"How are you, Eggie?" Drumm asked.
The valet rolled his umbrella and tucked it into a saddlebag.
"Much better, now that the heat has lessened."
The Agua Fria was disappointing. In spite of the beckoning greenery, the watercourse was a series of brackish puddles rimmed with alkali crust. Though desert heat had dried it to a rivulet, there were, however, patches of coarse grass and stands of bamboo and carrizo reeds in the muddy bottom.
"Well," Jack Drumm sighed, "we have arrived thus far without incident, Eggie."
The valet was the first to see the man in the reed-choked river, watering a thirsty buckskin horse. Eggleston pulled at his master's sleeve. "Look, sir! Over there!"
Cautious, Jack Drumm lifted the fowling piece. But the stranger stepped from the reeds in friendly fashion, advanced toward them holding out a hand.
"Meech—Alonzo Meech, gentlemen! It's a pleasure to see white men in these parts! Where you bound for?"
Drumm slid off his horse and put his weapon in the boot. He shook hands.
"We're for Prescott," he said, "my man Eggleston here, and I."
Mr. Meech was a stocky man with a fringe of spiky gray beard and heavy burnsided wattles. He wore a flat-brimmed hat and dusty black coat, with an enormous Colt's revolver of the Navy style buckled about his waist. A bedroll was strapped to the crupper of a bony mare, and a Winchester rifle in the saddle scabbard. Meech reminded Jack Drumm of nothing so much as an English bulldog, a little gray about the muzzle and somewhat past his prime.
"Going there myself," Meech nodded. "Like to throw in with you two, if you don't mind! There's Apaches about, I hear."
Drumm noticed a shotgun strapped to the other side of the mare. "You're well prepared for them, I see."
"I am always prepared, for whatever happens." Meech put a hand on the butt of the revolver. "Semper apparatus, that's my motto. It's Latin, you see—means 'be prepared.'"
"We met some soldiers in the pass back there," Drumm volunteered. "They said a person called Augustine—"
"Agustín."
"Whatever. Anyway, the rascal is on the loose, terrorizing the countryside. I don't know why the authorities let such things happen! There can be no responsible government, such as we are accustomed to in England."
"Met Dunaway, too," Meech said, helping Eggleston unload the mules. "The lieutenant didn't think I'd get to Prescott with my hair on. But another day—two at the most—and I'll be attending to my business there."
"And what did you say your business was?" Drumm inquired politely.
"I didn't say," Meech answered, and volunteered no more.
While Eggleston set up the camp, Meech reclined on a boulder and watched. Finally, seeing the valet take the rubber bathtub from a mule and unfold the telescoping legs, he could not restrain himself.
"Now what in Tophet is that thing?"
"A necessary sanitary facility," Jack explained, pouring in the bucket of warm water Eggleston brought from the fire. "I never travel without it. Perkins' Patent India-Rubber Portable Bath—a marvelous invention."
Removing travel-stained clothing, Drumm settled gratefully into the bath. The valet brought him a packet of correspondence, a two-week-old copy of the Yuma Sentinel, and a gin and water in a tumbler, setting them on a collapsible table nearby.
"And what will you have, sir?" Eggleston asked Meech. "We have a wide variety. American bourbon? Scotch whiskey? Perhaps a brandy?"
Meech shook his head. "I'm a temperance man, mostly. Never drink on the job, anyway." He fumbled in a pocket. "Do miss my stogies, though."
Drumm spoke to Eggleston. "There's a fresh box of Havana puros on the gray mule."
Alonzo Meech regarded the proffered cigar with a dazed look. He started slightly when the valet nipped the end with a silver cutter resembling a miniature guillotine.
"I like a good cigar myself," Drumm admitted, soaping himself thoroughly. "When's dinner, Eggie?"
"Eight, sir—as always."
While Drumm scrubbed himself clean, the valet bustled about the camp, setting up the tent, shaking out sheets, plumping pillows, uncorking a bottle of Rhine wine and decanting it critically by the light of a camphene lamp. The banks of the Agua Fria took on the appearance of a small village, complete with the folding toilet commode behind a canvas screen for modesty's sake. The mules, now unladen, wandered away to munch the grasses bordering the greenish pools.
Meech pulled hard on his cigar. "I never seen anything like it!" he muttered, staring in disbelief at the Union Jack the valet ran up a pole.
"Cheers!" Drumm said, lifting his glass, and turned his attention to the Sentinel. The newspaper had only four pages; he had read it many times since stepping off the schooner Sierra Nevada, Captain Joseph Beckett, at Port Isabel, a hundred miles below Yuma. Finishing the newspaper, he turned to the packet of letters and chose the latest communication from his brother. Andrew's letter was three months old:
It is all very well to be the elder brother and succeed to the title but it is certainly a damned nuisance. I do not understand how our father managed to do at eighty years of age what I am making a botch of at forty. We must face it, Jack: I simply do not have your knack for planning, your stubbornness in pressing on to accomplish what you have decided to do. As a consequence, my account books are in a muddle, the tenant farmers dissatisfied, and bills pile up in spite of my best resolve to take care of them promptly. Of course, I have my India fever to blame for it all—I do not really feel well—but at bottom I am afraid I am not cut out for a manager.
Drumm closed his eyes, shutting out the twilight bleakness of the landscape, and thought of Clarendon Hall in summer. Roses would be in bloom, white and pink and red, the garden heavy with their scent. Ancient lawns would be green, girls would come to parties in wispy summer dresses, the billiard room would be gay with banter and the click of ivory balls.
Cornelia Newton-Barrett was here yesterday with her mother, anxious for news of you. As you know, Cornelia is very fond of you, and joins me in wishing you Godspeed home.
Cornelia, Drumm thought. He recalled a winter night at Clarendon Hall, the old house creaking under the weight of snow, a fire still smoldering in the great fireplace. All had gone to bed. He and Cornelia, by arrangement, tiptoed down in nightclothes and sat for a long time holding hands. With pleasure he remembered the illicit softness of Cornelia's thigh, the depths of tender brown eyes. Then one of the servants had blundered in—
"Mr. Jack?" Eggleston coughed discreetly. "Dinner is ready."
"Right!" Drumm sprang to his feet to towel himself dry. Though the summer dusk was cool, drawing the warmth from his bath water, he felt a warm flush of passion in his loins. Cornelia Newton-Barrett would wait for him; she had promised. The prospect made this desert nearly tolerable. He got into fresh linen almost cheerfully, waxed his mustache to fierce Guardsman points before a mirror, and sat down across from Alonzo Meech.
"We are very low on food," he remarked, "but once we reach Prescott it will make no matter. Eggie and I plan to put up at a hotel for a few days rest, then I will inquire as to passage on the new Atlantic and Pacific Railroad line, which I understand we can catch on certain days of the month at Bear Spring, north of Prescott. From there we can ride the steamcars to New York City and sail home on a fast packet." Drumm turned to the valet. "Beef ragout, eh? Marvelous, simply marvelous, Eggie, what you manage to concoct with only canned meat and a few dried onions!" He poured the wine, chilled by wet cloths the valet had wrapped around the bottle, into a pair of long-stemmed glasses. "Try that, Meech! I find it a little woody, but with a nice bouquet."