XIX
JIMMIE SENDS THE ALARM
First there were fifteen or twenty mounted warriors, as an advance guard. Then there followed about one hundred and fifty other warriors, all with rifles, and stripped and painted to fight. Then there trooped and jostled a large procession of squaws and children, mostly afoot, herding a tremendous bunch of loose horses and mules, and packing camp stuff.
There must have been five hundred squaws and children, and six or seven thousand animals, not counting dogs! A small guard of warriors were riding the rear flanks of the march. It certainly was a big outbreak of the San Carlos Chiricahuas, and they were hot-footing for Mexico!
Whew! Where were the police and the soldiers, then? Jimmie swept the landscape for sign of them, and saw nothing. He clapped his glasses closed. His eyes leaped to the nearest telegraph pole. His duty was clear. He ought to send word at once to Camp Thomas.
Just as he was about to swing down, tie his horse, and climb the pole, he sighted, with a last glance of his eye, four Indians swimming the river below, with their ponies. Either he had been seen, or else they were coming to cut the wire. Maybe both.
Already the foremost was urging his pony up out of the water’s edge, to the bank on this side. Of course they had seen him, as he sat! But he still had a chance to race back, to the fort, and give the alarm. No; that would lose an hour, or more. Likely enough the wire from San Carlos to the fort had been cut; at the rate that those Chiricahuas were traveling, every minute was precious if they were to be headed off.
He ought to climb the pole and tap the wire. If he could not raise Thomas in the one direction, he might raise Grant, in the other. But he’d have to work fast. Lives were at stake, for no settler could stop those bronc’s.
Jimmie resolutely tumbled off his horse, in a jiffy strapped on his climbing irons, left his horse, and his rifle in scabbard (a rifle would be of no use up there), and ran for the pole. And this was a brave act, for he might easily have run, horseback, in another direction—back to Camp Thomas, or to hide in the farther timber until the Indians had gone after cutting the wire.
At top speed he shinned up the pole, and digging in, rapidly unshipped his line-man’s little sending kit, in order to break in on the wire and call the Camp Thomas operator. He did not dare to watch the movements of those four Indians.
No doubt the four were coming full tilt, up from the river and through the brush; but if he tried to watch them he would be nervous and make false motions. The thing for him to do was to clamp on to that line, and get there first. That required swift, sure work, and all his attention. So he endeavored not to think of the four Indians.