Lord Apache

you understand? I want my flag back, or Agustin will have to answer to me!'

At mention of Agustin the obsidian eyes seemed for a moment to clear, to show depth, to indicate interest. The youth was tall for an Apache, with a kind of indolent grace even in his bonds. He lifted his chin proudly, and the black eyes became large and luminous. Then, suddenly, it was if a curtain descended. Once more, Jack Drumm might have been addressing a stone.

'I don't think the creature understands a word you say,' Mrs. Glore observed.

Jack Drumm felt his knees weakening; he swayed a little. Phoebe caught him under the arm, looking anxiously into his face.

'Hadn't you better—'

'I—want—my—flag,' Jack said between clenched teeth. 'Flag— bandera! You understand that?'

The Apache watched him, immobile, without emotion, but Jack felt somehow that the youth understood. He turned to the valet.

'Cut him loose, will you, Eggie?'

Eggleston was surprised. 'Are you sure, sir, that—'

'Cut him loose,' Drumm repeated, surprised to find his voice suddenly husky and reedlike, almost inaudible. 'Let him go, and tell his master Agustin we are here to stay, along the Agua Fria! Let him tell Agustin he can not dislodge us! Let him tell Agustin I will have my flag back, and before I leave this miserable land I will see Agustin himself hanged on a gallows in Prescott!'

He toppled, then, and would have fallen. Eggleston and Mrs. Glore managed to catch him under the arms and drag him protesting into the reed hut. He had a fever and his mind wandered again. But Phoebe Larkin was always nearby; it gave him a grudging complacency.

By the middle of November the combined forces from Camp McDowell and Fort Whipple had confined Agustin and his raiders to the Mazatzals. Escorted by small detachments of troops, stages and wagons and even an occasional straggling train of hopeful settlers began to filter along the Prescott Road, although there was still danger of scattered raids. Sam Valentine and the newly elected Territorial representatives rode north to the capital in an armed band. Valentine was amazed at the growing activity along the river. Eating a slice of Mrs. Glore's peach pie, he strolled along the earthen dam, where the water now backed up to a depth of almost a foot.

'So you just decided to stay, eh?'

Drumm did not mention his fight with Lieutenant George Dunaway but he suspected that Valentine had heard of it. News traveled fast in this arid land.

'Yes,' he said, 'we Drumms are a stubborn lot.'

Valentine ate the last of the pie and looked toward Mrs. Glore's new kitchen, built with odds and ends from a Phoenix-bound shipment of lumber by the sawmill in the new capital of Prescott.

'The ladies too, I see.'

'Eh?'

'Those two indomitable ladies stayed also—the ones who refused to go back to Phoenix when the stage was attacked in Centinela Canyon.'

'Yes,' Drumm said, 'they are stubborn too, I think. At any rate, they decided to stay over awhile and help me get things in shape here. I think, though, they will be leaving soon for Prescott. Miss Larkin has an uncle there, I understand.'

Valentine's eyes narrowed. He stroked his beard. 'I see two more pies cooling on the table over there. They are covered with cheesecloth against the flies, but I can smell pie a hundred yards off. Do you suppose Mrs. Glore would sell me one?'

'She baked a few extra,' Drumm admitted. 'They cost a dollar apiece.'

'Done.' The legislator finished the last of his coffee, and added, 'I appreciate the coffee, too, but you ought to charge for it. If you're going to stay here, you can make yourself a mint of money with a good cook.' He mounted his big bay and looked thoughtfully at Drumm. 'You know, this Territory needs people like you —hard-working savvy folks that'll settle down and make the desert bloom. But Arizona needs people like George Dunaway too. George cusses a lot, never been curried below the knees, but he's actually a prince of a fellow when you get to know him. And if it wasn't for tough nuts like George Dunaway, the rest of us might just as well go home to Indianapolis or Nashville or Atlanta— wherever we came from.'

Ike Coogan stopped off, too, driving a Tully and Ochoa freight wagon bound for Prescott with a load of melons, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and peaches. Sitting in the shade of the ramada with Jack Drumm, he sliced open a ripe melon with his jackknife. Handing a dripping half to Drumm, he noted his host's wincing as he reached for the succulent fruit. 'Got you through the shoulder, eh?'

Drumm nodded. 'It's not healing right. There's pus around the wound, and a suppuration.'

Juice dripping from his whiskers, the old man shook his head, grinning. 'Rancho Terco, that's what I'd call it. Rancho Terco!'

Drumm knew some Spanish. 'Rancho Terco? Let's see— terco means—'

'It means stupid!' Ike cackled. 'Idiot—blockhead! Hee hee! That's it, all right! Blockhead Ranch! No one but a blockhead would camp in the middle of an alkali desert and wait for old Agustin to swoop down and cut out his giblets!'

Drumm was annoyed. 'I don't think it's so foolish! Anyway, Sam Valentine tells me Agustin probably won't bother us any more. And this is good soil along here—all it needs is water!' He pointed to the river bottom where the gentle Papago, whom they had named Charlie after an ancient London dustman, was hoeing newly sprouted shoots of corn. 'With plenty of winter sun, and water, a man could get several crops a year along the Agua Fria!' Not, he thought, as in Hampshire. There it was already cold and dark, blustery and raining.

'You serious?' Coogan demanded.

'I am in dead earnest. I mean to stay here until I am ready to leave—and I do not know when that will be.'

Coogan scratched his tobacco-stained beard. 'By God, you sure cut a different figger from that silly-ass Englishman that first come here!' He stared at Drumm's ginger beard, the straw sombrero, the jagged scar on the cheek. 'You're beginning to look like a real Arizony hardcase!' He got creakingly to his feet, leaning on the old rifle. 'If you're actual intending to stay here for a while, I got a proposition for you from Tully and Ochoa in Phoenix.'

'What kind of a proposition?'

'Run this spread as a regular stop. They'll leave extra animals here to graze and water, busted wagons that need fixing, whatever. Old man Tully thinks he might even put in a little warehouse. Fifty dollars a month to run the place. Stage line needs a stop, and they'll pay you something too. You can make a few dollars on the side selling grub to people, maybe putting someone up for the night in that shanty over there.'

Eggleston's uncle had indeed been a wheelwright, and the valet had once worked at the trade. So long as they stayed, Mrs. Glore could cook meals and Phoebe could help her. Charlie, the Papago, could be the porter when he was not tending his vegetables.

'I'll do it!' Drumm decided.

George Dunaway rode by with B Company. Dusty and sweating, he slid wearily from his mount to stare at the bearded figure in the tall conical hat. 'Drumm?'

Jack nodded. 'Hello, Dunaway.'

Phoebe had been helping Charlie dig weeds from the garden. Flushed and glowing, cheeks pink from effort and the sun, she came to greet the lieutenant. Her feet were bare, the balmoral dress torn and stained. Beulah Glore came too, face sweating from the heat of the kitchen fire, and Eggleston.

'Well, I'll be God damned!' Dunaway stared from one to the other, too astonished even to apologize for his language, while the troops watered their mounts in the small lake beginning to form behind the earthen dam. 'I'll be simply God damned!'

'We're still here,' Drumm said with some pride.