Chapter XXIV.
CAL'S NIGHT UNDER A TREE
The northern edge of Mexico was marked deeply by the surveyor's chisel upon the quartz rock at Cold Spring. All the country north and south of it had once been Apache land. Away back, nobody knows how long, before any Apaches had ever drank of that water, the entire region had belonged to another race of people, who disappeared, but left traces behind them, here and there. They did not leave any written history.
There are men who hold an opinion that the deserts of the southwest, such as Cal Evans made his gloomy march through that night, were not always desert. To Cal himself, as he rode along, the waste around him had seemed utterly hopeless, as if nothing good ever had been there or ever could be.
After the desert was passed, and after the whoop which announced the finding of water, he and his grim guard rode on until the forest around them became so dark that they and all others were compelled to halt. It was only for a few minutes, and then from the head of the cavalcade came back braves and squaws and boys carrying blazing torches of resinous wood. The huge tree-trunks that Cal now rode among seemed positively gigantic. No axe had been at work in that place for an age, and there was only a moderate amount of underbrush. What bushes could be seen were mostly gathered around and over the decaying trunks of fallen trees, and it was easy for the train to pick its winding way.
Before long Cal saw ahead of him great gleams of light, for the Apaches were kindling camp-fires, and there was an abundance of dry branches to make swift blazes.
The next thing of particular interest to him was a portly-looking squaw, who wore a somewhat battered straw bonnet, very much mixed up with gay ribbons. She seemed to be looking for somebody, and she carried in one hand a large water-gourd and in the other a flaming torch.
"Ugh!" she said, as she came to the side of Cal's pony. "Boy heap dry. Want water?"
"Thank you! Thank you!" exclaimed Cal, as he reached out for the gourd, and his voice sounded as if he had a bad cold in his head.
It was not a cold by any means, but a sort of fever, as if a sandy desert were beginning to form inside of him. He drank and drank again, and then passed the gourd to the lean Apache beside him.
"Ugh!" was all the immediate response to his politeness, but something said to Wah-wah-o-be in Apache brought back a rapidly spoken and seemingly resentful response. The chief's wife was plainly not at all afraid of that warrior.
"Boy eat, by and by," she said to Cal, as he handed her back the gourd, and he was encouraged to ask her a question.
"Do you know what they have done with my pony?" he said. "I want him to have some but not too much, right away."
"Ugh!" she said. "Heap pony!" for she had taken more than one look at a horse which she declared to be the right kind of a mount for The-boy-whose-ear-pushed-away-a-piece-of-lead. Cal repeated his question in Spanish before he was understood, and Wah-wah-o-be promised care for Dick. She did not add, however, that the care was to be given on account of the absent Ping.
The red mustang had a right to consider that he had been a patient pony, under trying circumstances, but his relief came at last. A fat squaw came to him, followed by a boy a little older than Cal and not resembling him in any way, and they unhitched Dick from his place in the train. They led him on among the trees until they came to the edge of a small, slowly running stream of water, and here they let him drink about a quarter as much as Dick thought would be good for him.
"No kill him," said Wah-wah-o-be. "Pony eat a heap. Drink more then."
Dick was led on after that until he came to a grassy open, where the moonlight showed him a large number of quadrupeds of various ranks in life. All were picketed at lariat-ends, but some of them had lain down at once, while others, in better spirits, had begun to nibble the grass. Dick was also picketed, and he tried the grass for a while. Then he concluded that he had done enough for one day and night, and he, too, lay down, but he would have been all the more comfortable for a few words from his master and a good rubbing down.
Cal's uncertainty as to what was to become of him was not at all relieved by his next experiences. To be sure he was guided onward to a place under the trees, not far from one of the camp-fires, and was ordered to dismount. More water was brought to him and a liberal piece of broiled venison. He ate well, now, but all the soreness at his heart seemed to have worked out into his muscles. He was dreadfully weary. He felt too badly to care a copper when he saw his saddle and bridle taken from the pony he had ridden. They were carried away by the fat squaw who had brought him the water. He had caught her name of Wah-wah-o-be from her own remarks, but he did not catch the other name she uttered, with a motherly chuckle, when she took possession of the saddle and bridle. It was a very long name, and was accompanied by expressions of strong admiration for the boy it belonged to. The one thing which Cal clearly comprehended was, that if he was ever to ride again he would probably mount some other steed than Dick and hold some other bridle.
His head was too weary and too busy to take much note of things around him then, but he afterwards remembered how wonderful it all looked. The scattered camp-fires were surrounded by wild, strange-looking figures, and by groups that were the wilder and the stranger the more figures there were in them. The firelight danced among the giant trees and through the long vines which clung to them or hung from their branches. The great shadows seemed to make motions to each other, now and then, and it was altogether a very remarkable picture.
