# Captain Quid

Extracted from Cosmopolitan magazine, July. 1924, pp. 40–45, 130, 132–134, 136, 138, 140–142. Illustrations by Herbert M. Stoops may be omitted.
By Owen Wister
Who wrote “The Virginian” Captain Quid
How an Indian Fighter Laid Down the Law for Apaches and for Wives
AFTER the Nez Percés war, it began to be said of James Monk, bachelor aged twenty-three, red-headed second lieutenant of cavalry, and particular about his collars and his boots, that he was the makings of a star Indian fighter; but this was scarcely enough yet to win him a name in our army of the old frontier. His brother officers at Walla Walla regretted that he didn't drink and doubted if he would ever tie himself to wedlock; but if he did become a husband they were sure that his wife would thoroughly realize it.
Until Verbena Frankish came to visit cousins at Walla Walla none of them had heard of her; then all heard of her the first day and all declared her the best girl the post had ever entertained; the prettiest, sweetest little thing—and how brightly she could talk when she felt like it!
“She knows how to keep still, too,” Mrs. Wade remarked.
Women can understand women at sight. It seems hardly fair to us.
Callers surrounded Verbena at every permissible hour. Each day in the week her unmistakable blond hair was discerned from afar, with some figure in uniform invariably contiguous. Every unwedded officer had his turn for a long ride or a walk.
“I'm Tuesday,” said a captain to a first lieutenant. “Which are you?”
“I used to be Thursday,” said the other pensively.
“Cheer up, old man. Never say die.”
So the blue-eyed Verbena remained everybody's sister.
Then James Monk returned from a scout on the John Day river. In one week he was engaged to Verbena Frankish, in four he went East on leave, married her in Caesar Borgia, Kansas, where the family lived, and brought her back to Walla Walla.
“Well, he'll let her know who she's married, all right,” her late brothers all averred.
The second lieutenant, aged twenty-three, was made welcome with his bride, aged seventeen; and even before their first baby they were a boon to local gossipers. By the time of their final baby this couple had long been a topic of ceaseless guessing which at an early stage competed with the weather and ended by putting the weather out of business.
It wasn't Verbena's wrongs or his infidelities—there were none; his morals after marriage withstood every strain—and it wasn't that James took to drink. Even in his first year out of the Military Academy before ever he had laid eyes on Verbena, in the long, idle, resourceless remoteness of the frontier, he had felt the lure and the joys of whisky to be gaining on him. In dread lest it turn him by forty or fifty into the sort of swine that he saw among the majors and colonels here and there, on one grim occasion alone in his quarters at Fort Bidwell, he had shut his hands tight, stood up, muttered, “For the last time, so help me, God!”—and made a riotous night of it, and never afterwards touched a drop of the stuff.
Walla Walla watched the honeymoon pair. You always do. They were to be seen daily along the parade-ground.
“She keeps that yellow head pretty close to his shoulder,” said Lieutenant Wade.
“Why, he's got a pipe in his mouth!” exclaimed Mrs. Wade.
“Well, a gentleman can smoke if it's his wife he's walking with.”
“Mr. Wade, when did you ever see him smoke before?”
“That's so. He used to say it gave him a thirst.”
The lady considered for a moment. “She must have insisted on it because it looks manly.”
“Don't you believe it! He does the insisting in that family.”
“Well, Mr. Wade, he has shaved off that sorrel-colored down on his lip. Who did the insisting then?”
“He looks better without it anyway,” grumbled the man.
“That's what she made him think,” declared the winner of this argument.
Walla Walla perceived that Verbena took deep pride in her husband as a soldier, letting his military life alone; it was the man that she supervised, and he bowed to it surprisingly, save only in one matter. A few months after the marriage, Mrs. Wade grew puzzled about the pipe. Had she been right? The pipe disappeared for a while, and James was irritable. Then it reappeared, and with it his good temper. Had he given it up to please Verbena? There was so little to talk about in our army of the old frontier!
“She told me he had a hacking cough,” said Mrs. Wade.
“I've never heard him give a hack,” her husband stated crossly.
“She says nicotine is a deadly poison,” added another lady. “She says his hand isn't steady.”
“Let her come to target practise,” Wade said, more crossly. “Does she know his score leads the post?”
Just before James's troop was transferred to Fort Custer a solution to her puzzle broke suddenly upon Mrs. Wade.
“Don't tell me!” she said to Wade. “That girl is jealous.”
“Jealous!” It startled him.
The lady nodded.
“Jealous?” After turning it over he shook his head. “No such luck, Nannie. It would teach the girl her place, but he's crazy about her, damn it.”
“A man never sees these things,” said Mrs. Wade quietly.
“Well, then, who is it?”
“His pipe.”
He stared.
“Let it soak in, Mr. Wade. You'll see it after a while.”
That was at dinner; at supper he had not yet seen it. “Perhaps it's her uncle,” he surmised. “Maybe he's what's the matter.”
“What does her uncle do, Mr. Wade?”
“Nothing, any more: He's buried. I was in Caesar Borgia when it happened. He ran for a train one day, got into the smoking car and struck a match and dropped dead. The doctor had been warning him he had a tobacco heart. He was her favorite uncle.”
“Well, you'll see it after a while, Mr. Wade,” persisted the unconvinced lady. “I'm not sure she knows it herself.”
Perhaps she was right. But when you come from Kansas you're apt to think your neighbor sins when he enjoys anything you don't happen to like yourself. Verbena had been heard to say it made the curtains smell. This might account for it. Or possibly was she determined to tame her red-headed Indian fighter just to show how much he was hers? Jealousy, the tobacco hearted uncle, enlargement of the conscience, smelly curtains, love of power—any of these, or all, might account for Verbena; but what could explain James?
At Custer, with their honeymoon long over by the almanac, still they were acutely on their neighbors' minds, a topic, a boon already. Neighbors had a terrific chance at you in those old military posts. A few houses in a wilderness, a few husbands, wives and bachelors shut up tight together in empty space for empty moons, not even a shop to divert the female attention—how could they help it?
“I have never seen her look more lovely.”
This was Mrs. Hipple, wife of Colonel Hipple, the post commander at Custer. The other Walla Walla troops had gone to Yuma. That was army life then. You saw some people every day for a year, and often longer, and nobody else. Then you never saw them at all; they would be a thousand miles away; then suddenly you would be seeing them every day again. So now at Custer, James and Verbena had a perfectly fresh set of spy-glasses turned upon them.
“Lovely,” said the Colonel. “Yes, indeed.”
“Horace, did you hear when it was expected?”
“What's expected?”
“Mercy, Horace, their baby!”
“Baby? Why they were only married last month.”
“I know they act so. But it was in October. Mary Wade wrote me all about it. Mary said he used to be quite wild.”
“Can't believe it. Lions don't turn to lambs that way.”
“Well, Mary would know, Horace. And he's wild about her now. And she's looking lovelier every day. I think I'll just go round to the O'Nells and find out when it's expected.”
Some offspring arrive more punctually than some trains. This one did. But Indians were less regular. Upon a day when Verbena's event was close at hand and she and James had never wanted more to be with each other and to sit together and wait, a glum James rode out of the post northward at the head of his troop. The Piegans were rumored to be preparing for a raid on their neighbors the Crows. There was no help for it; the trouble must be headed off and white settlers protected in their lives and property.
Before the soldiers returned the event was successfully over, and Verbena quite beyond the chance of danger. Moreover, Mrs. Frankish, Verbena's mother, had come from Caesar Borgia well in advance. Mrs. Frankish thought highly of her son-in-law.
“It's an ideal union,” she said to Colonel and Mrs. Hipple on the great day that made her a grandmother. “He weighs eight pounds and a half. He's to be James Junior.”
“That's right,” said the Colonel. “And now that collection of pipes will have to take third place in the affections of James Senior.”
“Pipes?” Mrs. Frankish looked vague.
“Why, all those corn-cobs and clays and brier-woods and meerschaums and German students and everything.”
