172 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST

was also tough the sort of a fellow with whom it was
as well to remember that your six-shooter is beneath
the last copy of your paper, on the desk at your elbow.

" I have never especially liked you," Cairness de-
cided, for his part, " and I can't say that you improve
upon acquaintance, you know. You wrote those arti-
cles about Landor, and that's one I owe you."

Stone wore his oratory out after a time, and Cairness
closed his eyes rather more, to the end that he might
look a yet greater ass, and said that he wanted to hire
out as a cow-boy or ranch hand of some sort. " Taylor
told me you knew a fellow named Lawton, I think it
was. Would he be wanting one now ? " He took con-
siderable satisfaction in his own histrionic ability, and
lapsed into the phraseology of the job-hunter.

Stone thought not. He had not heard Lawton speak
of needing help. But he wrote a very guarded note of
recommendation, falling back into the editorial habit,
and dashing it off under pressure. Cairness, whose
own writing was tiny and clear and black, and who
covered whole sheets without apparent labor, but with
lightning rapidity, watched and reflected that he spent
an amount of time on the flourish of his signature that
might have been employed to advantage in the attain-
ment of legibility.

" I'm a busy man," said Stone, " a very busy man,
the busiest man in the territory."

No one in the territory was busy. The atmosphere
was still too much that of the Mexican possession ; but
Cairness said it was undoubtedly so, and took his leave,



THE HERITAGE OF UNEEST 173

clanking his spurs, heavy footed, and stooping his long
form, in continuance of the role of ass. He knew well
enough that he had been so summed up. It is a dis-
advantage the British citizen labors under in the West.

The next day he left for the Circle K Ranch. Lawton
did not appear to need help. But he fired a Greaser,
nevertheless, and took Cairness on. He seemed to
stand in as abject awe of Stone's note as an Arab
might have stood of a bit of the black covering of the
Kaabah stone.

And Cairness stayed with him, serving seven months,
and seeking what he might discover. But he discov-
ered nothing more than that the Circle K Ranch, for all
that it might be the Texan's in name, was Stone's in
point of fact, and that Lawton's dread of that mighty
man was very much greater than his hope of heaven.

The knowledge was slight and of no plain value ;
but it might be of use some day. Life had taught
Cairness, amongst other things, that it usually proved
so. He stored it away with the other gleanings of
experience in his mental barns, and went in search of
new adventures.



XIV

THE chief Alcliise and a half hundred of his kind
one so deaf that he held to his savage old ear a civilized
speaking-trumpet squatted about on the ground, and
explained to Crook the nature of their wrongs.

" We were planting our own corn and melons," said
Alchise, "and making our own living. The agent at
San Carlos never gave us any rations, but we didn't
mind about that. We were taking care of ourselves.
One day the agent " He stopped and scowled at a
squaw a few yards away, whose papoose was crying
lustily. The squaw, having her attention thus called
to the uproar of her offspring, drew from somewhere in
the folds of her dirty wrappings a nursing-bottle, and
putting the nipple in its mouth, hushed its cries. The
chief went on : " One day the agent sent up and said
that we must give up our own country and our corn
patches, and go down there to the Agency to live. He
sent Indian soldiers to seize our women and children,
and drive us down to the hot land."

He was a simple, sullen Apache, and his untutored
mind could only grasp effects. Causes were beyond it.
He did not, therefore, understand that coal had been
discovered on his reservation, also silver, and that the
agent and the agent's friends were trying to possess

174



THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 175

themselves of the land in order to dispose of it to the
Eastern capitalist.

He knew that his cattle were driven off by the white
cow-boys and could not be gotten back, that he was
given but one cup of flour every seven days, that beef
was so difficult to obtain that it practically formed no
part of his diet ; but he did not know of the "boys '"in
Tucson and officials in Washington who were profiting
from the sale of Indian supplies to white squatters.

