Trent's Trust, and Other Stories

For some such cause as this Dick Boyle was obliged to amuse himself silently, alone on the back seat, with those liberal powers of observation which nature had given him. On entering the canyon he had noticed the devious route the coach had taken to reach it, and had already invented an improved route which should enter the depression at the point where the Indians had already (unknown to him) plunged into it, and had conceived a road through the tangled brush that would shorten the distance by some miles. He had figured it out, and believed that it “would pay.” But by this time they were beginning the somewhat steep and difficult ascent of the canyon on the other side. The vehicle had not crawled many yards before it stopped. Dick Boyle glanced around. Miss Cantire was getting down. She had expressed a wish to walk the rest of the ascent, and the coach was to wait for her at the top. Foster had effusively begged her to take her own time—“there was no hurry!” Boyle glanced a little longingly after her graceful figure, released from her cramped position on the box, as it flitted youthfully in and out of the wayside trees; he would like to have joined her in the woodland ramble, but even his good nature was not proof against her indifference. At a turn in the road they lost sight of her, and, as the driver and mail agent were deep in a discussion about the indistinct track, Boyle lapsed into his silent study of the country. Suddenly he uttered a slight exclamation, and quietly slipped from the back of the toiling coach to the ground. The action was, however, quickly noted by the driver, who promptly put his foot on the brake and pulled up. “Wot’s up now?” he growled.

Boyle did not reply, but ran back a few steps and began searching eagerly on the ground.

“Lost suthin?” asked Foster.

“Found something,” said Boyle, picking up a small object. “Look at that! D–d if it isn’t the card I gave that Indian four hours ago at the station!” He held up the card.

“Look yer, sonny,” retorted Foster gravely, “ef yer wantin’ to get out and hang round Miss Cantire, why don’t yer say so at oncet? That story won’t wash!”

“Fact!” continued Boyle eagerly. “It’s the same card I stuck in his hat—there’s the greasy mark in the corner. How the devil did it—how did HE get here?”

“Better ax him,” said Foster grimly, “ef he’s anywhere round.”

“But I say, Foster, I don’t like the look of this at all! Miss Cantire is alone, and”—

But a burst of laughter from Foster and the mail agent interrupted him. “That’s so,” said Foster. “That’s your best holt! Keep it up! You jest tell her that! Say thar’s another Injin skeer on; that that thar bloodthirsty ole ‘Fleas in His Blanket’ is on the warpath, and you’re goin’ to shed the last drop o’ your blood defendin’ her! That’ll fetch her, and she ain’t bin treatin’ you well! G’lang!”

The horses started forward under Foster’s whip, leaving Boyle standing there, half inclined to join in the laugh against himself, and yet impelled by some strange instinct to take a more serious view of his discovery. There was no doubt it was the same card he had given to the Indian. True, that Indian might have given it to another—yet by what agency had it been brought there faster than the coach traveled on the same road, and yet invisibly to them? For an instant the humorous idea of literally accepting Foster’s challenge, and communicating his discovery to Miss Cantire, occurred to him; he could have made a funny story out of it, and could have amused any other girl with it, but he would not force himself upon her, and again doubted if the discovery were a matter of amusement. If it were really serious, why should he alarm her? He resolved, however, to remain on the road, and within convenient distance of her, until she returned to the coach; she could not be far away. With this purpose he walked slowly on, halting occasionally to look behind.

Meantime the coach continued its difficult ascent, a difficulty made greater by the singular nervousness of the horses, that only with great trouble and some objurgation from the driver could be prevented from shying from the regular track.

“Now, wot’s gone o’ them critters?” said the irate Foster, straining at the reins until he seemed to lift the leader back into the track again.

“Looks as ef they smelt suthin—b’ar or Injin ponies,” suggested the mail agent.

“Injin ponies?” repeated Foster scornfully.

“Fac’! Injin ponies set a hoss crazy—jest as wild hosses would!”

“Whar’s yer Injin ponies?” demanded Foster incredulously.

“Dunno,” said the mail agent simply.

