Shalako (1962) (20 page)

There was no escape. The Apaches would still be out there, waiting for them. And somewhere in the rocks above was Tats-ah-das-ay-go, awaiting his opportunity.

The wind roared over and past them, and the sand whipped into their hollow and rattled against 'the rocks. Irina stood with her horses and the roan, quieting them. Charles Dagget lifted the body of his wife and carried her into a sheltered place behind a boulder where there was some protection from the wind.

Von Hallstatt put down his rifle and crossed to carry Henri to a place beside her.

Shalako picked up the bodies of the three dead Apaches and dropped them down the slope. Only one of them had been armed with a rifle, but that was loaded and put to one side.

Von Hallstatt's coat was ripped from his shoulders, his shirt torn, his face bloody.

He had been struck over the head or creased by a bullet that left a nasty scratch on his skull.

Irina left the horses and knelt beside Laura, holding her close. Julia Paige stared at them, dazed and numb with horror at what she had seen.

Shalako walked to the horses and took a canteen from one of them and rinsed his mouth, swallowed a bit, and carried the canteen to von Hallstatt, then to the girls.

Dagget was sitting beside his wife, his head in his hands.

"Get up!" Shalako said roughly. "Get a rifle. They'll be coming back."

Dagget stared up at him. "I don't care," he mumbled. "I don't care at all."

Shalako took him by the shoulder and lifted him to his feet. "I care, I care one hell of a lot, and grief is a luxury you can't afford. There are other women here, man. Now stand ready."

"There should be more dead," von Hallstatt said. "I could have sworn"

"They carry them off. After dark they'll come for the rest."

"We can't last through another night," Dagget pro tested. "It is impossible!"

"We'll last," Shalako said. He glanced over at von Hallstatt. "How are you, General?"

"I am well," Hallstatt said, "I am well indeed."

The vast roar of the wind did not cease, nor the wild flurries and gusts that blotted out all about them, obscuring even their own faces from one another. Outside the dust was a veil beyond which they could not see.

Nor did the waiting cease. Eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot, they huddled over their guns at the rim of the hollow with the vast bulk of the butte towering above them, and they waited, squinting into the blasting wind, throats parched, lips dried and cracked until blood came, their skins begrimed and gray.

Peering into the dust and the gathering dark, they waited for the Apaches to come again.

About midnight their water gave out, although they had used little for hours. The night wind roared with awful howls, a mighty wall of wind that threw itself against the mountain and swept brush, leaves and branches before it. Loose rock tumbled from the mountain, and then at last, with dawn, the storm spent itself and the wind died away, and they lay like dead men, staring with glazed and empty eyes upon the scene before them.

Lieutenant Hall heard the firing atop the mountain before the storm broke, but could not place the direction of the sound. Several times earlier he had seemed to hear shots but the sounding board of the mountain was rolling the sound away from him.

When the storm struck, he was in the lee of Gillespie Mountain. On his left was the cliff up which the hunting party had climbed. Not knowing of the dim trail, he did not suspect they might have mounted here.

All tracks in the open were obliterated by the storm, and he supposed all other tracks would be gone. In the desert there are places where tracks may outlive the years, but this he did not know. Unaware of the cliff trail, he could only believe the party had gone on through the pass that led across the range and into Animas Valley.

The storm's arrival demanded they take what shelter they could find, and the bulk of Gillespie proved enough to break the force of the wind and sand. Huddled among the boulders, they made a dry camp.

Hall had been asleep but a short time when he was awakened by Jim Hunt, a half-breed Delaware scout. "There is fighting on the mountain," Hunt said. "I have heard shooting."

Hall listened, but heard no sound save the roaring of the wind.

"In this storm? Impossible!"

"There was shooting," Hunt insisted.

Hall got up and shook the sand from his boots, then pulled them on. He hesitated, then scratched a brief note on a page of his notebook.

"Could you get to Forsyth?" A couple of frightened prospectors, hurrying out of the area, had told them of the fight near Horseshoe Canyon, and that Forsyth had remained there.

"I go," Hunt said.

When he had gone, Hall did not return to sleep. He got up and walked to the horses.

They were restless, and kept tugging toward the north.

Brannigan, who was standing horse guard, came up to him. "I think there's water over there, sir," he said. "Want me to have a look?"

"Yes, but be careful."

The lieutenant stood guard while Brannigan made his search, and he was thinking of Laura Davis. He had danced with her once when she had been touring Army posts with her father. It seemed impossible that she could be here, in such a place.

It was nearly light and the wind was dying when Brannigan returned.

"There's water, Lieutenant. About a half a mile from here, right over at the foot of the mountain." He scratched his jaw, which itched from the stubble of whiskers and the dust. "Good water, too."

When the troop had watered their horses and filled their canteens, they made coffee while Hall swept the cliffs with his field glass.

"Something up there," he said finally. "Looks like a body hanging among the rocks well up toward the top."

He stared through the glass, genuinely puzzled, for there was a spot of brightness there, brighter than any reflection from a rifle barrel.

Brannigan walked over to him, holding a cup of coffee. "Lieutenant ... this is for you." He squinted at the cliff. "Want I should go up there? I'm a right curious man, Lieu tenant."

"Let somebody else go. You've done your bit for the day.

"If the lieutenant pleases, I'd take it as a favor. I've a thought we'll find there's been a fight up there."

"All right, Brannigan. If you wish."

When Forsyth followed Jim Hunt back to the foot of Gillespie Mountain, the troop awaited him beside the body of Bosky Fulton.

The body was horribly mutilated.

