Before he could reply, the detonation of two gunshots, softened by distance, floated down from the ridge above them. “There!” said Miss Cantire eagerly. “Do you hear that?”
His face was turned towards the distant ridge, but really that she might not question his eyes. She continued with animation: “That’s from the coach—to guide us—don’t you see?”
“Yes,” he returned, with a quick laugh, “and it says hurry up—mighty quick—we’re tired waiting—so we’d better push on.”
“Why don’t you answer back with your revolver?” she asked.
“Haven’t got one,” he said.
“Haven’t got one?” she repeated in genuine surprise. “I thought you gentlemen who are traveling always carried one. Perhaps it’s inconsistent with your gospel of good-humor.”
“That’s just it, Miss Cantire,” he said with a laugh. “You’ve hit it.”
“Why,” she said hesitatingly, “even I have a derringer—a very little one, you know, which I carry in my reticule. Captain Richards gave it to me.” She opened her reticule and showed a pretty ivory-handled pistol. The look of joyful surprise which came into his face changed quickly as she cocked it and lifted it into the air. He seized her arm quickly.
“No, please don’t, you might want it—I mean the report won’t carry far enough. It’s a very useful little thing, for all that, but it’s only effective at close quarters.” He kept the pistol in his hand as they walked on. But Miss Cantire noticed this, also his evident satisfaction when she had at first produced it, and his concern when she was about to discharge it uselessly. She was a clever girl, and a frank one to those she was inclined to trust. And she began to trust this stranger. A smile stole along her oval cheek.
“I really believe you’re afraid of something, Mr. Boyle,” she said, without looking up. “What is it? You haven’t got that Indian scare too?”
Boyle had no false shame. “I think I have,” he returned, with equal frankness. “You see, I don’t understand Indians as well as you—and Foster.”
“Well, you take my word and Foster’s that there is not the least danger from them. About here they are merely grown-up children, cruel and destructive as most children are; but they know their masters by this time, and the old days of promiscuous scalping are over. The only other childish propensity they keep is thieving. Even then they only steal what they actually want,—horses, guns, and powder. A coach can go where an ammunition or an emigrant wagon can’t. So your trunk of samples is quite safe with Foster.”
Boyle did not think it necessary to protest. Perhaps he was thinking of something else.
“I’ve a mind,” she went on slyly, “to tell you something more. Confidence for confidence: as you’ve told me YOUR trade secrets, I’ll tell you one of OURS. Before we left Pine Barrens, my father ordered a small escort of cavalrymen to be in readiness to join that coach if the scouts, who were watching, thought it necessary. So, you see, I’m something of a fraud as regards my reputation for courage.”
“That doesn’t follow,” said Boyle admiringly, “for your father must have thought there was some danger, or he wouldn’t have taken that precaution.”
“Oh, it wasn’t for me,” said the young girl quickly.
“Not for you?” repeated Boyle.
Miss Cantire stopped short, with a pretty flush of color and an adorable laugh. “There! I’ve done it, so I might as well tell the whole story. But I can trust you, Mr. Boyle.” (She faced him with clear, penetrating eyes.) “Well,” she laughed again, “you might have noticed that we had a quantity of baggage of passengers who didn’t go? Well, those passengers never intended to go, and hadn’t any baggage! Do you understand? Those innocent-looking heavy trunks contained carbines and cartridges from our post for Fort Taylor”—she made him a mischievous curtsy—“under MY charge! And,” she added, enjoying his astonishment, “as you saw, I brought them through safe to the station, and had them transferred to this coach with less fuss and trouble than a commissary transport and escort would have made.”
“And they were in THIS coach?” repeated Boyle abstractedly.
“Were? They ARE!” said Miss Cantire.
“Then the sooner I get you back to your treasure again the better,” said Boyle with a laugh. “Does Foster know it?”
“Of course not! Do you suppose I’d tell it to anybody but a stranger to the place? Perhaps, like you, I know when and to whom to impart information,” she said mischievously.
Whatever was in Boyle’s mind he had space for profound and admiring astonishment of the young lady before him. The girlish simplicity and trustfulness of her revelation seemed as inconsistent with his previous impression of her reserve and independence as her girlish reasoning and manner was now delightfully at variance with her tallness, her aquiline nose, and her erect figure. Mr. Boyle, like most short men, was apt to overestimate the qualities of size.
