"Patcheese! Patcheese!" he squealed, and dove under
the nearest bed. Then Byrne, shinning into boots and breeches and
shunning his coat, grabbed his revolver and rushed for the door.
Across the parade, out of their barracks the "doughboys" came
streaming, no man of them dressed for inspection, but rather, like
sailors, stripped for a fight; and, never waiting to form ranks, but
following the lead of veteran sergeants and the signals or orders of
officers somewhere along the line, went sprinting straight for the
eastward _mesa_. From the cavalry barracks, the northward sets, the
troopers, too, were flowing, but these were turned stableward, back of
the post, and Byrne, with his nightshirt flying wide open, wider than
his eyes, bolted round through the space between the quarters of Plume
and Wren, catching sight of the arrested captain standing grim and
gaunt on his back piazza, and ran with the foremost sergeants to the
edge of the plateau, where, in his cool white garb, stood Plume,
shouting orders to those beneath.
There, down in the Sandy bottom, was explanation of it all. Two
soldiers were bending over a prostrate form in civilian dress. Two
swarthy Apaches, one on his face, the other, ten rods away, writhing
on his side, lay weltering in blood. Out along the sandy barren and
among the clumps of mezquite and greasewood, perhaps as many as ten
soldiers, members of the guard, were scattering in rude skirmish
order; now halting and dropping on one knee to fire, now rushing
forward; while into the willows, that swept in wide concave around the
flat, a number of forms in dirty white, or nothing at all but
streaming breechclout, were just disappearing.
Pages:
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98