Serial Story. CAPTAIN ADAIR’S WIFE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIV, Issue XXVI, 30 June 1900, Page 1202

Serial Story. CAPTAIN ADAIR’S WIFE.

By

LIEUTENANT JOHN PAYNE.

SYNOPSIS OK I’HEVIOI S CHAPTERS. The opening chapter, as is usual, introduces a number of dramatis personae. We are at Fort llamlnia. in Arizona, where a numb> r of soldiers and ottieers are gathered Interested in tile capture of Geronimo, an u, K lie chief, and a band of Indians devastating the country. We first meet the men. who evidently dislike one Mellish, who is about to be promoted as their sergeant. Mellish is a man of good family, who has come to grief, but who is, it appears, trying to pull tip. We are then introduced to I.lent. Hecker and his friend Ronan, an IrishMexican, Hie son of a Spanish-Mexican mother, and mi old gold prospector from the Emerald isle. He is a charmingly lazy and graceful man, and seems amusing. CHAPTER ll.—This begins on the train which is taking Colonel .Marcy, his daughter .Mary, and his niece Nine to the fort. Both girls are very beautiful, Nina as a semiSpanish tvpe, and Mary as a Northerner and an English girl. Captain Adair joins the train, and is immediately much taken with Nina, who is quite conscious of tile effect her power and beauty have had upon him. ® © & 111. "I know it will be a slim crowd, but I am glad of it. Bradish and Neal ami Adair will come in. and that will lie more than enough with the men here.” ••What 1 should like,” said Mr Ronan from the hammock where he swung and smoked cigarettes, “would be to have noboby except the two young ladies and ourselves —and the band. I'd want the band.” •■Bradish and Neal and Adair and Ellis -who’s always glad enough of a chance to dance to some other fiddling Ilian his wife’s —can dance with those people from Tombstone.” "May 1 ask,” said Mr Ronan, “if Mrs Savage is included in ‘those, people from Tombstone?’ ” “She was invited.” “litis it struck you, my dear boy, that Mrs Savage may not take kindly to having her programme made out for her —prematurely? And does it strike you at all that Captain Adair is rather running you with Miss Wentworth?” "Ronan, the most serious fault you own is a disinclination to minding your own business.” Ronan leaned over the side of the hammock, his delicate dark face as smilingly inscrutable as ever. “When I see an old friend with so many irons in the fire I like to —advise him.” Mary and Nina had unpacked their prettiest gowns for this festivity of Captain Hecker’s -a dance on his great verandah. There had been a round of festivities since the colonel had brought home his daughter and niece. Before that, there had been no young ladies in the camp except the three very young and very plain daughters of Captain Judd, and Mrs Ellis, who was so in love with and so jealous of her own husband that her youth was lost to the world. The great ottieers' ambulance, followed by a train of horseback riders, and a detachment of soldiers keeping a wary eve out for signs of Indians, had gone’ pienicward in every canyon for two miles. There had been invitations to every house in Officers' Row. Ronan sat on Hecker's verandah late on the summer nights in these days, and smoked endlessly. He made resolves to go back to the ranch the next dav and told himself that at last lie was in love, desperately in love, and with the sweetest girl on earth, amt that he hud put it forever out of his power to be anything to her. For the first time his heart Itched over his wild davs. ami his squandered fortune', ami perhaps it was the liest test of his affection that in remembering Mary Marev's sweet eyes he regretted the wild days more than the lost inheritance. lie cringed when lie thought or his escapades reaching her ears. But everv morning lie found his resolution failed him. •It's her father's place to find out what a black sheep I am. .and send me off the reservation." lie said to himself with the air of arguing down an opponent.

