Shalako (1962) (10 page)

It was quite dark when they finally moved out. Edna Dagget went first, walking beside her husband. The roan followed, led by Julia, and packed with food and medical supplies.

The Arab was also loaded down, and led by Laura.

Henri and von Hallstatt carried the stretcher on which Hans lay, protesting the necessity for taking him. Harding and Harris brought up the rear, and Mako walked behind the Arab.

Shalako had removed his boots and donned moccasins for the walk. They were Apache moccasins that came well up the leg and had stiffer soles for desert walking.

The stars were out, the night very still. Once, three years before, he had camped at the place where he planned to take them. He had no idea of attempting to make Fort Cummings. With the wounded man and Edna Dagget they could not hope to make the distance, and Apaches had been known to kill right under the walls of a fort. Nor would Julia Paige stand up to such a walk ... the others might.

The journey before them was serious enough without thinking of the much, much longer trek to Fort Cummings. All he could expect to do was to hide them in the hills and hope the backwash of retreating Apaches did not find them.

Harris had told him briefly about the robbery and flight of the group under Fulton, but that was none of his affair.

Shalako walked to the head of the small column, Irina falling in beside him. Von Hallstatt glanced at them as they went by, but made no comment.

"Why did you come back?" she asked suddenly.

If there was an answer to that he did not know what it was, nor was he a man given to self-analysis or worry about his motives. If they were caught out in the open there was no chance for them, simply none at all.

Knowing no logical answer, he did not attempt to make one, but walked beside her in silence. He walked well ahead of the others so the sounds from the desert would not be merged with their own sounds.

When they halted he fell back and squatted on his heels beside the stretcher, rolling a smoke in the darkness. Carefully shielding the flame, he lighted it, then handed it to Kreuger.

The German inhaled deeply, gratefully. "It is the little things," Kreuger said.

"Yes." "It is far?"

This man was beyond truth or lies, and he had shown himself a brave man. "It is farther than I told them. You will understand."

"A good place?"

"At the last it will be bad for you, Hans. There will be climbing and turning, but it is a good place."

"Do not think of me."

The bulk of Gillespie Mountain lifted against the sky, still several miles away.

The notch toward which he directed their steps was just to the south of it. The cliffs at that place reared up more than a thousand feet and, atop that cliff, between it and Elephant Butte Canyon, there was a place to hide. There was water at the head of Park Canyon and the corner where the two canyons headed up was a difficult place to attack.

"I do not think you have long been a Western man," Kreuger said. "The general was surprised when you mentioned Vegetius and Saxe."

"A Western man is a man from elsewhere," Shalako said. "The West was an empty land and men were drawn to it from the East, from Europe, even from China. An officer killed with Custer at Little Big Horn had been a Papal Guard at the Vatican.

I know a rancher in New Mexico who was an officer in Queen Victoria's Coldstream Guards. There is a marshal in the Indian Territory who served in the French Army.

Western men were poor men, rich men, beggar men, thieves. Only whatever they were, they were strong men or they did not come West, and of those who came, only the strongest survived."

"And you?"

Faintly, on the soft wind, was a smell of woodsmoke. Shalako swore. "There are Indians south of us."

"And you?" Kreuger persisted.

"A man who wanders, that is what I am. It is a wide land, and much of it I have not seen, and much I wish to see again. A man is what he is, and what he is shows in his actions. I do not ask where a man came from or what he was ... none of that is important.

"It is what a man does, how he conducts himself that matters, not who his family were." He got up. "I know it is otherwise in Europe."

"Not entirely," Kreuger said, "but it is important." He paused, then added defensively, "Breeding is important." "Breeding can breed weakness as well as strength, cowardice as well as bravery. I do not think much thought was given to virtue or courage when the blood lines were laid down. They did not breed for quality, they bred for money. Estates were married, not people."

"There is something in what you say," Kreuger confessed reluctantly.

Walking forward again, he spoke to each of them. "Not a whisper," he said, "not a sneeze. If you drop anything you may drop our lives with it. No matches, no cigarettes ... there are Indians south of us."

The woodsmoke might come from Cowboy Spring or even that other spring beyond the buttes. Not far enough away for comfort. When they moved out again, Buffalo took the lead and Harding shared the stretcher with Shalako.

Edna Dagget was already dragging her feet. Julia, al though she walked well, was showing discomfort.

They walked and rested, they walked again ... without the stretcher they might have made it by daybreak, as it was a rising wind tuned the violins of the desert shrubs, the Animas Mountains lifted a black wall before them, but a tinge of crimson touched the ridge. Reluctantly the darkness retreated into the narrow-mouthed canyons.

No smoke against the sky. They halted again where mountain run-off had cut a gash in the accumulated debris at the mountains' base. Charles and Edna Dagget huddled together, holding their faces tight against disaster. Laura's eyes seemed larger this morning, and there were hollows in her cheeks.

Only Hans Kreuger seemed unchanged.

Mako, a thin, wiry man who looked more like a doctor of philosophy than a cook, glanced up as Shalako approached him. "I could make some coffee, sir," he suggested.

"No." Shalako allowed nearly an hour of rest, for the Daggets had little reserve remaining.

It was cold in the shadow of the mountains. The desert lay pale beige before them, dotted with cloud shadow and desert shrubs. Julia Paige looked at the desert and held her shoulders pinched against the chill. Von Hallstatt had a stubble of beard on his jaws, and he stared sullenly at the sand. Count Henri leaned back against the bank, breathing easily.

Shalako squatted on his heels and studied them from under the brim of his hat, assaying the reserves of each. Von Hallstatt was like iron. Whatever else he was, there was strength in the man, strength of body and strength of will. The breeding had told there, all right. This was one who had been bred for the Prussian Army officer corps ... yet the breeding had lost something, too.

Henri ... a member of the nobility who still possessed nobility. His physical strength might be less, but his morale was greater, he had stamina of the spirit, which outweighs all physical strength.

Shalako was rising to start them moving again when he heard a sound that was more than the wind. Hat off, he lifted his head slowly until his eyes cleared the bank.

Not fifty yards away were four Apaches, riding single file.

Naked but for breechclouts, rifles in their hands, they were walking their horses toward the wash in which Shalako stood. Only their line of travel would take them into the wash some fifty or sixty yards ahead of their party. It was Shalako's good luck that their eyes had been averted as his head cleared the edge of the wash.

Von Hallstatt was beside him, and there was no mistaking the look in his eyes as the rifle started to come up. Shalako shoved the rifle barrel down, and the German jerked it from under his hand and started to lift it again. At that instant an Apache looked toward them.