But here the horses again swerved so madly from some point of the thicket beside them that the coach completely left the track on the right. Luckily it was a disused trail and the ground fairly good, and Foster gave them their heads, satisfied of his ability to regain the regular road when necessary. It took some moments for him to recover complete control of the frightened animals, and then their nervousness having abated with their distance from the thicket, and the trail being less steep though more winding than the regular road, he concluded to keep it until he got to the summit, when he would regain the highway once more and await his passengers. Having done this, the two men stood up on the box, and with an anxiety they tried to conceal from each other looked down the canyon for the lagging pedestrians.

“I hope Miss Cantire hasn’t been stampeded from the track by any skeer like that,” said the mail agent dubiously.

“Not she! She’s got too much grit and sabe for that, unless that drummer hez caught up with her and unloaded his yarn about that kyard.”

They were the last words the men spoke. For two rifle shots cracked from the thicket beside the road; two shots aimed with such deliberateness and precision that the two men, mortally stricken, collapsed where they stood, hanging for a brief moment over the dashboard before they rolled over on the horses’ backs. Nor did they remain there long, for the next moment they were seized by half a dozen shadowy figures and with the horses and their cut traces dragged into the thicket. A half dozen and then a dozen other shadows flitted and swarmed over, in, and through the coach, reinforced by still more, until the whole vehicle seemed to be possessed, covered, and hidden by them, swaying and moving with their weight, like helpless carrion beneath a pack of ravenous wolves. Yet even while this seething congregation was at its greatest, at some unknown signal it as suddenly dispersed, vanished, and disappeared, leaving the coach empty—vacant and void of all that had given it life, weight, animation, and purpose—a mere skeleton on the roadside. The afternoon wind blew through its open doors and ravaged rack and box as if it had been the wreck of weeks instead of minutes, and the level rays of the setting sun flashed and blazed into its windows as though fire had been added to the ruin. But even this presently faded, leaving the abandoned coach a rigid, lifeless spectre on the twilight plain.

An hour later there was the sound of hurrying hoofs and jingling accoutrements, and out of the plain swept a squad of cavalrymen bearing down upon the deserted vehicle. For a few moments they, too, seemed to surround and possess it, even as the other shadows had done, penetrating the woods and thicket beside it. And then as suddenly at some signal they swept forward furiously in the track of the destroying shadows.

Miss Cantire took full advantage of the suggestion “not to hurry” in her walk, with certain feminine ideas of its latitude. She gathered a few wild flowers and some berries in the underwood, inspected some birds’ nests with a healthy youthful curiosity, and even took the opportunity of arranging some moist tendrils of her silky hair with something she took from the small reticule that hung coquettishly from her girdle. It was, indeed, some twenty minutes before she emerged into the road again; the vehicle had evidently disappeared in a turn of the long, winding ascent, but just ahead of her was that dreadful man, the “Chicago drummer.” She was not vain, but she made no doubt that he was waiting there for her. There was no avoiding him, but his companionship could be made a brief one. She began to walk with ostentatious swiftness.

Boyle, whose concern for her safety was secretly relieved at this, began to walk forward briskly too without looking around. Miss Cantire was not prepared for this; it looked so ridiculously as if she were chasing him! She hesitated slightly, but now as she was nearly abreast of him she was obliged to keep on.

“I think you do well to hurry, Miss Cantire,” he said as she passed. “I’ve lost sight of the coach for some time, and I dare say they’re already waiting for us at the summit.”

Miss Cantire did not like this any better. To go on beside this dreadful man, scrambling breathlessly after the stage—for all the world like an absorbed and sentimentally belated pair of picnickers—was really TOO much. “Perhaps if YOU ran on and told them I was coming as fast as I could,” she suggested tentatively.

“It would be as much as my life is worth to appear before Foster without you,” he said laughingly. “You’ve only got to hurry on a little faster.”

But the young lady resented this being driven by a “drummer.” She began to lag, depressing her pretty brows ominously.

“Let me carry your flowers,” said Boyle. He had noticed that she was finding some difficulty in holding up her skirt and the nosegay at the same time.

“No! No!” she said in hurried horror at this new suggestion of their companionship. “Thank you very much—but they’re really not worth keeping—I am going to throw them away. There!” she added, tossing them impatiently in the dust.