He was in no reveries to-night. The verandah had been decked with flags. Flynn's tin chandelier, stuck full of candles, hung from the ceiling. Hecker walked anxiously about his swept ami garnished habitation, as nervous as a young hostess giving her housewarming. From the window of the room whers Mary and Nina were dressing they could see the lights, and hear the stray bits of music with which the famous cavalry band was tuning up. “I don’t know what’s the season.” Mary said, leaning over near the mirror. and pulling out the little curls on her forehead: “I've been to larger dances than this, but this seems to be just the most exciting event of my life. I suppose it’s because it is the first dance we’ve had out here.” Nina, at her own toilet table, laugned a little nervously. She was feeling something the same way—and trying to ridicule herself for it. She, who had gone through two brilliant New York seasons, to be feeling like a school girl at her first dance! There was a sound of a long drawn note on a horn, and Mary ran to the window. Coming up the drive from the open mesa outside, was a tallyho coach whose top seemed to be covered with white gowns. There was talking and laughter. "That must be the crowd from Tombstone.” Mary said. “They say they have all sorts of junketing over there. There are a lot of sisters and daughters of mining people, with a great deal of money. The Mrs Savage that Mrs Judd rolls up her eyes over seems to be the leader of the revels. 1 wonder if she came." There was no doubt about Mrs Savage being there. Her presence was as conspicuous as that of a queen bee at swarming time. Even the entrance of the colonel with his two beauties hardly caused an appreciable diminution of her group. As the girls came in. she had just been introduced to young Mr Neal, a very juvenile “sub.” “To what arm do you belong. Mr Neal?" said Mrs Savage. It was dark on that end of the verandah and his colours were not visible. Jimmie Neal had the reputation at West Point of being the pertest member of his class. Jimmie loved effects ind liked to swagger. “I. Mrs Savage, am a son of the sword.” "Oh. truly!” Mrs Savage laughed with briskness. “I thought you were the son of a gun!” Nina was fond of a gay young matron; she had been chaperoned by too many of them not to take to the species,, but Jter lip curled just a trifle as she came up the steps from the shadow of the liveoak trees, and heard this remark. Her bow as Lieutenant Hecker introduced them was of the chilliest. Mrs Savage looked at her with a rather anxious hardness in her face. This was the girl, she had been told, who had tqkhii Hecker captive. “Poaching on my preserves." Mrs Savage would have called it. At Nina's cool greeting a gratified look effaced her anxiety. "Jealous! She's heard of me." she thought. That there could be any other reason was beyond her comprehension. In the West, where there are So few young women, or where the young women are married so early, their prerogatives as young women are not taken from them. They expect and receive the attention that is usually given to their unmarried sisters in the East. Mrs. Savage had married, at sixteen, a man twenty-five years her senior. She was acquainted with men—the men of the mining towns and the mining circles in the East, and the San Francisco hotels. She said very cheerfully that she did not know many women, and she did not care much about those she did know. She had no children, and her Chinaman kept her house. The look came back into her face as Hecker passed out with the colonel's party.

Three hours later she beckoned with her fan to Ronan, who turned to her with a pleased smile. She always amused him, as he amused her. “You seem to be in love with Miss Marcy?” Mrs. Savage said. “I am!” “She's a pretty looking girl, and quite too good for you, but I want to tell you that Colonel Marcy is looking at you with anything but joy in his eye.' He hasn’t enjoyed your dancing 'with his daughter five times as much as you have.” “I suppose not.” Mrs. Savage scented fun. Beyond a feeling of comradeship, Ronan did not attract her the least in the world. She was more than ready to help him on with a love affair, if there were paternal obstacles in the way. Whatever the authority in power, Mrs. Savage was “agin it.” “I’ll tell you,” she said. “You must bring her over to Tombstone. Get her to stay with me; but I don’t want the cousin—mind. By the way, Lieutenant Hecker seems to be very much—ah—attracted by Miss Wentworth.” Ronan let his black eyes rest mournfully upon Hecker down at the other end of the verandah. He was leaning against the railing behind Nina Wentworth, looking at her. She had borrowed Mary’s big scarier fan. which was the only spot of colour in her white costume. Ronan wanted to be agreeable to Mrs. Savage, and he did not wish nget Hecker into a scrape. However indifferent that Lothario 'might be to old friends, he would not care to break with them by proxy. Just then Adair walked up to Nina and spoke to her. “It is Adair who is in love with Miss Wentworth,” Ronan said. IV. Adair had been in the fort only a few times, his duties keeping him in the field, but each time he left he felt nearer to this beautiful, sympathetic, gentle girl. In the cozy corners the girls had created of Mohave blankets and Mexican hammocks, in the colonel's quarters, they had talked of the hopes and desires and fears and longings of two lonely young hearts. Perhaps she had been a little of a coquette, but there was no thought of coquetry in Nina’s mind now. There was nothing between her and Adair to hang a flirtation upon, only a confidence that neither had ever felt like giving before, a companionship that was satisfying to each, and that at each meeting grew nearer and warmer. To-night. Hecker had hung about Nina all evening, and it was late before Adair had been able to get even one dance. As they moved skilfully together, he felt that she was tired by the heat and exertion, and as they passed a door he drew her inside and through to the other verandah. This side was deserted now, except for Lieutenant Neal and one of the girls that Mrs. Savage had brought with her, who were sitting wilh heads close together in the shadiest corner. Without a word Adair went down the steps and under the black shadows of the liveoak trees with Nina’s arm in his. “I never saw a dance anything like this before,” she began nervously. There was an electricity in the atmosphere, a witchery in the Southern moonlight that made her hum the commonplace as a balance for the influences of the night.

