painful? Leave them alone, and they'll die out. It
isn't three hundred years since one of the biggest con-
tinents of the globe was peopled with them, and now
there is the merest handful left, less as a result of war
and slaughter than of natural causes. Nature would
see to it that they died, if we didn't."

" The philanthropist doesn't look at it that way. He
thinks that we should strive to preserve the species."

"I don't," Cairness differed; "it's unreasonable.
There is too much sympathy expended on races that are
undergoing the process of extinction. They have out-
grown their usefulness, if they ever had any. It might
do to keep a few in a park in the interests of science,
and of that class of people which enjoys seeing animals
in cages. But as for making citizens of the Indians,
raising them to our level it can't be done. Even
when they mix races, the red strain corrupts the
white."

Landor glanced at his wife. She seemed to take it
without offence, and was listening intently.

" It's the old saying about a dog walking on its hind
legs, when you come to civilizing the Indian. You are
surprised that he civilizes at all, but he doesn't do it
well, for all that. He can be galvanized into a tempo-
rary semblance of national life, but he is dead at the
core, and be will decay before long."



70 THE HEEITAGE OP UNREST

" They could kill a good many of us before they died
out, if we would sit still and take it," Landor objected.

" It's six one, and half a dozen the other. They'd
be willing enough to die out in peace, if we'd let them.
Even they have come to have a vague sort of instinct
that that's what it amounts to."

Landor interrupted by taking the slipper from
Felipa's foot and killing with it a centipede that
crawled up the wall of the abode. " That's the
second," he said, as he put the shoe on again. " I
killed one yesterday ; the third will come to-morrow."
Then he went back to his chair and to the discussion,
and before long he was called to the adjutant's office.

Felipa forgot her contempt for Cairness. She was
interested and suddenly aroused herself to show it.
" How do you come to be living with the Indians ? "
she asked. It was rarely her way to arrive at a question
indirectly. " Have you married a squaw ? "

He flushed angrily, then thought better of it, because
after all the question was not impertinent. So he only
answered with short severity that he most certainly had
not.

Felipa could not help the light of relief that came on
her face, but realizing it, she was confused.

He helped her out. " I have drifted in a way," he
went on to explain. " I left home when I was a mere
boy, and the spirit of savagery and unrest laid hold of
me. I can't break away. And I'm not even sure that
I want to. You, I dare say, can't understand." Yet
he felt so sure, for some reason, that she could that he



THE HERITAGE OP UNREST 71

merely nodded his head when she said briefly, "I can."
" Then, too," he went on, " there is something in the
Indian character that strikes a responsive chord in me.
I come of lawless stock myself. I was born in Sidney."
Then he stopped short. What business was it of hers
where he had been born ? He had never seen fit to
speak of it before. Nevertheless he intended that she
should understand now. So he made it quite plain.
" Sidney was a convict settlement, you know," he said
deliberately, "and marriages were promiscuous. My
grandfather was an officer who was best away from
England. My grandmother poisoned her first husband.
That is on my mother's side. On my father's side it
was about as mixed." He leaned back, crossing his
booted legs and running his fingers into his cartridge
belt. His manner asked with a certain defiance, what
she was going to do about it, or to think.

And what she did was to say, with a deliberation
equal to his own, that her mother had been a half-
breed Mescalero and her father a private.

He looked at her steadily, in silence. It did not
seem that there was anything to say. He would have
liked to tell her how beautiful she was. But he
did not do it. Instead, he did much worse. For he
took a beaded and fringed leather case from his pocket
and held out to her the drawing he had made of her
four years before. She gave it back without a word,
and bent to play with the buckskin collar on the neck
of the fawn.

Cairness put the sketch back in the case and stood



72 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST

up. " Will you tell Captain Landor that I found that
I could not wait, after all ? " he said, and bowing went
out from the ramada.

She sat staring at the white glare of the opening, and
listening to his foot-falls upon the sand.



VI

LANDOR said that he had put in a requisition for kip-
pered mackerel and anchovy paste, and that the commis-
sary was running down so that one got nothing fit to
eat. He was in an unpleasant frame of mind, and his
first lieutenant, who messed with him, pulled apart a
broiled quail that lay, brown and juicy, on its couch of
toast and cress, and asked wherein lay the use of taking
thought of what you should eat. " Every prospect is
vile, and man is worse, and the sooner heaven sends
release the better. What is there in a life like this ?
Six weeks from the nearest approach to civilization,
malaria in the air by night and fire by day. Even
Mrs. Landor is showing it."