But she had not reckoned on Boyle’s perfect good-humor. That gentle idiot stooped down, actually gathered them up again, and was following! She hurried on; if she could only get to the coach first, ignoring him! But a vulgar man like that would be sure to hand them to her with some joke! Then she lagged again—she was getting tired, and she could see no sign of the coach. The drummer, too, was also lagging behind—at a respectful distance, like a groom or one of her father’s troopers. Nevertheless this did not put her in a much better humor, and halting until he came abreast of her, she said impatiently: “I don’t see why Mr. Foster should think it necessary to send any one to look after me.”

“He didn’t,” returned Boyle simply. “I got down to pick up something.”

“To pick up something?” she returned incredulously.

“Yes. THAT.” He held out the card. “It’s the card of our firm.”

Miss Cantire smiled ironically. “You are certainly devoted to your business.”

“Well, yes,” returned Boyle good-humoredly. “You see I reckon it don’t pay to do anything halfway. And whatever I do, I mean to keep my eyes about me.” In spite of her prejudice, Miss Cantire could see that these necessary organs, if rather flippant, were honest. “Yes, I suppose there isn’t much on that I don’t take in. Why now, Miss Cantire, there’s that fancy dust cloak you’re wearing—it isn’t in our line of goods—nor in anybody’s line west of Chicago; it came from Boston or New York, and was made for home consumption! But your hat—and mighty pretty it is too, as YOU’VE fixed it up—is only regular Dunstable stock, which we could put down at Pine Barrens for four and a half cents a piece, net. Yet I suppose you paid nearly twenty-five cents for it at the Agency!”

Oddly enough this cool appraisement of her costume did not incense the young lady as it ought to have done. On the contrary, for some occult feminine reason, it amused and interested her. It would be such a good story to tell her friends of a “drummer’s" idea of gallantry; and to tease the flirtatious young West Pointer who had just joined. And the appraisement was truthful—Major Cantire had only his pay—and Miss Cantire had been obliged to select that hat from the government stores.

“Are you in the habit of giving this information to ladies you meet in traveling?” she asked.

“Well, no!” answered Boyle—“for that’s just where you have to keep your eyes open. Most of ‘em wouldn’t like it, and it’s no use aggravating a possible customer. But you are not that kind.”

Miss Cantire was silent. She knew she was not of that kind, but she did not require his vulgar indorsement. She pushed on for some moments alone, when suddenly he hailed her. She turned impatiently. He was carefully examining the road on both sides.

“We have either lost our way,” he said, rejoining her, “or the coach has turned off somewhere. These tracks are not fresh, and as they are all going the same way, they were made by the up coach last night. They’re not OUR tracks; I thought it strange we hadn’t sighted the coach by this time.”

“And then”—said Miss Cantire impatiently.

“We must turn back until we find them again.”

The young lady frowned. “Why not keep on until we get to the top?” she said pettishly. “I’m sure I shall.” She stopped suddenly as she caught sight of his grave face and keen, observant eyes. “Why can’t we go on as we are?”

“Because we are expected to come back to the COACH—and not to the summit merely. These are the ‘orders,’ and you know you are a soldier’s daughter!” He laughed as he spoke, but there was a certain quiet deliberation in his manner that impressed her. When he added, after a pause, “We must go back and find where the tracks turned off,” she obeyed without a word.

They walked for some time, eagerly searching for signs of the missing vehicle. A curious interest and a new reliance in Boyle’s judgment obliterated her previous annoyance, and made her more natural. She ran ahead of him with youthful eagerness, examining the ground, following a false clue with great animation, and confessing her defeat with a charming laugh. And it was she who, after retracing their steps for ten minutes, found the diverging track with a girlish cry of triumph. Boyle, who had followed her movements quite as interestedly as her discovery, looked a little grave as he noticed the deep indentations made by the struggling horses. Miss Cantire detected the change in his face; ten minutes before she would never have observed it. “I suppose we had better follow the new track,” she said inquiringly, as he seemed to hesitate.

“Certainly,” he said quickly, as if coming to a prompt decision. “That is safest.”

“What do you think has happened? The ground looks very much cut up,” she said in a confidential tone, as new to her as her previous observation of him.

“A horse has probably stumbled and they’ve taken the old trail as less difficult,” said Boyle promptly. In his heart he did not believe it, yet he knew that if anything serious had threatened them the coach would have waited in the road. “It’s an easier trail for us, though I suppose it’s a little longer,” he added presently.

“You take everything so good-humoredly, Mr. Boyle,” she said after a pause.