“Oh yes! Oh yes!” said Mrs. Frankish hurriedly. “To be sure. Aren't they perfectly lovely!”
Presently she took her leave.
“Horace,” said the Colonel's wife after some thinking, “Did you notice her? She has never seen those pipes. Their existence was news to her.”
“Well, it mightn't interest her.”
“It interested her very much. Horace, Verbena has locked them up. And that throws a light on something in Mary Wade's letter that I couldn't understand.”
After that visit to Colonel and Mrs. Hipple, Mrs. Frankish was very wary. She waited to welcome James home from his triumphant handling of the Piegans, whom he quieted by firmness and sincerity, not a shot being fired; then she had to hasten back to Caesar Borgia. All that Lucretia Hipple could be sure of was that two days before James and his men rode into the post, every pipe was to be found on the rack. Lucretia took care to call in and ask to see the baby have his bath, so she saw the rack too.
“It didn't look to me as if they were in quite the same position,” she said to Horace. “That carved German one used to be in the lower right-hand corner. But he'll just suppose his mother-in-law dusted them.”
“I hope he doesn't spoil that pretty girl,” said Horace, thoughtfully.
Then James's troop was transferred to Fort Bayard, in New Mexico. Both infantry and cavalry were stationed at Bayard, and between these two branches of the service the heartiest intimacy did not invariably obtain. But the topic of James and Verbena drew them into relations of the most harmonious confidence.
“I consider it an ideal union,” asserted Mrs. Dexter, employing this time-honored phrase.
“Now something's coming!” said Major Dexter.
His lady contemplated him for a moment over the billowy Atlantic of her bosom.
“I consider it an ideal union,” she slowly insisted. “And I will never admit she is losing her looks.”
“Better not,” advised the Major. “She isn't. If I were James Monk, I'd want to be kissing her little nose all the time.”
“Harry Dexter, if you're trying to make this conversation ridiculous——”
“Not for worlds, Maria. I'm trying to fertilize it.”
“Well, it's plain she makes him happy,” said Mrs. Parminter, who was anxious to bring the conversation back; she had to go in a little while.
“Yes, indeed!” a fourth lady explained. “That's a splendid collection of pipes.”
“I'd call him the best looking of the two,” said Mrs. Parminter.
“That's because she watches his health so,” said the fourth lady. “And never lets him wear an old shirt.”
“Wasn't there something about his smoking?” asked a second lieutenant's wife.
It happened to be just what Mrs. Dexter hoped that somebody would ask. She didn't wish to have to lug it in herself; she much preferred to have things dragged out of her; then she could make them hum. She threw on the second lieutenant's wife a look of approval.
“Until that first baby,” she stated, “he had always refused to get rid of his collection.”
“Oh, then you were there!” said the fourth lady eagerly; but Mrs. Dexter didn't hear that. She paused; then: “It was her mother who stepped in,” she next imparted to them.
“Yes,” went on Mrs. Dexter after another pause, “and you'd never have thought it, to look at her.”
“Her mother?”
“No. Her. She didn't look a day over sixteen then. It was Mrs. Hipple who wrote me from Custer that her mother had stepped in. Mrs. Wade saw them at Walla Walla, and she told Mrs. Hipple it began there.”
“Maria, do you know you're not helping me to be quite clear as to what began there.”
“Harry, if you've not learned by this time that I am always very careful about what I am willing to repeat, even in strict confidence like this, you're never going to learn at all. Of course he still smokes cigars; not many, but I'm told they're of the best. But who knows when she will draw the line at cigars? After that Christmas pipe at Custer she might do anything.”
Mrs. Dexter sat back, and her broad Atlantic rose and fell serenely. You could have heard a pin drop.
“After the baby was born, Mrs. Frankish—that's her mother—went back to the family home in Caesar Borgia, Kansas. The family home, where the uncle committed suicide with prussic acid in the parlor and Verbena saw him do it. Of course with an uncle like that in the family a queer niece is no surprise. Her mother has always tried to counteract it. Verbena's very smart. You never hear her tell him not to smoke. So when their baby was expected and her mother had come from Caesar Borgia and he was off hunting——”
“Off hunting? The father? At such a time?” It was the fourth lady. She couldn't help it.
Mrs. Dexter took no offense at the interruption; it was a tribute to her narrative powers. “Yes; he was off hunting Indians. He was ordered to go. The mother——”
“The baby's mother?”
“No hers—it hadn't come. Her mother was almost glad to have him out of the house at that time for he was so needlessly anxious and concerned that he would have been in the way and Mrs. Frankish had plenty of experience and ran the house, and after all it's her mother a daughter wants then. But she had no trouble. She was young and her bones gave. Yes. Eight pounds and a half that first one weighed. I've never heard the weight of the second one.
“But the mother had stepped in already. She found his pipes all hidden away when he had gone after the Indians. She was used to him smoking and whistling all day, in and out of the house, so she saw how it was in a flash. Verbena never said a word to him in her hearing, but a woman can always guess right. She wasn't going to have trouble between those two if she could stop it. It's not known what advice she gave Verbena, but when he came back he never knew she had meddled with his pipes.”
Here Mrs. Dexter stopped.
“How does she make him?” wondered the fourth lady.
“I believe I have already stated,” Mrs. Dexter replied, “that she takes good care to keep those domestic scenes behind the curtain.”
“Did you say something about a Christmas present?” asked Mrs. Parminter.
“It had happened before it came. When that poor man returned to his home, and his young wife, and the boy who was going to bear his name ... well her mother ought never to have let him go into the room the first time and see her alone. But who would have intruded upon them at such a moment, and how was she to know that Verbena would be so smart?”
Mrs. Dexter looked at the clock, and once again you could have heard a pin drop.
“I've hardly time to tell the rest,” she said. “But there's not much. I know not a word of this will go out of this room. At Christmas Mrs. Frankish sent him a beautiful pipe from Caesar Borgia. He didn't let her know. Just thanked her. But there was something in the way he wrote, and she got an idea. Of course she found out. And the next Christmas she sent him a box of cigars. But to look at Verbena, even today, who would have thought it! Now remember. Not a word!”
It was evident now that Mrs. Dexter had finished.
“Maria,” said her husband most incautiously, “you haven't said what did happen.”
It was a triumph for Mrs. Dexter. She rose in a stately manner. “I must go and get ready for Silver City,” she answered, “Since Harry seems to be the only person present who hasn't listened to me, perhaps one of you ladies will tell him over again.
“Well, I must run along, I'm late already,” said Mrs. Parminter. And she hurried away. She never was for mixing herself with a domestic affair, not even a little one like this.
The fourth lady and the second lieutenant's wife looked at each other.°
“How old is your son Albert?” one of them asked Major Dexter.
“Twenty-five.”
“Can you remember when he was born?”
“Perfectly.”
“Can you remember your first sight of him and his mother?”
Harry Dexter dropped his eyes.
“Then think,” the lady advised him. “Think back. If, at that time, your wife had asked you to make some sacrifice—think it out.”
They left him with this; they deemed it enough. And he stood in the room alone, thinking it out.
“Well I'll be damned!” This was what he quietly said, though not at once; Harry was not a quick man.
Other details were confided to other audiences in other posts. At Lowell Barracks, hard by Tucson, they knew a part of the Custer incident which Mrs. Dexter had quite missed. Mrs. Frankish had told Mrs. Hipple that when James came back from his Indian excursion he had passed the pipe rack on his way to his wife, replaced the common pipe he had with him among the Piegans, taken his pet meerschaum, and with this in his hand had entered the sacred chamber where his wedded love and his first offspring were waiting to receive him. Mrs. Hipple said that the young father had knelt a long while by the bedside. Well of course, there it was!
Fort Riley had another version: it had happened after the baptism of James Junior. Long before the child came, she had banished his indulgence from the house, and he confined it to the club and to his rides or his walks about the post. Then she had told him that she considered a pipe in public ungentlemanly, so he used to sit in the Indian agent's private room up the river.
