Chapter 18: Gray Wolf’s Coming

While young spring was touching the mountains with green, the desert also was waking from sleep and putting on its scanty signs of new life. In a valley to the eastward of the canyon, a band of Apaches had spent the cold months, although a few of the warriors now and then roamed far in the hope of finding game or perhaps a wandering prospector who might be picked off with the aid of a happy bullet and never be missed by his own people.

This was the band that had taken Charles, and that had lost the great shaman, old Ka-jú, slain by a rifle bullet, fired from a great distance, perhaps by Se-má-che himself, and it retained for a long time its respect for the terrible pass and the inviolate home of the cliff dwellers. But with the months the influence of these events waned, and the Professor’s prediction came true.

One spirit more daring than all the rest wandered, just as the snow was melting, into the mass of mighty cliffs and peaks about the great canyon. This warrior entered tentatively upon the first fringe of the cold mountains. Then, as the snow melted, he went on up the great canyon to behold at last a sight that stirred in his primeval blood the desire for action. Upon the very shelf where cliff dwellers had been slaughtered long, long ago, he saw two lads going to and fro. They were well tanned, but undeniably they belonged to the white race, and they were far, very far from their people. They might disappear here and no one of their race ever know the secret of their disappearance. All the cunning cruelty and hate in the warrior’s nature blazed up at this happy chance. He remembered the face of one of the boys, and he began to believe now that his release had been secured by some one of the white man’s cunning tricks.

He crouched in the bushes, where he lay motionless more than an hour, his body apparently a part of the earth, but his burning black eyes intently watching the two white beings on the shelf above him. He saw a third white face also much tanned, but undeniably white, and then a fourth. The last was a little man, but with a great head covered by an enormous pith helmet, and the warrior with fierce anger remembered him too. The four attended to various duties and talked together now and then. They seemed to be wholly oblivious of danger, and the cunning Apache judged from what he saw that they had been there a long time.

The soul of the savage leaped within him at the great opportunity. There were human beings like himself. They were not protected by Se- má-che. He might have waited around until he could pick off one or two himself, but the Apache takes no needless risks, and he stole away from the canyon, and then across the desert to his comrades. The tale that he told—he was a bold and convincing orator—filled them, too, with the same desire, and they entered the mountains to achieve their triumph.

No warning came as yet to the four. They had enjoyed immunity so long since the slaying of old Ka-jú that the thought of the savage seldom entered their minds, and they were occupied now with preparations for the departure with the gold. Meanwhile the Apaches were in the canyon, encouraged by the fact that Se-má-che seemed to take no notice of their entrance, and were now cautiously approaching the path that led to the shelf.

Spring had made progress. A green robe lay over the lower slopes of the mountains, and above shone a sky of peaceful, unbroken blue. A little wind played among the grass stems, and the new-blown flowers. The four were having their breakfast again in the open air, and all were in the finest of humors. Then Herbert took a notion to wander on the shelf.

The boy was silent and abstracted. He could not have told why he was sad, but for the first time in days he was thinking of Mr. Carleton, who had perished so miserably, and he was blaming himself because he did not think of him oftener and grieve more. But from this tragedy his thoughts turned to something vague and intangible that suddenly oppressed him. The sixth sense, which perhaps belonged to the caveman, was registering an alarm; he had a feeling that danger was near; the feeling was unaccountable, but it grew in power, and he looked out at the canyon, the mountains and the lofty row of white peaks to the north. This was “home,” peaceful and protecting, with green on the slopes and golden sunlight above, but this air, seemingly so pure, was surcharged with an unknown quality that made his nerves quiver as he breathed it.

Without saying a word to the others, and almost forgetting for the moment their presence, he rose and stood at the edge of the shelf, gazing into the blue abyss. Here his sense of danger increased, as if he were coming nearer to that which brought the danger. Why he felt that way, at that particular moment, he could never tell. Nothing stirred but the little wind that played among the grass stems and leaves. No sound came to his ears, but the unknown warning was repeated.

A pebble rattled on the slope, and he looked down with eyes that had grown far more acute than those of the ordinary lad. A weed by the path moved more than it should have done in the wind, and he glanced at it twice. The second time he saw behind the bush a pair of fierce black eyes, gazing intently upward, and then he saw the coarse black hair and low brown forehead of the head to which the eyes belonged. In an instant he knew and, every nerve attuned, he was ready for what he had to do.

He stepped back from the edge, shouting to the others that they were attacked, and then he sprang forward again. At that moment the black hair and the brown face appeared over the terrace and Herbert promptly fired at it with the revolver that he always carried more from a sense of duty lately than from any fear of danger. A cry followed, and then the sound of a body falling, until the echo died far away. After that there was silence in the great canyon, save for the little wind that played among the grass stems.

In an instant the other three were running toward him.

“Apaches!” shouted Herbert.

“Ah,” said the Professor, “I am not surprised!” Charles and Jed ran for the rifles, and in a few seconds every one of the four was provided with his powerful breech-loader. The boys learned in their long stay in the mountains presence of mind, great resource and the use of but few words.

“They’re on the slope,” said Herbert.

“We can beat ‘em,” said Charles.

“Here, things favor the defense,” said the Professor.

“This is mighty cur’ous an’ interestin’,” said Jed, “but I think we can handle it.”

It is truth to say that they were not afraid. They were the primeval men now, defending their home. But they had the best of modern arms, and they awaited the contest with the joyous thrill that the strong feel. The attack, for the present, did not come.

