Lord Apache

It was Phoebe Larkin.

Chapter Thirteen

Holding her in his arms, body warm and soft against his, he paused for a moment, listening.

'What is it?'

'I don't know,' he muttered. 'I don't know.' He shook his head. 'Something queer is going on tonight in the camp.'

'What do you mean?'

He told her about the big brush hut, about the fight, about the way Agustin walked, silent and erect, toward the east, and how the people seemed to mourn.

'Listen,' he said, 'even now—'

Together they peered through the chinks in the hut where the mud plastering had fallen away. The sun had fallen quickly behind the screen of trees, and it was twilight. A huge fire blazed in the clearing. Around it Agustin's people—the Tinneh—were ranged. Someone harangued them in the sibilant Apache tongue. A meeting was taking place.

'What are they doing?' Phoebe whispered.

'I don't know.'

'What will they do with us, Jack?'

'I don't know that either,' he admitted.

She shuddered, pushing a strand of hair back from her face. He saw her face dimly, very pale, in the gloom of the hut.

'They came so quick, that night along the river! I was cleaning some wild celery. All of a sudden there they were, swarming all over the place like—like bees! I shot one—I always carried the derringer in my—bosom. But one of them grabbed me and tied me up and threw me over a horse. Mr. Sloat came running, then, and tried to help me, but—' Her voice trailed away in a half sob.

'No need to talk of it now,' Jack comforted, patting her shoulder.

He went to the doorway, pulled aside the deerskin flap. After a moment he slipped outside. When he returned his face was puzzled.

'There's no one out there. I mean—no guard!'

'What does that signify?'

'Our situation appears to have changed in some way.'

He could see the spark of hope in her eyes.

'Maybe—maybe they're going to let us go!'

'Hardly likely! And there's no one so unpredictable as an Apache. If we tried to get out of here, they'd cut our throats, quickly.'

'What must we do then?'

In distress she clung to him. The red hair, loose and flowing, lay silkily against his cheek, the ripe swell of her thigh pressed against the hard muscles of his own. Voice trembling, but not from fear, he muttered, 'Wait, I guess.'

'I suppose I should be scared. I was, till you came. Now I'm not anymore. Maybe they'll kill us, Jack, but—but somehow I'm happy! Happy you came, happy we're together, even in a scary situation like this!'

His arm girdled her slender waist in the poet's narrow compass. All that's good and all that's fair. At the meeting in the clearing someone pounded a drum; the pulse in his ears thudded in time to the savage beat.

'Phoebe,' he said thickly. 'Phoebe, I—' He touched her hair, feeling pleasure as the coppery strands sifted through his calloused fingers.

'What is it, Jack?'

He carried her to the pile of skins in a corner of the hut and they sank down clasped together in ecstasy that was strange and wondrous to John Peter Christian Drumm. He hoped it was wonderful to Phoebe Larkin also, and finally believed on good evidence that it was.

Afterward they lay for a long time in each other's arms. Moonlight, light from a winter moon, shone fitfully through cracks in the brush hut. The air grew cold but they were warm in their nearness. The meeting of the Tinneh was still going on. The voices, the drum, came to them only faintly.

'Do you love me, Jack?'

Unbidden in his mind came a quick image of Cornelia Newton-Barrett. He ought, of course, to feel very guilty, but somehow he did not; that troubled him. To cover his confusion, he equivocated.

'Do you love me?'

As always, she was quick and forthright in her answer.

'It seems like I always have, and I know I always will! How could it be any other way? When the Prescott stage came into your place along the river, arrows sticking out all over it, and I saw you standing there, something—something inside of me trembled. Oh, I couldn't give it much thought right then—Mr. Meech was hot on our trail—but a shiver went through me, and I said to myself, 'This is it, Phoebe Larkin! This is it—the real thing— and now you're on the run and won't probably ever see him again.''

Reminded, he told her, 'You need not worry any longer about Mr. Meech; he has given up the pursuit. It seems old Buckner fell down the stairs and broke his neck. His relatives have balked at spending any more money to catch you—you and Beulah Glore.'

'He didn't!'

'He did, indeed.'

She rose on an elbow to face him. 'I can hardly believe it! I mean, to have been chased so long—' She sighed. 'Still, I feel sorry for poor Mr. Buckner. He was lonely, I suppose, but he didn't know how to love anyone.' For a long moment she was silent. Then she said, 'It's—what do you call it? Ironic—yes, that's the word! It's ironic that I don't have to worry about Mr. Meech anymore, but now I've got to worry about—about—' She wept, burying her face against his shoulder. 'About—about us! I don't mind dying so much, but I don't want to lose you!'

In the face of her love he hated himself for his lack of equal frankness. The words of the song came to him: All that's good and all that's fair. He made the plunge.

'Yes, God damn it! Yes, indeed—I do love you, Phoebe! I loved you from that first instant, only I was too damned cold—what was it you said? Cold as Mose's toe? I was too damned glacial and British to admit my own feelings! So I was very polite and reserved, though inside I felt something churning, but I made myself believe it was the damned wild corn I ate that day! I did love you, and I do love you, and I will never stop loving you!' He paused. 'Ah—by the way, who was Mose?'

'Mose who?'

'The one who had the cold toe.'

In spite of the danger, she giggled. 'I don't know! It was just something Uncle Buell used to say!' She was thoughtful for a moment, then asked hesitatingly, 'Am I as pretty as Cornelia, Jack?'

Somehow or other, he could not remember exactly how Cornelia Newton-Barrett looked. Blond, certainly— stately, with brown eyes. He did, however, remember exactly how Cornelia's ogress mother looked, and winced. But Cousin Lionel had always gotten along well with Cornelia's mother. In fact, Lionel had been one of Cornelia's unsuccessful suitors. Yes, that was right! He felt relieved. Probably when he heard the news, Lionel would take up where he had left off when Jack Drumm entered Cornelia's picture. Probably Lionel would even become Lord Fifield; the thought did not distress him.

Phoebe gave his arm a hard pinch. 'What were you dreaming about? I was talking to you!'

'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, indeed. You are much prettier than Cornelia! She cannot hold a candle to you, Phoebe Larkin, and I am the luckiest man in the world to have discovered you, here in the Arizona Territory, and being captured by Apaches is a small price to pay for being here with you, in this brush hut, no matter