He knew that the stores which should have gone to
him were loaded upon wagon-trains and hurried off
the reservation in the dead of night ; but he did not
know why the Apache who was sent to humbly ask the
agent about it was put in the guard-house for six
months without trial. He knew that his corn patches
were trampled down, but not that it was to force him
to purchase supplies from the agent and his friends, or
else get out. He knew that his reservation none
too large, as it was, for three thousand adults more or
less had been cut down without his consent five dif-
ferent times, and that Mormon settlers were elbowing
him out of what space remained. But, being only a
savage, it were foolish to expect that he should have
seen the reason for these things. He has not yet
learned to take kindly to financial dishonesty. Does
he owe you two bits, he will travel two hundred miles
to pay it. He has still much to absorb concerning
civilization.

Another thing he could not quite fathom was why
the religious dances he had, in pursuance of his wild



176 THE HEKITAGE OF UNREST

pleasure, seen fit to hold on Cibicu Creek, had been
interfered with by the troops. To be sure, the dances
had been devised by his medicine men to raise the
dead chiefs and braves with the end in view of re-
peopling the world with Apaches and driving out the
Whites. But as the dead had not consented to the
raising, it might have been as well to allow the Ind-
ians to become convinced of the futility of it in that
way. However, the government thought otherwise,
and sent its troops.

Because they were sent, a fine officer had fallen vic-
tim to Apache treachery of the meanest sort and to
the gross stupidity of others, and Arizona was on the
verge of the worst disorder of all its disorderly history.
So Crook was sent for, and he came at once, and looked
with his small, piercing eyes, and listened with his ears
so sharp to catch the ring of untruth, and learned a
pretty tale of what had gone on during his absence
on the troubled northern plains.

A great many delightful facts, illustrative of the
rule of the Anglo-Saxon in for gain, came to his knowl-
edge. There were good men and just in Arizona, and
some of these composed the Federal Grand Jury, which
reported on the condition of affairs at the Agency.
When a territorial citizen had anything to say in favor
of the Redskin, it might be accepted as true. And
these jurymen said that the happenings on the San
Carlos Agency had been a disgrace to the age and a
foul blot upon the national escutcheon. They waxed
very wroth and scathing as they dwelt upon how the



THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 177

agent's vast power made almost any crime possible.
There was no check upon his conduct, nor upon the
wealth he could steal from a blind government ; and to
him, and such as him, they attributed the desolation
and bloodshed which had dotted the plains with the
graves of murdered victims. It was the rather unavail-
ing wail of the honest citizen caught between the upper
and nether millstones of the politician and the hostile.

Crook had been recalled too late, and he knew it.
Every Apache on the reservation was ready for the
war-path. It was not to be averted. One man, even
a very firm and deft one, could not straighten out in a
few weeks the muddle of ten years of thievery, oppres-
sion, and goading. It takes more than just a promise,
even though it is one likely to be kept, to soothe the
hurt feelings of savages who have seen eleven of their
friends jailed for fourteen months without the form of
accusation or trial. They feel bitter toward the gov-
ernment whose minions do those things.

The new general was hailed by the territories as
deliverer until he found the truth and told it, after
which they called him all manner of hard names, for
that is the sure reward of the seeker after fact. He
prepared for war, seeing how things were, but he tried
for peace the while. He sent to the bucks who lurked
in the fastnesses and strongholds, and said that he
was going out alone to see them. He left his troops
and pack-train, and with two interpreters and two
officers repaired to the canon of the Black River,
where he scrambled and slid, leading his scrambling,



178 THE HBEITAGE OF UNREST

sliding mule down the precipices of basalt and lava
among the pines and junipers.

Bright, black eyes peered down from crevasses and
branches. An Apache lurked behind every boulder
and trunk. But only the squaws and the children and
twenty -six bucks in war toilet, naked from shoulder
to waist, painted with blood and mescal, rings in their
noses, and heads caked thick with mud, came down to
the conference.

It was not of much avail in the end, the conference.
There was more than one tribe to be pacified. The
restlessness of the wild things, of the goaded, and of
the spring was in their blood.

The last straw was laid on when an Indian policeman
arrested a young buck for some small offence. The
buck tried to run away, and would not halt when he
was told to. The chief of police fired and killed a
squaw by mistake ; and though he was properly sorry
for it, and expressed his regret, the relatives and friends
of the deceased squaw caught him a few days later,
and cutting off his head, kicked it round, as they had
seen the White-eye soldier do with his rubber foot-ball.
Then they, aroused and afraid too of punishment, fled
from the reservation and began to kill.

