Old Sanchez—José—the former proprietor, had disappeared entirely, he and his brace of henchmen, after somewhere digging a treasure pit in the sand and therein "caching" their store of mescal, aguardiente, and certain other illicit valuables. It was conjectured that he had fled to the Verde Valley and taken refuge at McDowell until the storm blew over. But Craney was more than curious as to Case's guest, the ghost, and by Friday Case was sober and solemn and sick enough to be cross-questioned without show of resentment. Craney went so far as to ask Case wouldn't he like a little whiskey to steady his nerves—a cocktail to aid his appetite and stir his stomach? "Like it," said Case, "you bet I would—which is why I won't take it. Three days' liquor, two days' taper, one day suffer, then the water wagon for a spell. Thank you all the same, Mr. Craney. What can I do for you without the drink?"
But when Craney mentioned Sanchez, the ghost and the drinking bout by night at the rookery, Case said he must have been nigher to jimjams than he'd got in a year. "I never saw any ghost," said he, and Craney had to give it up, and report his failure to the commanding officer.
"Ever try threatening him with discharge?" asked Bucketts, by way of being helpful.
"Ever try? I don't have to try! The one time I started in on that lay he never let me finish; said all right, he'd go just as soon as he'd balanced the books. Then, by gad, it was all I could do to get him to stay. He is the most independent damn man I ever met. Says he knows he's a drunkard and nuisance one week out of four, and don't wonder I want to discharge him. Discharge him? I couldn't get along without him! Any time he wants a better job and plenty of society all he's got to do is go to Prescott. Discharge him! All I'm afraid of is he'll discharge himself!"
So Bucketts dropped the subject and he and Strong went to report non-success to Archer just as the sun was going down and the peak, in lone grandeur, loomed up dazzling above the black drapery about its base, and Bonner, pacing up and down with his much-honored chief, saw the gloom deepen in his deep-set eyes. Only Lilian seemed able to win a smile from him, as she came and took him by the arm and led him away to dinner.
Darkness settled down apace. The moon rose late and the stars were holding high carnival in consequence, for the skies were gorgeous in their deck of gold. Mrs. Stannard was dining with the Archers en famille, as she did now almost every evening, for the Archers would so have it, and Archer had been talking of Harris's proposition, and his determined stand for 'Tonio. Mrs. Archer shook her pretty head in negation. She could not see how any one who distrusted her general could himself be loyal. She had said the same of Secretary Stanton during the war, for one of that iron master's most masterly convictions was that every soldier, Southern born—even such as Thomas—must of necessity be a Southern sympathizer. 'Tonio must needs be a traitor since he avoided sight of, or speech with, her soldier who could do no wrong. And if Mrs. Archer believed in 'Tonio, on her husband's account, what must have been Lilian's conviction? she who had both father and lover—father and the husband soon to be, for of that Mrs. Archer had now no earthly doubt—the two men beyond all others combined who were dearest to Lilian on earth, both of them inimical to 'Tonio, one of them wellnigh his victim. It was Mrs. Stannard who listened in silence. She had longer known the Apache-Mohave, and as between 'Tonio and Willett it might well be a story with two sides.
They had finished their coffee and were just coming forth upon the veranda into the exquisite evening air, and, as bidden by her father, Lilian had just begun to tune her guitar, when across the parade among the men seated along the low front of the barracks there was sudden start, sudden rush, and, from up the line of officers' quarters not many doors away, came agonized cry for help. Archer sprang to his feet and started, but Mrs. Archer, in a paroxysm of fear, thinking only of Indians and treachery, seized him by the arm, clung to and held him. Mrs. Stannard sprang within the hall and back with Archer's revolver which, without a word, she thrust into his hand. Then all three together started, for while fifty men came tearing headlong across the sandy level, making straight for the adjutant's quarters, Lilian, their little Lilian—the silent, sad-eyed, anxious child of the days and days gone by—heading everybody, was flying like a white-winged bird, straight along the line, and when the father reached her she had thrown herself upon a heap of burning, smouldering bedding, thrashing it with a wet blanket snatched from the olla, and then, with her own fair, white hands, was beating out the few sparks that remained about the sleeve and shoulder of a soaked and dishevelled gown, and brushing others from the hair and face of an unheroic, swathed and dripping figure—Harold Willett in the midst of the wreck of his cot, while Blitz, the striker, aided by Wettstein and the doctor's man, were stamping and swearing and tearing things to bits in the effort to down other incipient blazes. Between them they had dragged Willett from the midst of the flames and drenched him with a cataract from the olla. The rush of the men from the barracks made short work of the fire, but when Mrs. Archer and Mrs. Stannard, with throbbing hearts, bent over the scorched and smoking ruin on the south porch, a tousled brown head, with ghastly face, was clasped in Lilian's arms, pillowed on Lilian's fair, white bosom. Willett had fainted from fright, pain and reaction, and the unheroic, untried, unfearing girl had blistered her own fair hands, her own soft, rounded, clasping arms, yet saw and felt nothing but dread for his suffering and joy for his safety. Even the mother for a moment could not take her rescued darling from that fond, fearless, impassioned embrace. All in that desperate instant the veil of virgin shame had burned away. In the fierce heat and shock and peril the latent love force had burst its bonds, the budding lily had blossomed into womanhood.
And upon that picture, pallid, weak and suffering, another neighbor, another pain-stricken young soldier gazed in silence, then turned unobtrusively away. There was no one to help him back to the reclining chair from which he had been startled at the almost frenzied shriek of alarm. There was no further talk—no thought of signals that night; Archer had had enough of fire. They bore the reviving officer, presently, to a vacant room in Stannard's quarters, and Lilian was led to her own. There were bandages about both hands and arms when next morning she appeared upon the gallery. They hid the red ravages on the fair, white skin, but what was there to veil the radiant light that shone in her eyes, the burning blushes that mantled her soft and rounded cheeks? Archer took her to his heart and kissed her and turned to his duty with a sigh. Mrs. Archer clung to and hovered about her, silent, for what was there to say? Mrs. Stannard came over, all smiles and sunshine, to announce that "He" had passed a comfortable night, and "His" first waking thoughts and words were for her, as indeed they should have been, and, so far as audible words were concerned, they possibly were. What else could Mrs. Stannard have said when she saw that winsome, yet appealing little face?
And in such wise was our Lilian wooed; in such wise was she won. Contrary to Bentley's wishes, Willett had essayed to smoke, and so set his bed afire. Contrary to all convention, the love of the maiden had been the first to manifest itself to public eye, but Willett manfully rose to the occasion. In the midst of anxiety, uncertainty and danger there beamed one ray, at least, of radiant, unshadowed, buoyant hope and bliss and shy delight. Lilian Archer envied no girl on the face of the globe, no white-robed seraph in heaven; and for her sake others, too, strove hard to hope, to help, to shower good wishes and congratulation.
"But to think of my little girl in love," said Archer, with brimming eyes. "Why, you—you won't be nineteen!"