With one orderly and a pair of Apache Yuma scouts, Neil Blakely had
set forth in hopes of making his way to Snow Lake, far up in the range
to the east. The orderly was all very well,--like most of his fellows,
game, true, and tried,--but few were the leaders who had any faith in
Apache Yumas. Of those Indians whom General Crook had successively
conquered, then turned to valuable use, the Hualpais had done well and
proved reliable; the Apache Mohaves had served since '73, and in scout
after scout and many a skirmish had proved loyal and worthy allies
against the fierce, intractable Tontos, many of whom had never yet
come in to an agency or accepted the bounty of the government. Even a
certain few of these Tontos had proffered fealty and been made useful
as runners and trailers against the recalcitrants of their own band.
But the Apache Yumas, their mountain blood tainted by the cross with
the slothful bands of the arid, desert flats of the lower Colorado,
had won a bad name from the start, and deserved it. They feared the
Tontos, who had thrashed them again and 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?