It was a halcyon time for the press. It approved
and it disapproved, while the troops went serenely on
their way. It gave the government two courses, re-
moval of the Apaches, one and all, to the Indian terri-
tory (as feasible as driving the oxen of Geryon), or
extermination the catchword of the non-combatant.



THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 179

The government took neither course.

There was but one other resort. The exasperated,
impotent press turned to it. " If the emergency should
arise, and it now looks as though it may come soon,"
flowed the editorial ink, "enough resolute and coura-
geous men can be mustered in Tombstone, Globe,
Tucson, and other towns and settlements to settle the
question, once and forever : to settle it as such questions
have often been settled before."

In pursuance of which the resolute and courageous
men arose at the cry of their bleeding land. They
have gone down to history (to such history as deigns
to concern itself with the reclaiming of the plains of
the wilderness, in area an empire of itself) as the
Tombstone Toughs.

The exceedingly small respectable element of Tomb-
stone hailed their departure with unmixed joy. They
had but one wish, that the Toughs might meet the
Apaches, and that each might rid the face of the desert
of the other. But the only Apaches left to meet were
the old and feeble, and the squaws and papooses left at
San Carlos. The able-bodied bucks were all in the
field, as scouts or hostiles.

The resolute and courageous men, led by a resolute
and courageous saloon-keeper, found one old Indian
living at peace upon his rancheria. They fired at
him and ran away. The women and children of the
settlers were left to bear the brunt of the anger of
the Apaches. It was too much for even the Tucson
journalist. He turned from denunciation of the mili-



180 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST

tary, for one moment, and applied his vigorous adjec-
tives to the Tombstone Toughs.

Arizona had its full share of murder and sudden
death. But New Mexico had more than that. Spring
passed on there, with warmth for the snow-wrapped
mountains, and blistering heat for the dead plains,
and her way was marked with lifeless and mutilated
forms.

Lander's troop was stationed at Stanton, high up
among the hills. It had come there from another post
down in the southern part of the territory, where any-
thing above the hundreds is average temperature, and
had struck a blizzard on its march.

Once when Felipa got out of the ambulance to
tramp beside it, in the stinging snow whirls, and to
start the thin blood in her veins, she had looked
up into his blanket-swathed face, and laughed. " I
wonder if you looked like that when you took me
through this part of the world twenty years ago,"
she said.

He did not answer, and she knew that he was
annoyed. She had come to see that he was always
annoyed by such references, and she made them more
frequent for that very reason, half in perversity, half
in a fixed determination not to be ashamed of her
origin, for she felt, without quite realizing it, that to
come to have shame and contempt for herself would
be to lose every hold upon life.

She was happier than she had been in Washington.
Landor saw that, but he refused to see that she was



THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 181

also better. However much a man may admire, in the
abstract, woman as a fine natural animal, unspoiled by
social pettiness, he does not fancy the thing in his
wife. From the artistic standpoint, a regal barbarian,
unconfined, with her virtue and her vices on a big
scale, is very well ; from the domestic, it is different.
She is more suitable in the garb of fashion, with home-
made character of parlor-ornament proportions.

Felipa had discarded, long since, the short skirt and
moccasins of her girlhood, and had displayed no in-
considerable aptitude in the matter of fashions ; but she
was given to looseness of draperies and a carelessness
of attire in her own home that the picturesqueness
of her beauty alone only saved from slatternliness.
There was one manifestation of ill taste which she
did not give, however, one common enough with the
wives of most of the officers. She was never to be
found running about the post, or sitting upon the
porches, with her husband's cape around her shoulders
and his forage-cap over her eyes. Her instinct for the
becoming was unfailing. This was a satisfaction to
Landor. But it was a secret grievance that she was
most contented when in her riding habit, tearing fool-
hardily over the country.