"One of the men said it was Bosky Fulton, a gunman," Hall commented. "His pockets were stuffed with money and jewels, sir. Must be fifty thousand dollars' worth or more."

Forsyth looked down at the body. He had known Fulton by sight, and had a sharp dislike for the man, but he could feel nothing but pity now. Fulton had died very slowly, and he had died hard.

"He was jammed among the rocks, sir. Brannigan says he must have been winged, and when he fell, he fell with his gun arm under him, caught between the rocks so he couldn't get himself out.

"His right arm was pinned, and the bullet `had gone through his left arm so that he couldn't use it. The Indian must have followed him down and slowly cut him into slices like that."

Literally, the body was covered with blood, blood that had flowed from a thousand small cuts, cuts made deliberately and with care.

"I would wish that on no man, although judging by his pockets, the man was a thief as well as a murderer." "There's others up there, Colonel. Brannigan heard voices, but after what he'd seen he wasn't sure he wanted to investigate. He couldn't make out what they were talking, but it sounded like English."

"There's a trail up there," McDonald suggested. "We passed it back down the canyon."

"All right," Forsyth said, "we'll take a look. Mount your men, Lieutenant."

Shalako shook von Hallstatt's shoulder. "Better wake up, General," he said. "I think we're alone. I think the Indians have pulled out."

Sunrise was two hours gone, and the sky was blue and clear, only a few scattered puffballs of cloud hung against the still blue. The air after the storm was startlingly clear.

No smoke could be seen, nor anything else. Down where the camp had been before the final retreat, birds were scattered about the clearing, picking at crumbs left from their previous meals.

"We've got to have water," Shalako added.

He took the reins of Irina's horses and told Dagget to lead the roan. Then he led the way out of the hollow and down onto the flat where the camp had been.

A few spots of blood were visible, but there were no bodies at all now. The three Apaches they had thrown out of the hollow had been carried away during the night. Carrying his Winchester ready in his hands, and wary of every movement, Shalako led the way.

There was no trouble. All was still. The last of the dust had settled, and the warm sun brought out the smell of pine and cedar. When they reached the spring they dismounted and filled their canteens.

"There's no coffee left, not even the old grounds, but there's tea." Irina looked up at him. "Shall I make tea?" "Sure ... at a time like this tea beats anything.

Strong black tea, hot as you can drink it. The best thing for shock of any kind, and the best stimulant there is for what we've been through."

He glanced around at the small group. The others were as unlike themselves as von Hallstatt. Julia Paige looked haggard and drawn, ten years older than she probably was. Laura Davis was tired, and only Irina seemed fresh, although her eyes were unnaturally large, and the hollows were deep around them.

"Are they gone?" von Hallstatt asked.

Shalako stood up, his eyes ranging the brush and rocks. "I think so. The Army's coming ... they would know that before we would, and they would move out. Anyway, they probably decided what we had to take wasn't worth the price."

Except for Tats-ah-das-ay-go.

He had paid no price at all. He was detached, a thing apart. He was like the wind or the rain, he came and he went and one did not make rules for him.

He might remain behind. It would be like him. "We'll take no chances," Shalako said.

"The one who killed Harris might still be here."

The heat seemed to have blown away with the wind, and the slight warmth from the early sun was only enough to dispel the chill. The birds continued to chirp and call in the brush and trees, and Shalako moved out to one side and sat down, his rifle across his knees.

Von Hallstatt came over and crouched beside him, stoking his pipe.

From where they sat they could look westward over a wild and broken land, the raw-backed mountains, devoid of vegetation for the most part, or scattered with the grays and faint greens of desert growth. The nearer pines and cedars covered only a limited area, and some of those had died and fallen into ruin over the broken red rocks.

"Without you," von Hallstatt said, "we should have been killed ... all of us."

"The land is hard. A man cannot fight this country, he lives with it, or he dies. A man learns to become a part of it, to live like the desert plants do, almost without water, and to use every bit of available cover, like the desert animals do. And to fight an Indian, as Washington tried to tell Braddock, a man has to become like an Indian."

"You spoke once of Saxe, of Vegetius. They are writers on tactics, the knowledge of command. Were you a soldier?"

"I read them." He built a cigarette with careful fingers, his eyes restless in searching the rocks. "When I was six teen I pulled out from home and fought the last two years of the Civil War with the Union forces, a cavalry outfit. I came out a lieutenant.

Didn't figure I knew enough, so I started reading tactics. When the war was over I went to Africa and fought with the Boers in the Basuto War ... maybe six months.

After that I served as a colonel under Shir Ali in Afghanistan in the fighting after the death of Dost Mo hammed."

"Henri thought he knew you."

"He saw me twice, I think. Once during the Franco Prussian War when MacMahon sent me to Metz. I was to take a message through to Bazaine."

"But that was impossible! Metz was surrounded." Shalako glanced at him. "I went back and forth three times... no trouble. Your German sentries should serve on the Indian frontier for a while, General. Any Apache or Kiowa could steal the buttons off their coats."

"And then?"

"The French lost. I shucked my uniform, produced my American papers and went to Paris.

Stayed awhile, and went to London...."

Julia Paige suddenly rushed up to them. "Are you mad? Are you going to sit there all day drinking tea and smoking? Or are we going to get out of here?" Her voice rose stridently.

"There is time, Julia," von Hallstatt replied. "We are as safe here as we would be moving, and the Army will come. And then, we must arrange burial for our friends."

She started to protest, then turned away, dragging her feet. "We will be killed," she said dully. "We will all be killed."