Cal was beginning to feel sleepy, when out from among the shadows marched the chief in the cocked hat and red stocking-leg uniform, followed by four other dignified warriors.
"Ugh!" he said. "How boy now? Eat heap?"
"Yes, thank you," said Cal. "How?"
"Ugh! Good!" said the Apache leader, as Cal slowly arose and stood in front of him, but he did not shake the hand Cal offered him.
He turned to the other great men, and they exchanged a few sentences in their own tongue. They were hearing further explanations of the plan he had formed for the general good, and they nodded a cheerful assent when he ended with, "Kah-go-mish is a great chief."
They turned and stalked away, and with them went the lean, grim Apache who had hitherto been Cal's guard, and who had latterly seemed to be getting almost like a friendly acquaintance. His place was filled by a pair of short, bow-legged, swarthy old braves, whom Cal set down as the unpleasantest-looking Indians he had ever seen.
Very quickly the prisoner had good reasons for an every way more severe opinion of his new guards. They were under strict orders to prevent his escape, and no other especial directions had been given them. Of course they proposed to perform their sentry duty with as little trouble and as complete security as might be. Cal was lying upon the ground, while they were busy with their knives among the nearest bushes. He hardly looked after them, for his thoughts were wandering to the camp at Cold Spring and to the faces of those who had talked so much about him, all that evening, in the parlor at Santa Lucia. He had not the remotest dream of the precise experience which was coming to him. The two ill-looking braves returned, and one of them had a handful of forked branches, trimmed and pointed. They turned Cal over upon his back and stretched out his arms. A sharp thrill went through him as he began to comprehend what they were doing. Thrill followed thrill as they drove one forked stick into the ground over each wrist, and another over each ankle.
"Ugh!" exclaimed one of them. "No get away!"
"I am staked out!" said Cal to himself, huskily. "Staked out!"
Well might the cold shivers come with that terrible thought, for he had read of that method of securing prisoners and of what sometimes followed it. Staked out in the depths of a Mexican forest!
Chapter XXV.
A STRANGE LETTER FROM MEXICO
Ping and Tah-nu-nu had not been staked out that first night after their capture. Precisely how to keep them safely, yet humanely, had at first been a puzzle.
"If they once got away into the brush," said Sam Herrick, "you might as well hunt for a pair of sage-hens, and they'd about die before they'd be caught again. The boy's a game little critter, and the gal's got an eye like a hawk."
It was decided that they must be tied up, but it was so done as to inflict very little hardship. A thong of hide, knotted hard, so that nothing but a knife could undo the knot, connected an arm of each captive with a stout arm of a mesquit bush, close to the sharp-eyed sentinel at the head of the widest path.
There was no danger of any escape, and both Ping and his sister were wiser and tamer than Sam gave them credit for. They understood the kindness of Colonel Evans better and better every time they looked at the little mirrors or the stunning handkerchiefs. They were also aware that the Apache band had left the chaparral, for the message brought from Kah-go-mish by the Mexicans had been translated to them carefully. Their night was, therefore, not at all uncomfortable.
When the cavalry and cowboys set out to hunt for Cal in the morning, the old Chiricahua volunteered to act as guard while they were gone. It was almost as if he had taken a fancy to Ping and Tah-nu-nu, or it may have been that Sam was correct in saying, "The old wolf'd rather loaf under a bush and spin yarns than hunt through the chaparral under this kind of sunshine."
Loaf he did, in seemingly contented patience; and he had yarns to spin, as if he had been Wah-wah-o-be. Not a few of them related to old-time fights which had been fought around that very spring, in and out of the chaparral. Some of his stories were of a dreadfully blood-curdling kind, but they hardly seemed sensational to Ping and Tah-nu-nu. Perhaps the story which interested Ping most was a long one of a strong party of an unknown, nameless tribe from beyond the Eastern Sierras. They were tall braves, almost black, and they came all this distance to strike the Apaches.
The strangers camped one night at Cold Spring, and in the morning they found themselves penned in by overwhelming numbers of Apaches, who poured forth from the chaparral by every path except one. That was a path which the Apache chiefs did not know or had overlooked. They and their warriors swarmed in upon the strangers, expecting to destroy them all, and there was a terrible battle for a little time. Then, to the astonishment of all the Apaches, the Eastern war-party grew smaller and smaller, retreating across the rock. It left the spring behind, and dwindled away, fighting hard all the while. It was dripping out, so to speak, through the path in the chaparral that nobody knew anything about. The Apache warriors fought wonderfully to prevent that escape, and hundreds hurried around through the chaparral to attack the strangers in the rear and to cut off their retreat. It was of no use at all, said the old Chiricahua.
As soon as the last of the strangers fired his last arrow from the mouth of that old buffalo-path it seemed to close up, and the Apaches could not find it. They never could, nor did they ever succeed in finding where it led to, for the strange warriors escaped entirely, just as if they had crawled into the spring. It was "very great medicine," he said, and nothing at all like it had been heard of since then. He himself knew all the paths now to be found around Cold Spring, and all of them led out into the desert.
