language, partly in Spanish, partly in the
few Apache terms that Blakely had learned during his agency days,
managed to make them understand that Wren was to be found some five
miles further on, and that most of the besieging Tontos were on the
heights above or in the canon below. Few would be encountered, if any,
on the up-stream side. Then, promising to take the horses and the
mules to Camp Sandy, he had left them. He dared go no farther toward
the warring Apaches. They would suspect and butcher him without mercy.

But Solalay had not gone without promise of further aid. Natzie's
younger brother, Alchisay, had recently come to him with a message
from her, and should be coming with another. Solalay thought he could
find the boy and send him to them to be used as a courier. Blakely's
opportune coming had cheered not a little the flagging defense, but,
not until forty-eight hours thereafter, by which time their condition
had become almost desperate and the foe almost daring, did the lithe,
big-eyed, swarthy little Apache reach them. Blakely knew him
instantly, wrote his dispatch and bade the boy go with all speed, with
the result we know. "Three more of our party are wounded," he had
written, but had not chosen to say that one of them was himself.

A solemn sight was this that met the eyes of the Bugologist, as
Carmody roused him from a fitful sleep, with the murmured words,
"Almost light, sir. They'll be on us soon as they can see." Deep in
under the overhang and close to the pool lay one poor fellow whose
swift, gasping breath told all too surely that the Indian bullet had
found fatal billet in his wasting form. It was Chalmers, a young
Southerner, driven by poverty at home and prospect of adventure abroad
to seek service in the cavalry. It was practically his first campaign,
and in all human probability his last. Consciousness had left him
hours ago, and his vagrant spirit was fast loosing every earthly bond,
and already, in fierce dreamings, at war with unseen and savage foe
over their happy hunting grounds in the great Beyond. Near him,
equally sheltered, yet further toward the dim and pallid light, lay
Wren, his strong Scotch features pinched and drawn with pain and loss
of blood and lack of food. Fever there was little left, there was so
little left for it to live upon. Weak and helpless as a child in arms
he lay, inert and silent. There was nothing he could do. Never a
quarter hour had passed since he had been