" I didn't know that I had made any complaint," she
said equably.

" You haven't, but the summer has told on you just
the same. You are thin, and your eyes are too big.
Look at that ! " He held out a hand that shook visibly.
"That's the Gila Valley for you."

" Sometimes it's the Gila Valley, and sometimes it's
rum," said Landor. "It's rum with a good many."

" Why shouldn't it be ? What the deuce has a fellow
got to do but drink and gamble? You have to, to keep
your mind off it."

73



74 THE HERITAGE OP UNREST

The lieutenant himself did neither, but he argued
that his mind was never off it.

Felipa thought it was not quite so bad as that, and
she poured herself another cup of the Rio, strong as
lye, with which she saturated her system, to keep off
the fever.

" You might marry," Landor suggested. " You can
always do that when all else fails."

" Who is there to marry hereabouts ? And always
supposing there were some one, I'd be sent off on a
scout next day, and have to ship her back East for an
indefinite time. It would be just my blamed luck."

The breakfast humor when the thermometer has been
a hundred and fifteen in the shade for long months, is
pessimistic. "Don't get married then, please," said
Felipa, " not for a few days at any rate. I don't want
Captain Landor to go off until he gets over these chills
and things."

There was a knock at the door of the tent, and it
opened. The adjutant came in. " I say, Landor "

" I say, old man, shut that door I Look at the flies.
Now go on," he added, as the door banged ; and he
rose to draw a chair to the table.

" Can't stay," said the adjutant, all breathless. " The
line's down between here and the Agency ; but a run-
ner has just come in, and there's trouble. The bucks
are restless. Want to join Victorio in New Mexico.
You've both got to get right over there."

It was the always expected, the never ceasing. Lan-
dor looked at his wife and stroked his mustache with



THE HERITAGE OF UNEEST 75

a shaking hand. His face was yellow, and his hair had
grown noticeably grayer.

" You are not fit to go," Felipa said resignedly, " but
that doesn't matter, of course."

" No," he agreed, " it doesn't matter. And I shall
do well enough." Then the three went out, and she
finished her breakfast alone.

In less than an hour the troop was ready, the men
flannel-shirted and gauntleted, their soft felt hats
pulled over their eyes, standing reins in hand, foot in
stirrup, beside the fine, big horses that Crook had sub-
stituted for the broncos of the plains cavalry of former
years. Down by the corrals the pack-mules were
ready, too, grunting under their aparejos and packs. A
thick, hot wind, fraught with sand, was beginning, pre-
saging one of the fearful dust storms of the southwest.
The air dried the very blood in the veins. The flies,
sticky and insistent, clung and buzzed about the horses'
eyes and nostrils. Bunches of tumbleweed and hay
went whirling across the parade.

Landor came trotting over from his quarters, fol-
lowed by his orderly, and the troops moved off across
the flat, toward the river.

Felipa stood leaning listlessly against the post of the
ramada, watching them. After a time she went into
the adobe and came out with a pair of field-glasses, fol-
lowing the course of the command as it wound along
among the foot-hills. The day dragged dully along.
She was uneasy about her husband, her nerves were
shaken with the coffee and quinine, and she was filled,



76 THE HEEITAGE OF UNREST

moreover, with a vague restlessness. She would have
gent for her horse and gone out even in the clouds of
dust and the wind like a hot oven, but Landor had for-
bidden her to leave the post. Death in the tip of a
poisoned arrow, at the point of a yucca lance, or from
a more merciful bullet of lead, might lurk behind any
mesquite bush or gray rock.

She set about cleaning the little revolver, self-cock-
ing, with the thumb-piece of the hammer filed away,
that her husband had given her before they were mar-
ried. To-night she wanted no dinner. She was given
to eating irregularly ; a good deal at a time, and again
nothing for a long stretch. That, too, was in the
blood. So she sent the soldier cook away, and he
went over to the deserted barracks.

