Lord Apache

outward with a jab. Drumm waited till the jab was committed, then swung a quick left to the pit of the lieutenant's stomach. Again he moderated the punch, but it was enough to make Dunaway grunt and stagger back.

'Come again!' Drumm taunted. 'Have another go at it, why don't you?' Jem Mace, he felt, would have been proud of him.

Abandoning caution, the lieutenant rushed forward, both fists swinging. Expertly Drumm stepped aside, elbows pulled close to his body and clenched fists protecting his face, coolly waiting out the blind rush. But this time something went wrong, dreadfully wrong. As Drumm trod on a gopher tunnel (Geomyidae Thomomys, he remembered dismally) the earth gave way under him and he toppled backward.

According to the Queensberry rules, he was entitled to a count of ten to recover his footing. But Dunaway rushed forward and threw himself on Drumm, knees crushing the wind from his chest, hands groping for the throat. Locked together in what Drumm assumed was frontier style, the two rolled muddily on the ground while spectators cheered and made bets.

'Middlesex Regiment, is it?' Dunaway snarled. 'Know how to handle Indians better, do they?' Fingers twined around Drumm's neck, he lifted Drumm's head high and banged it repeatedly on the damp earth, uttering cavalry obscenities all the while. 'There, take that! And that! You Englishmen are so damned good at handling things— handle that now!'

He banged Drumm's head down so hard that planets, constellations, a complete zodiac, reeled through his skull. Eggleston, seeing his master abused, ran to help him. Corporal Bagley reached out a languid paw and caught him by the collar.

'Had enough?' Dunaway jeered.

With his wind cut off he could not respond. The world dimmed, turned black. 'Guess that'll teach you!' Dunaway panted, relaxing his hold.

Drumm lay winded like a beached salmon while Dunaway casually retrieved his insignia to the cheers of the B Company rowdies. Eggleston tried to help his master rise but Drumm waved him away and staggered to his feet, aware that Miss Phoebe Larkin was regarding him pityingly. That hurt more than his defeat at the hands of George Dunaway.

'It wasn't fair!' he gasped, spitting out a foreign object that proved to be a tooth. 'The rules say—'

'No rules out here, no rules at all!' Dunaway casually tucked in a shirttail. 'As to what's fair, Drumm— depends on where you come from. Nothing out here is fair—the Apaches aren't fair, the weather isn't fair, the whole damned Arizona Territory is the unfairest thing you ever saw, and it's no place for a weakling that comes along whimpering about fair! Arizona is for men—men that scratch and claw their way and stick it out no matter what the weather, or the Indians, or the Lord God Himself!' Dunaway turned toward Miss Phoebe Larkin and her companion. 'Is that your baggage, ladies? Corporal, take the valises and put them in the lead wagon, will you?'

Drumm watched the corporal pick up the bags. He was afraid he would add to his humiliation by vomiting. 'Now that we've settled our little score,' Dunaway said conversationally, getting again into the saddle, 'there was a Pinkerton man named Meech, Alonzo Meech, left Phoenix about the same time you did, Drumm. Hasn't been heard from, and the home office has been making inquiries. Seen him around?'

Jack Drumm's throat hurt; he spoke hoarsely.

'Meech was with us when Agustin hit our camp. Next morning he rode out toward Prescott; said he had business there.'

'The Apaches probably got him,' Dunaway remarked, brushing dust from his shirt where he had lately rolled on the ground with Jack Drumm.

'I doubt it.' Drumm shook his head, wincing as his maltreated neck pained him. 'Mr. Meech was an extremely determined man, and very resourceful.'

Phoebe Larkin and Mrs. Glore were in whispered consultation, appearing concerned about something. The older woman kept insisting, but Phoebe continued to shake her head and say, 'No, no, Beulah!'

'Well, ladies?' Dunaway asked.

The corporal was handing up the luggage into the wagon when Phoebe snatched at his sleeve. 'I—just a minute, please!'

The brigand stared at her, then at his lieutenant.

'Ma'am,' Dunaway asked, 'what is the matter?'

Miss Larkin seemed distraught. 'I—we've changed our mind, Lieutenant. We won't be going to Prescott after all.'

'Not going to Prescott? But—'

'No.' She was very firm. Taking the bags from the corporal, she set them down in the dust. 'I think the journey will be too rough—in the wagon, I mean!' She looked nervously about, seeming at a loss for words, a condition that Jack Drumm had not before observed in her. Finally she said, almost desperately, 'My friend here— Mrs. Beulah Glore—has a liver condition. A shaking-up, like she might get in a freight wagon, could aggravate her condition.'

'That's the God's truth!' Mrs. Glore affirmed. 'Oh, it's ever so troublesome! Keeps me awake nights, and I don't eat too good either! We better wait for the next stage.'

Puzzled, Dunaway turned to Jack Drumm. 'But they can't stay here alone!'

Drumm had long been thinking certain private thoughts. He first entertained these thoughts when he met the uncouth Dunaway in Centinela Canyon and the lieutenant was so contemptuous of him and his equipment; later, when Agustin and his pack of brutes wantonly attacked them; when a perverse flood gutted their camp and scattered their possessions all along the river. Everything in this hostile country—heat, thirst, wind—seemed especially designed to challenge, bully, drive Jack Drumm from the face of the Arizona Territory. The climactic incident, of course, was his present humiliation. George Dunaway had beaten him into submission, fairly or unfairly, cast doubt on Jack Drumm's qualifications as a man, and embarrassed him publicly in front of twenty snickering cavalrymen, several teamsters, and their Mexican swampers—and Miss Phoebe Larkin.

'They won't be alone!' he told Dunaway. 'My man Eggleston and I intend to remain here also.'

Dunaway frowned. 'I don't think I heard you right. You're going to stay here, along the Agua Fria? For how long?'

Drumm looked steadily at his late antagonist. 'For as long as it takes.'

'What in hell does that mean?'

'I will stay here,' Jack Drumm said, 'until it is evident to me— and to others—that an Englishman cannot be bullied, cannot be chivied, cannot be driven out of any legitimate place where he elects to remain.'

Dunaway chewed at his ragged mustache. 'I can't be responsible for your safety!'

'I didn't ask you to be.'

'Agustin and his people are up somewhere on the ridge behind you, and it's just a whoop and a holler down the canyon to your camp. This is Agustin's old stamping grounds; that's why there's not been a stage station here, in spite of good grass and water.' Dunaway turned to Miss Larkin. 'Ma'am, I warn you—this place is dangerous! There may not be other transportation along for days.'

'I'm not afraid,' she said.

'Me neither,' Mrs. Glore agreed. 'We'll stay awhile, if it's all right with Mr. Drumm here.'

The lieutenant shrugged. 'Suit yourself, ladies!'

In spite of his brave front, Jack Drumm felt weary. He had a longing to lie in the green grass of Hampshire with his head on Cornelia Newton-Barrett's lap, free of great resolves and weighty responsibility. But he thrust the image from his mind; there was work to be done. As Dunaway rode off with his men toward the safe haven of Prescott, he turned on his heel and spoke briskly.

'Get a shovel, will you, Eggie? We must dig that rifle pit deeper, and face it with stones.'

Chapter Four

Before the last wagon left, Jack Drumm flagged down the driver and drove a few bargains. They were not bargains exactly; gamy mutton under a cheesecloth was forty cents a pound, and beans, unwashed and containing