“Nor I. I never supposed there could be such a one.” As they walked along over the sparse grass under the trees. Nina was trying to analyse her own feeling. It seemed to her that she had never before had a sensation of mental rest and support. The slight nervous sensation that she had had about her heart when she first came out, all melted and disappeared, like a hand taken softly and reluctantly away. She knew what was coming —but she let it come. There was no spirit in her to combat it, to fence, to be judicial and think. Already she had given her whole nature into the keeping of this man. She wasn’t really sure she was in love with Adair. She only knew that there was a something that was outside of herself, a something that she might not destroy. She turned, and as they came to a gap in the trees looked up into his face, the moonlight on hers. Tn a second (Adair had put his arms about her, and was holding her close to his heart.

V. Mrs Savage was very well satisfied. It wasn’t every day that “the Fort people.” as he casually mentioned them, drank tea on her verandah. There were drawbacks now; but Mrs Savage was not the woman to be niggardly in her enjoyment of a thing because it was not absolutely flawless. The wide, room-like shelf that ran entirely around the house. Mrs Savage had set as nearly as possible like the descriptions she had read, and seen illustrated in English periodicals, of Indian bungalows. There were palms, and Russian wicker ehairs, tables, hammocks with gay tassels, and embroidered cushions. When Mrs Savage saw all tins animated by the uniforms of the officers, and saw Hecker’s big face aglow with the flame of her spirit lamp, she felt that her ideal was complete. The sight of Mrs Major Acton in her thin pongee, drinking tea out of a Chinese covered cup, was an agreeable enough vision to her hostess. She liked well enough to be on good terms with the Fort ladies, but she had none of the social sense which made her cultivate women. “What’s the programme now?” Ronan said. “I’d like to know when some of you are going over to the Horseshoe. You have visited all the mines in the vicinity, and the very one that needs the presence of a luck bringer you have passed by. Miss Marcy, aren’t you going to conjure the silver out of the earth for me?” Everybody laughed. It was easy to laugh, and the Horseshoe was a good deal like its owner, continually promising better things. Not an ounce of silver had been taken from it, and still, with the recklessness of his nature. Ronan went on throwing into it all the money he could find. “We are going down to see the stamp mill now, I think,” Mrs Acton said gently. “We shall certainly go down your mine the next time we come over.” “If you do it will be in a bucket,” Mrs Savage remarked. “The accommodations are not all I would desire,” Ronan admitted, “but I feared it would be extravagant to put in elaborate hoisting works when I wasn’t- sure there was anything there to hoist.” “You may as well stay here. It is hot,” Mrs Savage said. Her white kid slippers that looked so well in the rug at her feet were hardly suitable for the mud of a stamp mill. She thought regretfully of the days when Hecker would have made any excuse to stay while the rest went. Then, reluctantlyrising, she went to prepare herself to go. “When are we going home?” Ronan asked, as the tail of his hostess’s gown swept through the door. “Presently,” Mrs Acton said, “We are going to see the stamp mill, and by that time we must have the ambulance ready for us. It will take us until ten o'clock to drive over.