Thanks to the Chiricahua, Ping and Tah-nu-nu had a fairly comfortable morning of it. They even grew curious, instead of frightened, concerning what was next to come to them.
The old Chiricahua did not spend all his time stretched out upon the sand. He arose and walked around as if the hot sunshine agreed with him, and exchanged remarks with the white camp-guard in their sultry covert.
Ping and Tah-nu-nu stared around the open with a deepening interest in a spot which had so wonderful a history. Across it, on the opposite side, was one dense mass of chaparral, many yards in length, through which no opening appeared. In the middle of it arose a giant cactus, with a trunk like that of a tree, and with two enormously thick, long arms reaching out near the top. One leaf pointed south and the other north, as if the cactus were a directing-post. Right there, they agreed, after some discussion, must have been the mysterious path that opened to let out the strange warriors, and then shut again.
Noon came, and the Chiricahua brought them some army bread, some fried bacon, and some coffee. They had tasted such things before, when their band was at the Reservation, and they had some for breakfast, but it was very wonderful to taste them again.
"Pale-face chief make Ping a blue-coat," said Tah-nu-nu. "Eat a heap."
"Tah-nu-nu squaw for blue-coat chief," said Ping. "Have big lodge. Cook his meat. Hoe his corn. Feed pony. Beat her with big stick. Ugh!"
They could rally one another about the prospect before them, but Ping stoutly declared that he would run away at the first opportunity. He would be a chief of his own people and not of any other. Tah-nu-nu as positively asserted her horror of ever becoming the wife of the greatest pale-face living. Not if he gave ever so many ponies for her, like a warrior of the Apaches.
Two hours later the cavalry squads and the cowboys began to straggle back to the spring. Their horses needed water and food and rest, and so did they. Hot, weary, disappointed, was the appearance of every man who came in, but none of them wore such a face as did Colonel Evans. He drank some water, but he did not eat nor did he speak to anybody.
"Ugh!" said Ping. "No find boy. Heap pony lose too. Bad medicine."
It was only a little later when something remarkable happened to a picket in a path of the southern chaparral. He stood by his horse ready to mount, as was his duty, but he was very sure that no Indians were around, and he only now and then gave a listless glance along the path. Suddenly, within twenty yards of him, an Indian stepped out of the bushes.
"Halt!" sprang to the lips of the startled soldier, but the Indian held up both hands, empty, above his head, to show that he carried no weapons.
The challenge was heard by the men around the spring, and they sprang to their feet, while others came out of the bushes. A dozen rifles were ready behind the picket as the solitary Indian came forward. He wore nothing but a waist-cloth, and from the belt of this he drew something which he held out and offered.
"Take it, Brady," said the voice of Captain Moore. "Bring him in. He's a messenger of some kind."
The cavalryman took it, but it was nothing more than a leathery cactus leaf, as wide as a stretched-out hand.
"How," said the Indian. "Kah-go-mish."
"That's it," exclaimed Sam Herrick. "I reckoned we'd hear from him. Colorado!"
The leaf was passed to Captain Moore, and the Apache brave followed him, but only as far as the end of that pathway. There he stood, and seemed almost like a wooden Indian. He saw both Ping and Tah-nu-nu, and they saw him, but if they knew him they did not say so.
"They thought nobody saw 'em, but they were making signs," said Sam; and the old Chiricahua muttered, "Ugh! Good!" as if he had understood something.
Just at that moment Captain Moore met Colonel Evans.
"Read that," he said, as he held out the cactus leaf.
There were letters deeply scratched into the smooth, fleshy surface.
Father I'm a Prisoner to Kah-Go-Mish Staked out last night Safe now Don't know where he means to go next He says you will hear some day
Cal
Send mother my love.
It was a wonderful cactus leaf, for it made the strong hand of Colonel Abe Evans shake so that he could hardly hold it. Every pair of eyes around Cold Spring stared at it and at him, and when they once more turned to look at the Apache brave who had brought it he was not to be seen. He had vanished as if he had been a dream.
Chapter XXVI.
CAL'S VISITORS AND HIS BREAKFAST
Even when he was lost in the chaparral, and saw the sun go down without any hope of escaping from the spider-web of buffalo-paths, Cal had not felt quite so badly as he did when he found himself staked out. There he lay upon his back under the vast canopy of an ancient cypress-tree. Near him the two uncouth-looking Apaches had thrown themselves upon the grass. They seemed to be asleep pretty soon, for there was no more need of their watching the prisoner.
Get away?
