Closing the boughs again, Henry opened them in an opposite direction and crept softly up to Chiquita, holding out his hand to her. The docile pony raised her head, and, coming forward, placed her nose in his palm, submitting to be saddled and bridled without objection or noise.

Leaping into the saddle, the boy drove his spurs into the animal's flanks, and was off at a furious run in the direction of Whipple.

Startled by the hoof-beats, the Apaches looked back, and began running diagonally across the field to try to intercept the boy before he turned into the direct trail. Arrow after arrow flew after him, one wounding him in the neck and another in the cheek, and when the distance began to increase between him and his pursuers and they saw the boy was likely to get away, one raised his rifle and sent a bullet after him, which fractured the radius of his left arm.

"Well, Chiquita," said Henry, as he turned fairly into the Prescott trail and had realized the exact nature of his injuries, "you haven't got a scratch, and are good for this run if I can hold out."

It was dusk when Henry began his ride, and it rapidly grew darker as he hurried along the trail. Neither he nor the pony had been over it before. Twice he got off the trail, and long and miserable stretches of time elapsed in regaining it; but the fort was reached at last and the alarm given.

XVII

PURSUIT OF THE APACHES

With twenty-eight men, including two scouts picked up as we pa.s.sed through Prescott, and the post surgeon, I left for Skull Valley. The night was moonless, but the myriad stars shone brilliantly through the rarefied atmosphere of that Western region, lighting the trail and making it fairly easy to follow. It was a narrow pathway, with but few places where two hors.e.m.e.n could ride abreast, so conversation was almost impossible, and few words, except those of command, were spoken; nor were the men in a mood to talk. All were more or less excited and impatient, and, wherever the road would permit, urged their horses to a run.

The trail climbed and descended rugged steeps, crossed smooth intervals, skirted the edges of precipices, wound along borders of dry creeks, and threaded forests of pine and clumps of sage-brush and greasewood. Throughout the ride the imaginations of officers and men were depicting the scenes they feared were being enacted in the valley, or which might take place should they fail to arrive in time to prevent.

It is needless to say, perhaps, that the one person about whom the thoughts of the men composing the rescuing party centred was the gentle, bright, and pretty Brenda. To think of her falling into the hands of the merciless Apaches was almost maddening.

On and on rode the column, the men giving their panting steeds no more rest than the nature of the road and the success of the expedition required. At last we reached the spur of the range behind which lay Skull Valley. We skirted it, and with anxious eyes sought through the darkness the place where the ranch buildings should be. All was silence. No report of fire-arms or whoop of savages disturbed the quiet of the valley.

Ascending a swell in the surface of the ground we saw that all the buildings had disappeared, nothing meeting our anxious gaze but beds of lurid coals, occasionally fanned into a red glow by the intermittent night breeze. But there was the impregnable earthwork; the family must be in that. I dashed swiftly forward, eagerly followed by my men. The earthwork was destroyed, nothing but a circular pit remaining, in the bottom of which glowed the embers of the fallen roof-timbers.

A search for the slain was at once begun, and continued for a long time. Every square rod of the valley for a mile was hunted over without result, and we all gathered once more about the two cellars, in which the coals still glowed.

"It was in the cellar of the house that Sergeant Henry said the body of Mrs. Arnold was laid, was it not?" asked Dr. Coues.

"Yes," I replied.

"Then if all were killed after he left--shot from time to time--would not their remains be likely to be beside hers?"

"Not beside hers, I think. The last stand must have been made in the fort."

"Then the bodies, or what is left of them, must lie under that circular bed of coals, Duncan, if they died here."

"Probably, doctor. It's an uncanny thing to do, but we must stir the coals and see."

A thorough search revealed nothing.

"Does th' liftinint moind that Sargint Hinery mintioned a covered way that led from th' cellar to th' spring?" asked Private Tom Clary, who wielded a rail beside me. "Perhaps th' pretty la.s.sie and her frinds are in that."

"That is so, Clary; thank you for the suggestion," I answered. "Can you make out the opening?"

"Nothin' sure, sor. Behoind thim wagon-tires there sames to be a natural slope of earth."

