The
untrammeled and sovereign citizen had his own way of treating the
obnoxious native to the soil.
By this time, too, further word should have come from some of the
field columns, Sanders's especially. But though runners had reached
the post bearing brief dispatches from the general, showing that he
and the troops from the more southerly posts were closing in on the
wild haunts of the Tontos about Chevlon's Fork, not a sign had come
from this energetic troop commander, not another line from Sergeant
Brewster or his men, and there were women at Camp Sandy now nearly mad
with sleepless dread and watching. "It means," said Byrne, "that the
hostiles are between us and those commands. It means that couriers
can't get through, that's all. I'm betting the commands are safe
enough. They are too strong to be attacked." But Byrne was silent as
to Blakely; he was dumb as to Wren. He was growing haggard with
anxiety and care and inability to assure or comfort. The belated
rations needed by Brewster's party, packed on mules hurried down from
Prescott, were to start at dawn for Sunset Pass under stout infantry
guard, and they, too, would probably be swallowed up in the
mountains. The ranch people down the valley, fearful of raiding
Apaches, had abandoned their homes, and, driving their stock before
them, had taken refuge in the emptied corrals of the cavalry.
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