They walked on for some moments in silence. The ascent was comparatively easy but devious, and Boyle could see that this new detour would take them still some time to reach the summit. Miss Cantire at last voiced the thought in his own mind. “I wonder what induced them to turn off here? and if you hadn’t been so clever as to discover their tracks, how could we have found them? But,” she added, with feminine logic, “that, of course, is why they fired those shots.”
Boyle remembered, however, that the shots came from another direction, but did not correct her conclusion. Nevertheless he said lightly: “Perhaps even Foster might have had an Indian scare.”
“He ought to know ‘friendlies’ or ‘government reservation men’ better by this time,” said Miss Cantire; “however, there is something in that. Do you know,” she added with a laugh, “though I haven’t your keen eyes I’m gifted with a keen scent, and once or twice I’ve thought I SMELT Indians—that peculiar odor of their camps, which is unlike anything else, and which one detects even in their ponies. I used to notice it when I rode one; no amount of grooming could take it away.”
“I don’t suppose that the intensity or degree of this odor would give you any idea of the hostile or friendly feelings of the Indians towards you?” asked Boyle grimly.
Although the remark was consistent with Boyle’s objectionable reputation as a humorist, Miss Cantire deigned to receive it with a smile, at which Boyle, who was a little relieved by their security so far, and their nearness to their journey’s end, developed further ingenious trifling until, at the end of an hour, they stood upon the plain again.
There was no sign of the coach, but its fresh track was visible leading along the bank of the ravine towards the intersection of the road they should have come by, and to which the coach had indubitably returned. Mr. Boyle drew a long breath. They were comparatively safe from any invisible attack now. At the end of ten minutes Miss Cantire, from her superior height, detected the top of the missing vehicle appearing above the stunted bushes at the junction of the highway.
“Would you mind throwing those old flowers away now?” she said, glancing at the spoils which Boyle still carried.
“Why?” he asked.
“Oh, they’re too ridiculous. Please do.”
“May I keep one?” he asked, with the first intonation of masculine weakness in his voice.
“If you like,” she said, a little coldly.
Boyle selected a small spray of myrtle and cast the other flowers obediently aside.
“Dear me, how ridiculous!” she said.
“What is ridiculous?” he asked, lifting his eyes to hers with a slight color. But he saw that she was straining her eyes in the distance.
“Why, there don’t seem to be any horses to the coach!”
He looked. Through a gap in the furze he could see the vehicle now quite distinctly, standing empty, horseless and alone. He glanced hurriedly around them; on the one side a few rocks protected them from the tangled rim of the ridge; on the other stretched the plain. “Sit down, don’t move until I return,” he said quickly. “Take that.” He handed back her pistol, and ran quickly to the coach. It was no illusion; there it stood vacant, abandoned, its dropped pole and cut traces showing too plainly the fearful haste of its desertion! A light step behind him made him turn. It was Miss Cantire, pink and breathless, carrying the cocked derringer in her hand. “How foolish of you—without a weapon,” she gasped in explanation.
Then they both stared at the coach, the empty plain, and at each other! After their tedious ascent, their long detour, their protracted expectancy and their eager curiosity, there was such a suggestion of hideous mockery in this vacant, useless vehicle—apparently left to them in what seemed their utter abandonment—that it instinctively affected them alike. And as I am writing of human nature I am compelled to say that they both burst into a fit of laughter that for the moment stopped all other expression!
“It was so kind of them to leave the coach,” said Miss Cantire faintly, as she took her handkerchief from her wet and mirthful eyes. “But what made them run away?”
Boyle did not reply; he was eagerly examining the coach. In that brief hour and a half the dust of the plain had blown thick upon it, and covered any foul stain or blot that might have suggested the awful truth. Even the soft imprint of the Indians’ moccasined feet had been trampled out by the later horse hoofs of the cavalrymen. It was these that first attracted Boyle’s attention, but he thought them the marks made by the plunging of the released coach horses.
Not so his companion! She was examining them more closely, and suddenly lifted her bright, animated face. “Look!” she said; “our men have been here, and have had a hand in this—whatever it is.”
“Our men?” repeated Boyle blankly.