Then she tried to read, but the whisper of savagery
was in the loneliness and the night. She sat with the
book open in her lap, staring into a shadowy corner
where there leaned an Indian lance, surmounted by a
war bonnet. Presently she stood up, and stretched
her limbs slowly, as a beast of prey does when it
shakes off the lethargy of the day and wakens for the
darkness. Then she went out to the back of the tents.

The stars were bright chips of fire in a sky of pol-
ished blue. The wind of the day had died at dusk,
and the silence was deep, but up among the bare graves
the coyotes were barking weirdly. As she looked off
across the low hills, there was a quick, hissing rattle at
her feet. She moved hastily, but without a start, and
glanced down at a rattler not three feet away.



THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 77

Lander's sabre stood just within the sitting room, and
she went for it and held the glittering blade in front of
the snake. Its fangs struck out viciously again and
again, and a long fine stream of venom trickled along
the steel. Then she raised the sabre and brought it
down in one unerring sweep, severing the head from the
body. In the morning she would cut off the rattle and
add it to the string of close upon fifty that hung over
her mirror. But now the night was calling to her, the
wild blood was pricking in her veins. Running the
sabre into the ground, she cleaned off the venom, and
went back to the adobe to put it in its scabbard.

After she had done that she stood hesitating for just
a moment before she threw off all restraint with a toss
of her head, and strapped about her waist a leather belt
from which there hung a bowie knife and her pistol in
its holster. Then slipping on her moccasins, she glided
into the darkness. She took the way in the rear of the
quarters, skirting the post and making with swift, sound-
less tread for the river. Her eyes gleamed from under
her straight, black brows as she peered about her in
quick, darting glances.

Not a week before and then the Agency had been
officially at peace a Mexican packer had been shot
down by an arrow from some unseen bow, within a
thousand yards of the post, in broad daylight. The
Indians, caking their bodies with clay, and binding sage
or grass upon their heads, could writhe unseen almost
within arm's reach. But Felipa was not afraid. Straight
for the river bottom she made, passing amid the dump-



78 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST

heaps, where a fire of brush was still smouldering, fill-
ing the air with pungent smoke, where old cans and
bottles shone in the starlight, and two polecats, pretty
white and black little creatures, their bushy tails erect,
sniffed with their sharp noses as they walked stupidly
along. Their bite meant hydrophobia, but though one
came blindly toward her, she barely moved aside. Her
skirt brushed it, and it made a low, whining, mean sound.

Down by the river a coyote scudded across her path
as she made her way through the willows, and when he
was well beyond, rose up on his hind legs and looked
after her. At the water's edge she stopped and glanced
across to the opposite bank. The restlessness was going,
and she meant to return now, before she should be
missed if indeed she were not missed already, as was
very probable. Yet still she waited, her hands clasped
in front of her, looking down at the stream. Farther
out, in the middle, a ripple flashed. But where she
stood among the bushes, it was very dark. The water
made no sound, there was not a breath of air, yet sud-
denly there was a murmur, a rustle.

Felipa's revolver was in her hand, and cocked and
pointed straight between two eyes that shone out of
the blackness. And so, for an appreciable time, she
stood. Then a long arm came feeling out ; but be-
cause she was looking along the sight into the face
at the very end of the muzzle, she failed to see it.
When it closed fast about her waist, she gave a
quick gasp and fired. But the bullet, instead of
going straight through the forehead beneath the head



THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 79

band, as she had meant it to do, ploughed down. The
grasp on the body relaxed for an instant ; the next it
had tightened, and a branch had struck the pistol from
her hand.

And now it was a struggle of sheer force and agility.
She managed to whip out the knife from her belt and
to strike time and time again through sinewy flesh, to
the bone. The only noise was the dragging of their
feet on the sand, the cracking of the willows and the
swishing of the blade. It was savage against savage,
two vicious, fearless beasts.

The Apache in Felipa was full awake now, awake in
the bliss of killing, the frenzy of fight, and awake too,
in the instinct which told her how, with a deep-drawn
breath, a contraction, a sudden drop and writhing, she
would be free of the arms of steel. And she was free,
but not to turn and run to lunge forward, once and
again, her breath hissing between her clenched, bared
teeth.