and althoug-h the Indians are so far away now, I hardly think anything later is safe.” “Do you want the ambulance to meet you at the mill?” Neal asked. “In that ease I will go on down to the hotel and order it sent up. I have seen a stamp mill several times. “If you are .going to the hotel. Mr Neal,” Nina said from the shady depths of her big chair, “I will go with vou. My head aches a little, and 1 think 1 shall lie down until time to start.” Mrs Acton looked anxious. "Perhaps, my dear, you had better accept Mrs Savage’s invitation.” “I hate to get into that hot ambulance,” Nina replied with a little petulance. “1 wish 1 could ride home on horseback.” “Why, you can,” Jimmie Neal said. “1 am going to ride over, and they have capital horses in the stables here in Tombstone. I can get you a horse and we can start when we like. “I believe I will do it.” Mrs Savage came out with her big flowered hat and lace parasol, ready for the walk to the mill. Hecker, busy gathering up umbrellas ami gloves, had not heard Nina’s plans, and blithely starting off with Mrs Acton and Mrs Savage, leaving Ronan with Mary, did not notice that Nina left their path presently and with Neal went around the brow of the hill toward the straggling town. When he discovered it at the mill door, it was too late to follow her. Nina and Neal walked on together down the dusty trail, and into Allen Street, with its gaudy saloons lining all one side, to the hotel. “What time had I better tell Mellish to have the ambulance at the mill. Miss Wentworth?” Neal asked. There were people in Tombstone he himself was anxious to see. and he was glad to get away. “Oh, in two hours, I suppose. I never visited a stamp mill; attd she turned away toward the hotel parlours. She and Neal had both forgotten their plan of riding home. As she came into the little room, dark with drawn blinds, which mercifully hid the staring red and green velvet carpet, and the plated ice pitcher on the marble table, there arose in the gloom a. figure which, blinded as her eyes were with the white glare outside, she recognised. Adair walked forward, and shutting the door, put his arms around her. “Robert!” she said. “Robert!” and putting - her head against his shoulder burst into tears. Adair had left, the morning after Hecker’s dance, before Nina was out of her room, and had gone back to his troop in the field. She had not seen him for almost three weeks since they had almost involuntarily told their love to each other that intoxicating August night. To both it had been a strain they had hardly realised. To both it was the first passion of their lives, and they were neither of the temperament to wear it lightly. . He held her until she was quiet. “My dear.” he said, “my dear.” “Where are you going. Robert?” she asked, when she lifted her face. “To the Fort. What are yon doing over here—and alone? Where is—who is with you?” "Mis Acton and Mary, and Mr Hecker. Mr Ronan, and ,M,r Neal. We came over yesterday to see the mines, and Mrs Savage asked us up there to luncheon to-day. Oh. Robert, I missed you!” They sat silent for a few minutes, he with his arm around her. her head against him. “Nina.” he said finally. "I have some bad news for you, my darling.” “Aren’t you going back with us?” she said, sitting up. her brows drawn together in an anxious frown. “Yes. 1 am going back with you. but not to stay. Only until the day after to-morrow. The Indians are slipping away from the reservation, and there is danger of a more serious outbreak than we have known in vears. My troop is ordered to the t'ananea Pass ami I shall probably be there for several mouths, unable to see you at all.” "And in constant danger,” she whispered. “Oh. some.” he said. “That doesn’t count. It is not seeing you that 1 mind.” “1 cannot let you go.” she said, her voice husky with emotion. “I will nott let you go." Why should you go down

