f. Along the sunset
face of this gleaming _picacho_ there was a shelf or ledge that had
often been used by the Apaches for signaling purposes; the renegades
communicating with their kindred about the agency up the valley.
Invisible from the level of Camp Sandy, these fires by night, or smoke
and flashes by day, reached only those for whom they were
intended--the Apaches at the reservation; but Stout, who had known the
neighborhood since '65, had suggested that lookouts equipped with
binoculars be placed on the high ground back of the post. Inferior to
the savage in the craft, we had no code of smoke, fire, or, at that
time, even sun-flash signal, but it was arranged that one blaze was to
mean "Unmolested thus far." Two blazes, a few yards apart, would mean
"Important news by runner." In the latter event Plume was to push out
forty or fifty men in dispersed order to meet and protect the runner
in case he should be followed, or possibly headed off, by hostile
tribesmen. Only six Indian allies had gone with Stout and he had eyed
them with marked suspicion and disfavor. They, too, were Apache Yumas.
The day wore on slowly, somberly. All sound of life, melody, or
merriment had died out at Camp Sandy. Even the hounds seemed to feel
that a cloud of disaster hung over the garrison. Only at rare
intervals some feminine shape flitted along the line of deserted
verandas--some woman on a mission of mercy to some mourning,
sore-troubled sister among the scattered households. For several hours
before high noon the wires from Prescott had been hot with demand for
news, and with messages from Byrne or Plume to department
headquarters. At meridian, however, there came a lull, and at 2 P. M.
a break. Somewhere to the west the line was snapped and down. At 2.15
two linesmen galloped forth to find and repair damages, half a dozen
"doughboys" on a buckboard going as guard. Otherwise, all day long, no
soldier left the post, and when darkness settled down, the anxious
operator, seated at his keyboard, was still unable to wake the spirit
of the gleaming copper thread that spanned the westward wilderness.

All Sandy was wakeful, out on the broad parade, or the officers'
verandas, and gazing as one man or woman at the bold, black upheaval a
mile behind the post, at whose summit twinkled a tiny star, a single
lantern, telling of the vigil of Plume's watchers. If Stout made even
fair time he should have reached the _picacho_ at dusk, and now it wa