it is one thing to be sacrificed to a cause, even if it is only by filling up the ditch that others may cross to victory; it is quite another to be sacrificed in a cause, to die unavailingly without profit or glory of any kind, to be even an obstacle thrown across the way. and that was the end which looked cabot in the face. he stood and considered his horse where it lay in the white dust, with its bloodshot eyes turned up to a sky that burned like a great blue flame. its tongue, all black and swollen, hung out upon the sand, its flanks were sunken, and its forelegs limp.
cabot was not an unmerciful man, but if he had had his sabre just then, he would have dug and turned it in the useless carcass. he was beside himself with fear; fear of the death which had come to the cow and the calf whose chalk-white skeletons were at his feet, of the flat desert and the low bare hills, miles upon miles away, rising a little above the level, tawny and dry, giving no hope of shelter or streams or shade. he had foreseen it all when the horse had stumbled in a snake hole, had limped and struggled a few yards farther, and then, as he slipped to the ground, had stood quite still, swaying from side to side, with its legs wide apart, until it fell. he gritted his teeth so that the veins[pg 2] stood out on his temples, and, going closer, jerked at the bridle and kicked at its belly with the toe of his heavy boot, until the glassy eye lighted with keener pain.
the column halted, and the lieutenant in command rode back. he, too, looked down at the horse, pulling at his mustache with one gauntleted hand. he had played with cabot when they had been children together, in that green land of peace and plenty which they called the east. they had been schoolmates, and they had the same class sympathies even now, though the barrier of rank was between them, and the dismounted man was a private in landor's own troop. landor liked the private for the sake of the old times and for the memory of a youth which had held a better promise for both than manhood had fulfilled.
"done up,—is it?" he said thoughtfully. his voice was hard because he realized the full ugliness of it. he had seen the thing happen once before.
cabot did not answer. the gasping horse on the sand, moving its neck in a weak attempt to get up, was answer enough. he stood with his hands hanging helplessly, looking at it in wrath and desperation.
landor took stock of the others. there had been five led horses twenty-four hours before, when they had started on a hot trail after the chief cochise. but they had taken the places of five others that had dropped in their tracks to feed the vultures that followed always, flying above in the quivering blue. they were a sorry lot, the two score that remained.
[pg 3]
in the spring of '61, when the handful of frontier troops was pressed with enemies red and brown and white, the cavalry was not well mounted.
landor saw that his own horse was the best; and it bid very fair to play out soon enough. but until it should do so, his course was plain. he gathered his reins in his hands. "you can mount behind me, cabot," he said. the man shook his head. it was bad enough that he had come down himself without bringing others down too. he tried to say so, but time was too good a thing to be wasted in argument, where an order would serve. there was a water hole to be reached somewhere to the southwest, over beyond the soft, dun hills, and it had to be reached soon. minutes spelled death under that white hot sun. landor changed from the friend to the officer, and cabot threw himself across the narrow haunches that gave weakly under his weight.
it went well enough for a time, and the hills seemed coming a little nearer, to be rougher on the surface. then the double-loaded horse fagged. cabot felt that it did, and grasped hard on the burning cantle as he made his resolve. when landor used his spurs for the first time, he loosed his hold and dropped to the ground.
landor drew rein and turned upon him with oaths and a purpled face. "what the devil are you trying to do now?" he said.
cabot told him that he was preparing to remain where he was. his voice was firm and his lips were[pg 4] set under the sun-bleached yellow of his beard, but his face was gray, for all the tan. he lapsed into the speech of other days. "no use, jack," he said; "it's worse than court-martial—what i've got to face here. just leave me some water and rations, and you go on."
landor tried another way then, and leaned from his saddle in his earnestness. he put it in the light of a favor to himself. but cabot's refusal was unanswerable. it was better one than two, he said, and no horse in the command could carry double.
"i will try to reach the water hole. leave a man there for me with a horse. if i don't—" he forced a laugh as he looked up at the buzzard which was dropping closer down above him.
"you could take turns riding behind the men."
"no," cabot told him, "i couldn't—not without delaying you. the trail's too hot for that. if you'll put a fourth and last bullet into cochise, the loss of a little thing like me won't matter much." he stopped short, and his chin dropped, weakly, undecided.
"jack," he said, going up and running his hand in and out underneath the girths. he spoke almost too low to be heard, and the men who were nearest rode a few feet away. "jack, will you do something for me? will you—that is—there is a fellow named mcdonald up at the mescalero agency. he's got a little four-year-old girl he's taking care of." he hurried along, looking away from landor's puzzled face. "she's the daughter of a half-breed mescalero woman, who was[pg 5] killed by the mexicans. if i don't come out of all this, will you get her? tell mcdonald i told you to. i'm her father."
he raised his eyes now, and they were appealing. "it's an awful lot to ask of you, jack, even for old sake's sake. i know that. but the little thing is almost white, and i cared for her mother—in a way. i can't let her go back to the tribe." his lips quivered and he bit at them nervously. "i kept meaning to get her away somehow." there was a sort of pity on landor's face, pity and half contempt. he had heard that from cabot so often for so many years, "i kept meaning to do this thing or the other, somehow, some day." "but it looks as though you might have to do it now. will you, lieutenant?" he tugged at the cinchings while he waited.
landor was without impulses; the very reverse from boyhood of the man on the ground beside him, which was why, perhaps, it had come to be as it was now. he considered before he replied. but having considered, he answered that he would, and that he would do his best for the child always. once he had said it, he might be trusted beyond the shadow of a doubt.
"thank you," said cabot, and drew his hand from the girths. he cut landor short when he tried to change him again. "you are losing time," he told him, "and if you stay here from now to next week it won't do any good. i'll foot it to the water hole, if i can. otherwise—" the feeble laugh once more as his eyes shifted to where a big, gray prairie wolf was going[pg 6] across the flat, stopping now and then to watch them, then swinging on again.
they came around him and offered him their horses, dismounting even, and forcing the reins into his hands. "you don't know what you are doing," a corporal urged. "you'll never get out alive. if it ain't indians, it'll be thirst." then he looked into cabot's face and saw that he did know, that he knew very well. and so they left him at last, with more of the tepid alkali water than they well could spare from their canteens, with two days' rations and an extra cartridge belt, and trotted on once more across the plain.
he stood quite still and erect, looking after them, a dead light of renunciation of life and hope in his eyes. they came in search of him two days later and scoured the valley and the hills. but the last they ever saw of him was then, following them, a tiny speck upon the desert, making southwest in the direction of the water hole. the big wolf had stopped again, and turned about, coming slowly after him, and two buzzards circled above him, casting down on his path the flitting shadows of their wings.
