The little man got to his feet and made a gesture that indicated fealty and respect anywhere in the world. He spoke rapidly, hands fluttering like small birds in a kind of sign language. Drawing a finger across his throat, he pointed toward the Mazatzals. Putting his hands over his face, he cowered and held out two fingers, working them back and forth in a manner reminiscent of a man running.
'He is fleeing from the Apaches!' Drumm decided. 'That is certainly his meaning!' Striding to the dying fire, he kicked the embers. 'Eggie, put out the lamp! His presence here may mean that Agustin and his cutthroats are not far behind!' He opened the case, loaded his Tatham pistols, and handed them to Phoebe Larkin.
'If we are attacked and there is no hope, do me the favor of shooting Mrs. Glore directly. Save the other pistol for yourself. There are horrible tales of what the red brutes do to captured white women!'
'I'm not afraid,' Phoebe said. Her voice trembled only slightly. 'If one of them comes near me, he will get what for!'
'That's right,' Mrs. Glore said. 'We are from far up the holler, and was weaned on a bullet!'
'Eggie,' Drumm instructed, 'you and I will defend the camp from the earthworks we have dug. Bring all our weapons and cartridges. A flask of water, too, and a dish of Mrs. Glore's beans to stay us during the night's watch.'
Phoebe touched Drumm's arm. 'You—you be careful, now!'
She was looking directly at him, eyes luminous in the starlight. He expected to find fear there, perhaps panic. Instead there was a queer look he did not have time to analyze.
'I will be careful,' he assured her. 'Now you and Mrs. Glore go into the hut and get some sleep. If anything untoward happens, you will certainly be aware of it.'
The camp settled into stillness. A rind of moon hung low in the western sky and finally disappeared. An infinity of stars sprinkled the sky, so densely distributed that it was difficult to separate one from the other. Only the Pole Star seemed a separate entity, hanging high over distant Prescott.
'That Mrs. Glore,' Eggleston said softly in the darkness, 'is an unusual woman, Mr. Jack!'
Warmth fled the earth, evaporating quickly into the dry air. Along the river the coyotes started their nightly chorus. The sound was almost welcome to Jack Drumm, a familiar thing against the menacing uncertainty of an Apache attack.
'She is, indeed,' he agreed. 'A good cook, also.' He squatted in the trench, peering over the parapet of stones, watching, listening. Orion's belt crawled slowly overhead.
'A hard worker, Mrs. Glore,' Eggleston continued. 'Very clean and neat, also!'
'That, too,' Drumm agreed.
The wound on his cheek itched. Though it had partially healed and the ugly scab had fallen away, he was conscious of its disfiguring nature. The beard, now a good half inch long, covered most of it; he was grateful for that.
Through the night they lay behind the parapet, tense and expectant. Eggleston slept—Jack Drumm was sure he once heard a muffled snore, quickly cut off—but Drumm himself could not think of sleep. Cramped and sore, he stared into the starlit darkness with eyes aching from the intensity of his gaze. He had two females to protect; it was a heavy responsibility.
He felt, rather than saw, the pallid dawn. Well, it had all been a false alarm, he supposed. Eggleston truly slept, now; his mouth was open, a lock of thinning hair fallen over his face so that the valet looked almost like a child—a lost middle-aged child. Drumm smiled paternally.
'Eggie,' he whispered. 'Wake up! The night is almost over!'
Yawning and stretching, the valet sat up. 'For a moment there,' he admitted, 'I think I dozed a little.'
Drumm started to laugh but bit it off hard. From the river, where they must have lurked unseen, the Apaches burst out on the camp, a dozen or more of them. Silently and viciously they spread about the camp, intent on murder and rapine. Clubbing the butt of his carbine into a looming painted face, Jack Drumm had the satisfaction of seeing the man stumble backward, dropping a ribboned hatchet. Pulling the trigger, he saw another attacker drop his lance and fall. At his feet Eggleston knelt, aiming carefully, to drop an Apache who was running toward the reed hut.
