The trail climbed and descended rugged steeps, crossed smooth intervals, skirted the edges of precipices, wound along borders of dry creeks, and threaded forests of pine and clumps of sage-brush and greasewood. Throughout the ride the imaginations of officers and men were depicting the scenes they feared were being enacted in the valley, or which might take place should they fail to arrive in time to prevent.
It is needless to say, perhaps, that the one person about whom the thoughts of the men composing the rescuing party centred was the gentle, bright, and pretty Brenda. To think of her falling into the hands of the merciless Apaches was almost maddening.
On and on rode the column, the men giving their panting steeds no more rest than the nature of the road and the success of the expedition required. At last we reached the spur of the range behind which lay Skull Valley. We skirted it, and with anxious eyes sought through the darkness the place where the ranch buildings should be. All was silence. No report of fire-arms or whoop of savages disturbed the quiet of the valley.
Ascending a swell in the surface of the ground we saw that all the buildings had disappeared, nothing meeting our anxious gaze but beds of lurid coals, occasionally fanned into a red glow by the intermittent night breeze. But there was the impregnable earthwork; the family must be in that. I dashed swiftly forward, eagerly followed by my men. The earthwork was destroyed, nothing but a circular pit remaining, in the bottom of which glowed the embers of the fallen roof-timbers.
A search for the slain was at once begun, and continued for a long time. Every square rod of the valley for a mile was hunted over without result, and we all gathered once more about the two cellars, in which the coals still glowed.
"It was in the cellar of the house that Sergeant Henry said the body of Mrs. Arnold was laid, was it not?" asked Dr. Coues.
"Yes," I replied.
"Then if all were killed after he left—shot from time to time—would not their remains be likely to be beside hers?"
"Not beside hers, I think. The last stand must have been made in the fort."
"Then the bodies, or what is left of them, must lie under that circular bed of coals, Duncan, if they died here."