again, despoiled them of their
plunder, walked away with their young women, insulted and jeered at
their young men. Except when backed by the braves of other bands,
therefore, the Apache Yumas were fearful and timorous on the trail.
Once they had broken and run before a mere handful of Tontos, leaving
a wounded officer to his fate. Once, when scaling the Black Mesa
toward this very Snow Lake, they had whimpered and begged to be sent
home, declaring no enemy was there in hiding, when the peaks were
found alive with Tontos. The Red Rock country and the northward spurs
of the Mogollon seemed fraught with some strange, superstitious terror
in their eyes, and if the "nerve" of a dozen would desert them when
ordered east of the Verde, what could be expected of Blakely's two? No
wonder, then, the elders at Sandy were sorely troubled!

But the Bugologist had nothing else to choose from. All the reliable,
seasoned scouts were already gone with the various field columns. Only
Apache Yumas remained, and only the least promising of the Apache
Yumas at that. Bridger remembered how reluctantly these two had obeyed
the summons to go. "If they don't sneak away and come back swearing
they have lost the lieutenant, I'm a gopher," said he, and gave orders
accordingly to have them hauled before him should they reappear.
Confidently he looked to see or hear of them as again lurking about
the commissary storehouse after the manner of their people, beggars to
the backbone. But the week went by without a sign of them. "There's
only one thing to explain that," said he. "They've either deserted to
the enemy or been cut off and killed." What, then, had become of
Blakely? What fate had befallen Wren?

By this time, late Saturday night, acting for the department commander
now lost somewhere in the mountains, Byrne had re-enforced the guards
at the agency and the garrison at Sandy with infantry drawn from Fort
Whipple at Prescott, for thither the Apaches would never venture. 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