The buck fell back before her fury, but she followed
him thrusting and slashing. Yet it might not, even
then, have ended well for her, had there not come from
somewhere overhead the sound most dreaded as an
omen of harm by all Apaches the hoot of an owl.
The Indian gave a low cry of dismay and turned and
darted in among the bushes.

She stood alone, with the sticky, wet knife in her
hand, catching her breath, coming out of the madness.
Then she stooped, and pushing the branches aside felt
about for her pistol. It lay at the root of a tree, and



80 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST

when she had picked it up and put it back in the
holster, there occurred to her for the first time the
thought that the shot in the dead stillness must have
roused the camp. And now she was sincerely fright-
ened. If she were found here, it would be more than
disagreeable for Landor. They must not find her.
She started at a swift, long-limbed run, making a wide
detour, to avoid the sentries, bending low, and flying
silently among the bushes and across the shadowy
sands.

She could hear voices confusedly, men hurriedly call-
ing and hallooing as she neared the back of the offi-
cers' line and crept into her tent. The door was barely
closed when there came a knock, and the voice of the
striker asking if she had heard the shot across the
river.

" Yes," she said, " I heard it. But I was not fright-
ened. What was it ? " He did not know, he said, and
she sent him back to the barracks.

Then she lit a lamp and took off her blood-stained
gown. There was blood, too, on the knife and its
case. She cleaned them as best she could and looked
into the chamber of her revolver with a contemplative
smile on the lips that less than half an hour before had
been curled back from her sharp teeth like those of a
fighting wolf. She wondered how badly the buck had
been hurt.

And the next day she knew. When she came out
in front of her quarters in the morning, rather later
than usual, there was a new tent beside the hospital,



THE HERITAGE OP UNEEST 81

and when she asked the reason for it, they told her
that a wounded Apache had been found down by the
river soon after the shot had been fired the night before.
He was badly hurt, with a ball in his shoulder, and he
was half drunk with tizwin, as well as being cut in a
dozen places.

She listened attentively to the account of the traces
of a struggle among the willows, and asked who had
fired the shot. It was not known, they said, and the
sullen buck would probably never tell.

When she saw the post surgeon come out from his
house and start over to the hospital, she called to him.
" May I see your new patient ? " she asked.

He told her that he was going to operate at once, to
remove the ball and the shattered bone, but that she
might come if she wished. His disapproval was marked,
but she went with him, nevertheless, and sat watching
while he picked and probed at the wound.

The Apache never quivered a muscle nor uttered a
sound. It was fine stoicism, and appealed to Felipa
until she really felt sorry for him.

But presently she stood up to go away, and her eyes
caught the lowering, glazed ones of the Indian. Half
involuntarily she made a motion of striking with a
knife. Neither the doctor nor the steward caught
it, but he did, and showed by a sudden start that he
understood.

He watched her as she went out of the tent, and the
surgeon and steward worked with the shining little
instruments.



VII

LANDOE, came in a few weeks later. He had had an
indecisive skirmish in New Mexico with certain bucks
who had incurred the displeasure of the paternal gov-
ernment by killing and eating their horses, to the glory
of their gods and ancestors, and thereafter working off
their enthusiasm by a few excursions beyond the con-
fines of the reservation, with intent to murder and
destroy.

Being shaved of the thick iron-gray beard, and once
again in seemly uniform, and having reported to the
commandant, he sat down to talk with his wife.

She herself lay at full length upon a couch she had
devised out of packing cases. It occurred to Landor
that she often dropped down to rest now, and that she
was sallow and uneasy.

He looked at her uncomfortably. " I am going to
get you out of this, up into the mountains somewhere,"
he said abruptly ; "you look peaked."

She did not show the enthusiasm he had rather
expected. " I dare say it is my bad conscience," she
answered with some indifference. " I have a sin to
confess."

He naturally did not foresee anything serious, and he
only said, " Well ? " and began to fill his pipe from a

82



THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 83

buckskin pouch, cleverly sketched in inks with Indian
scenes. " By the way," he interrupted as she started
to speak, " what do you think of this ? " He held it
out to her. " That fellow Cairness, who wouldn't stay
to luncheon that day, did it for me. We camped near
his place a couple of days. And he sent you a needle-
case, or some such concern. It's in my kit." She
looked at the pouch carefully before she gave it back ;
then she clasped her hands under her head again and
gazed up at the manta of the ceiling, which sagged and
was stained where the last cloud-burst had leaked
through the roof.