“Yes!—troopers from the post—the escort I told you of. These are the prints of the regulation cavalry horseshoe—not of Foster’s team, nor of Indian ponies, who never have any! Don’t you see?” she went on eagerly; “our men have got wind of something and have galloped down here—along the ridge—see!” she went on, pointing to the hoof prints coming from the plain. “They’ve anticipated some Indian attack and secured everything.”
“But if they were the same escort you spoke of, they must have known you were here, and have”—he was about to say “abandoned you,” but checked himself, remembering they were her father’s soldiers.
“They knew I could take care of myself, and wouldn’t stand in the way of their duty,” said the young girl, anticipating him with quick professional pride that seemed to fit her aquiline nose and tall figure. “And if they knew that,” she added, softening with a mischievous smile, “they also knew, of course, that I was protected by a gallant stranger vouched for by Mr. Foster! No!” she added, with a certain blind, devoted confidence, which Boyle noticed with a slight wince that she had never shown before, “it’s all right! and ‘by orders,’ Mr. Boyle, and when they’ve done their work they’ll be back.”
But Boyle’s masculine common sense was, perhaps, safer than Miss Cantire’s feminine faith and inherited discipline, for in an instant he suddenly comprehended the actual truth! The Indians had been there FIRST; THEY had despoiled the coach and got off safely with their booty and prisoners on the approach of the escort, who were now naturally pursuing them with a fury aroused by the belief that their commander’s daughter was one of their prisoners. This conviction was a dreadful one, yet a relief as far as the young girl was concerned. But should he tell her? No! Better that she should keep her calm faith in the triumphant promptness of the soldiers—and their speedy return.
“I dare say you are right,” he said cheerfully, “and let us be thankful that in the empty coach you’ll have at least a half-civilized shelter until they return. Meantime I’ll go and reconnoitre a little.”
“I will go with you,” she said.
But Boyle pointed out to her so strongly the necessity of her remaining to wait for the return of the soldiers that, being also fagged out by her long climb, she obediently consented, while he, even with his inspiration of the truth, did not believe in the return of the despoilers, and knew she would be safe.
He made his way to the nearest thicket, where he rightly believed the ambush had been prepared, and to which undoubtedly they first retreated with their booty. He expected to find some signs or traces of their spoil which in their haste they had to abandon. He was more successful than he anticipated. A few steps into the thicket brought him full upon a realization of more than his worst convictions—the dead body of Foster! Near it lay the body of the mail agent. Both had been evidently dragged into the thicket from where they fell, scalped and half stripped. There was no evidence of any later struggle; they must have been dead when they were brought there.
Boyle was neither a hard-hearted nor an unduly sensitive man. His vocation had brought him peril enough by land and water; he had often rendered valuable assistance to others, his sympathy never confusing his directness and common sense. He was sorry for these two men, and would have fought to save them. But he had no imaginative ideas of death. And his keen perception of the truth was consequently sensitively alive only to that grotesqueness of aspect which too often the hapless victims of violence are apt to assume. He saw no agony in the vacant eyes of the two men lying on their backs in apparently the complacent abandonment of drunkenness, which was further simulated by their tumbled and disordered hair matted by coagulated blood, which, however, had lost its sanguine color. He thought only of the unsuspecting girl sitting in the lonely coach, and hurriedly dragged them further into the bushes. In doing this he discovered a loaded revolver and a flask of spirits which had been lying under them, and promptly secured them. A few paces away lay the coveted trunks of arms and ammunition, their lids wrenched off and their contents gone. He noticed with a grim smile that his own trunks of samples had shared a like fate, but was delighted to find that while the brighter trifles had attracted the Indians’ childish cupidity they had overlooked a heavy black merino shawl of a cheap but serviceable quality. It would help to protect Miss Cantire from the evening wind, which was already rising over the chill and stark plain. It also occurred to him that she would need water after her parched journey, and he resolved to look for a spring, being rewarded at last by a trickling rill near the ambush camp. But he had no utensil except the spirit flask, which he finally emptied of its contents and replaced with the pure water—a heroic sacrifice to a traveler who knew the comfort of a stimulant. He retraced his steps, and was just emerging from the thicket when his quick eye caught sight of a moving shadow before him close to the ground, which set the hot blood coursing through his veins.
