon as he was up, went in search of the commanding officer, and found him in the adjutant's office, and the adjutant with him. he demanded an explanation. "if any one has been [pg 144]saying anything about me, i want to know it. i want to face him. it can't be that newspaper rot. we are all too used to it."
"it seems, landor," the major said, "to be rather that which is left unsaid."
landor asked what he meant by that. "i'm sick of all this speaking in riddles," he said.
the major told him a little reluctantly. "well, it's this, then: brewster will not, or cannot, defend your conduct in the matter of the san tomaso volunteers."
landor sat speechless for a moment. then he jumped up, knocking over a pile of registers. he seized a bone ruler, much stained with official inks, red and blue, and slapped it on the palm of his hand for emphasis. "i'll demand a court of inquiry into my conduct. this shan't drop, not until the strongest possible light has been turned on it. why doesn't brewster prefer charges? either my conduct was such that he can defend it openly, or else it was such as to call for a court-martial, and to justify him in preferring charges. certainly nothing can justify him in smirching me with damning silence. that is the part neither of an officer nor of a man." he kicked one of the registers out of the way, and it flapped across the floor and lay with its leaves crumpled under the fair leather covers.
"by george! mclane, it strikes me as devilish odd that you should all give ear to the insinuations of a shave-tail like brewster, against an old hand like myself. be that as it may, however, until this thing has been cleared up, i shall thank all of you to continue in your[pg 145] attitude of suspicion, and not in any way draw on your charity by extending it to me. i shall demand a court of inquiry." he laid the ruler back on the desk. "i report for duty, sir," he added officially.
it was the beginning of a self-imposed coventry. he sent in a demand for a court of inquiry, and brewster, with much show of reluctance and leniency, preferred charges.
the post talked it over unceasingly, and commented on landor's attitude. "he stalks around in defiant dignity and makes everybody uncomfortable," they said.
"everybody ought to be uncomfortable," ellton told them; "everybody who believed the first insinuation he heard ought to be confoundedly uncomfortable." he resigned from the acting adjutancy and returned to his troop duties, that landor, who had relieved brewster of most of the routine duties, and who was still fit for the sick list himself, might not be overburdened.
so the demand and the charges lay before the department commander, and there was a lull, during which landor came upon further trouble, and worse. he undertook the examination of the papers he had found in the dead men's pockets. they had been buried in earth for two weeks.
he found that it had been father and son come from the eastern states in search of the wealth that lay in that vague and prosperous, if uneasy, region anywhere west of the missouri. and among the papers was a letter addressed to felipa. landor held it in the flat[pg 146] of his hand and frowned, perplexed. he knew that it was cairness's writing. more than once on this last scout he had noticed its peculiarities. they were unmistakable. why was cairness writing to felipa? and why had he not used the mails? the old, never yet justified, distrusts sprang broad awake. but yet he was not the man to brood over them. he remembered immediately that felipa had never lied to him. and she would not now. so he took the stained letter and went to find her.
she was sitting in her room, sewing. of late she had become domesticated, and she was fading under it. he had seen it already, and he saw it more plainly than ever just now. she looked up and smiled. her smile had always been one of her greatest charms, because it was rare and very sweet. "jack," she greeted him, "what have you done with the bread knife you took with you, dear? i have been lost without it."
"i have it," he said shortly, standing beside her and holding out the letter.
she took it and looked from it to him, questioningly. "what is this?" she asked.
then it was the first, at any rate. his manner softened.
"it smells horribly," she exclaimed, dropping it on the floor, "it smells of hospitals—disinfectants." but she stooped and picked it up again.
"it is from cairness," said landor, watching her narrowly. her hand shook, and he saw it.
"from cairness?" she faltered, looking up at him[pg 147] with frightened eyes; "when did it come?" her voice was as unsteady as her hands. she tore it open and began to read it there before him. he stood and watched her lips quiver and grow gray and fall helplessly open. if she had been under physical torture, she could have kept them pressed together, but not now.
"where did you—" she began; but her voice failed, and she had to begin again. "where did you get this?"
he told her, and she held it out to him. he started to take it, then pushed it away.
she put down her work and rose slowly to her feet before him. she could be very regal sometimes. brewster knew it, and cairness guessed it; but it was the first time it had come within landor's experience, and he was a little awed.
"i wish you to read it, john," she said quietly.
he hesitated still. "i don't doubt you," he told her.
"you do doubt me. if you did not, it would never occur to you to deny it. you doubt me now, and you will doubt me still more if you don't read it. in justice to me you must."
it was very short, but he held it a long time before he gave it back.
"and do you care for him, too?" he asked, looking her straight in the eyes. it was a very calm question, put—he realized it with exasperation—as a father might have put it.
she told him that she did, quite as calmly. her[pg 148] manner and her tone said it was very unfortunate, that the whole episode was unfortunate, but that it was not her fault.
he went over to the window and stood looking out of it, his hands clasped behind his back. some children were playing tag around the flag-staff, and he watched a long-limbed small daughter of the frontier dodging and running, and was conscious of being glad that she touched the goal.
it was characteristic of felipa that she forgot him altogether and reread the letter, her breath coming in audible gasps.
