Part 10

Nobody spoke again. If anyone even coughed, from the cold air, he did so with his mouth pressed against his blanket. Jimmie shivered with the cold and the excitement.

Now here came Archie and Joe and their squad, trotting back from their reconnoitering. Archie reported to Major Brown and Nan-ta-je.

“Yavapai fires,” whispered Micky, sinking beside Jimmie. “Pony herd, too. Four wickyups. No Yavapai. Left wickyups and ponies, little while ago. Maybe go to tell Delt-che.”

That looked bad.

“Huh!” grunted a White Mountain. “We go to surprise Yavapai. If Yavapai know and surprise us, we all get killed, says Nan-ta-je.”

“What ponies?” asked somebody, of Micky.

“Pima and undah (white-man) ponies. Traveled far. Feet worn out.”

In their cavalry capes Captain Taylor and Lieutenant Bourke stole forward, stooping. They had been sent for to consult with Major Brown, Archie MacIntosh, and Nan-ta-je and Chief Big Mouth. Pretty soon they went back. The march was resumed, toward the fires. The column had spread out, ready to defend itself, but the White Mountain scouts kept ahead. Chief Owl Ears’ Pimas were behind with the Captain Burns company.

The fires were still glowing at the Yavapai camp on the top of the mesa, in a hollow where there were grass and water for the stolen ponies. But save for the snorts of the ponies, all was silence. The march had been made cautiously, and now the air had thinned; in the east the sky had lightened. Morning was at hand.

“Yavapai cave near,” whispered Micky. The word had been passed along, somehow. The march was halted again. Teeth chattered.

Next, Lieutenant Ross continued, with Archie and Joe and Nan-ta-je, a dozen cavalrymen and the packers Jack Long, Jim O’Neill, Long Jim Cook, Frank Monach, Slim Shorty――dead shots all, and fine Indian fighters. Nan-ta-je led.

Captain Burns and Lieutenant Thomas, with their cavalrymen and most of the Pimas, branched off on the back trail of the pony herd, to the southeast. More Yavapai might be coming, from that direction, with other booty.

The remainder of the column followed Lieutenant Ross. The White Mountains had dropped their blankets about their waists, as if clearing for action. Their faces were set alert, their nostrils flared, they were straining every sense, to detect more “sign.” Micky pointed downward; underfoot was a regular trail, disclosed in the gray light.

Their carbines and rifles at a trail, the Lieutenant Ross detachment, led by Nan-ta-je, with Archie and Joe at his heels, had dipped out of sight, as if over an edge. The last one of them disappeared. The faint roar of rapid waters sounded.

“Canyon of Salt River there,” whispered Micky. “Yavapai cave, too.”

The crack of the canyon began to open――across were the opposite walls. Cold mist was floating up. The trail conducted to the canyon, and down. Major Brown and Captain Taylor and Lieutenant Bourke, with Tony Besias the interpreter, Chief Big Mouth and others went forward to peer in. As the column bunched, everybody tried to peer in. Micky craned forward, with the scouts――he and Alchisé and Bobby Do-klinny; Jimmie edged on; they all might look over the rim, for the officers were as curious as the rest.

The roar of the waters rose louder. The river was far down, hundreds of feet, at the bottom of a long crooked gorge with precipice walls. Icicles hung from the crags. The trail entered, here, and clinging to the niches and wearing away the sod of the few flat spots snaked at a diagonal until, descending, it rounded a shoulder one hundred yards below the rim, where the mists were wreathing.

It was as steep as the trail down which those Tontos had scampered, into the Tonto Basin! Nobody was on it. The Ross party had gone.

“Mescal,” whispered Micky, sniffing. All the scouts were sniffing. A sweetish scent was in the air, as if welling from below.

Apache mescal pits! Wood smoke, too! Smell it?

“Huh! Rancheria there,” grunted Bobby Do-klinny. “Close to Delt-che, now. Where Nan-ta-je?”

Then――――

“Bang-g-g-g-g-g!”

The noise, echoing through the canyon depths and striking the faces gazing in, fairly deafened. It sounded like a regiment, but it was only a volley by the Lieutenant Ross party, unseen.

The little handful of advance guard had found the Yavapai!

XIV

THE BATTLE OF THE CAVE

The suddenness of the tremendous outburst paralyzed even Micky. As the echoes rumbled and jarred, Jimmie’s heart beat in his ears. The hard, quick voice of Major Brown broke in.

