The Douglas independent. [volume] (Roseburg, Or.) 187?-1885, 1883-06-30

ner with the command, as noiselessly as
white men can. In the darkness some
ones foot slips, o stone goes rolling
and the metallic cllnk OF
canteen is heard, whereat one or two
profane remarks are growled about
among the men, and Tanner orders
halt in whisper. "Take on your can
teens, men," is the next word, and they
are noiselessly deposited under the trees,
only the doctor and his atten
dant being allowed to retain theirs.
Then on they go again. Twice
Ray has to turn and caution his men to
take it easy. All are eager to get to the
bly, at the very top of the rugged noun
tain they are climbing. band OF
Apaches are hidden; for only on the
submits of these isolated buttes have !
they of late dared to build their rancho
r as, so untiring has been he search for
them, SO sudden the attack. Presently |
only by using both hands and helping |
one another can they climb up. Car
bines and rifles are passed from man to |
continued, and still, far aloft, the sum-
climbing fully an hour in this way when
the word halt is passed, as those in ad-
vance hold up warning hand. Tanner
and Ray again creep forward.
"What is it, Jack?"
'sCan't tell. There's a deep hollow
round that point. Charley said wait"
Tanner looks at his watch. Nearly
one" he mutters, sand we're not at the
Nh,
try?"
Well might we ask! Clinging along the
side of this huge spur from the main
range, his men could look for miles and
| miles over sea of tumbled rock and
ravine, of Jagged precipices and stony
| heights. of barren wastes or pine crested
slopes. Softened as it was by the sill
very touch of the moon, there yet was in
the entire scene the very abomination of
desolation. Below them yawned black
| gorge whose depths no eye could pene-
trate; before them an almost impractical
BILE ascent of rock and tangled under
brush; around them nothing that was
not savage and inhospitable. Already
the keen night air begun to cut in to the
| very marrow, and the men huddled to-
gether for warmth. "What stops us?" is
the muttered query.
| Back comes Charley Toyah. They are
wild with excitement now, and breath
| lessly the former makes his report.
Broken as is his English, bis hearers
readily understand him. They have
found the hostiles, and it is big ranch
eria. "Mebbe so two hundred Tonto.
No can tell" says Charley. "Come cap
tain; come see." And noiselessly as be-
fore the three officers creep forwar be-
yond the scouts, following the lead of
the agile young chief, who, nearly as
naked as on the day he was born, knows
neither hunger, thirst, nor cold in the
face of such glorious prospect as lies
before him. His savage soul thirsts for
war, and here is his opportunity.
Some two hundred yards they half
climb, half creep, and at last arrive at
RIDGE or point, over and around which
they are hidden to look, but not to ex-
pose head or hand, and to preserve in
tense silence. Peering, they see shall
low depression in the mountain. It lies
between the rocky ridge on which they
are crouching and corresponding ridge
some six hundred yards beyond. It is
well filed wi III pines and stunted oaks,
is walled in on the east by an almost pre-
cipitous cliff. while to the west the
mountain-side slopes abruptly down into
| the depths of that unfathomabie gorge.
Save the glistening treetops and occa-
sional outcropping of boulder, all is
darkness. Yet Charley has said that
there lay the rancheria; that in that hol-
low were probably over hundred hos
tile Apaches. How does he know?
Truscott points beneath them. "Lookl"
he says.
The mountain breeze is beginning to
sigh through the pines and to stir the
dead leaves among the crevices of the
| rocks. As little gust hutters the
branches below them, from a dozen
different points, deep down in this
mountain fastness, little showers of
| sparks fly forth, and are as quickly lost
to sight. They spring from tue smolder
ing embers of tiny fires, invisible except
| from above, and this it is that now be-
| trays the position OF the hostiles, who,
sleeping in fancied security, have not
sentinel to oppose to the coming foe.
For hve minutes Tanner and his two
CO nrades study the situation in silence.
Some of the fires are away off to the left
under the cliff, others to the right nearer
the ravine, more directly in front, and
around them all they know the Apaches
to he huddling. It is large rancheria.
very probably Eskiminzin's. the very
one they are after. Now come the dis
positions for attack.
Very slowly and cautiously has this
been accomplished. Hardly sound has
been made that could be heard more
than few yards away, and now, as
grayish pallor spreads over the heavens
above, and the tree-tops rustic in wind
that grows chiller ever minute. Tanners
little command, copying the tactics
| taught by long experience among the
Indians themselves, lies crouching in
readiness for its spring. Near the CEN
ter of the line and in front of all is the
captain himself, kneeling beside huge
boulder; with him. prone upon the
ground, lies Truscott; behind them
crouch one of Tanners sergeants and
''The Kid" Every man has his orders,
silence, not move, not shot until
the captain gives the word, then one vol
ley and rush in. The nearest fire OPP
posite Tanners position seems three
hundred yards away, perhaps not quite
so far. Little by little a wan light is
| stealing over the scene, and the men can
begin to distinguish one another's
features; but in the hollow no forms are
visible. Tanner looks impatiently at his
watch again.
"Onarter-past FIVE" he mutters sand