there to be butchered by Indians? Oh ” she began to sob. “My darling girl,” Adair said, “you know I must go. There is no other way. I would not desire any other way. Before I go we must tell your uncle that we love each other, and w hen I come back ” “You shall not go!” She stood up and flung herself against his breast, her arms about his neck. Her nervous tt mperament and vivid imagination pictured him taken away from her, murdered by the Apaches, The separation had strained her. the altitude, the heat, the climate, had strung her to a pitch that was almost beyond her control. Adair’s calmness was a thing of tense muscles held by his will. He leaned his head down to her ear. “Marry me before I go.” Nina lay passive. The idea had sent a thrill through her mind. She wondered—all in the thousandth part of a minute—what her uncle would say, how they could arrange it; and then she thought that if she married Adair he could leave the army now this instant, leave this cruel country with its pest of murdering fiends, aud go abroad with her. She had money enough to do anything. Yes, she would marry him nnw, and take him away from death. . She lifted up her arms again and pm them about his neck, and put her lips against his. Adair was looking down into her face, his own pale with emotion. “Yes! I will, now!” VI. Up Allen Street in Tombstone there is aridness, the odour of liquor, the sound of clinking glasses and dice, and the dust cloud of the galloping cowboy. On the side streets there are rows of young cottonwood trees that are carefully watered and tended, and sometimes plots of grass and gayly coloured flowers. The houses are all one-storey cottages and painfully new. In one of these an old man sat with his hand before his eyes and his teeth on his thin lips. On the other side of the room was Mellish, looking bored and uncomfortable. The apartment was sparsely furnished, mostly with black-eovered theological books. “There isn’t any use worrying, father; I’m as well off as I ever was in my life. Tt isn’t all milk and roses, and there are precious few dollars, but I manage to exist, and nobody's ever going to find out I’m here.” “My son! My son!” “I should think you’d be glad to see me at respectable work.” Mellish sneered. “You used to say so.” “What has become of vour wife and child ?” “Oh ” Mellish cursed. “What’s the use of hauling up everything disagreeable the minute T enter the door? As soon as I found you had been sent here to this mission church I came to see you. You were always bemoaning my ‘evil ways,’ and I thought you might be glad to know I was alive and unhung—and the first thing vou do is to begin to dig up every disagreeable subject you can lav your hands on. I’m getting along better than 1 ever did in my life. I want to forget T ever had any past.” "And your wife and child mar starve.” , “Wihat do you want me to do? Have Edith enlist as laundress?” The cool sarcasm and scorn in the man's voice was like a cutting knife to his old father. “I might bring her out here. 1 supj>ose. but. you know she wouldn’t come.” “You know better than that. George. You know that she has been a good and faithful wife to you. through all your troubles. She would come to you and yon know it.” “And T suppose you want me to have her out here, get the detectives on my track, and be taken back and sent to the penitentiary. Thank you! I m not looking for that job!” The lines of anguish grew closer about his father’s lips and nostrils. His eyes were tragic. “My son! My son!” he said again softly. “I might have been sergeant this time, except that that upstart Adair put drunken Flynn back.” And then Mellish laughed again. “Who knows but I may get to be a lieutenant or a major general some of these days? There’s no accounting for luck in the army, when a man’s a man of family, which T certainly am. But, I owe Adair something for knocking the first round out of my ladder.”

“Hush!” his father said sternly, "there is some one at the door.” Mellish looked from behind the blind and whistled. "That’s Adair now, and the colonel’s niece. What the devil are they doing here?” He gave his father’s arm a pull. “If Adair suspects anything—he's a sneaking brute—don’t answer any of his questions. I was a fool for coming here:” and he went into the next room and drew the door to. leaving a crack to peer through. But what Mellish heard left him leaning against the wall in amazement. He felt as though he wanted to go in and stop the proceeding. Lieutenant Hecker's sweetheart—as he had thought her to be—was marrying Adair. He looked again, and concluded that it was a secret marriage. He gave up the notion that he had had of asking his father for money; he concluded that his seeing this was worth something to him from somebody. Hecker would pay to know it, and Adair would surely pay to keep it quiet. He did not want to hear his father’s reproaches again, and he stole silently out as he heard the final words of the benediction over Captain Adair and his wife. VII. When Nina and Adair reached the hotel again, they found that both the ambulance and Lieutenant Neal had

gone. Mrs Acton supposed that Nina had ridden on with Neal, and Neal had never given her project of riding with him a second thought. After he had finished his own visits he had ridden away, expecting to find Nina in the ambulance when it arrived at the Fort. “There is nothing for us but to ride or drive over alone,” Adair said. “Do you mind, sweetheart? Are you afraid?” “No! no!” she said. She was nervously anxious to get home to her uncle and Mary to tell them what she had done, and to make her uncle find some way to keep Adair in at the post until she could get him out of the army. She could not, she would not, think of his going down among the Mexican rocks to be murdered. She had a horror of the very aspect of an Indian. She could not bear to look at the scouts with their strips of re'd knotted about their ugly foreheads, as they sat sullenly in the sun. They seemed to her like venomous beasts. Let her husband go again into danger she could not. She made up her mind that she would not. Surely her authority, her love, would come first now'. “Can you ride on horseback in that gown?” Adair asked her. “Of course.” It was a short blue serge, made for rough work, as different as possible from the frilleries of Mrs Savage. It was after eight o’clock when they

