The Garment of Iron.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 10485, 2 November 1901, Page 5 (Supplement)

The Garment of Iron.

There was no skeleton in the armor when Hartpole found it; only some sand and a bunch of tumble-weed, a rattle-Bnake, and a tarantula. The tarantula scuttled off, he killed the rattlesnake, and the tumble-weed and sand be emptied out. Then he had tho armor done up in a shelter tent and put upon a pack-mule. _.ter which, the column moved on. It should not have halted at all, for it was in pursuit of a baud of Indians. But there were bands of Indians every day, and the finding of a full suit of armor lying underneath a mosquite bush beside their trail was rare. Certainly Hartpole had never heard oi such a thing. And, so far as he knew, it was the only suit of armour over discovered on the New Mexico plains, but bis lore on the subject was not profound. When he got back to his two-com-pany post on the banks o± the Gila, he found the interest in life, which had been lacking for him up till then, in enlarging that knowledge. He sent Knst tor bouks and histories and treatiscb concerning coats of mail and the men who had worn them, and he even went so far as to write to the Smithsrnian Institution, at the risk of having a government commission sent out at pnee to seize his treasure. And in the- interval of two months which e'apsed before he received a reply — for the railroad was only to Kansas *in those days — ho set about cleaning the armor himself, and with his own hands joined it together." He was co occupied, what with that und the histories and the other books, but he forgot to have Gila-bottom mn- > laria and had no time to worry about the flies. Then when the steel was once more bright as the azure shield of Achilles, and he had proved to his own and to everyone's satisfaction "that it must once have protected the body of one of Coronado's men, and must. date from the middle of the sixteenth_contury, or thereabout, he hung it up in his one-room abode quarters, along with the Indian trophies that was as nothing now and the bottled reptiles of many sorts; and the fame of it spread through the laud. An English lord, in a pith helmet and grey linen, who was going about the country, travelled miles out of his way to look at it;- and a scientific party from Boston did the same. Hartpole was beginning to be very proud, when, one day, he had a visitor of another kind. It was a man he had seen sometimes hanging around the agency and the "post — a small, little fellow, part Coyotero Apache, part Mexican.-^posaibly a very small part "white, who had some reputation as a medicine man with the tribes, but not much as anything else. Hartpole was sitting under his 'ramada' on a late summer afternoon, wearing a hood whose covers curled up with the heat, when something came between him and his light, and, looking up, he saw the medicine-man peerin? in the opening. He said, "Hullo, CieEC " and added : "What do you want, eh?" Ciego was so-called because he was bliud in one eye. He came in under ttfo ramada, and stood so close to him that Hartpole moved a little. j.uc Coyotero's cast-oft uniform and red head-band were not clean. Ciego spoke excellent Spanish, and, nu Hartpole did, too, he had no trouble about making himself understood. He explained that Se~would like to see the suit of iron clothes which he had been told that the lieutenant possessed. The licutenaut was so pleased to think that it had been spoken of even, in the fastness of the Sierra' Blanca and tho Tonto Basin that ho forgot how dirty Ciego was, and straigutway rose and invited him into the room. •The medicine-man stood looking at the armor with an interest and evident appreciation that touched Hartpole very much. After the manner of his kind, he said no word, but presently he went nearer and felt of the-'plates and chains with his finger-tips, and put lub good eye close and looked inside. Then he turned to Hartpole. 'Where did you find it?' he asked. The lieutenant explained at some length. 'It is very old.' Hartpole said it was at least three hundred and thirty odd years old, and went into a little history. Ciego nodded his head. 'I know,', he said; but that was so manifestly abBurd that Hartpole did not pay any attention to it. "It 'is very fine,' said Ciego. Tor how much will you sell it to °me?' Naturally, Hartpole only laughed, but the Apache was in earnest, nevertheless. '$To,' he insisted, looking him sharply in the face. 'No, do veras, I wish to buy it 'from you.' 'Well, I don't wish to sell,' answered ■ the lieutenant, rather vexed at the mere Kea. •I have five hundred dollars,' said tho Indian. 'If you had a thousand you could not have it.' 'I have a thousand.' _ t • Hartpolo laughed agaiu, a little impatiently.

