Tonio, Son of the Sierras | Page 2

but many a young brave of the
Apache Mohave tribe had cast his lot with them. Many had taken their
women and children, and 'Tonio would be hunting, possibly, his own
flesh and blood. The junior general had ventured to remonstrate by
letter, even when issuing the order indicated, but the senior stood to his
prerogative with a tenacity that set the junior's teeth on edge, and
started territorial and unbecoming comparisons between the division
commander's firmness on the fighting line a decade earlier, and far
behind it now. San Francisco was perhaps five hundred miles from the

scene of hostilities, and those farthest away seldom fail to see clearer
than those on the spot, and to think they know better, so Harris and his
dusky henchman came up to Almy with little by way of welcome, and
back from their first scout with nothing by way of result. Therefore, the
sextette of officers that had been but lukewarm at the start became
lavish in cordiality at the close. The failure of Harris, the favorite of the
chieftain of the big Division, meant that no further criticism could
attach to them. If Harris could accomplish nothing worth mention, what
could be expected of others?
Therefore, while awaiting the return of the courier sent up to Prescott,
with report of what Harris had not accomplished, and asking
instructions as to what the gentleman would have next, the
commanding officer of the old post, built by California volunteers
during the Civil War and garrisoned later by reluctant regulars, set a
good example to his subordinates by doing his best to console the
"casuals," as visitors were officially rated, and his subordinates loyally
followed suit.
But Harris seemed unresponsive. Harris seemed almost sulky. Harris
had added silence to dignity, and spent long hours of a sunny day
sprawled in a hammock, smoking his pipe and studying 'Tonio, who
squatted in the shade at the end of the narrow porch of the old officers'
mess building, still more silent and absorbed than his young
commander.
And this was the condition of things when the Latest Arrival appeared
on the scene, fresh from head-quarters, some ninety miles northwest
and two thousand feet higher. He had come late the previous afternoon.
He had skated down the flinty scarp of Misery Hill, with the wheels of
his buckboard locked, and hauled up at the adjutant's in a cloud of dust
and misapprehension, with barely time for a bath and a shave before
dinner. He was a new aide-de-camp of the department commander. He
had served him well and won his notice on Indian campaigns afar to the
north in the Columbia valley, where gum boots and slickers were as
indispensable as here they were superfluous. He had never been, he
said, so dry in his life as when he scrambled from his mud-colored

chariot to the steps of the official residence. The temporal wants had
been spiritually removed, but not the impression. Now, some eighteen
hours later, he wished to know if it never rained at Almy, and there was
no white man could tell him. So, one and all, they looked to 'Tonio,
whose earliest recollections were of the immediate neighborhood.
And 'Tonio proved a reluctant witness. Urged by Stannard, the senior
captain referred to, Harris put the question in "Pidgin" Apache, and
'Tonio, squatting still, gazed dreamily away toward the huge bulwark of
Squadron Peak, and waited for respectful cessation of all talk before he
would answer.
At last he rose to his full height and, with a sweeping gesture the length
of his arm, pointed to the domelike summit, dazzling in the slant of the
evening sunshine, that seemingly overhung the dun-colored adobe
corrals on the flats to the south, yet stood full five miles away. 'Tonio
so seldom opened his lips to speak that the six men listened with
attention they seldom gave to one another. Yet what 'Tonio said was
translatable only by Harris:
"When the picacho hides his head in the clouds, then look for rain."
"Lord," said the doctor, "I doubt if ever I've seen a cloud above
it--much less on it! If it weren't for the creek yonder the whole post
would shrivel up and blow away. Even the hygrometer's dead of
disuse--or dry rot. But, talk of drying up, did you ever see the beat of
him?" and the doctor was studying anatomy as displayed in this
particular Apache.
Five feet ten 'Tonio stood before them, not counting the thatch of his
matted black hair, bound with white cotton turban. Five feet ten in
height, but so gaunt and wiry that the ribs and bones seemed breaking
through the tawny skin, that in flank and waist and the long sweep of
his sinewy, fleshless legs, he rivalled the greyhound sprawled