“Good heavens! What’s all that? Bourke, take the first forty men――doesn’t matter who――support Ross as quick as you can, and wait for the rest of the command. I’ll join you in short order. Hold your fire, if possible, till I arrive. Tell Ross the same.”

“Yes, sir,” and the strong, active figure of Lieutenant Bourke sprang to the trail. “Sergeant Turpin! Here!” Top Sergeant James Turpin was the nearest to him. “Count off forty men, as they come, white or red, and follow me. Quick, now!”

Chief Big Mouth yelped at his men in Apache; tossed away his blanket.

“Soldier-captain want men to fight Yavapai. Don’t let white men beat you!”

There was a rush for the trail. Soldiers and Indians both were eager. Sergeant Turpin had hard work. Jimmie saw no chance――――

“Sh! Come!” hissed Micky, at him.

Micky had slipped over the edge. Only his red head could be seen. His feet were on a narrow ledge that, extending along, just held him. Below, the canyon wall of stunted brush and rough gray rock and frozen trickles fell sharply away, clear down to the cold river, a thousand feet! It was a dizzy sight.

Clutching his rifle, planted as a brace to steady him while he half kneeled, Micky twisted enough to beckon with his free hand.

“Come on. Leave your blanket.”

Micky’s blanket lay where he had peeled it. Without a thought of hesitation Jimmie doffed his own roll, and squirming flat fumbled, feet first, for the ledge; found it, and carefully lowered his body, backward. Ticklish work, that was, for a fellow in a hurry――although Micky apparently had done it as nimbly as a squirrel.

“Inju!” approved Micky, when Jimmie was safely settled. “Now wait.”

If anybody above had noticed, nobody took time to object. What with the soldiers and scouts so eager to pass Sergeant Turpin’s count, and what with the rear guard hastening up, and what with everybody preparing weapons and clothing and re-forming for the prospective fight, there were few thoughts upon the whereabouts of two such items as wild Micky Free and his partner Jimmie Dunn. Micky was the kind who usually got a front seat.

Now they too crouched here out of sight upon the narrow shelf. Scarcely yet had the echoes of the thunderous volley died away. Listen! Shrill, distant whoops and yells of defiance, also from below! But there sounded a brisk command, above――the fast shuffle of feet and the rolling of pebbles――and down the slanting trail that cut along the sheer wall plunged, sliding and striding, the support company, Lieutenant Bourke first, Chief Big Mouth next, and their file of men, white and red mingled in a fast jumble, close pursuing, every carbine and rifle ready for business.

Micky poised, crouching tense. Just as the tail of the little procession swung past, slipping and steadying again he darted forward on the shelf. Jimmie imitated. They scuttled so fast that they either must keep going or tumble off. The shelf pinched out before it cut the trail, but Micky never paused; he leaped, and landed like a goat, on a smaller shelf, a mere piece of out-sticking rock; that gave him purchase for another leap which took him to the trail; and turning instantly he ran down.

Jimmie had no time for thought. What Micky could do, he could do――he _had to_! He, too, leaped; barely touched the next rock with one moccasin; sprang on, desperately, across space, brushing the wall; landed on the edge of the trail, slipped, recovered (Whew!), and gaining balance sped after Micky.

The trail descended, narrow and broken and icy in spots, at a steep angle. Anybody who lost his footing on it would be a “goner”――he’d not stop until, having bounced and rolled and hurtled, he was a fragment of shattered bone and flesh in the roaring river below. It was a regular Apache trail.

But Micky was running. The Lieutenant Bourke file were at a trot, and already half-way to the turn around the shoulder. So Jimmie ran.

Micky caught the tail of the file before it rounded the shoulder, and slackened to keep pace with it. Jimmie caught Micky just as the tail, who was John Cahill the blacksmith, was disappearing like the lash end of a dragged whip――but he did not go much farther.

The file were scattering like frightened quail, to a chorus of Apache yells, and the clatter and swish of arrows, and a rapidly barked command. Micky dived for the shelter of a jagged boulder, and Jimmie followed suit. They all had arrived.

It was a broad shelf two hundred yards long, about half-way between the bottom of the precipice and the top, and littered with boulders. On right and left, behind the boulders, were the Ross men, their carbine barrels pointing steadily at a high rock wall about in the middle of the shelf, a little way out from the face of the precipice. Behind this rock wall――which was ten feet high and built up smooth――was a large opening: the Yavapai cave!