“It’s the way to do business, Miss Cantire,” he said. “A man in my line has to cultivate it.”

She wished he hadn’t said that, but, nevertheless, she returned a little archly: “But you haven’t any business with the stage company nor with ME, although I admit I intend to get my Dunstable hereafter from your firm at the wholesale prices.”

Before he could reply, the detonation of two gunshots, softened by distance, floated down from the ridge above them. “There!” said Miss Cantire eagerly. “Do you hear that?”

His face was turned towards the distant ridge, but really that she might not question his eyes. She continued with animation: “That’s from the coach—to guide us—don’t you see?”

“Yes,” he returned, with a quick laugh, “and it says hurry up—mighty quick—we’re tired waiting—so we’d better push on.”

“Why don’t you answer back with your revolver?” she asked.

“Haven’t got one,” he said.

“Haven’t got one?” she repeated in genuine surprise. “I thought you gentlemen who are traveling always carried one. Perhaps it’s inconsistent with your gospel of good-humor.”

“That’s just it, Miss Cantire,” he said with a laugh. “You’ve hit it.”

“Why,” she said hesitatingly, “even I have a derringer—a very little one, you know, which I carry in my reticule. Captain Richards gave it to me.” She opened her reticule and showed a pretty ivory-handled pistol. The look of joyful surprise which came into his face changed quickly as she cocked it and lifted it into the air. He seized her arm quickly.

“No, please don’t, you might want it—I mean the report won’t carry far enough. It’s a very useful little thing, for all that, but it’s only effective at close quarters.” He kept the pistol in his hand as they walked on. But Miss Cantire noticed this, also his evident satisfaction when she had at first produced it, and his concern when she was about to discharge it uselessly. She was a clever girl, and a frank one to those she was inclined to trust. And she began to trust this stranger. A smile stole along her oval cheek.

“I really believe you’re afraid of something, Mr. Boyle,” she said, without looking up. “What is it? You haven’t got that Indian scare too?”

Boyle had no false shame. “I think I have,” he returned, with equal frankness. “You see, I don’t understand Indians as well as you—and Foster.”

“Well, you take my word and Foster’s that there is not the least danger from them. About here they are merely grown-up children, cruel and destructive as most children are; but they know their masters by this time, and the old days of promiscuous scalping are over. The only other childish propensity they keep is thieving. Even then they only steal what they actually want,—horses, guns, and powder. A coach can go where an ammunition or an emigrant wagon can’t. So your trunk of samples is quite safe with Foster.”

Boyle did not think it necessary to protest. Perhaps he was thinking of something else.

“I’ve a mind,” she went on slyly, “to tell you something more. Confidence for confidence: as you’ve told me YOUR trade secrets, I’ll tell you one of OURS. Before we left Pine Barrens, my father ordered a small escort of cavalrymen to be in readiness to join that coach if the scouts, who were watching, thought it necessary. So, you see, I’m something of a fraud as regards my reputation for courage.”

“That doesn’t follow,” said Boyle admiringly, “for your father must have thought there was some danger, or he wouldn’t have taken that precaution.”

“Oh, it wasn’t for me,” said the young girl quickly.

“Not for you?” repeated Boyle.

Miss Cantire stopped short, with a pretty flush of color and an adorable laugh. “There! I’ve done it, so I might as well tell the whole story. But I can trust you, Mr. Boyle.” (She faced him with clear, penetrating eyes.) “Well,” she laughed again, “you might have noticed that we had a quantity of baggage of passengers who didn’t go? Well, those passengers never intended to go, and hadn’t any baggage! Do you understand? Those innocent-looking heavy trunks contained carbines and cartridges from our post for Fort Taylor”—she made him a mischievous curtsy—“under MY charge! And,” she added, enjoying his astonishment, “as you saw, I brought them through safe to the station, and had them transferred to this coach with less fuss and trouble than a commissary transport and escort would have made.”

“And they were in THIS coach?” repeated Boyle abstractedly.

“Were? They ARE!” said Miss Cantire.

“Then the sooner I get you back to your treasure again the better,” said Boyle with a laugh. “Does Foster know it?”

“Of course not! Do you suppose I’d tell it to anybody but a stranger to the place? Perhaps, like you, I know when and to whom to impart information,” she said mischievously.

