An Apache Princess: A Tale of the Indian FrontierKing, Charles
General
An Apache Princess: A Tale of the Indian Frontier
King, Charles
Apache Indians -- Fiction; Western stories
joyful tidings, even though she saw that her hero was desperately ill.
She thought, of course, the white girl knew the few words of Spanish
that she could speak. All this was made evident to Arnold and Stout,
partly through Natzie's young brother, who had helped to find and
support the white chief, partly through the girl herself. It was
evident to Arnold, too, that up to the time of their coming nothing
had happened to undeceive Natzie as to that relationship. They tried
to induce her to return to the agency, although her father and brother
were still somewhere with the hostile bands, but she would not, she
would go with them to Sandy, and they could not deny her. More than
once on that rough march of three days they found themselves asking
what would the waking be. Angela, daughter of civilization, under safe
escort, had been sent on ahead, close following the courier who
scurried homeward with the news. Natzie, daughter of the wilderness,
could not be driven from the sight of Blakely's litter. The dumb,
patient, pathetic appeal of her great soft eyes, as she watched every
look in the doctor's face, was something wonderful to see. But now, at
last, the fevered sufferer was home, still only semi-conscious, being
borne within the walls of the major's quarters, and she who had saved
him, slaved for him, dared for him, could only mutely gaze after his
prostrate and wasted form as it disappeared within the darkened
hallway in the arms of his men. Then came a light step bounding along
the veranda--then came Angela, no longer clad in the riding garb in
which hitherto Natzie had seen her, but in cool and shimmering white,
with gladness and gratitude in her beautiful eyes, with welcome and
protection in her extended hand, and the Indian girl looked strangely
from her to the dark hallway within which her white hero had
disappeared, and shrank back from the proffered touch. If this was the
soldier's sister should not she now be at the soldier's side? Had she
other lodge than that which gave him shelter, now that his own was
burned? Angela saw for the first time aversion, question, suspicion in
the great black eyes from which the softness and the pleading had
suddenly fled. Then, rebuffed, disturbed, and troubled, she turned to
Arnold, who would gladly have slipped away.
"Can't _you_ make her understand, Mr. Arnold?" she pleaded. "I don't
know a word of her language, and I so want to be her friend--so want
to take her to my home!"
And then the frontiersman did a thing for which, when she heard of it
one sunset later, his better half said words of him and to him that
overstepped all bounds of parliamentary usage, and that only a wife
would dare to employ. With the blundering stupidity of his sex, poor
Arnold "settled things" for many a day and well-nigh ruined the
sweetest romance that Sandy had ever seen the birth of.
"Ah, Miss Angela! only one place will ever be home to Natzie now. Her
eyes will tell you that."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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