All the air resounded with whoops and screeches, and bow twang, and now and then a gun-shot, coming from the cave. The Yavapais were inside. Several might be glimpsed, between the end of the rock wall and the mouth of the cave, darting about. They dragged a body or two back, out of sight. The Ross volley had killed some of them.

“Big fight!” panted Micky. “Good. We are in time.”

“Hey! What in thunder are you doin’ down hyar?” scolded Joe Felmer, from behind the next boulder――he and John Cahill together. “You want to lose yore scalps?”

Micky only grinned impudently, and with an Apache yell answered the Yavapais. The White Mountains were replying with taunt to taunt. Jimmie said not a word. He may have done wrong, but here he was.

“Wall, you stay mighty close,” ordered Joe. “This’ll be no picnic.”

“What have you done, Black Beard?” called Chief Big Mouth, who was near.

“The pony thieves were dancing their deeds in the mouth of the cave. Before they saw us we killed six of them.”

“Bueno,” grunted the fierce Big Mouth.

Lying low, Lieutenant Ross and Lieutenant Bourke and Nan-ta-je were consulting together. Presently orders were passed from man to man, on this side; and by ones and twos and threes the soldiers and scouts spread out, in the gray dawn, selecting other positions here, or bending, went scurrying across, against the shelter of the cave rampart, to reinforce the other flank, while the carbines of their fellows kept the Yavapais from shooting at them.

Listen, again! Amidst the cries of the enraged Yavapais there rose the clink of carbine butt and shuffle of moccasins from marching men, again. Major Brown was bringing down the rest of the troops. But Micky had focussed his attention upon something else. The roving one eye of his never missed a single point.

“Yavapai!” he uttered excitedly, half rising and pointing, and up he jerked his rifle.

“Hooh!” exclaimed Big Mouth, craning.

John Cahill was the quickest. Away beyond, down the beetling canyon wall, on an out-jutting rock there, stood a naked Indian with long black hair. He whooped triumphantly. He had escaped, somehow, from the cave――he was almost to the bottom and in a moment more――――

“Bang!”

Blacksmith Cahill’s carbine had spoken even while Big Mouth and Joe and Micky were taking aim.

“Thut!” That was the bullet striking flesh. Off from the rock was swept the Indian, and disappeared. Whether or not he had been killed, nobody knew; but his body was found later, by some squaws.

“He will take no word to other Yavapai, I think,” pronounced Micky. “If other Yavapai come and catch us here, then we are dead, too.”

The Major Brown soldiers were pelting in, breathless from the slippery trail. Hither-thither they deployed, sneaking among the rocks and darting across the face of the cave-mouth wall. Now a Pima of the Bourke men stood up, daring the Yavapais while he peered for a shot into the cave. A puff of smoke belched from a niche atop the rampart――“Bang!”――and down he wilted, into a crumpled heap without motion.

The Yavapais yelled louder――their “kill” yell. The Pimas and White Mountains yelled back. The soldiers were not doing much shooting, yet. Their officers were arranging them. Very soon the arrangement had settled into this:

There was one line of crouching scouts and soldiers behind the many boulders (which sometimes touched one another) not far in front of the cave-mouth wall and on either flank as the ends curved in. These were skirmishers. Back of them, clear along the edge of the immensely broad shelf and extending around the ends of the shelf, and even among the crags of the precipice, was a second line, in reserve, also behind rocks, to cover the first line. Some of the rocks were low, some high; they formed all kinds of shelter, from which one might shoot over and around corners and through chinks. The Micky-Jimmie boulder, down from the foot of the trail, in the second line, was about the size of a roll-top office-desk; and squatting they might peep across the ragged surface of it and see the whole length of the big shelf.

From either side Joe Felmer and Big Mouth wriggled in toward them, to shoot between their rocks and this.

“Steady! Hold your fire till orders,” warned Sergeant Turpin and others.

For Antonio Besias the interpreter was speaking. He half rose, from along the second line, and called in Apache.

“You must all come out!” he shouted. “The soldier-captain has many men and many guns. He has found you, and you cannot get away. He does not wish to kill you, but he will kill you unless you lay down your guns and come out.”

Back behind his rock ducked Antonio, just in time to dodge a dozen arrows, not to say several bullets. What a storm of hoots and shrieks had drowned his voice!