'Good shot, Eggie!' Drumm shouted.
Perhaps low on ammunition in their mountain fastness, the raiders hoped to slaughter them with knife and club and hatchet. But this time Drumm and his valet were prepared. Together they laid down a blistering fire, forcing the Apaches to retort in kind. Though the big Sharp's rifle was a single-shot weapon, Eggleston had his pistol, and Drumm covered him with carbine fire while the valet reloaded. The survivors quickly took cover and for a moment the din ceased. Drumm peered over the parpet but withdrew when a bullet ricocheted from a flat boulder and caromed off, singing wickedly. In the first rays of the rising sun he saw a puff of smoke from the reed hut, a flash of orange; an attacker running toward the reed hut suddenly bent over, as if struck by an immense wind, and crumpled. Phoebe Larkin and Mrs. Glore were defending themselves. He hoped they would save the last cartridges for each other.
In the brief lull he swung to scan the perimeter of the trench, fearing that a new attack was planned from another quarter. He was just in time to see the Union Jack, his own Union Jack, fluttering high over the far side of the parapet. Now they were attacking from that side.
'They are coming, Eggie!' he shouted. 'Be ready!'
The flag was carried by the man in the ornamented leather hat—surely Agustin himself—whom Jack remembered from the first raid. Bone whistle between his teeth, keening like the call of a wild animal, Agustin leaped into the trench. Behind him swarmed the rest of the attackers.
The chieftain swung a gleaming machete, as it was called. Drumm blocked it with the barrel of his carbine. Iron clanged against iron. Agustin dropped the swordlike weapon, cursing an Apache curse. As he danced in pain, Drumm caught Agustin's brown hand in his and twisted hard, bending the wrist backward in a jujitsu maneuver he remembered from Kurushiki, in Japan. Agustin dropped the flag. They both scrabbled on the ground for it.
Wrenching at the staff, Jack tore the flag from Agustin's grasp but the wily Apache kicked him in the groin. Giddy with pain, he doubled over, hearing at the same time a woman's scream. It seemed very far away, distant, almost like a voice from beyond the Styx.
Aware of a sudden shadow, he rolled away in panic. But it was Eggleston standing over him, swinging the big Sharp's like a club. The weapon spun in a deadly arc, the steel buttplate crashing into a rag-bound skull.
'Get back there!' the valet snarled, and broke a man's bones with another vicious swipe of the butt. 'Ho, sirrah, stand back! Mr. Jack, are you all right?'
Someone leaped on the valet, bearing him down. The trench filled with smoke, confusion, wolfish snarls, the report of firearms. Drumm tried to get to his feet but could only writhe in agony, clutching his groin. He was dimly aware of Agustin snatching up the maltreated banner, holding it triumphantly aloft where it caught the rays of the rising sun.
Almost resignedly Drumm closed his eyes, waiting for the end. This was his last sunrise. Lieutenant George Dunaway had been right. He should have—how was it the lieutenant had put it?
Impatient at death's delaying, he finally opened his eyes. That was when he saw Phoebe Larkin. Like an avenging fury, she stood on the parapet, pistol in each hand, squinting along the barrels with such professionalism that he knew instantly the derringer in her bosom was a well-known tool, her familiarity with weapons a matter of custom. Probably she was a professional murderess, though this category of employment was not one he had previously come on. But murderess or not, he did not want her to die.
'Run!' he yelled. 'Run away, Phoebe! Save yourself!'
Propping his body on outstretched arms, he tried to rise. But a last bullet from the fleeing Apaches struck him heavily in the shoulder. The force of the impact spun him sideways so that he fell with face pressed against the dew-wet earth. He became very tired. Curious, he tried to touch his wounded shoulder. The effort was painful, and his fingers came away warm and wet.
He continued to lie in that strange position, cheek pressed against the ground and buttocks in the air, hearing the sounds of battle grow fainter and ever fainter.