finished their dinner and mounted their horses to leave the town. The sun had gone long ago, and the golden glory of the short Southern twilight had faded out of the sky. The young moon was well up, making the whole plateau upon which Tombstone stood like molten silver, with the dark accent here and there of lightning burned cactus, or an abandoned mine building. The road was like a broad white ribbon. As Nina rode out of town into the o|M-n mesa by Adair's side, she seemed to herself to be riding out into an unknown work! with .him, and she felt herself supremely happy. They rode along in silence for a mile or two. and then Adair drew his horse up l>eside her and put his hand on hers. She looked so young, so almost childish in the moonlight. Her little soft felt hat was pulled down tightly upon her head, and her dress was so plain; there were none of the fripperies of the woman of the world about her. Tn these three weeks since they had l>een promised to each other -in nights when he had slept with his face to the skies, Adair had remembered some of the confidences she had given him. She had seen what seemed to him so much of life; she had had such experiences, coming to her through her beauty, her wealth; such adoration, such worldly training, that he had been afraid, sometimes, that she would find a simple soldier’s life too stupid. The idea of leaving ...s beloved profession had never entered his head, and he did not dream that it had entered Nina’s. But as he looked at her to-night, she seemed all his own. Every thought left his mind except the fact that she had been ready and glad to give herself to him now. “ Robert.” Suddenly, before Adair’s eyes there flashed a light. Tn a second it was gone, to reappear again in another flash. It came from the top of the great mountain, almost behind the Fort. Propping Nina's hand he lifted himself in his saddle and looked behind him. There was an answering flash from the Pragoons. Adair had not lived in the Indian country all these years not to learn that there was something important on foot just now. He thought of the rumour that there was to be a new uprising of the Indians, and his heart beat fast. It was twenty miles from Tombstone to Huachuca, and they were not half way. He thought of himself as a blundering idiot for coming at all that night. “What is the matter?” Nina asked. “Nothing. I saw lightning down in the mountains. I think we may be going to have an autumn storm.” “Not before we get home, I hope.” “I hope not. indeed”: and Adair put their horses into a gallop. They rode along for another mile or two, hardly speaking. There was so much to say. they had no words in which to put it. Adair’s heart was torn with a terrible fear. He felt the revolvers in his belt and in his saddle. He started once to give one to Nina, and then he stealthily felt his best one to see that it was in perfect order. There was but one thing to do if they were attacked by the Apaches, and be seemed to grow cold and sick with horror as he thought of it. What would one man be against even half a dozen of them? His first shot must be into the heart of the woman he loved and who loved him. Better any sort of death for her than to fall into the hands of those fiends. “Robert.” Nina said, with an inflection that showed her thoughts had been wandering far, “we will go to the south of France for the winter. It is lovely in October, and by Christmas we can get down to Nice. It will make a beautiful wedding journey.” “Next year, perhaps, my dearest.” “This year. Why not this year?” Tier voice was raised .anxiously. “Because this year I must go down into the Cananeas and fight Indians. Would yon have me leave my profession like n coward, just when danger comes? Surely you do not think you have married such a man as that?” “Am I nothing to you?” “Yon are everything to me. Oh. Nina, think! You would not have me do such a thing. I want to help put down this uprising. Think of the men who lie down nt night, not knowing whether they or their loved ones will see the light or not. It not only means death, it menus horrors 1 cannot speak into your ears. I must stay and do my duty here.” He spoke passionately, his hand on the revolver that he feared he might

have to put to so terrible a use. Tn every fibre of his soul he felt the Indian outrages as he had never felt them before. To Nina there was nothing visible except the danger to her husband. Her soul rose in protest against his leaving at all. To leave her to go into danger—it must not be. “I married you, expecting you to stay with me. If you do not, I will go away, and you shall never see me again.” She was ready to say anything to keep him, and then she herself was appalled by the picture she had made. “Robert, my darling, stay!” She reached out her hand and laid it on his, her face pleading into his. They were passing under the shadow of some rocks which came out over the road. The moon struck Nina’s face for the last time with that look of sorrowful entreaty in her eyes. Adair's horse gave a violent lurch across the road. Nina’s horse stood stiff for an instant and then leaped ahead. Adair’s heart was still. The horses had given the unmistakable Indian signal. He dug his spurs in and flew after Nina, only to hear yells and see her surrounded by a dozen of the black and lowering brutes. “Save me! Save me!” she screamed, throwing her hands towards him. He took the revolver from its holster, and made a careful aim at her heart. She saw the muzzle pointed towards her, and threw back her hands. “Would you kill me?” He heard it through the medley of Apache cries. His arm was knocked up by a savage at his side, and he fell back—his revolver exploding in the air, a rifle bullet crashing througn his body.

(To be continued.)