Now courage and patience were matched against courage and cunning. The most terrible of human tests was at hand, long waiting in the face of mortal danger. Hour after hour passed, the morning waned, the sun reached the zenith, pouring down floods of golden rays, then the afternoon, too, waned and long black shadows began to creep over the mountains, but the two men and the two boys, rifle in hand, still knelt on the terrace, watching the head of the path, hearing every sound, and seeing every weed or bush that quivered. They felt able to stand on guard, until the end, whatever it might be. The Apaches had not gone—instinct alone would have told them that—and they knew that, sooner or later, the attack would be made. The twilight deepened into the night, and after a while the moon came out.

While the four waited on the shelf, watchful and listening, a group far down in the canyon were also watchful and listening. They belonged to a far-off, more primitive age, and they belonged to it wholly; it was not for moments, it was no psychic revulsion; they dwelt all the time in that fierce old past, and now they were at war with the present.

They sought foes who in their minds were typical of that present with which they fought, and they saw a chance for at least a partial vengeance. All their natural instincts were awake. They were akin now to the animal, and were moved largely by the same impulses. Se-má-che had given them no warning and now he must favor their attempt. The blood-red sun, dropping suddenly behind the mountains, added a new fire to their passion, the weird, ghost-like darkness that crept up the canyon conveyed to them no sense of awe or fear; it was merely the coming of the night which might help them, and they rejoiced in accordance.

As the swift twilight went and black night covered the mountains, the darkness, like the red light of the sun, served to give a new touch of flame to the blood of the besiegers. One, leaner, gaunter, and uglier than all the rest, stalked now and then among them. It was their leader, Gray Wolf, and he urged them always to persistence.

The night advanced, the faint wind died in the canyon, the sickle of a pale moon was blotted out by clouds, and darkness, heavy and brooding, lay over all the great mountains. Nature was silent and waiting, as if she expected a black and ugly deed; the air in the deep canyon became close and heavy, and then, when the somber skies, unlighted by a single star, lay close to the earth, Gray Wolf and his men, fierce for blood, began to creep slowly upward. They were in no hurry; if there was any quality that the Apache possessed in surpassing degree it was patience; he was ready to wait through any measure of time if the taking of a life were only at the end of it. Perhaps no other human beings ever bore a greater semblance to serpents, as they went on, always upward. Had the eyes of men been able to pierce the blackness they would have seen only sinuous brown forms blending against the brown of the slopes.

Gray Wolf, as became him, was always in the front, and he never doubted that they would succeed in their attempt; the defenders would be taken by surprise and the rest would be easy. All the omens were propitious; not a single ray of light came through the clouds, and every voice was dead in the canyon; his savage heart thrilled already with the joys of the coming triumph. Yet he lost no particle of his caution. Now and then, with a soft warning hiss, which redoubled his likeness to a serpent, he would cause all the band to stop, and they would lie there for minutes against the slope, absolutely motionless and scarcely breathing.

Up, up they went, and still no noise reached the listening ear of Gray Wolf. A laugh rose in his throat, but went no further than his lips. They were but whites on the shelf, and, with only the dulled senses of the whites. A more chivalrous enemy might have wished a harder prey, but not so the Apache; courage he had when it was needed, but it gave him the keenest joy to win the greatest prize without cost; he loved to find a sleeping foe.

Gray Wolf presently stopped again, and measured the distance to the shelf, which he could not see, but whose location he knew well. Two hundred yards! He resumed his advance, but stopped again at the last hundred. Still no sound, nothing whatever to indicate that his coming victims suspected their fate to be so near. Gray Wolf brought his rifle well forward, and loosened the knife in his belt. Big Elk, second in command and just behind him, did the same.

Gray Wolf and his band passed the last hundred yards more slowly than any of the others, because they now had the utmost need of caution if they would win the easy victory that the Apache loved. But there was yet nothing to indicate that the victims suspected; the black night and the quiet mountains remained favorable. Now he could see the edge of the shelf in the darkness, and no watchful form stood upon it.

The yards melted slowly to nothing, and then Gray Wolf, with all the caution that the Apache learns on his swart, gray plains, drew a little to one side, and beckoned to the stoutest of his band to go up first. They went forward without a word, eager for the triumph, and two straightened up, ready to climb upon the shelf.

Gray Wolf at that moment saw dark figures rise from the ground, made gigantic and terrible by the dusk, and flame shot down almost directly in the face of the leading Apaches, who uttered groans and crashed away down the mountainside, rolling like bowlders. The great canyon took up the sounds, and sent them echoing away toward the white peaks.

Gray Wolf was a brave man, but his brow grew cold with sweat, and red terror plucked at his heart. It was not the white men, but he and his own warriors, who had been surprised. The band fled far more swiftly than they had come to the comparative safety of the canyon-bed below. The four on the shelf could not see the dim, retreating figures in the dusk, but they heard the groans, the rattling sounds, the fall of bowlders and the scraping of bodies, and they knew that the Apaches were in wild retreat. Exultation lifted up the souls of everyone, but most of all that of Jedediah Simpson o’ Lexin’-ton, K—y.

“Swing low, old chariot, swing low,” he chanted. “Can’t you come again, you purty brown men! That was jest a military salute we fixed for you an’ now you have run away! It was so sudden! So impolite! Come again, we’re waitin’! ‘I’m waitin’, only waitin’ for thee.’ ‘Oh come, won’t you come?’”

“Jed,” said the Professor, “you bloodthirsty creature, stop that noise!”

“It ain’t a noise, Purfessor,” said Jed. “It’s a song o’ action. I come o’ fightin’ stock. I’ve got pioneer blood in me, an’ I feel that blood risin’ to the top right now. Settin’ here we can lick the whole Apache nation, ef they are a nation, an’ I’m close to cryin’ fur fear they won’t come again.”

He threw himself flat down on the slope and began to creep over the very edge. His eyes were two coals in the dark, and the song of battle was undoubtedly singing a fierce tune in the ears of Jedediah Simpson.