"Hallo!" Drumm called, cupping his hands.
His shout died away in the depths of the canyon, to return a moment later in an eerie diminishing echo. The air was hot, stifling, somehow taut.
"Well," Drumm shrugged, "there is no other way to go but through the canyon!"
They herded the mules before them through the cactus-studded defile. The beasts plodded unwillingly, heads down and ears laid back, braying protests as they slipped and scrambled on the rocks. Drumm kept the fowling piece across his lap, ready for action, and Eggleston gripped his pistol tightly. As they rode, both watched the rocky heights; it was patent that hostile Indians could ambush them from above. Even if the Pimas and Papagos were amicable, and the Apaches confined to reservations, the pair was not too far from the country of the Navahos.
A few hundred yards into the canyon Eggleston raised a hand. "Hsst, Mr. Jack! Did you hear that?"
When they paused, the weary mules paused also.
"Hear what, Eggie?"
Borne faintly on the wind, there came to them the far-off rattle of hoofs and a shrill neigh. The mules pricked up their ears. Old Mr. Coogan said the mules could smell Indians. If they acted uneasy, as they were now certainly doing, hostile tribesmen might be about. One animal rolled eyes whitely and started to back down the canyon.
"The Indians," Drumm said in a tight voice, "may be friendly after all, Eggie. But be ready to fire when I give the command. First, however, I will attempt to 'palaver' with them, as they say on the frontier."
Tense and expectant, they waited. Above, a hawk wheeled on a rising current of air. The bird could see whatever peril awaited them, but they could only watch and listen. The clatter of hoofs grew louder, and a curl of dust rose from the cleft of the canyon above them. Someone shouted, a cry that might have been a war whoop. Jack Drumm paled, but spoke firmly.
"Steady, Eggie! Remember the hollow square at Lucknow!"
Suddenly a banner wavered above the rocks, high on a staff. A moment later a trooper cantered down toward them. The rest of the column picked its way down the narrow defile—lank, angular men, in corduroy and buckskin breeches and sweat-soaked flannel shirts.
"Thank God!" Eggleston breathed a heartfelt relief. "Look, Mr. Jack, it is the cavalry—the U. S. Army!"
To Drumm, familiar with the Royal Horse Guards in their blue tunics, white helmets with horsehair plumes, and polished steel cuirasses, the oncoming soldiers were a nondescript lot with little discipline and even poorer appearance. The lieutenant, a young man in a felt hat, sporting a ragged black beard, was slouched in the saddle as if it were an easy chair.
"Dunaway," he drawled, extending a hand to Jack Drumm. "B Company, Sixth Cavalry, from Fort Whipple." He jerked his head toward the ridge above them. "Saw you from on top. Had our eye on you for a long ways. See any hostile sign on the playa?"
Drumm took off the sun helmet and wiped the sweatband with a fresh handkerchief.
"Any what?"
Dunaway was impatient. "Hostile sign! Indians! Apaches!"
"Actually, no." Drumm put on the topi again. "No Indians, that is. But there were peculiar things in the road. Knotted rawhide strings, piles of rocks, hieroglyphics scratched on boulders."
Dunaway nodded. "Apache messages; that's the way they keep in touch with each other."
"But I thought—"
"All hell broke loose two days ago!" The lieutenant slapped the battered hat against his thigh; a cloud of dust arose. "Agustín burned Weaver's Ranch to the ground—killed Weaver's boy Sam and some Mexicans, set fire to the hay, butchered a steer, and ran off the stock they couldn't eat. It's up to us to put him back in the bottle and ram home the cork."
"Agustín? Who is Agustín?"
Dunaway gave Jack Drumm a pitying look. "You never heard of him?"
"No."
"Agustín is just chief of the Tonto Apaches, that's all! Took his braves and ran away from the Verde River reservation after a fuss with the Indian agent about bad beef his people were issued. You fellows were probably on the road when it happened, and didn't get the word. But everyone between Phoenix and Prescott knows! We've alerted all posts by telegraph. Things have come to a standstill—nothing moving on the wagon road, everyone scared. Territorial Legislature even wants General Crook removed unless we cut Agustín's trail mighty quick and dehorn him."
Eggleston looked puzzled, turning to his master for enlightenment.
"I think," Jack Drumm said, "it is meant that the cavalry must find Mr. Agustín quickly, and—well, render him harmless, one might say."
Dunaway regarded him with amusement. "I guess you might say that." He grinned, fondling his beard. "You're English, aren't you?"
"John Peter Christian Drumm, from Clarendon Hall, in Hampshire. My father is—was—Lord Fifield, the ambassador. Before he died, he insisted I see something of the world. But I must admit I was not prepared for Arizona."
Dunaway blew his nose with a handkerchief of the kind called a bandanna and stuffed it into a hip pocket. "Few folks are," he said, condescension in his voice. He watched his men milling about Drumm's pack train, exclaiming at the quantity and variety of equipment. "Look!" a brigandish-looking corporal cried. "God damn me, if it ain't a commode—a—a mechanical slop jar!"
Drumm's tone was sharp. "Don't touch that! It's a delicate machine!"
In his rolling cavalryman's gait, Dunaway strolled over and inspected it. "I swear!" he muttered, touching one of the metal tubes that entwined the device.
"There's a tank for water," Drumm explained. "You pull the chain, then the water—"
Someone guffawed. One grizzled trooper slapped his thigh, two others fell speechless with merriment into each other's arms. Lieutenant Dunaway stared unbelievingly at the loaded mules with their burdens of paraphernalia.
"Tents, cookstoves, imported biscuits, liquor, camp chairs—" He jammed the shapeless hat back on and motioned to the trumpeter. "You limeys!"
"I beg pardon?" Drumm asked.
Dunaway continued to stare at the impedimenta of the caravan while the brassy throat of the bugle shattered the silence.
"I swear!" he muttered again, and shook his head.
"What do you mean?"
"I'm a simple soldier, Mr. Drumm," the lieutenant snapped. He waved to his men. "We're all simple soldiers! We eat sour bacon, mostly, and rusty beans out of a can. We make water on the nearest bush—when we can get out of the saddle long enough, that is. So it's sand in our craw when the Sixth has got its hands full protecting legitimate citizens of the Territory, and then comes up on a circus like you got here!" Dunaway's voice had been condescending; now it turned contemptuous. "I'd advise you, Mr. Drumm, or whatever your name is, to shuck off all this junk and ride as fast as you can to Prescott before you get bushwhacked!" He grinned an evil grin. "Lord, I'd like to see Agustín sitting on that throne of yours!"
"But—"
Dunaway spat. He wheeled his horse, not saying farewell. Guidon flapping in the wind, the column broke into a gallop, heading toward the playa. There was only the diminishing rattle of shod hoofs, a dissipating plume of dust. The windswept pass was silent again, and lonely, and dangerous.
"Well," Drumm muttered, mounting his gelding, "I gather the lieutenant did not think much of Englishmen, Eggie, or their traveling arrangements!"
He had heard that most officers in the modern Army were West Pointers, men with a pretense to some education in the military academy on the Hudson River. But a few uncurried roughnecks were left over from the War Between the States; Lieutenant George Dunaway with his uncouth ways was probably one of them.
At last they topped the pass and could see again the green fringes of the Agua Fria, now much nearer. The heat had abated. As they smelled water, the mules picked up their dilatory pace. The sun vanished behind a dark cloud, fringed with gold where the scattered rays emerged.