"i give this to a friend," it ran, "to be delivered into your own hands, because i must tell you that, though i should never see you again—for the life i lead is hazardous, and chance may at any time take you away forever—i shall love you always. you will not be angry with me, i know. you were not that night by the campfire, and it is not the unwaveringly good woman who resents being told she is loved, in the spirit i have said it to you. i do not ask for so much as your friendship in return, but only that you remember that my life and devotion are yours, and that, should the time ever come that you need me, you send for me. i will come. i will never say this to you again, even should i see you; but it is true, now and for all time."
landor turned away from the window and looked at her. it was in human nature that she had never seemed so beautiful before. perhaps it was, too, because there[pg 149] was warmth in her face, the stress of life that was more than physical, at last.
it struck him that he was coolly analytical while his wife was reading the love-letter (if that bald statement of fact could be called a love-letter) of another man, and telling him frankly that she returned the man's love. why could not he have had love, he who had done so much for her? there was always the subconsciousness of that sacrifice. he had magnified it a little, too, and it is difficult to be altogether lovable when one's mental attitude is "see what a good boy am i." but he had never reflected upon that. he went on telling himself what—in all justice to him—he had never thrown up to her, that his life had been one long devotion to her; rather as a principle than as a personality, to be sure, but then— and yet she loved the fellow whom she had not known twenty-four hours in all—a private, a government scout, unnoticeably below her in station. in station, to be sure; but not in birth, after all. it was that again. he was always brought up face to face with her birth. he tried to reason it down, for the hundredth time. it was not her fault, and he had taken her knowingly, chancing that and the consequences of her not loving him. and these were the consequences: that she was sitting rigid before him, staring straight ahead with the pale eyes of suffering, and breathing through trembling lips.
but she would die before she would be faithless to him. he was sure of that. only—why should he exact so much? why should he not make the last of[pg 150] a long score of sacrifices? he had been unselfish with her always, from the day he had found the little child, shy as one of the timid fawns in the woods of the reservation, and pretty in a wild way, until now when she sat there in front of him, a woman, and his wife, loving, and beloved of, another man.
he went and stood beside her and laid his hand upon her hair.
she looked up and tried hard to smile again.
"poor little girl," he said kindly. he could not help it that they were the words of a compassionate friend, rather than of an injured husband.
she shook her head. "it is the first you have known of it, jack," she said; "but i have known it for a long while, and i have not been unhappy."
"and you care for him?"
she nodded.
"are you certain of it? you have seen so very little of him, and you may be mistaken."
if he had had any hope, it vanished before her unhesitating, positive, "no; i am not mistaken. oh, no!"
he took a chair facing her, as she put the letter back in its envelope and laid it in her work-basket. it was very unlike anything he had ever imagined concerning situations of the sort. but then he was not imaginative. "should you be glad to be free to marry him?" he asked, in a spirit of unbiassed discussion.
she looked at him in perplexity and surprise. "how could i be? there is no use talking about it."
he hesitated, then blurted it out, in spite of the[pg 151] inward warning that it would be unwise. "i could let you free yourself."
his glance fell before hers of dismay, disapproval, and anger—an anger so righteous that he felt himself to be altogether in the wrong. "do you mean divorce?" she said it like an unholy word.
he had forgotten that the laws and rites of the church of rome had a powerful hold upon her, though she was quite devoid of religious sentiment. he admitted apologetically that he had meant divorce, and she expressed her reproach. in spite of himself and what he felt ought properly to be the tragedy of the affair, he smiled. the humor of her majestic disapproval was irresistible under the circumstances. but she had little sense of humor. "what would you suggest, then, if i may ask?" he said. he had to give up all pathos in the light of her deadly simplicity.
"nothing," she answered; "i can't see why it should make any difference to you, when it hasn't with me." she had altogether regained the self-possession she had been surprised out of, with an added note of reserve.
and so he had to accept it. he rose, with a slight sigh, and returned to the examination of his spoils.
but when he was away from felipa and her blighting matter of fact, the pathos of it came uppermost again. troubles seemed to thicken around him. his voluntary coventry was making him sensitive. he had thought that his wife was at least giving him the best of her cool nature. cool! there was no [pg 152]coldness in that strained white face, as she read the letter. the control she had over herself! it was admirable. he thought that most women would have fainted, or have grown hysterical, or have made a scene of some sort. then he recalled the stoicism of the apache—and was back at her birth again.
he realized for the first time the injury his thought of it did her. it was that which had kept them apart, no doubt, and the sympathy of lawlessness that had drawn her and cairness together. yet he had just begun to flatter himself that he was eradicating the savage. she had been gratifyingly like other women since his return. but it was as brewster had said, after all,—the apache strain was abhorrent to him as the venom of a snake. yet he was fond of felipa, too.
someway it had not occurred to him to be any more angry with cairness than he had been with her. the most he felt was resentful jealousy. there was nothing more underhand about the man than there was about felipa. sending the note by the prospectors had not been underhand. he understood that it had been done only that it might make no trouble for her, and give himself no needless pain. cairness would have been willing to admit to his face that he loved felipa. that letter must have been written in his own camp.
he heard his wife coming down the stairs, and directly she stood in the doorway. "will you let me have that knife, jack dear?" she asked amiably.
he turned his chair and studied her in a kind of hopeless amusement. "felipa," he said, "if you will insist upon being told, i cut open the pockets of those dead men's clothes with it."
"but i can have it cleaned," she said.
he turned back abruptly. "you had better get another. you can't have that one," he answered.
was it possible that twenty minutes before he had risen to the histrionic pitch of self-sacrifice of offering her her freedom to marry another man?