Lowell Barracks had been told that James for a year had been allowed no smoking. When he came there from Bayard for a shooting contest, a snare was set for him—Mrs. Day invited him to supper and bought the best cigars to be had. He came, but before she could lead him astray he pulled out a cigar of his own and asked permission to light it. It gave the veteran lady quite a shock. If James from first to last ever knew how they talked, they never knew he knew it.
“And what are we to believe now?” asked Mrs. Day of Mrs. Slocum when he had gone back to Fort Bayard. Mrs. Slocum was another veteran.
“I never noticed him with a cigar till this evening,” observed Captain Slocum, “if that'll help you.”
“Perhaps that's it,” Mrs. Day mused. “She's got him down to that. Or perhaps it's when he feels safe.”
“Do you suppose he ever thinks he made a mistake?” said Mrs. Slocum. “Sometimes he doesn't look a day over twenty-five,”
“Not a day!” assented her friend. “Especially when he laughs. I wonder how long she'll be able to hold him?”
“Do they have children still?” Mrs. Slocum asked.
“Quite regularly, I'm told,” said Captain Slocum.
“Can he actually be afraid of her?” Mrs. Day inquired.
“Don't you believe he's afraid of her!” asserted Slocum. “Any hard fighter will pay a good deal for peace.”
“Yes: but he usually draws the line somewhere,” Mrs. Slocum remarked.
“One place he draws it,” said Captain Slocum, “is at the children. I saw it.”
The ladies' eyes instantly converged upon him.
“It was at McKinney. His two biggest kids were just about big enough to toddle round and fall down now and then. They'd begged him to let 'em ride his horse, and he was walking beside the horse and holding Charlie in the saddle. Charlie had the reins, shouting, and James Junior was yelling that it was his turn, when out comes Verbena from the house and tells him it's dangerous and to take Charlie right down. Jim just turns his head a little and looks at her and says, “That's my business, dear.” She went back into the house. His kids were always crazy about him at McKinney. He took 'em camping to Cloud's Peak.”
“Can't somebody tell her how imprudent she is?” croaked Mrs. Slocum.
“Her mother has tried and tried,” said Mrs. Day. “But what can you do with an obstinate will?”
“Well, ladies,” said the Captain, “strong will or not, they're lovers to this day.”
The thought of it made each of the women breathe a pensive sigh.
Not many months later, James and Verbena were stationed at Fort Bowie, Arizona. Little was near there but cactus, mountains and hostile Apaches. It was between massacres, with nothing doing. One night a young officer, at whose quarters they were playing cards, came out rather strongly. Glasses of whisky were beside all the players but James. Talk had dwelt so far upon the recent burning of the Butterfield stage and the massacre of its passengers in Apache Pass, when the aroma of James's cigar changed the subject.
“How much do those cost, Captain?” said Jack Whetstone. Whetstone was Monk's young second lieutenant, only two years out of the Military Academy, but already most companionable to his Captain.
“Oh, these don't come high. I'll take one card.”
Monk extended his case to Whetstone who accepted with alacrity one of the admirable cigars.
“I'm glad they don't come high,” said Whetstone. “For I'd like to order some and cease being a dead beat.”
“Give you a box next lot I get from San Francisco.”
Possibly the whisky may have helped Jack to make his next remark.
“Captain, with your taste for Havana products, in your place I'd never have dared to go on increasing our population.”
During the flash of suspense which this impish ribaldry precipitated, nobody knew how James would take it. Then his sense of humor tipped the scale and he turned an eye and a smile on his indiscreet and overindulged junior. “Mine are all white.”
Ease relaxed the company in laughter at the expense of Jack Whetstone, for over at Fort Bliss the ladies had spread romantic rumors about his visits across the bridge to the Mexican town of Juarez. Two or three hands were dealt before his cheeks regained their normal hue, and during the rest of the game he attended strictly to his cards and bets. At the end of the evening he walked home with James Monk in the dark, and upon reaching Monk's door he said—in the dark:
“Captain, that was hellishly fresh. I apologize.”
The boy felt his Captain's hand for a moment gently upon his shoulder; that was all.
Next day, the Major who had been in the card game made a remark to Whetstone:
“Ever seen Captain Monk get mad?”
“No, sir, never yet.”
“Well, he let you off damned easy.” Then he chuckled. “I guess the way you put it appealed to him. I guess nobody else has ever——” the Major broke off and ruminated, locking at Jack Whetstone. But Jack, with the feel of his Captain's hand still on his shoulder, would not have discussed the matter with anybody for worlds. Monk, moreover, to show it was all right, had bidden Whetstone take pot-luck with him that day.
“Why that little wife of his is a fanatic!” declared the Major; “the kind that reasons and facts don't reach. And she's got him in in her pocket! In her pocket.” Here a loud laugh overtook the Major. “But you touched him up. Godo'mitey! With the family they've got now, if she'd made him cut out something more at every new arrival the way she did after their first at Custer, he'd be down to Star Plug today. He'd be past it, even if you counted snuff. But she lets him alone for a long while at a time, then something turns up and she scores again. Step by step she's nearing where she means to go. They think she's satisfied. Godo'mitey!”
The Major rolled bloodshot eyes.
“All the same,” he continued, “if the army presented 'em with a silver soup tureen, it'd be no more than they deserved.”
“Wy—y?” mewed Jack Whetstone in his surprise.
“For never failing to provide us with sensations in these God-forsaken holes where we pass the better part of out lives.”
The reigning sensation of the moment was the Apaches and the Butterfield stage line, which our cavalry was at Bowie to protect. There was a lull about James and Verbena, but it was the lull that precedes the storm.
The Monk family with Whetstone, their invited guest, were seated at dinner, James at one end of his table, Verbena opposite. On one side of her strapped in his high chair, with his napkin under his chin, was little Albert who had come at Fort Hall; on her other side, little George strapped in another high chair with his napkin under his chin. George had come at Laredo. Nellie had come at Assinaboine, Charlie at Wingate, Gertrude at the Presidio. Nellie and Gertrude sat along in the middle opposite each other; Jack, the guest, next Gertrude, but on each side their father the chairs of Charlie and James Junior were still vacant although the soup had been served.
“Give them another call,” said Captain Monk; and while Gertrude ran out to the back door, where her upraised voice could be heard calling in the direction of one of the post wood-sheds, the rest of the family went on with the soup.
“I can see them just as well as well,” declared Gertrude coming back, “but they won't move.”
Verbena now undertook the job, and for her they moved at once, reluctantly filling the chairs on each side of their father.
“Don't you like your soup?” he inquired.
“I hate it,” said Charlie.
“Oh, Charles,” his mother said, “when there's many a starving boy in Caesar Borgia would be thankful for that nice hot soup!”
“Don't make 'em eat it, dear,” remonstrated James. “They shall have two helps of beef to make up. What made you so late, boys?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Charlie.
“We were just playing,” James Junior lucidly amplified. He had lately gone into long trousers.
Jack Whetstone was silent. He knew. He had seen them as he came to pot-luck. But he was their friend and hoped for the best.
“If you expect to grow up and catch Indians,” said their father, “you'll have to step livelier.”
“There will be no more Indians then, Captain,” said Verbena, smiling. “Eat your beef, Charlie.”
Charlie in obedience lifted a fork very slowly toward his mouth. Half-way there it faltered, and then abruptly crashed down upon his plate.
“Charlie!” cried his mother. “What's the matter? James, do look at him!'
James was already looking, but before he could speak a horrible strange sound from his first born on the other side diverted his eye. James Junior sat with face set and a heaving of his immature frame. Both parents now started up in alarm at the green faces of their young, but in that moment the whole ghastly incident rushed to its culmination. The entrance of no hostile Apaches could have more upset what had been so lately a peaceful domestic scene. Plates tobogganed to the floor; Nellie and Gertrude got down and ran screaming from the room; while little Albert and little George, unable to fall from their high chairs because of the straps, sat with their napkins still under their chins, bawling with mouths wide open and eyes tight shut.