“We are not afraid!” were retorting the cave warriors. “Yah yah! We are not afraid,” they jeered, in Apache and Spanish. “It is you who will die, you white men and you traitor moccasin-stealers who rob women.” To accuse an Apache of stealing moccasins from squaws was the bitterest of insults. “You will not live to see the sun rise. Our people are coming up from below, and you will be fed to the buzzards. Yah!”

Nan-ta-je tried, in Apache and Mohave jargon both. But he, too, had to duck, before he had finished telling them to send out their women and children, anyway.

“We are not fighting those,” he said. “We fight only men. The soldier-captain will wait until you send out your women and children. They will not be harmed. It is not right――――” and his words were lost in another burst of furious, insolent clamor.

Major Brown’s trumpeter orderly sounded: “Commence firing.” The high strains lilted gaily from canyon wall to canyon wall, and back again.

“Take it easy, boys,” cautioned Sergeant Turpin, near the Jimmy squad. “Let the front line do the work, but if you see a head, hit it. But watch out for the women and children.”

The Yavapai warriors, behind their high rock rampart, taller than they were, had difficulty in seeing out. Occasionally a head seemed to be cautiously poked up, under an old hat, and the men of the front rank promptly banged away at it.

Micky, squirming for a rest, leveled his battered rifle across the top of the boulder, took aim with his one eye――“Bang!” Instantly an answering shot so shrewdly scraped the boulder top that the stinging rock splinters filled not only Micky’s one eye but both eyes of the intently peering Jimmie.

“Fool Red-head, you; why you shoot?” scolded Big Mouth. “Squaw hold up hat on stick, you shoot at that, man shoot at _you_!”

This trick did not deceive the soldiers long. The Yavapais quit it, and from behind their wall began to send arrows by scores high into the air, so that, curving downward, they might land among the rocks where the soldiers and scouts lay.

Major Brown met this with a similar scheme. Nan-ta-je and Archie MacIntosh wriggled forward, as rapidly as snakes, among the rocks, from back line to front line, taking a message to soldiers and scouts. The word was passed, for suddenly all the line elevated the carbines and rifles a little higher and shot fast.

Long Jim Cook and Alchisé and Lieutenant Ross and the others in sight were grabbing the cartridges spread by the handful beside them, and using them as rapidly as triggers might be pulled. From the whole wide cave floated dust; here and there the edges melted away.

“Hi! That’s the stuff!” muttered Joe. “Shoot into the cave an’ let the bullets glance. That’ll fetch ’em.”

Now squaws and children were crying with pain and fright. The glancing, re-bounding bullets favored nobody. The warriors howled furiously. The lead was finding them, behind their wall. Worse, it was wounding their wives and babies. So they stood up, to face it and try to divert it――stop it, if possible.

Their scowling faces and naked or ragged-shirted shoulders might be seen, above the breastworks, amidst the smoke and dust. They, too, shot rapidly, point-blank, into the rocks before――and the squaws’ and children’s arms were glimpsed, handing up to them loaded guns.

At the far end of the wall was a strange, wild figure――their medicine man! Yes, because he wore a large head-dress of painted feathers and a painted, beaded buckskin shirt hung with strings and shells, which should protect him and his people from the bullets. He was fighting, too!

Twice Joe Felmer drew bead on him and shot; only to mutter:

“I can’t tech that feller.”

“No. He is big medicine,” reproved Chief Bocon. “You had better save your bullets, Black Beard.”

“Cease firing!” shrilled the bugle. And on a sudden there was nothing doing, and almost a complete silence, except for crying children, until Antonio Besias called again, in Spanish.

“You have fought well, but you can see that you have no chance. The soldier-captain says for you to come out. Or if you are so foolish as not to come out, send to us your women and children, that they may not be hurt.”

The Yavapais did not answer. They had disappeared from the wall. Maybe they were consulting together, about the peace summons. Everybody waited expectantly. Jimmie, trembling with the excitement and the horror of the fight, hoped that the people in the cave would now surrender.

Ah, what was that? More defiance? The Yavapais were chanting――a high, wild chorus, men and squaws both――and the shuffle and thud of a dance could be heard.

“Hooh! They make ready to charge,” grunted Chief Big Mouth. “They sing their death song. We must shoot straight, Black Beard.”

“Look out! It is the death song! They will charge!” were warning Nan-ta-je, Bobby Do-klinny, Alchisé, and the other scouts, in Apache and Spanish; and the soldiers repeated.

