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At tattoo there came a Mexican woman from one of the down-stream ranches, sent in by the post trader, who said she could speak the Apache-Mohave language sufficiently well to make Natzie understand the situation, and this frontier linguist strove earnestly. Natzie understood every word she said, was her report, but could not be made to understand that she ought to go.
Then Angela had come cantering down the sandy road; had gone on down stream, passing even the prowling prospectors, and after a few minutes had returned and dismounted among the willows above where Blakely lay Angela whom poor Natzie believed to be Blakely's sister. Natzie supposed her looking for her brother, and wondered why she waited.
Neither cover, backing, nor case of the miniature gave the faintest clew as to its original or as to its ownership. What was Natzie doing with this? and to whom did it belong? A little study satisfied him there was something familiar in the face, yet he could not place it. The very night of her coming, therefore, he told his wife the story and handed her the portrait. One glance was enough.
More morning suns than could be counted in the field of the flag had come, and gone, but not a sign of Natzie. Wren's own troopers, hot on Punch's flashing heels, were cooling their own as best they could through the arid days that followed.
Natzie, the girl queen, was gone from the guard-house: Punch, the Lady Angela's pet pony, was gone from the corral, and who would say there had not been collusion?
Food and shelter elsewhere they proffered in abundance. Natzie sat stubbornly at the major's steps, and sadly at first, and angrily later, shook her head to every proposition. Then they brought food, and Lola and Alchisay ate greedily. Natzie would hardly taste a morsel.
All this was given me by Lola's father, the interpreter, back from Chevlon's Fork only yesterday. I sent him to try to persuade Natzie and her kinsfolk to return. I have promised them immunity." Then Plume and Graham had gone, leaving Wren to brood and ponder, and this had he been doing two mortal days and nights without definite result, and now came Janet to bring things to a head.
"Has she worried you?" he began, "has she been " spying, he was going to say, and she knew it, and grew redder still with vexation. Natzie could claim at least that she was not without a shining example had she come there to spy, but Blakely had that to say to her that deserved undivided attention, and there is a time when even one's preserver and greatest benefactor may be de trop.
And so Natzie was still there, sitting sleepless in the soft and radiant moonlight, when toward twelve o'clock Graham came forth from his last visit for the night, and she lifted up her head and looked him dumbly in the face, dumbly, yet imploring a word of hope or comfort, and it was more than the soft-hearted Scot could bear.
I wish to heaven we hadn't killed these two," and ruefully he looked at the stark forms the dead lover of Natzie, the gasping tribesman just beyond, dying, knife in hand. "The general has been trying to curb Daly for the last ten days," continued he, "and warned him he'd bring on trouble. The interpreter split with him on Monday last, and there's been mischief brewing ever since.
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