He could move his hands and feet just enough to keep the blood in circulation, and that was all. He could turn his head and look at the glow of the camp-fires and at the forms of men that now and then went stalking to and fro. They were only dog-soldier Indian police in charge of the camp, for the remainder of the band was taking all the sleep it could get. Even the dogs were entirely quiet. If he looked up, there was nothing but a dense mass of foliage, but it began at a height of fifty feet or more from the ground. Great branches reached out, and from these hung long ropes of vines of some sort, here and there, to the very ground. There was no opening through which a star could be seen, and it seemed to Cal as if his last hope had departed.
The position of a staked-out man is peculiarly uncomfortable, but it is the traditional method of the red men for securing captives. The Hurons and Shawnees and Iroquois, and other eastern tribes, made a forest-jail in precisely the same way before any white men ever came among them. Cal found that it was a great affliction not to be able to turn over in bed, but that was nothing to the torment of having a mosquito on his chin, another on his nose, and ten more humming around his head on all sides, with no hand loose to slap among them. He almost ceased thinking of Indian cruelties while suffering the merciless torments of those insects. Tired as he was, he felt no longer any inclination to sleep. His eyes grew accustomed to the dimness about him and over him. As he looked up into the branches of the tree, after a while, he heard a strange, mournful cry, very much like something that he had listened to before, and then something whitish and wide-winged came sweeping down from the darkness, and his eyes followed it as it swiftly shot across the camp.
"Owl, I guess," groaned Cal. "Never saw one so large before. White owl. What a hoot he had! Oh, my nose! These are the biggest kind of mosquitoes."
So they were, and they kept their victim in continual misery. It was not long before he saw something else, not so large as the owl, fly very silently past him. It went and came several times, with a peculiarly rapid flight, and he had pretty fair glimpses of it.
"What an enormous bat!" exclaimed Cal. "They have almost everything down here. What I'm most afraid of are scorpions and centipedes and tarantulas. Such woods as these must have lots of 'em, and I couldn't get away."
They were dreadful things to think of, but Cal had not remembered all of the customary inhabitants of a Mexican forest. He was put in mind of yet one more after a while. He heard a rustling sound among the grass and leaves near him, and it made him lift his head as high as he could. Just then something else lifted its head, and Cal saw a pair of small, glittering, greenish eyes that travelled right along at a few inches above the ground. The cold sweat broke out all over him, but he held perfectly still.
"They don't bite if you don't stir or provoke them," was the thought in his mind; but that snake was not of the biting, venomous kind. It was only a constrictor, not more than seven or eight feet long, and only three inches thick at his thickest point. He was in no hurry, and it seemed to Cal as if it took him about half an hour, or half a century, he could not tell which, to crawl across the pair of legs which the Apaches had pinned down. It was really about a quarter of a minute.
Cal had no idea how hard he had been straining at his fetters, spurred by the mosquitoes. He made an unintentional jerk with his right arm as the snake disappeared, and was startled by a discovery.
"Loose?" he said to himself. "Then I can loosen it more. I won't disturb either of those fellows, but I must scratch these mosquito-bites."
A pull, another pull, and that forked stick began to come up, for one of its legs had been put down in a gopher's hole, and had no holding. Out it came, slowly, softly, and Cal's right hand was free to reach over and help his left. That stake was hard pulling, but it came up at last, and then the ankles could be set free.
"I'll drive them all down again hard," said Cal to himself, and he did so.
"Let them wonder how I got out," he added; "but there isn't any use in my trying to run away. They'd only catch me and kill me at once."
He rose to his feet, and it occurred to him that his safest place might be by one of the smouldering camp-fires. The short June night was nearly over, and the dawn was in the tree-tops when Cal walked away from the shadow of the great cypress. He had a sort of desperate feeling, and it made him singularly cool and steady. He did not meet anybody on his way. His first discovery, as he drew near the fire, was that the Apaches had found plentiful supplies in the packs of the Mexican mules. They knew how to make coffee, too, for there was a big tin coffee-pot nearly full. Cal put it upon some coals to heat, and then he saw a tin cup lying on the ground, a box of sugar, a piece of bacon, and a fragment of coarse corn-cake.
"That'll do," he said to himself. "I may as well eat."
The coffee boiled quickly, and Cal sat with a cup of it in one hand, while with the other he held a stick with a slice of bacon at the fire end of it. He did not know what was happening under the cypress.
One wrinkle-faced brave opened his beady black eyes and looked at the place where the staked-out captive had been. The mocking smile he had begun flitted away from his lips.
"Ugh!" he exclaimed as he sprang up and kicked his comrade, and in an instant more two dreadfully puzzled Apaches were examining the forked stakes which ought to have had a white boy's wrists and ankles in them. Hard driven into the ground were all four, but the white boy? Where was he?
"Heap bad medicine!" exclaimed one brave, almost despairingly.
"Boy heap gone," said the other.
They looked in all directions, but the last refuge they dreamed of was the camp-fire where Cal was sitting.