Another grievance was the Ellton baby. Felipa
adored it, and for no reason that he could formulate,
he did not wish her to. He wanted a child of his
own. Altogether he was not so easy to get on with
as he had been. She did not see why. Being alto-
gether sweet-humored and cheerful herself, she looked



182 THE HERITAGE OP UNREST

for sweet humor and cheerfulness in him, and was
more and more often disappointed. Not that he was
ever once guilty of even a quick burst of ill temper.
It would have been a relief.

Sometimes when she was quite certain of being
undisturbed, she took Cairness's one letter from the
desk, and read and reread it, and went over every
word and look she had had from him. She had for-
gotten nothing, but though her olive skin would burn
and then grow more colorless than ever when she
allowed herself to recall, not even a sigh would come
from between the lips that had grown a very little set.

Yet she not only loved Cairness as much as ever,
but more. Her church had the strong hold of super-
stition upon her, but she might have thrown it off,
grown reckless of enforced conventions, and have gone
to him, had not faithfulness and gratitude held her yet
more powerfully.

Landor had been good to her. She would have gone
through anything rather than have hurt him. And
yet it was always a relief now when he went away.
She was glad when he was ordered into the field at the
beginning of the spring. Of old she had been suffi-
ciently sorry to have him go. But of old she had not
felt the bit galling.

Life went on very much the same at the post when
there was only the infantry left in possession. As
there was nothing to do at any time, there was nothing
the less for that. On the principle that loneliness is
greatest in a crowd, Stanton was more isolated now



THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 183

than Grant had been in the days when there had been
no railroad west of Kansas. The railroad was through
the southwest now, but it was a hundred miles away.
It was unsafe to ride outside the reservation, there was
no one for hops, the only excitement was the daily
addition to the list of slaughtered settlers. Felipa
spent most of her time with the Ellton baby. Miss
McLane had been married to Landor's second lieuten-
ant for a year and a half, and they were very happy.
But Felipa in the knowledge of the strength of her
own love, which gained new might each time that she
wrestled with it and threw it back upon the solid
ground of duty, found their affection decidedly insipid.
Like the majority of marital attachments, it had no
especial dignity. It was neither the steadfast friend-
ship she felt for her husband, nor the absolute devotion
she would have given Cairness.

But the baby was satisfactory. She amused it by
the hour. For the rest, being far from gregarious, and
in no way given to spending all the morning on some
one else's front porch, and all the afternoon with some
one else upon her own, she drew on the post library
and read, or else sat and watched the mountains with
their sharp, changing shadows by day, and their Indian
signal flashes by night, which did not tend to enhance
the small degree of popularity she enjoyed among the
post women.

Some thirty miles to the southeast was the Mescalero
Indian Agency. Landor had consented with the worst
possible grace to take her there sometime when the



184 THE HERITAGE OF UNKEST

road should be passable and safe. She had openly
resented his disinclination, though she usually appeared
not to notice it. " It is very natural I should want to
see the place where I was born," she had said, " and
I think we should both be more comfortable if you
would not persist in being so ashamed of it."

The story of her origin was an open secret now.
Landor had never been able to discover who had spread
it. The probabilities were, however, that it had been
Brewster. He had been suspended for a year after
Lander's trial, and driven forth with contempt, but he
was back again, with a bold front, and insinuating and
toadying himself into public favor, destined by that
Providence which sometimes arouses itself to reward
and punish before the sight of all men, to be short-
lived.



XV

LANDOB sat at the centre table and went over requisi-
tion blanks by the light of a green-shaded student lamp.
The reflection made him look livid and aging. Felipa
had noticed it, and then she had turned to the fire and
sat watching, with her soft eyes half closed, the little
sputtering sparks from the mesquite knot. She had
been immovable in that one position for at least an
hour, her hands folded with a weary looseness in her
lap. If it had not been that her face was very hard to
read, even her husband might have guessed that she
was sad. But he was not thinking about her. He
went on examining the papers until some one came
upon the front porch and knocked at the door. Then
he got up and went out.

It was the post-trader, he told Felipa when he came
back, and he was asking for help from the officer-of-the-
day. Some citizens down at the store were gambling
and drinking high, and were becoming uproarious.