Pot-luck was served somewhat later in the kitchen while the dining-room windows were lifted to admit as much air as possible; but only three assembled to finish the meal, and the guest left as soon as was polite.
The limp young smokers lay upstairs in their beds sleeping it off.
Two or three days later the peculiarly excellent aroma of the cigar that Jack Whetstone was smoking caught Major Brewster's attention.
“So he's given you another of those?”
Whetstone nodded.
On still a later day the Major stopped the Lieutenant at the stables.
“How many more has he given you?”
Jack stood silent, smiling, and he blew out a ring of smoke.
“Godo'mitey!” cried the Major, “she's made him part with the lot.”
Jack never told what he knew. The pale Verbena's one unguarded word to her James at pot-luck in the kitchen was locked in his loyal breast: “To think of their learning it at their age and in this house!” The words escaped her. “Well, dear, there's no place like home.” The gallant James had tried to carry it off. Jack stood proof indeed, even to the probing of the ladies, but guessing had never been easier: Nellie and Gertrude hadn't lost a second.
Ten minutes after the event the whole post had known what Charlie and James Junior had done, and could foretell what the consequences to their father would be. Why hadn't he locked his cigars up? They wondered that Captain Monk “with his experience,” as they put it, should consider the cigarets to which he presently had recourse, as even a forlorn hope. She certainly would never stand cigarets, even his allowance of three a day!
I have forgotten to mention the youngest member of the Monk family, younger than little George, who had come at Laredo; little Christine was coming in June; it was January now. Mrs. Brewster knew it was going to be a girl this time; somehow she just knew it, she declared. She was to be godmother and she chose the name: Christine. Verbena loved it. James loved whatever Verbena loved.
“Anything that pleases her,” he said to Mrs. Brewster. “Christine, Mary Anne, Bridget, Pensacola—anything she wants.”
“You're always so perfect!” exclaimed the lady.
“Better get some boys' names ready too. Gustavus, Napoleon—how're they for starters?”
“Oh, Captain Monk, darling Verbena and I are that sure, this time!”
“All right. Boy, girl, anything that pleases Verbena.”
“Major,” said his wife that evening, “do you know I sometimes wonder if Captain Monk is—not that I've ever heard him say a thing—but I do wonder if he—every now and then——”
“Is tired of it?” completed the Major.
“Oh, Major, I'd never say that!”
“So you want me to say it. What?”
“He's still on his three cigarets,” said the lady. “I shouldn't wonder if she kept them shut up safe from the children. Nobody knows what she said to him.”
“Has anybody known what she's ever said to him?” cried the Major. “She's never once been caught at it.”
June tenth: that was Doctor Stoff's date for Christine. In April one day, the cigarets disappeared.
“Well, I suppose she's happy now at last,” said the Major. “It's taken her about fifteen years.”
“I can't think,” said his wife, “I simply don't see how darling Verbena did it.”
“I always told you she would.”
“Have you any idea, Mr. Whetstone?” He was paying a call and the lady appealed to him.
“No, indeed, Mrs. Brewster.” Jack would never discuss this subject. But before April was over Verbena stunned them all by lifting the veil herself. It may be that she felt secure, that her final victory after her long campaign, so well conducted, so persistent and indomitable, had given her a belief that she could do anything; or her delicate condition may have affected her judgment for the nonce. At any rate, a court-martial at Bowie had brought officers from both Bayard and Grant and these visitors were being entertained one evening by James. He had provided refreshments of various simple sorts for them, and although he had abstained from drinking with them, he had lighted a cigar for the first time since the pot-luck incident because it was the first time since then that any group of strangers had visited the post and sat in his company.
All was going naturally when the door opened and Verbena appeared. The gentlemen rose and she greeted them most sweetly; a soft pathos in her voice was noticed and admired. She was charmingly clad in white and folds of it fell about her in a way at once appropriate and concealing. Then her glance fell upon James who had no thought of hiding his act. With a lift of her pretty brows she went to him, and taking his cigar from between his fingers in the sweetest and most attractive manner, she spoke caressingly:
“Ah, naughty!”
Then for a brief second she placed the cigar between her own lips and drew one puff. They all said afterwards that she looked bewitching.
“It would harm me less than him.”
This was her good night to them, and she left them with a smile, shaking a playful finger at James.
Before breakfast next day Mrs. Stoff was round to see Mrs. Brewster who was just starting to see her.
“The doctor waked me up to tell me,” Mrs. Stoff began at once.
“The Major waked me up too.”
“The doctor says he didn't turn a hair.”
“The Major says not a man in the army could have behaved better. He didn't light another one, he just said that the joke was on him, and they just said that they wished their wives took care of them like that and then they drank her health, and the cards got going, and I guess it was two o'clock when the Major sat on my bed and told me. But I do wish Verbena wouldn't.”
“He turned red though.”
The sight of Jack Whetstone rapidly coming along from his quarters distracted the two ladies. They called out to him with one voice. But he merely lifted his hat and sped onward. Nobody needed to tell him what they were doing, and he ground his teeth.
“Hags!” he said to himself. “Buzzards! Damned if ever I marry!”
In this hot youthful unjust state he entered the private room of Captain Monk wondering what could be the matter that the Captain's striker had brought him so early a message. The sound of people at breakfast came through the door; and while Jack stood waiting he scowled gloomily at the rack for pipes, so orderly, so interesting, so deserted. Absorbed in his mood, he did not hear the quiet entrance of his superior officer, gave a slight start at being spoken to and turned quickly away from the rack. The Captain appeared not to be aware of the rack.
“Have you heard the news?”
Monk was cool and natural and good natured; but serious too.
“N-no,” stuttered Whetstone, with a wild fancy that it must have to do with last night.
“They've got the Butterfield stage again. Over near Willcox.”
“Oh,” said the boy, with relief, and there was some surprise in Monk's glance at him.
“A clean sweep,” he said with a touch of severity.
“That's bad.” The boy took it in now.
“Sit down a minute,” said Monk.
The boy sat, his eyes intent on his Captain.
“This has got to stop,” pursued Monk slowly, and brooding over it as he went on, “We've been sent here to do it. If we don't do it, what good are we? Nobody escaped this time. Four passengers inside. Must have been just about daylight, as usual. I expect it'll be some of Cochise's band. They should have let the cavalry finish the old fox up that time they caught him and had him sure. But they put him in a Sibley tent and he cut a hole in it … Well, that old nanny goat of a Secretary of War is not going to have the chance to hinder me. I'll stop it somehow, or I'll——”
Captain Monk did not say what he would do if he failed, and the young soldier waited.
“Stage was burned to ashes, as usual. They must have shot the horses first. The state of the bodies—but I don't want to make you sick. One woman, too. I want to get a look at the place. You'll go with me. Put on your oldest shirt and things—it's rough country, I'll fix it up with the K.O. E. Troop is hunting them now, ordered out from Fort Grant. Fifty men on horseback in broad daylight, riding around and around. So likely to make Indians come right in and surrender! The nanny goat has telegraphed that all arrests must be peaceful. Indians mustn't have any cause for dissatisfaction. Pity he didn't tell us never to disturb them on Sundays. Well, you scatter now and get ready.” And the Captain went to the Colonel.
“Work it out yourself,” said the Colonel. “We'll call it a roving detail. Report to me when you're ready. Oh, by the way: are you expecting Mrs. Frankish?”
“Not just yet, Colonel.”
“But you are expecting her?”
“About June first.”
The Colonel smiled slightly at the prospective father. “Can't you head her off?”
James Monk looked a little surprised.
“I mean,” said the Colonel, “the Indians. Of course, if you expect to have them thoroughly discouraged by then ——”
“I can't be sure, Colonel. The sooner the better of course. Nothing would stop my mother-in-law.”
“I see. I see.” The Colonel's tone was dubious.