"Tip the tires over, Clary," I ordered; and presently a number of tires, from which the fire had burned the felloes, spokes, and hubs, fell into the coals, disclosing a recently filled aperture.

"Looks as if the end of a pa.s.sage had been filled, doesn't it?" asked the surgeon.

"It certainly does," I answered. "Let us go to the spring and examine."

Accompanied by the doctor and several men, I rode to the spring. When we arrived there we broke a way through the thick-set willows into an irregular ma.s.s of small bowlders. Climbing over these, we found ourselves at the mouth of a narrow pa.s.sage about four feet high and two feet wide.

"This must be the entrance to the covered way," I remarked, and placing my head in the crevice, I called: "Oh, Mr. Arnold, we are here--your friends from Fort Whipple!"

"Thank Heaven!" in a man's tones, came clearly through the entrance, accompanied by a sudden outburst of sobs in girlish voices.

"We'll be there directly," spoke another man's voice--that of a stranger. "We've heard your horses' hoofs jarring the ground for some time, but we thought it safest to lay low until we were sure it wasn't redskins."

Then followed the sound of steps, accompanied by voices, sounding at the entrance, as a voice spoken in a long tube appears to be uttered at the listener's end. Some time elapsed before those who seemed so near appeared; but at last there emerged from the pa.s.sage Mr. Arnold, two strange men, and three girls--but no Brenda.

"Where is Brenda, Mr. Arnold?" I asked.

"Heaven only knows, lieutenant. She gave herself up to the Apaches."

"Gave herself up to the Apaches! What do you mean?"

"That's precisely what she did, lieutenant," said one of the strangers, adding: "My name is Bartlett, from Ha.s.sayampa, and this is Mr. Gilbert, from Tucson. We were on our way from La Paz to Prescott and stopped here for a meal, and got corralled by the Indians. But about the girl Brenda: she took it into her head, after we got into the little fort, that unless some one could create a diversion to mislead the devils, we'd all lose our scalps."

"That beautiful young girl! Gave herself up to certain torture and death! Why did you allow it?"

"Allow it!" exclaimed Mr. Bartlett, indignantly. "I hope, lieutenant, you don't think so hard of me and my friend as to believe we'd have allowed it if we'd suspected what the plucky miss meant to do!"

"Tell me the circ.u.mstances, Mr. Bartlett," said I.

The party moved slowly along the path from the spring to the fires, and as they walked Mr. Arnold and the travellers gave an account of all that had happened after Sergeant Henry left for Fort Whipple.

The burning arrows sent to the pitch-pine roof became so numerous that the besieged found it impossible to prevent the flames from catching in several places. Henry was hardly out of sight before the house became untenable, and the defenders were obliged to retire to the fort. When the house was consumed, and its timbers had fallen into the cellar a ma.s.s of burning brands, the s.p.a.ce about the earthwork was clear, and the rifles at its loop-holes kept the Indians close within the out-building they had occupied since the attack began. No one dared to show himself to the unerring marksmen, who watched every movement.

For a long time silence reigned among the Indians. The whites, however, felt sure that plans were being matured which meant disaster to them.

At last these plans were revealed in a constant and rapid flight of arrows, directed at a point between two loop-holes--a point which could not be reached by the besieged, and where, if a considerable collection of burning brands could be heaped against the logs, between the earth and the eaves, the pine walls and rafters must take fire. Walls and roof were too solid to be cut away, and water could not reach the outside.

The defenders, when they realized what the result of a fire would be, held a consultation, and decided that in the event of the fire getting control of the fort they should retire into the covered way, block up the entrance with earth, and remain there until help should arrive. It was thought the Indians would suppose all had perished in the flames.

"But they know we came here by an underground pa.s.sage from the house,"

said Brenda; "will they not suspect we have entered another pa.s.sage if we all disappear?"

"P'r'aps they may," answered Mr. Arnold; "I had not thought of that.

We'll have to take our chances."

"If one of us was to appear to escape from here, and join them,"

continued the girl, "I think they would suppose the others had perished, and make no search."

"That may be true, but I'll take my chances here," said Mr. Gilbert.