An Apache Princess | Page 2

opened those pretty, curving
lips to speak or smile? Speak she did not, even to the greyhounds
stretched sprawling in the warm sands at her feet. Smile she could not,
for the young heart was sore troubled.
Back in the thick of the willows she had left her pony, blinking lazily
and switching his long tail to rid his flanks of humming insects, but
never mustering energy enough to stamp a hoof or strain a thread of his
horsehair riata. Both the long, lean, sprawling hounds lolled their red,
dripping tongues and panted in the sullen heat. Even the girl herself,
nervous at first and switching with her dainty whip at the crumbling
sands and pacing restlessly to and fro, had yielded gradually to the
drooping influences of the hour and, seated on a rock, had buried her
chin in the palm of her hand, and, with eyes no longer vagrant and
searching, had drifted away into maiden dreamland. Full thirty minutes
had she been there waiting for something, or somebody, and it, or he,
had not appeared.

Yet somebody else was there and close at hand. The shadow of the
westward heights had gradually risen to the crest of the rocky cliffs
across the stream. A soft, prolonged call of distant trumpet summoned
homeward, for the coming night, the scattered herds and herd guards of
the post, and, rising with a sigh of disappointment, the girl turned
toward her now impatient pony when her ear caught the sound of a
smothered hand-clap, and, whirling about in swift hope and surprise,
her face once more darkened at sight of an Indian girl, Apache
unquestionably, crouching in the leafy covert of the opposite willows
and pointing silently down stream. For a moment, without love or fear
in the eyes of either, the white girl and the brown gazed at each other
across the intervening water mirror and spoke no word. Then, slowly,
the former approached the brink, looked in the direction indicated by
the little dingy index and saw nothing to warrant the recall. Moreover,
she was annoyed to think that all this time, perhaps, the Indian girl had
been lurking in that sheltering grove and stealthily watching her. Once
more she turned away, this time with a toss of her head that sent the
russet-brown tresses tumbling about her slim back and shoulders, and
at once the hand-clap was repeated, low, but imperative, and Tonto, the
biggest of the two big hounds, uplifted one ear and growled a
challenge.
"What do you want?" questioned the white girl, across the estranging
waters.
For answer the brown girl placed her left forefinger on her lips, and
again distinctly pointed to a little clump of willows a dozen rods below,
but on the westward side.
"Do you mean--someone's coming?" queried the first.
"Sh-sh-sh!" answered the second softly, then pointed again, and pointed
eagerly.
The soldier's daughter glanced about her, uncertainly, a moment, then
slowly, cautiously made her way along the sandy brink in the direction
indicated, gathering the folds of her long skirt in her gauntleted hand
and stepping lightly in her slender moccasins. A moment or two, and

she had reached the edge of a dense little copse and peered cautiously
within. The Indian girl was right. Somebody lay there, apparently
asleep, and the fair young intruder recoiled in obvious confusion, if not
dismay. For a moment she stood with fluttering heart and parting lips
that now permitted reassuring glimpse of pearly white teeth. For a
moment she seemed on the verge of panicky retreat, but little by little
regained courage and self-poise. What was there to fear in a sleeping
soldier anyhow? She knew who it was at a glance. She could, if she
would, whisper his name. Indeed, she had been whispering it many a
time, day and night, these last two weeks until--until certain things
about him had come to her ears that made her shrink in spite of herself
from this handsome, petted young soldier, this Adonis of her father's
troop, Neil Blakely, lieutenant of cavalry.
"The Bugologist," they called him in cardroom circles at the "store,"
where men were fiercely intolerant of other pursuits than poker, for
which pastime Mr. Blakely had no use whatever--no more use than had
its votaries for him. He was a dreamy sort of fellow, with big blue eyes
and a fair skin that were in themselves sufficient to stir the rancor of
born frontiersmen, and they of Arizona in the days of old were an
exaggeration of the type in general circulation on the Plains. He was
something of a dandy in dress, another thing they loathed; something of
a purist in speech, which was affectation unpardonable; something of a
dissenter as to drink, appreciative of "Cucumungo" and claret, but
distrustful of whisky--another