James was not quite certain that his commanding officer did see. “I'd hate to lose her visit,” he now said frankly, “as much as she'd hate to lose it herself? She has always been welcome, she always will be, and it's a pleasure and a comfort to have her.”
“I see! I see!” repeated the Colonel, but this time very heartily. “Allow me to congratulate you. I have sometimes met men whose feelings for their wife's mother were—er——”
“Yes,” said James Monk succinctly.
“But,” the Colonel hurried on, “about her journey across the San Simon and up into these hills. I don't like that. Let me know in time and I'll send the ambulance with an escort to meet her in Lordsburg—that is unless you've got the Indians discouraged by then. Now, Captain Monk, I count on you. You understand the fix we're in just as well as I do. Some mean skunk who calls himself a hardy settler and a great-souled pioneer plays the Indian some stinking trick. Next, the justly outraged Indian, like the simple savage that he is, scalps, mutilates, and otherwise annoys, not only the great-souled pioneer with his wife, his maid, his ox, his ass, and everything that is his, but also any other white people he can catch. That puts him in wrong.
“Then the surviving population of the territory clamor for justice and military protection. Then we try to give it to 'em. Then all the women in Boston with their sisters the clergymen denounce our brutalized American army. Then the Secretary of War runs to the President, and the President, mindful of a second term, tells the Secretary to allow none but peaceful arrests. Then the Indians do it some more. And then the surviving population denounces the pampered inefficiency of our American army. So we get it in the neck on both sides—east and west—and there you are.”
Some hours after this conversation two objects which were neither vegetable nor mineral, though quiet as the earth, sat behind a gray rock. Cactus was to the right of them, cactus to the left of them, and sand was beneath them. The Chiricahua mountains blazed bleakly around and above them, and the flat blaze of the San Simon valley, which was ten miles away and didn't look two, sent up its heat to the sky whence the heat had come. If you were unused to the sight, you might have taken the two objects for Indians, and you would have been wrong: anybody living in that country would have known them for white men, and with field-glasses might have discerned the yellow stripes on one pair of visible legs. These belonged to James Monk; Jack Whetstone sat beside him and the shirts and faces of both were brown with dust. A large rip slanted across Jack's trousers where a cactus had laid them open; for it was a rough country, and they had climbed about in it, up and down.
Monk once more lifted his glasses to his eyes, and for a long while studied various distant places through them. Then he handed them to Whetstone and spoke.
“Get to know it well,” he said. “Learn it by heart.”
In a little while Whetstone said, “I think I've got it all now.”
“Look at it again, and follow me. The road comes from Stein's Pass over there across the valley, and up into this draw. That's the stage road. The railroad is surveyed round the north end of these hills.”
“I can see the road away across the valley.”
“Right. Now when the draw narrows, you see that turn among the rocks. That's the kind of place they would choose. They'd lie fifty yards back, each side. Now go back farther—back to the big cactus. There's big cactus back a hundred yards each side. See? That's about where we'd take our position.”
“I see,” said Whetstone.
“The stage would get to that narrow turn, and shots would drop the horses. Then the Indians would show, and then—well, we'd get into the game then.”
“You mean, we'd spring up above and have 'em surrounded?”
“That's the idea. Trouble is, this isn't the only good place through here for an ambush. We've got to study several others.”
“How can we know which one they'll choose?”
“That's going to bother me. There's a sergeant I could borrow from B troop who has his ways of finding things out in this country, but he's sick in hospital with rheumatism. Come along. We've a lot of work to do yet.”
The dusty figures rose, and climbed back to where they had their horses tied. On the way little quail ran and then clustered among the thin weeds.
“Shoot!” said Monk. “It's a good chance,” and he got his shotgun from the saddle.
They went to it and bagged enough for their purpose; the birds were not wild.
“Look out!” Monk suddenly warned; and near a bird he was stooping to pick up Jack saw a rattlesnake which he killed at once.
He dangled it. “Small one.”
“Yes. Wouldn't be able to pierce your boot; but nasty in your finger or your face.”
“How nasty?”
“Couldn't say. Wouldn't care to find out by experiment. Don't bother to keep that rattle, you'll find plenty of bigger ones.”
“I thought your kids might like it.”
“I guess they will, thank you. Now come along. And tie the quail very conspicuously. And put up your shotgun and keep your rifle ready.”
More dusty still, they returned in the afternoon, as to their lives safe and sound, but in Jack's trousers the rent had developed to such an extent that he thought he had better get off at the stable and slink to his quarters by a back way.
“No such thing,” said Monk.
“But, Captain! Look!”
“Let 'em see it. With the birds it makes a first rate blind— Why, Toney, good day to you!” This was addressed to a dark slim girl riding a gray donkey down a trail into the post. A red fillet bound her black Indian hair.
Toney sat on her burro and showed her beautiful teeth. She smiled kindly on the officers. She was driving another burro whose load of wood was quite as big as the patient little gray donkey.
“You lucky day,” said she. “You kill heap quail.”
“You got heap wood, Toney. Who you sell him?”
“Sell him Missis Colonel. Yas, you got heap quail.”
“Hope more tomorrow.”
“You more tomorrow? No get tired quail! Very good, very nice eat, yas.”
Once again Toney smiled sweetly on the two, and proceeded toward the house of the commanding officer with what might have been mistaken for a walking wood-pile.
Monk's eye followed her, and he laughed. “Well, if she guesses what we're at, our white ladies won't, and that's more important.”
“Toney wouldn't tell?”
“Not she.”
“But she's a full-blooded Apache.”
“She's had white friends and she's the white man's friend. Her father's a scout and she's been to Carlisle. But she has learned English by the best method known and she can speak it much better than you heard her—when she chooses.”
The quail were bestowed where they would do the most good; congratulations followed and good wishes for the morrow. No blind could have been more successful with the white ladies who in the next two or three days were already beginning again to think about Verbena and James. James, meanwhile, rode daily into the desert. He studied the rocks, crawled into the nooks, riveted each detail in his brain. He jotted notes where he sat or stood, he shot quail for the benefit of all observers. Sometimes he went an hour without a word to the devoted Jack, proud and dusty and mute beside him. On these excursions Jack grew slowly into knowledge of his Captain, until one day their final step of intimacy was taken at a jump.
“Now here's the first thing,” began James Monk.
Again the two were sitting down among the stones above the road in the unchanging blaze of the Arizona noon. The twin knobbed hill-tops so melodiously named Dos Cabezas in that Spain-haunted southern land rose to their left, and still further to their left, westward, the pass opened out upon the gaping waste of the Sulphur Springs valley.
“Can it get hotter than this?” asked Whetstone.
“Wait till you feel July. This is only May ninth. Now first, before we go over the whole performance point by point, let's stage it. Scene, Chiricahua mountains, somewhere in Apache Pass. Time, probably just before or soon after sunrise. It'll not be so hot, Jack. It's the only cool hour in the twenty-four. The patrol of the road we're keeping now will have been withdrawn two days before—time for the Indians to get wind of it and plan another shy at the Butterfield stage—if they'll only be so accommodating as to do it. And I sort of think they will. We can't time 'em to the minute, and if I can help it I'll not trust to our getting to the spot in one march. The day the patrol's withdrawn, you and I will be ready at any news to leave the post with our detail. We'll travel by night and hide in the scrub trees on the top by day, well off any trail. They'll come by one of their trails, or they'll come by the road from Dragoon Summit. We've got all trails marked on our maps. Enter the stage bound for Tucson and dressed for the part. Enter Indians. Enter soldiers of pampered and brutalized U.S. cavalry. Alarms and excursions. See?” Monk, absorbed over his scheme, looked at the mountains.
“But you never say where you think it's going to happen,” said Whetstone.
“Well, that's merely because I prefer knowing to guessing. If that sergeant hadn't rheumatism—but he has. It's the Indians who will choose the place, and I've got to find out their choice. And that's where I plan you're to come in.”
Jack stared.
Monk's meditative eyes still contemplated the general distance. “What's your opinion of Toney?”
Jack stared more. “Toney? Who sells the wood?”
