Lord Apache

She giggled. 'I forgot you were English! That means—well, courting me!'

'I see,' he said, somewhat stiffly.

'I guess Papa was afraid the boys were getting too serious! So me and Beulah—Papa packed us off to travel the West, visit my wealthy Uncle Buell Larkin, who made his fortune in a gold mine at Prescott. Papa didn't want me to marry anybody but another judge, and there wasn't any in the pack that always hung around the house.'

'That's the God's truth,' Mrs. Glore called. 'Every word of it!'

Drumm fumbled a hand over his damaged mustache when he looked at Miss Larkin. 'I have a friend who was with me at Magdalen College. Geoffrey moved to New York City to take over his father's import business. He lived someplace in New York City near the Bronx. Tell me, do you know the Bronx?'

'The Bronks?' Phoebe shook her head. 'There was a family of Bronsons, but they were kind of white trash. The judge never wanted me to associate with them.'

Drumm was puzzled. 'No, no!' he protested. 'I mean the Bronx! It's a locality in New York City.'

Phoebe pondered. 'Oh, yes,' she said. 'The Bronx.'

She regarded him with asperity. 'Well, I did live there!'

'I did not deny it, ma'am.'

Her blue eyes narrowed. 'But just what are you getting at?'

It had been a long and arduous day, and he was not in the best of moods. 'I was not 'getting at' anything!' he said stiffly. 'I was only wondering why you had never heard of the Bronx. Even in London we know that area!'

'And in New York,' she said loftily, 'we have better manners than to haze our guests so!'

He blinked. 'Really, Miss Larkin—'

'I have been a perfect lady,' she said. 'I have shared confidences with you, told you a few details of my personal life as a proper female might, and now you are abusing me!'

Open-mouthed, he could only stare at her. The blue eyes were dark with annoyance, the lips firmly set in disapproval. Dusting her hands in a gesture of finality, she got to her feet. 'It really is not nice to be so suspicious, Mr. Drumm. I wonder you have any friends!'

'Look out!' he called after her. 'Ma'am, be careful! You're walking right into a barrel cactus— Echinocactus grusoni, I think!'

Pausing in flight, she drew her skirts aside from the menacing spines.

'Thank you,' she said curtly, 'but I don't need your help, Mr. Drumm. I saw the cactus myself and I don't need any man's help! I can take care of myself—always have, and always will!'

While Eggleston slept, Jack Drumm took the first watch. He squatted for a long time, chill and uncomfortable in the single burr-covered blanket remaining to him after the valet had fitted out the reed hut for the females' occupancy. Moodily he stared into the darkness. Along the river the coyotes started their music, and a night bird tuned up in a nearby bush.

Miss Larkin was certainly an odd person; he suspected she was not even a proper lady. As for that story of living in New York City, it was an obvious fabrication. But there had been no need to lie to him; what did he care about her past?

Near one in the morning, to judge from the position of Orion's belt, he woke the weary Eggleston and lay down himself, hands clasped behind his head. Around the distant Mazatzals forked lightning played, shimmering silently against the dark clouds. Long moments later he heard a cannonading of thunder. But she was beautiful! Not the patrician handsomeness of Cornelia Newton-Barrett, but instead a kind of coltish attractiveness, a careless charm that seemed unaware of its own beauty. Closing tired eyes, he finally slept, exhausted by the events of the day.

In the first flush of dawn he awoke. A single ray of sunlight crept through a notch in the sierra, lighting the disorder and confusion of the camp. Eggleston lay propped against a boulder, Sharp's rifle across his knees, sleeping. Poor Eggie—the valet was done in too! But soon they would be on the cars at Bear Spring and out of this infernal wasteland. Drumm yawned and stretched his arms. In spite of cramps in his legs and an aching back, he felt almost cheerful. Home, soon—the green hills of Hampshire!

The morning was yet chill, and he did not care to leave the scanty warmth of his blanket. As he lay there, he was puzzled by a faint rumbling, so faint he seemed almost to feel it rather than hear. He raised himself on an elbow and looked around.

Miss Phoebe Larkin had also heard the strange noise. In the gray of dawn she hurried from the reed hut with a blanket about her shoulders, otherwise dressed only in camisole and lacy petticoats. Her feet were bare.

'What was that?' she called to Drumm.

'I don't know,' he said, and sat up—looking, listening.

Phoebe stood in the shaft of sunlight, tumbled red hair falling about her shoulders and glistening sleekly, like the brush of a fox in autumn. 'There! I heard it again!' She raised a slender finger. 'Listen!' She wore a lot of rings; though Drumm was no expert, many of them were heavy with what appeared to be diamonds.

He got up quickly in his drawers, his own blanket held modestly about naked legs. Now there was no doubt of the queer sensation. Under his feet the hard-baked earth quivered, trembled, rolling slightly so that he felt giddy. It was almost like his attack of mal de mer on the stormy passage from Marseilles to Alexandria.

Eggleston woke up and stared at them. 'What is it?' he called. Then he felt the rumble and jumped to his feet.

'In my guidebook,' Drumm said thoughtfully, 'there is an account of a dreadful earthquake that occurred near the city of Los Angeles, west of here, in the year seventeen hundred and—'

The rumbling grew; the earth shook.

'Seventeen hundred,' Drumm repeated, 'and—'

Hair done up in curl-papers, Mrs. Glore rushed from the reed hut. 'Lordy, Lordy, Lordy!' she quavered. 'What's happening?'

'Mr. Jack!' Eggleston shouted. 'Look!'

Down the valley of the Agua Fria, rolling like a steam locomotive, came a wall of water as high as their heads. Boulders, trees, and uprooted bushes caromed in the muddy torrent. The last thing Drumm saw as the great tide reached them was Eggleston's reed hut, riding high on the crest.

He opened his mouth to cry a warning but there was no time. The waters reached him, bowled him over, filled his mouth with sand and mud. The world turned, the Mazatzals wheeled into the sky, and dawn-flecked clouds fell to earth, or where the earth should have been. Carried along like a chip of wood on the Thames, he paddled madly, trying to avoid obstacles looming in his path; a giant boulder, a towering saguaro, a smoke tree. Traveling at express-train speed, he closed his eyes in horror as the desert Niagara raised him high on its crest to fling him at a patch of spiny cholla. At the last moment a freakish shift of the current deposited him with a splash into a shallow pool at one side of the main course of the Agua Fria.

Stunned, he lay in the mud and ooze until he realized he was drowning. Thrashing, he staggered to his feet, drawing gasps of air into his lungs. Someone was screaming, a shrill insistent female keening that hurt his ears. He ran toward the sound.

'Phoebe! Oh, Phoebe! Dear Lord, where is she?'

The roar of the water had grown fainter. Against its diminishing rumble he heard Mrs. Glore scream again, saw her white face, her open mouth, the pointing finger paralyzed with horror.

'There! There she is!'

The great wave had scoured out a pool in the once-tranquil bed of the river. On its foam-flecked surface Drumm saw something floating, a white flower unfolded on the surface. Desperately he threw himself into the water, now well over his head, and swam to the white blossom. It was Phoebe Larkin's petticoats; he grabbed a handful of silk and started to backstroke with one arm, holding the petticoats with the other. Faintly, above the frantic splashing of his efforts, he heard shouts, commotion, Mrs. Beulah Glore still screaming with fire-whistle intensity.

'She's drowned! She's drowned!'

Blackness engulfed him. His arm felt leaden and he gasped for breath, feeling his mouth fill again with the