" Well ? " repeated Landor.

" I disobeyed orders," said Felipa.

" Did you, though ? "

" And I went outside the post the night after you
left, down to the river. Some one will probably tell
you about a wounded Sierra Blanca found down among
the bushes in the river bottom that same night. I shot
him, and then I hacked him up with my knife." He
had taken his pipe from his mouth and was looking at
her incredulously, perplexed. He did not understand
whether it was a joke on her part, or exactly what it
was.

But she sat up suddenly, with one of her quick
movements of conscious strength and perfect control
over every muscle, clasped her hands about her knees,
and went on. " It was very curious," and there came
on her face the watchful, alert, wild look, with the nar-
rowing of the eyes. " It was very curious, I could not



84 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST

have stayed indoors that night if it had cost me my
life and it very nearly did, too. I had to get out.
So I took my revolver and my knife, and I went the
back way, down to the river. While I was standing
on the bank and thinking about going home, an Indian
stole out on me. I had an awful struggle. First I
shot. I aimed at his forehead, but the bullet struck
his shoulder ; and then I fought with the knife. As
soon as I could slip out of his grasp, I went at him and
drove him off. But I didn't know how badly he was
hurt until the next day. The shot had roused them
up here, and they went down to the river and found
him bleeding on the sand.

" They put him in a tent beside the hospital, and the
next morning I went over with the doctor to see him.
He was all cut up on the arms and neck and shoulders.
I must have been very strong." She stopped, and he
still sat with the puzzled look on his face, but a light
of understanding beginning to show through.
" Are you joking," he asked, " or what ? "
" Indeed, I am not joking," she assured him earnestly.
" It is quite true. Ask any one. Only don't let them
know it was I who wounded him. They have never so
much as suspected it. Fortunately I thought of you
and ran home all the way, and was in my tent before it
occurred to any one to come for me." She burst into
a low laugh at his countenance of wrath and dismay.
" Oh ! come, Jack dear, it is not so perfectly, unspeak-
ably horrible after all. I was disobedient. But then
I am so sorry and promise never, never to do it again."



THE HERITAGE OF UNREST 85

"You might have killed the Indian," he said, in a
strained voice. It did not occur to either of them, just
then, that it was not the danger she had been in that
appalled him.

She was astonished in her turn. " Killed him ! Why,
of course I might have killed him," she said blankly,
frowning, in a kind of hopeless perplexity over his
want of understanding. "I came very near it, I tell
you. The ball made shivers of his shoulder. But he
was brave," she grew enthusiastic now, "he let the
doctor probe and pick, and never moved a muscle. Of
course he was half drunk with tizwin, even then."

" You didn't stay to see the operation ? " His voice
was ominously quiet.

" For a while, yes. And before I came away I made
a sign to show him it was I. You should have seen his
surprise."

There followed a fury-fraught silence. Landor's face
was distorted with the effort he was making to contain
himself, and Felipa began to be a little uneasy. So
she did the most unwise thing possible, having been
deprived by nature of the good gift of tact. She got
up from the couch and drew the knife from its case,
and took it to him. " That," she said, showing the
red-brown stains on the handle, "that is his blood."

He snatched it from her then, with a force that threw
her to one side, and sent it flying across the room,
smashing a water jug to bits. Then he pushed her
away and going out, banged the door until the white-
wash fell down from the cracks.



86 THE HERITAGE OF UNREST

Felipa was very thoroughly frightened now. She
stood in wholesome awe of her husband, and it was
the first time she had ever made him really angry,
although frequently he was vaguely irritated by her.
She had had no idea the thing would infuriate him so,
or she would probably have kept it to herself. And
she wished now that she had, as she went back to the
couch and sat on the edge of it, dejectedly.

When he returned at the end of a couple of hours
she was all humility, and she had moreover done some-
thing that was rare for her : made capital of her beauty,
putting on her most becoming white gown, and piling
her hair loosely on the top of her head, with a cap of
lace and a ribbon atop of it. Landor liked the little
morning caps, probably because they were a sort of
badge of civilization, but they were incongruous for
all that, and took from the character of her head. His