It was the figure of an Indian crawling on his hands and knees towards the coach, scarcely forty yards away. For the first time that afternoon Boyle’s calm good-humor was overswept by a blind and furious rage. Yet even then he was sane enough to remember that a pistol shot would alarm the girl, and to keep that weapon as a last resource. For an instant he crept forward as silently and stealthily as the savage, and then, with a sudden bound, leaped upon him, driving his head and shoulders down against the rocks before he could utter a cry, and sending the scalping knife he was carrying between his teeth flying with the shock from his battered jaw. Boyle seized it—his knee still in the man’s back—but the prostrate body never moved beyond a slight contraction of the lower limbs. The shock had broken the Indian’s neck. He turned the inert man on his back—the head hung loosely on the side. But in that brief instant Boyle had recognized the “friendly” Indian of the station to whom he had given the card.
He rose dizzily to his feet. The whole action had passed in a few seconds of time, and had not even been noticed by the sole occupant of the coach. He mechanically cocked his revolver, but the man beneath him never moved again. Neither was there any sign of flight or reinforcement from the thicket around him. Again the whole truth flashed upon him. This spy and traitor had been left behind by the marauders to return to the station and avert suspicion; he had been lurking around, but being without firearms, had not dared to attack the pair together.
It was a moment or two before Boyle regained his usual elastic good-humor. Then he coolly returned to the spring, “washed himself of the Indian,” as he grimly expressed it to himself, brushed his clothes, picked up the shawl and flask, and returned to the coach. It was getting dark now, but the glow of the western sky shone unimpeded through the windows, and the silence gave him a great fear. He was relieved, however, on opening the door, to find Miss Cantire sitting stiffly in a corner. “I am sorry I was so long,” he said, apologetically to her attitude, “but”—
“I suppose you took your own time,” she interrupted in a voice of injured tolerance. “I don’t blame you; anything’s better than being cooped up in this tiresome stage for goodness knows how long!”
“I was hunting for water,” he said humbly, “and have brought you some.” He handed her the flask.
“And I see you have had a wash,” she said a little enviously. “How spick and span you look! But what’s the matter with your necktie?”
He put his hand to his neck hurriedly. His necktie was loose, and had twisted to one side in the struggle. He colored quite as much from the sensitiveness of a studiously neat man as from the fear of discovery. “And what’s that?” she added, pointing to the shawl.
“One of my samples that I suppose was turned out of the coach and forgotten in the transfer,” he said glibly. “I thought it might keep you warm.”
She looked at it dubiously and laid it gingerly aside. “You don’t mean to say you go about with such things OPENLY?” she said querulously.
“Yes; one mustn’t lose a chance of trade, you know,” he resumed with a smile.
“And you haven’t found this journey very profitable,” she said dryly. “You certainly are devoted to your business!” After a pause, discontentedly: “It’s quite night already—we can’t sit here in the dark.”
“We can take one of the coach lamps inside; they’re still there. I’ve been thinking the matter over, and I reckon if we leave one lighted outside the coach it may guide your friends back.” He HAD considered it, and believed that the audacity of the act, coupled with the knowledge the Indians must have of the presence of the soldiers in the vicinity, would deter rather than invite their approach.
She brightened considerably with the coach lamp which he lit and brought inside. By its light she watched him curiously. His face was slightly flushed and his eyes very bright and keen looking. Man killing, except with old professional hands, has the disadvantage of affecting the circulation.
But Miss Cantire had noticed that the flask smelt of whiskey. The poor man had probably fortified himself from the fatigues of the day.
“I suppose you are getting bored by this delay,” she said tentatively.
“Not at all,” he replied. “Would you like to play cards? I’ve got a pack in my pocket. We can use the middle seat as a table, and hang the lantern by the window strap.”
She assented languidly from the back seat; he was on the front seat, with the middle seat for a table between them. First Mr. Boyle showed her some tricks with the cards and kindled her momentary and flashing interest in a mysteriously evoked but evanescent knave. Then they played euchre, at which Miss Cantire cheated adorably, and Mr. Boyle lost game after game shamelessly. Then once or twice Miss Cantire was fain to put her cards to her mouth to conceal an apologetic yawn, and her blue-veined eyelids grew heavy. Whereupon Mr. Boyle suggested that she should make herself comfortable in the corner of the coach with as many cushions as she liked and the despised shawl, while he took the night air in a prowl around the coach and a lookout for the returning party. Doing so, he was delighted, after a turn or two, to find her asleep, and so returned contentedly to his sentry round.
