LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

with his own blood, was our poor, unfortunate friend, Kennedy. He was in the full possession of his faculties and able to recognize every one whom he knew and to tell a coherent story. As to the first part of the attack, he concurred with Domingo, but he furnished the additional information that as soon as the Apaches saw that the greater number of the party had withdrawn with the women and children, of whom there were more than thirty all told, they made a bold charge to sweep down the little rear-guard which had taken its stand behind the wagons. Kennedy was sure that the Apaches had suffered severely, and told me where to look for the body of the warrior who had killed his partner, Israel. Israel had received a death-wound in the head which brought him to his knees, but before he gave up the ghost his rifle, already in position at his shoulder, was discharged and killed the tall, muscular young savage who appeared to be leading the attack.

      Kennedy kept up the unequal fight as long as he could, in spite of the loss of the thumb of his left hand, shot off at the first volley; but when the Mexicans at each side of him fell, he drew his knife, cut the harness of the “wheeler” mule nearest him, sprang into the saddle, and charged right through the Apaches advancing a second time. His boldness disconcerted their aim, but they managed to plant an arrow in his breast and another in the ribs of his mule, which needed no further urging to break into a mad gallop over every rock and thorn in its front. Kennedy could not hold the bridle with his left hand, and the pain in his lung was excruciating—“Jes’ like ’s if I’d swallowed a coal o’ fire, boys,” he managed to gasp, half inarticulately. But he had run the mule several hundreds of yards, and was beginning to have a faint hope of escaping, when a bullet from his pursuers struck its hind-quarters and pained and frightened it so much that it bucked him over its head and plunged off to one side among the cactus and mesquite, to be seen no more. Kennedy, by great effort, reached the little arroyo in which we found him, and where he had lain, dreading each sound and expecting each moment to hear the Apaches coming to torture him to death. His fears were unfounded. As it turned out, fortunately for all concerned, the Apaches could not resist the temptation to plunder, and at once began the work of breaking open and pilfering every box and bundle the wagons contained, forgetting all about the Mexicans who had made their escape to the foot-hills, and Kennedy, who lay so very, very near them.

      Half a dozen good men were left under command of a sergeant to take care of Kennedy, while the rest hurried forward to see what was to be seen farther to the front.

      It was a ghastly sight, one which in its details I should like to spare my readers. There were the hot embers of the new wagons, the scattered fragments of broken boxes, barrels, and packages of all sorts; copper shells, arrows, bows, one or two broken rifles, torn and burned clothing. There lay all that was mortal of poor Israel, stripped of clothing, a small piece cut from the crown of the head, but thrown back upon the corpse—the Apaches do not care much for scalping—his heart cut out, but also thrown back near the corpse, which had been dragged to the fire of the burning wagons and had been partly consumed; a lance wound in the back, one or two arrow wounds—they may have been lance wounds, too, but were more likely arrow wounds, the arrows which made them having been burned out; there were plenty of arrows lying around—a severe contusion under the left eye, where he had been hit perhaps with the stock of a rifle or carbine, and the death wound from ear to ear, through which the brain had oozed.

      The face was as calm and resolute in death as Israel had been in life. He belonged to a class of frontiersmen of which few representatives now remain—the same class to which belonged men like Pete Kitchen, the Duncans, of the San Pedro; Darrel Duppa and Jack Townsend, of the Agua Fria; men whose lives were a romance of adventure and danger, unwritten because they never frequented the towns, where the tenderfoot correspondent would be more likely to fall in with some border Munchausen, whose tales of privation and peril would be in the direct ratio of the correspondent’s receptivity and credulity.

      It was now too dark to do anything more, so we brought up Kennedy, who seemed in such good spirits that we were certain he would pull through, as we could not realize that he had been hit by an arrow at all, but tried to console him with the notion that the small round hole in his chest, from which little if any blood had flown, had been made by a buck-shot or something like it. But Kennedy knew better. “No, boys,” he said sadly, shaking his head, “it’s all up with me. I’m a goner. I know it was an arrow, ’cause I broke the feather end off. I’m goin’ to die.”

      Sentinels were posted behind the bushes, and the whole command sat down to keep silent watch for the coming of the morrow. The Apaches might double back—there was no knowing what they might do—and it was best to be on our guard. The old rule of the frontier, as I learned it from men like Joe Felmer, Oscar Hutton, and Manuel Duran, amounted to this: “When you see Apache ‘sign,’ be keerful; ’n’ when you don’ see nary sign, be more keerful.”

      The stars shone out in their grandest effulgence, and the feeble rays of the moon were no added help to vision. There is only one region in the whole world, Arizona, where the full majesty can be comprehended of that text of Holy Writ which teaches: “The Heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork.” Midnight had almost come, when the rumble of wheels, the rattle of harness, and the cracking of whips heralded the approach of wagons and ambulance and the second detachment of cavalry. They brought orders from Colonel Dubois to return to the post as soon as the animals had had enough rest, and then as fast as possible, to enable all to start in pursuit of the Apaches, whose trail had been “cut” a mile or two above Felmer’s, showing that they had crossed the Santa Catalina Range, and were making for the precipitous country close to the head of the Aravaypa.

      The coming day found our party astir and hard at work. First, we hunted up the body of the Apache who had shot Israel. Lieutenant George Bacon, First Cavalry, found it on a shelf of rock, in a ravine not a hundred yards from where the white enemy lay, shot, as Israel was, through the head. We did not disturb it, but as much cannot be averred of the hungry and expectant coyotes and the raw-necked buzzards, which had already begun to draw near.

      The trail of the savages led straight toward the Santa Catalina, and a hurried examination disclosed a very curious fact, which later on was of great importance to the troops in pursuit. There had been a case of patent medicine in the wagons, and the Apaches had drunk the contents of the bottles, under the impression that they contained whiskey. The result was that, as the signs showed, there were several of the Indians seriously incapacitated from alcoholic stimulant of some kind, which had served as the menstruum for the drugs of the nostrum. They had staggered from cactus to cactus, falling into mesquite, in contempt of the thorns on the branches, and had lain sprawled at full length in the sand, oblivious of the danger incurred. It would have been a curious experience for the raiders could we have arrived twenty-four hours sooner.

      Fully an hour was consumed in getting the horses and mules down to the water in the Cañon del Oro, and in making a cup of coffee, for which there was the water brought along in the kegs in the wagons. Everything and everybody was all right, excepting Kennedy, who was beginning to act and talk strangely; first exhilarated and then excited, petulant and despondent. His sufferings were beginning to tell upon him, and he manifested a strange aversion to being put in the same vehicle with a dead man. We made the best arrangement possible for the comfort of our wounded friend, for whom it seemed that the ambulance would be the proper place. But the jolting and the upright position he was compelled to take proved too much for him, and he begged to be allowed to recline at full length in one of the wagons.

      His request was granted at once; only, as it happened, he was lifted into the wagon in which the stiff, stark corpse of Israel was glaring stonily at the sky. A canvas ’paulin was stretched over the corpse, half a dozen blankets spread out to make as soft a couch as could be expected, and then Kennedy was lifted in, and the homeward march resumed with rapid gait. Animals and men were equally anxious to leave far in the rear a scene of such horror, and without whip or spur we rolled rapidly over the gravelly “mesa,” until we got to the head of the Santa Catalina Cañon, and even there we progressed satisfactorily, as, notwithstanding the deep sand, it was all down grade into the post.

      In crossing the San Pedro, the wagon in which Kennedy was riding gave a lurch, throwing him to one side; to keep himself from being bumped against the side, he grasped the first thing within reach, and this

Скачать книгу