It would have been a good
lesson. Of course she fought and scratched. Next thing I knew a dozen
of 'em were atop of us--some water, for God's sake!--and lift me out
of this!"
Then with grave and watch-worn face, Graham came hurrying to the spot,
all the way over from Mullins's bedside at the hospital and breathing
hard. Dour indeed was the look he gave the groaning agent, now gulping
at a gourd held to his pale lips by one of the men. The policy of
Daly's predecessor had been to feather his own nest and let the Indian
shift for himself, and this had led to his final overthrow. Daly,
however, had come direct from the care of a tribe of the Pueblo
persuasion, peace-loving and tillers of the soil, meek as the Pimas
and Maricopas, natives who fawned when he frowned and cringed at the
crack of his whip. These he had successfully, and not dishonestly,
ruled, but that very experience had unfitted him for duty over the
mountain Apache, who cringed no more than did the lordly Sioux or
Cheyenne, and truckled to no man less than a tribal chief. Blakely,
the soldier, cool, fearless, and resolute, but scrupulously just, they
believed in and feared; but this new blusterer only made them laugh,
until he scandalized them by wholesale arrest and punishment. Then
their childlike merriment changed swiftly to furious and scowling
hate,--to open defiance, and finally, when he dared lay hands on a
chosen daughter of the race, to mutiny and the knife.
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