He was some distance from the coach when a low moaning sound in the thicket presently increased until it rose and fell in a prolonged howl that was repeated from the darkened plains beyond. He recognized the voice of wolves; he instinctively felt the sickening cause of it. They had scented the dead bodies, and he now regretted that he had left his own victim so near the coach. He was hastening thither when a cry, this time human and more terrifying, came from the coach. He turned towards it as its door flew open and Miss Cantire came rushing toward him. Her face was colorless, her eyes wild with fear, and her tall, slim figure trembled convulsively as she frantically caught at the lapels of his coat, as if to hide herself within its folds, and gasped breathlessly,—
“What is it? Oh! Mr. Boyle, save me!”
“They are wolves,” he said hurriedly. “But there is no danger; they would never attack you; you were safe where you were; let me lead you back.”
But she remained rooted to the spot, still clinging desperately to his coat. “No, no!” she said, “I dare not! I heard that awful cry in my sleep. I looked out and saw it—a dreadful creature with yellow eyes and tongue, and a sickening breath as it passed between the wheels just below me. Ah! What’s that?” and she again lapsed in nervous terror against him.
Boyle passed his arm around her promptly, firmly, masterfully. She seemed to feel the implied protection, and yielded to it gratefully, with the further breakdown of a sob. “There is no danger,” he repeated cheerfully. “Wolves are not good to look at, I know, but they wouldn’t have attacked you. The beast only scents some carrion on the plain, and you probably frightened him more than he did you. Lean on me,” he continued as her step tottered; “you will be better in the coach.”
“And you won’t leave me alone again?” she said in hesitating terror.
“No!”
He supported her to the coach gravely, gently—her master and still more his own for all that her beautiful loosened hair was against his cheek and shoulder, its perfume in his nostrils, and the contour of her lithe and perfect figure against his own. He helped her back into the coach, with the aid of the cushions and shawl arranged a reclining couch for her on the back seat, and then resumed his old place patiently. By degrees the color came back to her face—as much of it as was not hidden by her handkerchief.
Then a tremulous voice behind it began a half-smothered apology. “I am SO ashamed, Mr. Boyle—I really could not help it! But it was so sudden—and so horrible—I shouldn’t have been afraid of it had it been really an Indian with a scalping knife—instead of that beast! I don’t know why I did it—but I was alone—and seemed to be dead—and you were dead too and they were coming to eat me! They do, you know—you said so just now! Perhaps I was dreaming. I don’t know what you must think of me—I had no idea I was such a coward!”
But Boyle protested indignantly. He was sure if HE had been asleep and had not known what wolves were before, he would have been equally frightened. She must try to go to sleep again—he was sure she could—and he would not stir from the coach until she waked, or her friends came.
She grew quieter presently, and took away the handkerchief from a mouth that smiled though it still quivered; then reaction began, and her tired nerves brought her languor and finally repose. Boyle watched the shadows thicken around her long lashes until they lay softly on the faint flush that sleep was bringing to her cheek; her delicate lips parted, and her quick breath at last came with the regularity of slumber.
So she slept, and he, sitting silently opposite her, dreamed—the old dream that comes to most good men and true once in their lives. He scarcely moved until the dawn lightened with opal the dreary plain, bringing back the horizon and day, when he woke from his dream with a sigh, and then a laugh. Then he listened for the sound of distant hoofs, and hearing them, crept noiselessly from the coach. A compact body of horsemen were bearing down upon it. He rose quickly to meet them, and throwing up his hand, brought them to a halt at some distance from the coach. They spread out, resolving themselves into a dozen troopers and a smart young cadet-like officer.
“If you are seeking Miss Cantire,” he said in a quiet, businesslike tone, “she is quite safe in the coach and asleep. She knows nothing yet of what has happened, and believes it is you who have taken everything away for security against an Indian attack. She has had a pretty rough night—what with her fatigue and her alarm at the wolves—and I thought it best to keep the truth from her as long as possible, and I would advise you to break it to her gently.” He then briefly told the story of their experiences, omitting only his own personal encounter with the Indian. A new pride, which was perhaps the result of his vigil, prevented him.
