From the eastward side,
from officers' row, Plume and his white-coated subordinates hastened
to the southward face, realizing instantly what must have
occurred--the long-prophesied rush of Apache prisoners for freedom.
Yet how hopeless, how mad, how utterly absurd was the effort! What
earthly chance had they--poor, manacled, shackled, ball-burdened
wretches--to escape from two hundred fleet-footed, unhampered,
stalwart young soldiery, rejoicing really in the fun and excitement of
the thing? One after another the shackled fugitives were run down and
overhauled, some not half across the parade, some in the shadows of
the office and storehouses, some down among the shrubbery toward the
lighted store, some among the shanties of Sudsville, some, lightest
weighted of all, far away as the lower pool, and so one after another,
the grimy, sullen, swarthy lot were slowly lugged back to the unsavory
precincts wherein, for long weeks and months, they had slept or
stealthily communed through the hours of the night. Three or four had
been cut or slashed. Three or four soldiers had serious hurts,
scratches or bruises as their fruits of the affray. But after all, the
malefactors, miscreants, and incorrigibles of the Apache tribe had
profited little by their wild and defiant essay--profited little, that
is, if personal freedom was what they sought.
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