“You can't have helped noticing her, surely?”
“I've seen her coming and going with those burros. What d'you mean, noticing?”
The Captain turned astonished eyes on his Lieutenant. “She's exceptionally attractive,”
The Lieutenant's eyes ventured to twinkle at his Captain. “Of course I noticed that she smiled at you.”
Monk remained serious. “I'm a married man.”
“Would a full-blooded Apache appreciate that?”
“You're not twenty-five yet. She'd appreciate that more. Suppose her smile had been really for you?”
Bewilderment grew in the Lieutenant's face, and he was silent, waiting.
“They're women, Jack, they're women. She's a girl, you're a man, and you're both human. Follow that smile up.”
“I——” Jack began and stopped, leaving his mouth open.
“You think I've dragged in topic number one. But it belongs here. I think you can find out through Toney. Her eyes, her hair—take a look at her next time! She has helped two civilians. One of 'em's DeLong over at the store at Dos Cabezas. She has been useful to him—very useful. Saved his life twice, Warned him of raids.”
“Toney hears things?” Jack asked precipitately.
“Toney hears anything she goes after.”
“But, Captain! I——”
“She's not white, I know. What of it? When I was your age—but look at her.” Monk paused, not satisfied with his Lieutenant's expression. “I'm talking seriously, Jack. Follow it up. It's our best chance. I must know for sure, if I can. These horrible murders have got to stop. Consider it your duty to follow it up.”
“Captain”—a flush mantled up to the rim of Jack's hair—“I think I'll have to—I guess I don't mind telling you—I know you'll never mention it——”
It was now the Captain who stared at his Lieutenant. And as he stared, a confessing smile flickered upon the face of that youth.
“Do you mean to say,” began Monk, “do you——” He rose up straight—“You little rascal! Oh, you damned little rascal!”
Jack, reassured, brought it out with a voice that trembled on the edge of mirth. “Captain, I'd followed up that smile before we ever started our reconnaissances.”
“You had?”
“Quite a while.”
“And I sat here,” mused the Captain, “never thought of your Mexican experiences—I'm an idiot—I sat arguing and persuading——” his words failed, and his emotions abruptly expressed themselves in a long and accurately aimed squirt of tobacco juice.
At that dumfounding sight, Jack's respect and restraint stemmed the outbreak of his mirth, but he fell backwards silent and limp on the hill side. “Ouch!” he cried.
Monk sprang to him. “Snake?”
Jack sat up ruefully. “Cactus.” And then respect and restraint struggled faintly again. His Captain had them all fooled—Verbena, everybody. To think of Verbena filled the boy with savage delight. While James Monk was carefully picking the porcupine lances of the cactus out of his back, respect dissolved in confiding affection.
“Captain, you've stunned me.”
“I guess I've about got 'em all out of your shirt,” said Monk. “Take it off and let's have a look at your back.”
Whetstone removed the garment.
“Here are some more,” Monk said. “Mustn't give 'em a chance to work under the skin. Bad. Well, young fellow, the stunning is mutual.”
“Captain, if you want to know about Toney, I'll tell you.”
“I don't want to know. That's a fellows own business.”
“I think I'd like to tell you.”
“That's all right then. Go ahead.”
Jack finished when the last cactus spine had been extracted and he was putting on his shirt. “So you see, Captain, the foundation for your plan is laid.”
“You've been very close. Keep so. Don't let the ladies begin to regret you're not any steadier than you-were at El Paso.”
“Oh, I've learned my lesson.”
Monk, without concealment, brought his tobacco out and cut a fresh piece from it.
Jack whipped out a cigar and held it to him.
Monk shook his head.
“It's one of your own, you know,” said Jack. “Won't you?”
“I prefer this, thank you.” And the two got on their horses.
“Captain, when did you start?”
“Start chewing, you mean? When I was eighteen. Since then I've always chewed; right along.”
Still dumfounded Jack rode by his side, whispering, “To think of it, to think of it, to think of it.”
Captain Monk stared at Arizona.
“It's a nasty habit,” he resumed thoughtfully as they rode along the hill. “So when I took to courting, I took to smoking, like a gentleman.”
“I see,” said Jack in a low voice, and not looking at him.
“But when I've been on serious duty,” pursued his Captain, “I've always found myself going back to my little old plug. You can learn to chew—invisibly—in the house, and so you get to doing it out-of-doors as well. Sometimes in a tough Indian situation I've found myself chewing a lot. It's a comfort. It helps. A woman is not likely to understand a thing like that.”
“No,” said Jack in a voice still lower.
And then they rode on silently, while Arizona slowly softened, and violet shadows began to stretch eastward; and so they returned to the post; and when young Jack went to bed that night, he would cheerfully have died for his Captain.
May was not quite over when the Colonel sent his compliments one evening to Captain Monk, and would the Captain be so obliging as to call on a little matter of business about sending an ambulance to Lordsburg? The Captain went over.
“Have a cigar?” began the thoughtless Colonel. “Oh, I forgot. Well; well; yes. Here we are, and June's coming.”
“Three days more,” said Monk.
“Hot,” said the Colonel. “Awful hot. Well. Now then. Your mother-in-law.”
“She wants to come early the first week, Colonel.”
“And you didn't wish to head her off. And our friends the Indians haven't been discouraged yet.”
“I think it had better wait till after Mrs. Frankish has arrived. She's with friends at Bayard.”
“Tell me your point.”
“Just this, Colonel. I think that the longer we patrol the road, the quicker the action we're likely to get.”
“You may overdo that. What if they tire of hovering about here and go off somewhere else to pillage where they're less watched?”
“I'll risk it, Colonel. What I'm counting on is their impatience. They've acquired the habit of considering the Butterfield stage their particular prey. Keep 'em away from it, keep 'em waiting till they're worked up over it, and then withdraw your patrol. They'll be more in the mood to think you feel safe than that you're up to something.”
“You've completed your study of the country?”
“The day after I made my last report to you. Those Indians will sneak in from the south—or else from Dragoon Summit. They may feel bold.”
“Well, Captain, I'd not care to be one of the passengers in that stage.”
“That's all fixed, Colonel. Warning's to reach them, and they'll have the choice of waiting over at Lordsburg, or coming on and taking the risk.”
“And how is the stage driver going to like it?”
“Very much better than usual, Colonel. Jake Varris will be the man. When I put it up to him, he said that if they didn't get him first he'd be ready to get some of them.”
“Look here. Why not make your passengers wait over at Lordsburg and fill the stage with soldiers?”
“I'd thought of it, Colonel. I'm afraid of it. Hard to manage quietly enough.”
“You seem fairly confident of the place they'll choose.”
“Whetstone and I have felt that way more and more as we have studied the situation.”
“How is that boy turning out?”
“He's going to make a first class cavalry officer.”
“There was talk of some foolishness—across the bridge—Juarez—that sort of thing. So he's steady now?”
“I'll be more than satisfied if my own boys grow up like him.”
“Well, well, that's good! Let me know when to send the ambulance for Mrs. Frankish.”
“Why, Colonel, that's very kind, but the road will still be patroled.”
“Send it all the same, Captain. Your wife will feel more comfortable. We must save her every strain we can just now.”
“Thank you, Colonel, she will appreciate that as much as I do.”
So Mrs. Frankish, thoroughly protected from the enemy, rattled into Fort Bowie on the third afternoon of the new month, and Verbena was saved all strain. Her mother brought the latest news from Caesar Borgia and the army gossip fresh from Bayard. She was made welcome by the ladies of the post; they congratulated her upon the health, the beauty, and the number of her grandchildren.
“Yes, I'm well trained!” she declared. “Why, I've learned how to spoil the children without Verbena catching me at it! But it has been an ideal union from the first, and I've always said so. James simply adores her, and I've yet to see a happier wife.”
“Or a happier husband,” said Mrs. Brewster.
“Doesn't he look young!” exclaimed his mother-in-law with bright quickness. “You'd never in the world take him for forty. Well, that's what love does! We all think Christine is just the sweetest name.”