The young officer glanced at him with as much courtesy as might be afforded to a civilian intruding upon active military operations. “I am sure Major Cantire will be greatly obliged to you when he knows it,” he said politely, “and as we intend to harness up and take the coach back to Sage Wood Station immediately, you will have an opportunity of telling him.”
“I am not going back by the coach to Sage Wood,” said Boyle quietly. “I have already lost twelve hours of my time—as well as my trunk—on this picnic, and I reckon the least Major Cantire can do is to let me take one of your horses to the next station in time to catch the down coach. I can do it, if I set out at once.”
Boyle heard his name, with the familiar prefix of “Dicky,” given to the officer by a commissary sergeant, whom he recognized as having met at the Agency, and the words “Chicago drummer” added, while a perceptible smile went throughout the group. “Very well, sir,” said the officer, with a familiarity a shade less respectful than his previous formal manner. “You can take the horse, as I believe the Indians have already made free with your samples. Give him a mount, sergeant.”
The two men walked towards the coach. Boyle lingered a moment at the window to show him the figure of Miss Cantire still peacefully slumbering among her pile of cushions, and then turned quietly away. A moment later he was galloping on one of the troopers’ horses across the empty plain.
Miss Cantire awoke presently to the sound of a familiar voice and the sight of figures that she knew. But the young officer’s first words of explanation—a guarded account of the pursuit of the Indians and the recapture of the arms, suppressing the killing of Foster and the mail agent—brought a change to her brightened face and a wrinkle to her pretty brow.
“But Mr. Boyle said nothing of this to me,” she said, sitting up. “Where is he?”
“Already on his way to the next station on one of our horses! Wanted to catch the down stage and get a new box of samples, I fancy, as the braves had rigged themselves out with his laces and ribbons. Said he’d lost time enough on this picnic,” returned the young officer, with a laugh. “Smart business chap; but I hope he didn’t bore you?”
Miss Cantire felt her cheek flush, and bit her lip. “I found him most kind and considerate, Mr. Ashford,” she said coldly. “He may have thought the escort could have joined the coach a little earlier, and saved all this; but he was too much of a gentleman to say anything about it to ME,” she added dryly, with a slight elevation of her aquiline nose.
Nevertheless Boyle’s last words stung her deeply. To hurry off, too, without saying “good-by,” or even asking how she slept! No doubt he HAD lost time, and was tired of her company, and thought more of his precious samples than of her! After all, it was like him to rush off for an order!
She was half inclined to call the young officer back and tell him how Boyle had criticised her costume on the road. But Mr. Ashford was at that time entirely preoccupied with his men around a ledge of rock and bushes some yards from the coach, yet not so far away but that she could hear what they said. “I’ll swear there was no dead Injin here when we came yesterday! We searched the whole place—by daylight, too—for any sign. The Injin was killed in his tracks by some one last night. It’s like Dick Boyle, lieutenant, to have done it, and like him to have said nothin’ to frighten the young lady. He knows when to keep his mouth shut—and when to open it.”
Miss Cantire sank back in her corner as the officer turned and approached the coach. The incident of the past night flashed back upon her—Mr. Boyle’s long absence, his flushed face, twisted necktie, and enforced cheerfulness. She was shocked, amazed, discomfited—and admiring! And this hero had been sitting opposite to her, silent all the rest of the night!
“Did Mr. Boyle say anything of an Indian attack last night?” asked Ashford. “Did you hear anything?”
“Only the wolves howling,” said Miss Cantire. “Mr. Boyle was away twice.” She was strangely reticent—in complimentary imitation of her missing hero.
“There’s a dead Indian here who has been killed,” began Ashford.
“Oh, please don’t say anything more, Mr. Ashford,” interrupted the young lady, “but let us get away from this horrid place at once. Do get the horses in. I can’t stand it.”
But the horses were already harnessed and mounted, postilion-wise, by the troopers. The vehicle was ready to start when Miss Cantire called “Stop!”
When Ashford presented himself at the door, the young lady was upon her hands and knees, searching the bottom of the coach. “Oh, dear! I’ve lost something. I must have dropped it on the road,” she said breathlessly, with pink cheeks. “You must positively wait and let me go back and find it. I won’t be long. You know there’s ‘no hurry.’”