But the Apaches were used to being hunted, and some of them really
liked the game. It was full of exhilaration and excitement, and not a
few chances to hunt and hit back. The threat conveyed no terror to the
renegades. It was to the Indians at the reservation that the tidings
brought dismay, yet even there, so said young Bridger, leaders and
followers swore they had no idea where the white maiden could be, much
less the young chief. They, the peaceable and the poor servants of the
great Father at Washington, had no dealings with these others, his
foes.
About the post, where gloom and dread unspeakable prevailed, there was
no longer the fear of possible attack. The Indian prisoners in the
guard-house had dropped their truculent, defiant manner, and become
again sullen and apathetic. The down-stream settlers had returned to
their ranches and reported things undisturbed. Even the horse that had
been missing and charged to Downs had been accounted for. They found
him grazing placidly about the old pasture, with the rope halter
trailing, Indian-knotted, from his neck, and his gray hide still
showing stains of blood about the mane and withers. They wondered was
it on this old stager the Apaches had borne the wounded girl to the
garrison--she who still lay under the roof of Mother Shaughnessy,
timidly visited at times by big-eyed, shy little Indian maids from the
reservation, who would speak no word that Sudsville could understand,
and few that even Wales Arnold could interpret. All they would or
could divulge was that she was the daughter of old Eskiminzin, who was
out in the mountains, and that she had been wounded "over there," and
they pointed eastward. By whom and under what circumstances they swore
they knew not, much less did they know of Downs, or of how she chanced
to have the scarf once worn by the Frenchwoman Elise.
Then Arnold's wife and brood had gone back to their home up the
Beaver, while he himself returned to the search for Angela and for
Blakely. But those four days had passed without a word of hope. In
little squads a dozen parties were scouring the rugged cañons and
cliffs for signs, and finding nothing. Hours each day Plume would come
to the watchers on the bluff to ask if no courier had been sighted.
Hours each night the sentries strained their eyes for signal fires.
Graham, slaving with his sick and wounded, saw how haggard and worn
the commander was growing, and spoke a word of caution. Something told
him it was not all on account of those woeful conditions at the front.
From several sources came the word that Mrs. Plume was in a state
bordering on hysteric at department headquarters, where sympathetic
women strove vainly to comfort and soothe her. It was then that Elise
became a center of interest, for Elise was snapping with electric
force and energy. "It is that they will assassinate madame--these
monsters," she declared. "It is imperative, it is of absolute need,
that madame be taken to the sea, and these wretches, unfeeling, they
forbid her to depart." Madame herself, it would seem, so said those
who had speech with her, declared she longed to be again with her
husband at Sandy. Then it was Elise who demanded that they should
move. Elise was mad to go--Elise, who took a turn of her own, a
screaming fit, when the news came of the relief of Wren's little
force, of the death of their brave sergeant, of the strange tale that,
before dying, Carmody had breathed a confession to Lieutenant Blakely,
which Blakely had reduced to writing before he set forth on his own
hapless mission. It was Mrs. Plume's turn now to have to play nurse
and comforter, and to strive to soothe, even to the extent of
promising that Elise should be permitted to start by the very next
stage to the distant sea, but when it came to securing passage, and in
feverish, nervous haste the Frenchwoman had packed her chosen
belongings into the one little trunk the stage people would consent to
carry, lo! there came to her a messenger from headquarters where
Colonel Byrne, grim, silent, saturnine, was again in charge. Any
attempt on her part to leave would result in her being turned over at
once to the civil authorities, and Elise understood and raved, but
risked not going to jail. Mullins, nursed by his devoted Norah, was
sitting up each day now, and had been seen by Colonel Byrne as that
veteran passed through, ten pounds lighter of frame and heavier of
heart than when he set forth, and Mullins had persisted in the story
that he had been set upon and stabbed by two women opposite Lieutenant
Blakely's quarters. What two had been seen out there that night but
Clarice Plume and her Gallic shadow, Elise?