And then, one day Mrs. Frankish ceased her excursions and sat indoors with her daughter; Dr. Stoff had thought it would be prudent for Verbena to keep rather quiet. There was whispering in the post that afternoon. Captain Monk and Lieutenant Whetstone had gone after quail again. Such a good influence for Mr. Whetstone! So fortunate! He was now known to be a strictly well behaved young man; what a pity nobody had a daughter old enough for him! Marriage was just what he needed, and he would make such a good husband! His hair grew so nicely over his ears, and had you ever noticed his eyelashes? Would it do to ask Mrs. Frankish or Verbena if they really were shooting quail? Or could it be something about the stage? Had the patrol really been drawn from the road? Perhaps it was going to be put back.
The Colonel had seemed quite surprised at the suggestion that there was more in the quail shooting than appeared. In fact, he didn't believe it. Captain Monk had been busy making maps of the region, and was often away from morning till night with Lieutenant Whetstone. Why was this particular day chosen to make comments on their absence? No one had an answer for that; and yet none seemed quite satisfied. Mrs. Brewster couldn't bear it alone for another minute. She went to see Mr. Stoff.
“The Major is out,” said she. “And he wouldn't say any more than the Colonel.”
“Then you feel just the same as I do?” exclaimed Mrs. Stoff.
The ladies sat a moment in silence, with rumor restless in their brains.
Then Mrs. Brewster rose. “I intend to ask Verbena. She must know if there's anything.”
Mrs. Stoff rose also. “I'll go with you.”
“Would you, dear? Just in these days? You see, I've always been so particularly close to her.”
“It's no more than my duty,” said Mrs. Stoff, “after the message she sent me this morning by Dr. Stoff, hoping her friends wouldn't forget her, now she had to keep so quiet.”
“Oh, well, you know best,” said Mrs. Brewster; and they acted upon it at once, and were soon sitting solicitously with Verbena, to show her that she was not being forgotten.
Presently Mrs. Brewster came right out with it. “I thought I saw the Captain and Mr. Whetstone.”
“So early!” said Mrs. Frankish in surprise. “Why it's only four o'clock.”
“Perhaps it wasn't, but I thought that the Captain would be here. It must be half an hour ago.”
“It couldn't have been,” said Verbena, “or he surely would have been in to see me. He has been getting home about seven, and I tell him not to hurry or worry.”
“Do you suppose they will put back the soldiers to guard the road?” asked Mrs. Stoff.
Mrs. Frankish appealed to Verbena. “Has James said anything about it to you?”
“Not since he told me the patrol was to be withdrawn,” Verbena answered. “Why should they put them back?”
“Well, that's it. Nobody seems to know.”
Verbena shook her head. “James would have told me.”
“But perhaps it's a military secret,” said her mother, cheerfully.
Verbena shook her head again. “He would have told me.”
“Well, dearie, your father didn't always tell me everything. And I didn't expect him to.”
“James is different, mother.”
“He certainly must be!” said Mrs. Frankish, still more cheerfully. “But I've yet to discover it.”
Verbena colored. “It is not,” she said, “that I ever interfere with James, or that I ever would. I do not have to expect him to tell me his plans; he simply does.”
“Well, we mustn't stay too long,” said Mr. Brewster, getting up.
“Yes, we mustn't tire you,” added Mrs. Stoff, following her example.
They were about to go out of the door when it opened violently and through it burst Nellie and Gertrude. In the hands of each was something creased and bright which they held up to the company. It appeared to be tin foil. On their heels followed Charlie and James Junior.
“We know what it is!” screamed the little girls out of breath.
“Shut up. You shut up!” said James Junior grabbing the tin foil out of Nellie's hand.
But Gertrude waved hers beyond her brother's reach. “It goes round tobacco!” she shrieked.
“Chew tobacco,” shrieked Nellie.
“Shut up, shut up!” repeated James Junior.
“The kind they sell at the canteen!” added Gertrude, still at the top of her lungs.
“And it's daddy's!” asserted Nellie in a deafening voice.
Verbena had gone very white.
“Give it to me,” she said.
It was thrust at her with excitement.
“Isn't it daddy's?” persisted Nellie.
“Where did you get it?” asked Verbena of James Junior; but the boy stood sullen and silent.
“We got it in the shed where father oils his guns. And you know we did!” said Gertrude; and she glared at her brother triumphantly.
“And we said it was daddy's and they said it wasn't,” said Nellie. “You know you did,” she added harshly to Charlie. “And you tried to take it from us. Mother, isn't it daddy's?”
Verbena sat quite still holding the tin foil more and more tightly.
“Run along, children,” said Mrs. Frankish, “mother's tired.”
“Well, we'll just go along now,” said Mrs. Brewster.
“And we'll be in to see you tomorrow,” said Mrs. Stoff. “Good-by.”
“Good-by,” said Mrs. Frankish. “Do come in tomorrow.”
The children went out of the door, Nellie and Gertrude dancing in front, happy in having proved themselves perfectly right about everything, Charlie and James Junior dumb with rage at their sisters, all the more because it had begun to dawn upon their male minds that they had somehow mismanaged in a crisis: they should not have contradicted the girls. As for Mrs. Stoff and Mrs. Brewster, these visitors had brought away from the Monk household information of a sort so far superior to their expectations that they utterly forgot all about patrols and Captain Monk and Lieutenant Whetstone who were at that very moment proceeding cautiously together through the dry, stunted, thorny woods, high up in the Chiricahua mountains while the pale Verbena sat with her mother.
“Did you know about this?” she presently asked.
“Gracious, no!” said Mrs. Frankish.
“Did you ever suspect?”
“Verbena, have you taken leave of your senses? I'm just as surprised as you are. Only, I don't wonder he had to do something.”
“Do you think the boys knew?”
“Of course they didn't, not beforehand. You're getting worse and worse, Verbena. Of course decent boys would want to shield their father.”
“He has deceived me,” said Verbena.
“That doesn't surprise me at all,” observed her mother.
“He has never deceived me before.”
“Well, dearie, that's no fault of yours, I must say. There've been times when I've hoped he would.”
Not very much later, Dr. Stoff was summoned in haste. Evidently Verbena's experiences of the afternoon had accelerated the advent of little Christine who appeared before midnight in the shape of two bouncing boys.
With thoughts far other than those of paternity, and in happy ignorance of tin foil and that his domestic strategy after all these years had slipped a cog, James Monk moved stealthily beneath the night-watching stars. He was intent upon the military strategy which had rendered his absorbed mind so incautious in that shed where he oiled his guns.
Close beside him among the trees rode Jack Whetstone, and their men were near at hand. Their men had joined them after dark at a place appointed, having left the post ostensibly bound for Stein's Pass. Perhaps so much care was not needed, but it was taken by Captain Monk. They were still several hours' march from where they were going, and yet they seldom spoke; when they did; it was with voices lowered by the suspense of their errand. While yet in the screen of the woods, the Captain stopped and dismounted. Thence to the goal they must be infantry, and from here the horses were led back to wait in the heart of the forest.
“Your guess as to the place was right all along,” said Jack, “once you were willing to make it.”
“I wasn't willing to rely on it, though.”
“What would you have done if Toney had named some other point?”
“Don't ask questions I can't answer.”
“Then here's one you can if you will. Did the Colonel say anything about arrests?”
“He employed the customary formula.”
“What? None but peaceful?” Jack swore a muffled oath.
“There'll be no arrests.”
“That's pretty nervy of you.”
“Well, not so very. I thought the Colonel winked. I know I did.”
The plateau where the trees grew thick began to fall away, and the growth became more sparse. With this change, their voices dropped still lower when they spoke at all, although much ground was yet to be covered, and they had more than enough night left in which to cover it. The gap of the pass could be discerned below them, and beyond it the unfeatured dimness where the valley lay. The light from the clear stars disclosed no small objects; but in it the large lines of the mountains loomed in differing depths of shadow, and from their slanted slides rose now and then the shape of an outstanding cactus or of some lone rock. Arizona's towering space was cool and mute. The quiet feet of the men as they descended once or twice dislodged some pebble that rolled for a moment with a tiny sound.
