[Pg 62]Stone held that the affair had been grossly exaggerated, and that the proof thereof lay in the acquittal of all accused of the crime, by a jury of their peers; and Landor said that the sooner that highly discreditable travesty on justice was forgotten, the better for the good fame of the territory. The press representative waxed eloquent once more, until his neck grew violet with suppressed wrath, which sputtered out now and then in profanity. The officer met his finest flights with cold ridicule, and the Agency man improved the opportunity by pouring himself a drink from the flask on the cot. In little it was the reproduction of the whole situation on the frontier—and the politician profited.
FORE:Chapter 25Cairness said to himself that she was regal, and acknowledged her most formal welcome with an ease he had fancied among the arts he had long since lost.
FORE:"Always supposing you have," interposed Stone, hooking his thumbs in his sleeve holes and tipping back his chair, "always supposing you have, what could you do with the facts?"
ONE:The woman launched off into a torrent of vituperation and vile language that surprised even Cairness, whose ears were well seasoned.He rolled another cigarette, and sat smoking it unmoved. And she went into the mess tent.
TWO:One cup to the dead already.It was a halcyon time for the press. It approved and it disapproved, while the troops went serenely on their way. It gave the government two courses,—removal of the Apaches, one and all, to the Indian territory (as feasible as driving the oxen of Geryon), or extermination—the catchword of the non-combatant.
"Yes," Cairness called back.The Apache in Felipa was full awake now, awake in the bliss of killing, the frenzy of fight, and awake too, in the instinct which told her how, with a deep-drawn breath, a contraction, a sudden drop and writhing, she would be free of the arms of steel. And she was free, but not to turn and run—to lunge forward, once and again, her breath hissing between her clenched, bared teeth.