"You do not believe me — look here.' CiegS drew a buckskin bag from the folds of his sash. It was full of gold. 'There are five hundred dollars here. In three days I can bring you five hundred more.' Hartpole guessed how he had come by it, and his temper rose. • 'That is stolen money,' he said angrily; 'put it up. You can't have the armor.' 'You let me have it,' begged Ciego. 1 wish it very much. I will do many things for you.' Hartpole swore this time — mean, Spanish oaths. 'No,' he said, 'you can't have it. Go to the dcvil — get ont.' Even though Ciego was only a dirty Indian, the White-Eye should have remembered that he probably had feelings which could be hurt. It is wellhowever, for those who have the direction of children and savages in their hands to remember that those simple folk have sometimes reasons for the things they do and say, good and sufficient unto themselves. But it never occurred to Hartpole what this half-blind li.diau's reasons might be. They did' not transpire until some weeks later. A legend of a great white chief who had once married one of their women, and • had ruled over them, and who had ' worn a suit of shining iron. And their tradition ran that whosoever should find and wear that -garment again would be impervious to the bullets of tbo White-eye, would oecome the greatest of medicine-men, and rule not only ever his own**people, but over all the ■ j\ pache tribes and those of the plainß . of the North. And the very founder ot that family to which Ceigo belonged was reputed to have been the white chief in the coat of iron. The Coyoteros believed these things and bo did the medicine-man. So when ..the news of the armor suit had reached -him, he had levied -eavy fees for his incantations for some months, and, adding these to the gold he had exchanged for Mexican dollars, collected from many raids, he took himself down to the camp of the soldiers to obtain fairly and by purchase what was his very own. But fairness and the offers of, purchase failed. Ciego looked the White-eye officer over from his scalp to his toes, and up again, and then with no sound, save jnst one grunt, " went out from tho quarters and from the post. Hartpole- told of it at the mess, that night, and forgot all about it after that. But Ciego did not — as Hartpole ought to have foreseen. One 'night an Indian, his body naked as it waft bom, a poisoned knife in his hand, stole across the sandy paradeground whon the moon was under the clouds of a coming storm, and slipped, as silently as none but a savage can, under the ramada of Hartpole's quarters, and thence through an open door. The Indian had missed nothing when he had been in that one small room a month before. He knew where everything in it was, from the chromo in a blue frame on the wall to the cot in the corner, across from the fireplace. Jac hid himiself behind the piece of calico that curtained o-i. the nook where Hartpole's clothes hung, and waited until the moon showed for a moment through a break in the clouds, and ho could Bee the figure on the cot beneath the mosquito-net. -When the room was dark again, he slid- out; and the blade ct the knife in his hand went straight through the heart of the man asleep. Then he took the rattling armour from its nails and wrapped it in the calico curtain, and fled through the_night, as silently and swiftly as onljan Apache can. Now it happened that Hartpole had gone to another post a good many miles to the east that very day, and he had 'eft his striker to sleep in his quarters md keep guard over his things. So it was into the luckless soldier's heart that the knife was driven, and the next fay a telegram apprised Hartpqle that his striker was murdered and his suit of mail had gone. The day after that all the department knew that the Coyotcros were on the war-path, and having cut the reservation, were killing right and left. They *tre led by a inedicine-man called 'Ciego,' and the scouts reported that ho van dressed in a garment of white iron ivHch no White-eye's bullet could pierce. They also reported that the ChiricShaus and the Par-TJtea and tho Sierra Blancs were joining him. It promised to be an interesting time for the Terri- . torics. Hartpole began to have a dim idea o r why the medicine-man had wanted his Spanish mail, now. .He was ordered out, of course. Most of -the department was. Trouble of the sort that this promised to be had to be checked at once, if at all. It was serious already; but there was one thing in favour of the troops, which was that "1h«. hostiles showed no desire to get away. ' Their fanatical faith in their medicine-men led them to seek battle rvther than shun it. And twice, having done so, they beat off the troops, Lccausc they were, as" usual, so few. But the third time they wore caught m a pocket of tho Mogallans, and there were no less than six troops against them. Hartpole's was of the number.

The Indians fought from' dawn of the first day until twilight of the second in the open at first, then from behind shelter, then at last they retreated to a shallow cave high up on a hillside, and there was no getting them out. A mountain-howitzer might have done it, but there was 'none with the command. All day 'the troops fired volleys into so much of the mouth nf tLo cave as showed between the pine trunks and the walls of rock. They know that the slaughter within must have been pretty severe, but there were no signs of surrender, nevertheless. The Lrstiles might hold out until the last one was dead; they certainly would i.ntil their medicine-man should fall. The medicine-man could be seen moving clumsily among the trees and un ; ncrbrush. And for all that it went bo slowly and was so bright, no bullet, sremed ever to hit it. Even the white men began to consider it with awe. Al sunset of the second day, when the sounds of the cave had all but. ceased, the Indians within it- were without ' ammunition and at bay, the glistening form came clambering deliberately to the top of a high rock, whooping and yelling, calling the remnant of his fol- ' lowers on. It stood so, for a moment, the red sun rays striking through tfc* pine branches on the dented steel, a -weird sight in the depths of the mouiitpin fastness of the New World ; so odd ' Mid strange that the soldiers hesitated with their fingers on the triggers of their carbines. But Hartpole, kneeling alone behind* o .boulder, remembered only that thnt glowing armour was his, and that he wanted it. The visor was up 'and he rould see the glitter of the one good eye. He had won « sharpshooter's medal in hiß time, and he put his skill to use now. There was a puff of smoke from above his boulder, and the shining figure threw up its arms and staggered. Then it fell forward, down ftom the pinnacle of rock, clattering and crashing among the logs andstones. They found, when they dragged him ont, that HaTtpole's bullet had gone straight through the good eye, and that Ciego was 'ciego' in very truth now — and quite dead.