Landor sent for a squad of the guard and went to put
them out. It was just one of the small emergencies
that go to make up the chances of peace. He might or
he might not come back alive ; the probabilities in
favor of the former, to be sure. But the risks are

185



186 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST

about equal whether one fights Indians or citizens
drunk with liquor and gaming.

The men went away, however, without much trouble
beyond tipsy protests and mutterings, and the sutler
rewarded the guard with beer, and explained to Landor
that several of the disturbers were fellows who were
hanging round the post for the beef contract ; the big-
gest and most belligerent he of the fierce, drooping
mustachios was the owner of the ranch where the
Kirby massacre had taken place, as well as of another
one in New Mexico.

Landor paid very little attention just then, but that
same night he had occasion to think of it again.

It was his habit to go to bed directly after taps when
he was officer-of-the-day, and to visit the guard imme-
diately before reveille the next morning. But the
requisitions and some troop papers kept him until
almost twelve, so that he decided to make his rounds
as soon as the clock had struck twelve, and to sleep
until sunrise. Felipa had long since gone off to bed.
He turned down the lamp, put on his cape and cap, and
with his revolver in his pocket and his sabre clicking a
monotonous accompaniment went out into the night.

It was not very dark. The sky was thick with
clouds, but there was a waning moon behind them.
The only light in the garrison was in the grated
windows of the guard-house.

Visiting the guard is dull work, and precisely the
same round, night after night, with hardly ever a
variation. But to-night there occurred a slight one.



THE HERITAGE OP UNREST 187

Landor was carrying his sabre in his arm, as he went
by the back of the quarters, in order that its jingle
might not disturb any sleepers. For the same reason
he walked lightly, although, indeed, he was usually
soft-footed, and came unheard back of Brewster's
yard. Brewster himself was standing in the shadow
of the fence, talking to some man. Landor could see
that it was a big fellow, and the first thing that flashed
into his mind, without any especial reason, was that it
was the rancher who had been in trouble down at the
sutler's store.

It gave cause for reflection ; but an officer was
obviously at liberty to talk to whomsoever he might
choose around his own premises, at any hour of the
day or night. So the officer of the day went on,
treading quietly. But he had something to think
about now that kept off drowsiness for the rest of the
rounds. Brewster's fondness for the society of dubi-
ous civilians was certainly unfortunate. And the
conjunction of the aspiring beef contractor and the
commissary officer was also unfortunate, not to say
curious. Because of this. The beef contract was
about to expire, and the commandant had advertised
for bids. A number of ranchers had already turned
their papers in. Furnishing the government's soldiers
with meat is never an empty honor.

The bids, duly sealed, were given into the keeping of
the commissary officer to be put in his safe, and kept until
the day of judgment, when all being opened in public
and in the presence of the aspirants, the lowest would



188 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST

get the contract. It was a simple plan, and gave no
more opportunity for underhand work than could be
avoided. But there were opportunities for all that.
It was barely possible the thing had been done
for a commissary clerk or sergeant, desirous of adding
to his pittance of pay, or of favoring a friend among
the bidders, to tamper with the bids. By the same
token there was no real reason why the commissary
officer could not do it himself. Landor had never
heard, or known, of such a case, but undoubtedly the
way was there. It was a question of having the will
and the possession of the safe keys.

There were only the bids to be taken out and steamed
open. The lowest found, it was simple enough for the
favored one to make his own a quarter of a cent less,
and to turn it in at the last moment. But one draw-
back presented itself. Some guileful and wary con-
tractors, making assurance twice sure, kept their bids
themselves and only presented them when the officers
sat for the final awarding. Certainly Brewster would
have been wiser not to have been seen with the big
civilian. During the two days that elapsed before the
awarding of the contract, Landor thought about it most
of the time.

It came to pass in the working out of things that the
commandant elected to spend the night before the open-
ing of the bids', in the small town some miles away,
where one of the first families was giving a dinner.
This left Landor, as next in rank, in temporary com-
mand. It had happened often enough before, in one way



THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 189

or another, but this time the duties of the position seemed
to weigh upon him. He was restless and did not care