Then there was another symptom: Sentries on the north and east front,
Nos. 4 and 5, had been a bit startled at first at seeing, soon after
dawn, shadowy forms rising slowly from the black depths of the valley,
hovering uncertainly along the edge of the mesa until they could
make out the lone figure of the morning watcher, then slowly,
cautiously, and with gestures of amity and suppliance, drawing
gradually nearer. Sturdy Germans and mercurial Celts were, at the
start, disposed to "shoo" away these specters as being hostile, or at
least incongruous. But officers and men were soon made to see it was
to hear the morning music these children of the desert flocked so
early. The agency lay but twenty miles distant. The reservation lines
came no nearer; but the fame of the invader's big maple tom-tom (we
wore still the deep, resonant drum of Bunker Hill and Waterloo, of
Jemappes, Saratoga, and Chapultepec, not the modern rattle pan
borrowed from Prussia), and the trill of his magical pipe had spread
abroad throughout Apache land to the end that no higher reward for
good behavior could be given by the agent to his swarthy charges than
the begged-for papel permitting them, in lumps of twenty, to trudge
through the evening shades to the outskirts of the soldier castle on
the mesa, there to wait the long night through until the soft
tinting of the eastward heavens and the twitter of the birdlings in
the willows along the stream, gave them courage to begin their timid
approach.
And this breathless October morning was no exception. The sentry on
the northward line, No. 4, had recognized and passed the post surgeon
soon after four o'clock, hastening to hospital in response to a
summons from an anxious nurse. Mullins seemed far too feverish. No. 4
as well as No. 5 had noted how long the previous evening Shannon and
his men kept raking and searching about the mesa where Mullins was
stabbed in the early morning, and they were in no mood to allow
strangers to near them unchallenged. The first shadowy forms to show
at the edge had dropped back abashed at the harsh reception accorded
them. Four's infantry rifle and Five's cavalry carbine had been
leveled at the very first to appear, and stern voices had said things
the Apache could neither translate nor misunderstand. The would-be
audience of the morning concert ducked and waited. With more light the
sentry might be more kind. The evening previous six new prisoners had
been sent down under strong guard by the agent, swelling the list at
Sandy to thirty-seven and causing Plume to set his teeth--and an extra
sentry. Now, as the dawn grew broader and the light clear and strong,
Four and Five were surprised, if not startled, to see that not twenty,
but probably forty Apaches, with a sprinkling of squaws, were hovering
all along the mesa, mutely watching for the signaled permission to
come in. Five, at least, considered the symptom one of sufficient
gravity to warrant report to higher authority, and full ten minutes
before the time for reveille to begin, his voice went echoing over the
arid parade in a long-draw, yet imperative "Corporal of the Gua-a-rd,
No. 5!"