After an hour more of silent, supple climbing downward and along over the half-seen hill, some of them halted. Their Captain's cautiously pointed hand showed them where they were to lie in hiding here. They disappeared, stooping and crawling in silence. Those that lay near together could smell each other's sweat.
With Captain Monk the rest moved out of their hearing farther downward, crossed the stage road quickly, climbed up and back among the rocks and mounds for a while, dispersed and lay low, hidden from those opposite and from themselves. Their grip was on their guns; they were to wait for one word from their Captain. He kept his Lieutenant with him in a bare space which they had often marked for their own. Cactus grew thick around this little clear spot of ground and small stones and thin weeds covered it. By looking between two bristling clumps of Yucca, you got in daylight a slit of view out of the gap and over the flat to Dragoon Summit; but you must not lift your head as much as six inches and your body must lie close against the earth. The sweat dried in the backs of the wet shirts, the damp chests and bellies of the men began to grow cold.
“The waiting is the longest part,” whispered Jack.
He saw Monk's head nod. He saw, above Stein's Pass, a change come in the sky; but he was not sure of this, and he watched it until he had no doubt. Another hue was flowing in among the stars. It flowed, filling and spreading, and he watched it so hard that his whole thought was there. A color was coming into it, something not yet pink; and underneath this the shadowed world was all at once deep purple. Liquid depths submerged in darkness rose from it point after point amid the changing tides of light, purple, and purple again, and again purple with pools of blue beginning, next some wide shadows of saffron and amber, and suddenly he noticed that all the stars were gone and a great lake of rose had flooded the east.
And then his Captain's elbow touched him lightly, but it was like a stroke of ice or fire. Monk's head was turned from him looking between the Yucca clumps. Jack looked. He could see nothing. Tight-strung with suspense, he lay and looked, and he could feel the light of day stretch across and begin to reach down into deep holes in the pass till they filled up with it and all the stones and plants were to be seen. Everything was to be as seen, gray and clear; and far across space to the west, Dragoon Summit was purple, with a line of gold shining along it.
Did he see something move, down there fifty yards, had something sunk down between those two rocks? He dared not ask; he hoped that his body would not take to trembling. He held out one hand to see. He tested each spread finger watching for any quiver in it. Each one was steady; a smile crossed his face, and he turned one dedicating look at his Captain. His Captain must succeed; and he—well, he'd be glad to die for it.
Again his eyes strained to catch sight of something in the open, down below. Only rocks were there, and the spear clumps of cactus and the huge space and silence of Arizona. Was it possible that they had come while he was thinking about the dawn? At grips with his excitement, he sank his forehead against the stones and closed his eyes. A second touch, like a feather, gave him no second electric start of surprise; one finger of the Captain was pointing.
There they came, as noiseless as a cloud of mist, but clear cut in the dry stillness. He thought of pyramids and of Egypt, which he had never seen save in pictures, of desert and Arabs and ancient strange figures carved on slabs of ruin. Was this actual? Was he here looking at living shapes, dark, painted, slim, that he could almost hit with a stone, and that were going to leap upon dead white bodies unless he killed them first?
All this while, he was rapidly counting them. He could not finish because now they were moving among themselves; like a cloud of mist they were gone, floating down among the rocks and growth a little way up the hill, each side of the road; and here was he close above them, still stretched along the ground, still waiting.
The Captain had to succeed. Jack found he had been carefully examining his gun when he was almost sure that he heard something. He looked quickly across to the opposite hill; not a sign of anything was visible there; and yet, these rocks and cactus were full of men with their hands on their guns.
Memories and thoughts swept through him. How could this place look so natural? Could he have made Toney feel like telling him, if he had only begun after that talk with the Captain? Yes, he could. Toney surpassed any of his experiences so far. What would the next one be? Where? Experiences waited in the world everywhere for such a man as he knew himself to be. Or else—to die here, quick and sharp, helping the Captain win. That would be all right.
Was that the noise again? Not imagination? No, there it was. He had really heard it. Nearer now. On the road. Coming. Pretty slow. A clank; another; a creak. The stage. Absolutely. Anybody inside? Or had they stayed at Lordsburg? It was coming very slowly. Up that grade just there. Was he close enough down on the ground? He tried to flatten himself more, but it wasn't to be done. It had got up the grade. That was the crack of a whip. It was coming down now. Faster. That was a wheel knocking a rock.
He looked at the Captain, and once again ice and fire shot through the whole length of his body; moving toward the Captain was a snake. Sliding slowly out of the cactus into e warming sun, ten feet away, a rattlesnake was headed toward the Captain's face, Captain didn't see it. What would it do if it got to him? It must be turned. Turned now, at once, or killed. But the Indians would hear you. You mustn't move, you mustn't speak. That would spring the trap too soon. That would ruin all, and the Captain must win. Jack seized a little stone. No. Not that. Desperately, he touched James Monk who turned a fierce, heavy frown upon him, but seeing his glare, looked.
Instantly the Captain picked up a pebble like a boy's marble and like a boy's marble flicked it sharp and true. It hit the snake which coiled in a flash a foot from James Monk's face; and as it coiled he blew at it out of his mouth a huge wet quid of tobacco!
It struck the rattler's nose straight. Its soft sloppy mass spattered over his eyes and jaws and head; the juice blinded him—it stuck all over his front. Its taste was awfully new to him. It must have been horrible. He forgot to rattle. In disgust, in sheer outrage and amaze, he uncoiled in a dazed manner and slid away somewhere to wipe off the unprecedented insult.
The clank of the stage is close. One shot cracks. The Captain is up. One horse lies on the road, beating his legs.
Again a shot rings, and there's a shout from the Captain, and more shots. Jack finds himself kneeling, his gun cold and hard against his cheek, sighting, firing, and dropping the wild figures that now leap into sight below. He doesn't remember when he began.
More Indians now; more figures leaping to view all over the hill; smoke and shots from the stage, smoke everywhere, the sharp smell of it; shots high and low and echoing din among the rocks; the stretched arms of soldiers, aiming and shooting; the flung puffs from their rifles. How it smells! How thick the smoke is!
Silence. Down on the road, a stage driver, wiping blood from his neck, with the remark, “Just creased me;” passengers getting out and shaking hands with him; cavalry soldiers moving warily on the hillside; a shot occasionally from one of these; prone figures, dark, painted, slim, stretched quiet, faces down, arms flung flat out; faces up, arms twisted; dark bodies curved backward across rocks, full in view; dark bodies fallen half out of sight, half sticking out of cactus clumps; here and there a dark body still moving, crawling in a tilted falling motion for shelter; one last shot, the tilted body drops,
Silence once more after a time; stage road empty, everybody gone, and no arrests at all; merely a condensed funeral, and the Butterfield stage line safe hereafter in Apache Pass, till the completion of the Southern Pacific shall do away with it.
Captain Monk and his Lieutenant rode back together over the hills in the hot morning.
“Tobacco can be useful at a pinch, Captain,” said the Lieutenant. He got one nod for answer, and saw gather slowly over Monk's face that dusky red which Dr. Stoff had seen, It held for several miles and faded slowly. Then Jack ventured a word.
“Have one of your own cigars—now?”
“I don't mind if I do—now.”
The Captain and his Lieutenant were within a mile of the post; during that last mile nothing was said, until just as they dismounted, when the Captain spoke again with a curiously cutting voice.
“Those cigars are yours, Jack. I'm going to send to San Francisco for a fresh lot.”
News had preceded them, and the officers and ladies were gathered outside to see their arrival. The sharp eye of James Junior was the first to notice his father as he walked into sight; and the boy burst out loudly:
“Daddy's smoking!”
Major Brewster stared a full half minute.
“Godo'mitey!” said he.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1938, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 85 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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