An Apache Princess, Charles King [ready player one ebook .txt] 📗

The tin reflector at the office window threw the light of the glass-framed candle straight upon Hart's rubicund face, and that face was a study. He faltered a bit before he asked:

"Did Blakely seem all right?—not used up, I mean?"

"Seemed weak and tired, but the man is mad to go and join his troop now—wants to go right out with Ahorah in the morning, and Captain Cutler says no. Oh, they had quite a row!"

They had had rather more than quite a row, if truth were told. Doty had heard only a bit of it. Cutler had been taken by surprise when the Bugologist appeared, two strange, wiry Apaches at his heels, and at first had contented himself with reading Wren's dispatch, repeating it over the wires to Prescott. Then he turned on Blakely, silently, wearily waiting, seated at Doty's desk, and on the two Apaches, silently, stolidly waiting, squatted on the floor. Cutler wished to know how Blakely knew these couriers were coming, and how he came to leave the post without permission. For a moment the lieutenant simply gazed at him, unanswering, but when the senior somewhat sharply repeated the question, in part, Blakely almost as sharply answered: "I did not know they were coming nor that there was wrong in my going. Major Plume required nothing of the kind when we were merely going out for a ride."

This nettled Cutler. He had always said that Plume was lax, and here was proof of it. "I might have wanted you—I did want you, hours ago, Mr. Blakely, and even Major Plume would not countenance his officers spending the greater part of the night away from the post, especially on a government horse," and there had Cutler the whip hand of the scientist, and Blakely had sense enough to see it, yet not sense enough to accept. He was nervous and irritable, as well as tired. Graham had told him he was too weak to ride, yet he had gone, not thinking, of course, to be gone so long, but gone deliberately, and without asking the consent of the post commander. "My finding the runners was an accident," he said, with some little asperity of tone and manner. "In fact, I didn't find them. They found me. I had known them both at the reservation. Have I your permission, sir"—this with marked emphasis—"to take them for something to eat. They are very hungry,—have come far, and wish to start early and rejoin Captain Wren,—as I do, too."

"They will start when I am ready, Mr. Blakely," said Cutler, "and you certainly will not start before. In point of fact, sir, you may not be allowed to start at all."

It was now Blakely's turn to redden to the brows. "You surely will not prevent my going to join my troop, now that it is in contact with the enemy," said he. "All I need is a few hours' sleep. I can start at seven."

"You cannot, with my consent, Mr. Blakely," said the captain dryly. "There are reasons, in fact, why you can't leave here for any purpose unless the general himself give contrary orders. Matters have come up that—you'll probably have to explain."

And here Doty entered, hearing only the captain's last. At sight of his adjutant the captain stopped short in his reprimand. "See to it that these runners have a good supper, Mr. Doty," said Cutler. "Stir up my company cook, if need be, but take them with you now." Then, turning again on Blakely, "The doctor wishes you to go to bed at once, Mr. Blakely, and I will see you in the morning, but no more riding away without permission," he concluded, and thereby closed the interview. He had, indeed, other things to say to, and inquire of, Blakely, but not until he had further consulted Graham. He confidently expected the coming day would bring instructions from headquarters to hold both Blakely and Trooper Downs at the post, as a result of his dispatches, based on the revelation of poor Pat Mullins. But Downs, forewarned, perhaps, had slipped into hiding somewhere—an old trick of his, when punishment was imminent. It might be two or three days before Downs turned up again, if indeed he turned up at all, but Blakely was here and could be held. Hence the "horse order" of the earlier evening.

It was nearly two when Blakely reached his quarters, rebuffed and stung. He was so nervous, however, that, in spite of serious fatigue, he found it for over an hour impossible to sleep. He turned out his light and lay in the dark, and the atmosphere of the room seemed heavily charged with rank tobacco. His new "striker" had sat up, it seems, keeping faithful vigil against his master's return, but, as the hours wore on, had solaced himself with pipe after pipe, and wandering about to keep awake. Most of the time, he declared, he had spent in a big rocking chair on the porch at the side door, but the scent of the weed and of that veteran pipe permeated the entire premises, and the Bugologist hated dead tobacco. He got up and tore down the blanket screen at the side windows and opened all the doors wide and tried his couch again, and still he wooed the drowsy god in vain. "Nor poppy nor mandragora" had he to soothe him. Instead there were new and anxious thoughts to vex, and so another half hour he tossed and tumbled, and when at last he seemed dropping to the borderland, perhaps, of dreams, he thought he must be ailing again and in need of new bandages or cooling drink or something, for the muffled footfalls, betrayed by creaking pine rather than by other sound, told him drowsily that the attendant or somebody, cautioned not to disturb him, was moving slowly across the room. He might have been out on the side porch to get cool water from the olla, but he needn't be so confoundedly slow and cautious, though he couldn't help the creaking. Then, what could the attendant want in the front room, where were still so many of the precious glass cases unharmed, and the Bugologist's favorite books and his big desk, littered with papers, etc.? Blakely thought to hail and warn him against moving about among those brittle glass things, but reflected that he, the new man, had done the reshifting under his, Blakely's, supervision, and knew just where each item was placed and how to find the passage way between them. It really was a trifle intricate. How could he have gone into the spare room at Captain Wren's, and there made his home as—she—Mrs. Plume had first suggested? There would not have been room for half his plunder, to say nothing of himself. "What on earth can Nixon want?" he sleepily asked himself, "fumbling about there among those cases? Was that a crack or a snap?" It sounded like both, a splitting of glass, a wrenching of lock spring or something. "Be careful there!" he managed to call. No answer. Perhaps it was some one of the big hounds, then, wandering restlessly about at night. They often did, and—why, yes, that would account for it. Doors and windows were all wide open here, what was to prevent? Still, Blakely wished he hadn't extinguished his lamp. He might then have explored. The sound ceased entirely for a moment, and, now that he was quite awake, he remembered that the hospital attendant was no longer with him. Then the sounds must have been made by the striker or the hounds. Blakely had no dogs of his own. Indeed they were common property at the post, most of them handed down with the rest of the public goods and chattels by their predecessors of the ----th. At all events, he felt far too languid, inert, weak, indifferent or something. If the striker, he had doubtless come down for cool water. If the hounds, they were in search of something to eat, and