Whatever was in Boyle’s mind he had space for profound and admiring astonishment of the young lady before him. The girlish simplicity and trustfulness of her revelation seemed as inconsistent with his previous impression of her reserve and independence as her girlish reasoning and manner was now delightfully at variance with her tallness, her aquiline nose, and her erect figure. Mr. Boyle, like most short men, was apt to overestimate the qualities of size.

They walked on for some moments in silence. The ascent was comparatively easy but devious, and Boyle could see that this new detour would take them still some time to reach the summit. Miss Cantire at last voiced the thought in his own mind. “I wonder what induced them to turn off here? and if you hadn’t been so clever as to discover their tracks, how could we have found them? But,” she added, with feminine logic, “that, of course, is why they fired those shots.”

Boyle remembered, however, that the shots came from another direction, but did not correct her conclusion. Nevertheless he said lightly: “Perhaps even Foster might have had an Indian scare.”

“He ought to know ‘friendlies’ or ‘government reservation men’ better by this time,” said Miss Cantire; “however, there is something in that. Do you know,” she added with a laugh, “though I haven’t your keen eyes I’m gifted with a keen scent, and once or twice I’ve thought I SMELT Indians—that peculiar odor of their camps, which is unlike anything else, and which one detects even in their ponies. I used to notice it when I rode one; no amount of grooming could take it away.”

“I don’t suppose that the intensity or degree of this odor would give you any idea of the hostile or friendly feelings of the Indians towards you?” asked Boyle grimly.

Although the remark was consistent with Boyle’s objectionable reputation as a humorist, Miss Cantire deigned to receive it with a smile, at which Boyle, who was a little relieved by their security so far, and their nearness to their journey’s end, developed further ingenious trifling until, at the end of an hour, they stood upon the plain again.

There was no sign of the coach, but its fresh track was visible leading along the bank of the ravine towards the intersection of the road they should have come by, and to which the coach had indubitably returned. Mr. Boyle drew a long breath. They were comparatively safe from any invisible attack now. At the end of ten minutes Miss Cantire, from her superior height, detected the top of the missing vehicle appearing above the stunted bushes at the junction of the highway.

“Would you mind throwing those old flowers away now?” she said, glancing at the spoils which Boyle still carried.

“Why?” he asked.

“Oh, they’re too ridiculous. Please do.”

“May I keep one?” he asked, with the first intonation of masculine weakness in his voice.

“If you like,” she said, a little coldly.

Boyle selected a small spray of myrtle and cast the other flowers obediently aside.

“Dear me, how ridiculous!” she said.

“What is ridiculous?” he asked, lifting his eyes to hers with a slight color. But he saw that she was straining her eyes in the distance.

“Why, there don’t seem to be any horses to the coach!”

He looked. Through a gap in the furze he could see the vehicle now quite distinctly, standing empty, horseless and alone. He glanced hurriedly around them; on the one side a few rocks protected them from the tangled rim of the ridge; on the other stretched the plain. “Sit down, don’t move until I return,” he said quickly. “Take that.” He handed back her pistol, and ran quickly to the coach. It was no illusion; there it stood vacant, abandoned, its dropped pole and cut traces showing too plainly the fearful haste of its desertion! A light step behind him made him turn. It was Miss Cantire, pink and breathless, carrying the cocked derringer in her hand. “How foolish of you—without a weapon,” she gasped in explanation.

Then they both stared at the coach, the empty plain, and at each other! After their tedious ascent, their long detour, their protracted expectancy and their eager curiosity, there was such a suggestion of hideous mockery in this vacant, useless vehicle—apparently left to them in what seemed their utter abandonment—that it instinctively affected them alike. And as I am writing of human nature I am compelled to say that they both burst into a fit of laughter that for the moment stopped all other expression!

“It was so kind of them to leave the coach,” said Miss Cantire faintly, as she took her handkerchief from her wet and mirthful eyes. “But what made them run away?”

Boyle did not reply; he was eagerly examining the coach. In that brief hour and a half the dust of the plain had blown thick upon it, and covered any foul stain or blot that might have suggested the awful truth. Even the soft imprint of the Indians’ moccasined feet had been trampled out by the later horse hoofs of the cavalrymen. It was these that first attracted Boyle’s attention, but he thought them the marks made by the plunging of the released coach horses.