“Good!” pronounced Micky, his blue eye snapping. “It will be a fight man to man. That is no fun, to shoot into a cave.”

The chant welled higher and stronger, and all the canyon echoed again. Would they never come?

The front or skirmish line had shifted to their knees, guns at shoulders――Lieutenant Ross had drawn his revolver.

“Steady, lads,” was cautioning Sergeant Turpin and his non-coms, to this rear line. “Hold your places.”

“Here they come!”

A great cheer rang, for like jacks-in-the-box the Yavapai warriors had appeared――some twenty or thirty of them――all together leaping atop their rampart――strong, muscular, bronze-skinned fighters, bristling quivers of reed arrows upon their left shoulders, strung bows in one hand, rifles in the other, their eyes gleaming blackly, their raven hair flung back, their painted faces scowling. They emptied their guns in a crashing volley, and proceeded to ply their bows while the squaws handed up fresh guns. The skirmish line of scouts and soldiers swept the wall――the smoke eddied and hung――and out from the farther end of the wall bolted a little bevy of other warriors, to break through for freedom.

Up from their rocks jumped the skirmish line, and ran to head them off. Long Jim Cook, Alchisé, Bobby Do-klinny, Nan-ta-je, Slim Shorty, Lieutenant Ross, with his revolver――they all ran, shooting and yelling.

They were too many for the Yavapais. The top of the wall had been cleaned――and back through the opening at the end hustled, pell-mell, the escaping warriors, dragging cripples, but leaving, in the open space there, half a dozen crimsoned, motionless forms.

The firing died away. The face of the cave precipice was beginning to glow with sunlight. What next, now?

“Yavapai!” yelped Micky, springing up.

“Hooh!” exclaimed Big Mouth.

Micky had leveled his rifle――it missed fire. Now twenty paces before their rock was standing, on another rock, a tall Apache-Mohave. How he had sneaked this far, nobody might say. He must have run out from the near end of the rampart, while everybody was watching the far end. The smoke was very thick.

He did not know that there were two lines of enemy, and he had paused a moment to whoop his triumph at having passed the first line. How foolish! In a twinkle a score of carbines and rifles were focussed on him――John Cahill aimed, Joe Felmer aimed, Big Mouth aimed――they could not miss.

He was a fine, brave warrior――and he saw, too late.

“Soldados (Soldiers)!” he shrieked.

“Crash!” The guns all shot together; the bullets fairly lifted him and drove him topsy-turvy, riddled through and through from head to waist.

“Crowed a leetle soon, that feller,” commented Joe.

XV

JIMMIE IS A VETERAN

The December sun was high and warm, flooding the broad rock-strewn terrace half-way between river and sky, but the battle was still going on. Now that the Yavapais had found out they could not break to freedom, the second soldier line had been advanced, with a dash, to join the first. As fast as it could be loaded and fired, every gun was speeding bullet after bullet into the cave, filling it with a very hailstorm of glancing, crisscrossing lead.

The cave was broad, and seemed to be shallow; and how anybody in there could be alive was a mystery. But alive some of those Apache-Mohaves were, for above the deafening staccato of a hundred carbines rose the death chant and the shrieks and wails and groans and curses.

There was no token of surrender. It was a fight to the death. Cleverly shielded in a niche at his end of the rampart the medicine-man, barely seen through the smoke and dust, was shooting as before, helped by the squaws who handed up guns to him; he certainly wore a charmed shirt. Now and again a warrior bobbed up, fired blindly, and bobbed down.

Micky had long ago used the last of his cartridges. Like Jimmie, he might only lie and watch.

“I told you there would be a good fight!” he shouted, in Jimmie’s ear. “This is the end of these Delt-che people. They fight like wolves in a pen, but it is no use.”

“Look!” shouted back Jimmie, pointing.

An Apache-Mohave boy――he was naked and chubby and could not have been more than three or four years old――had run out, around the cave wall, into the open space in front; and there he stood, sucking his thumb, and scowling at the Americanos as if he wanted the noise stopped. Over he keeled, struck by a chance bullet (for nobody would have shot at _him_); but he was not dead――he lay and kicked and howled, and all the firing ceased as if by magic.

From the soldiers’ line somebody darted forward. Hurrah!

It was Nan-ta-je. He reached the little boy, grabbed him and at one jump was behind a rock again.