Shalako (1962) (6 page)

"Finally, or so the story goes, an old soldier who was a friend of the bishop filled a keg with Bernkasteler and, in spite of the protests, wheeled it into the bishop's room and filled a glass with it, and then another.

"The following morning the bishop was much better, and he declared, `This wine, this fine doctor, has cured me!' Hence, the name of the wine."

"It is growing cold," Edna Dagget said. "I believe I will go in."

Charles arose and walked with her toward the wagon where they slept.

"She is not fitted for this life," von Hallstatt said. "Charles would have done well to leave her behind." Irina glanced at him, and said, "Wives are not so easily left behind. A wife's place is with her husband."

"Not at war," von Hallstatt replied, "nor the hunt. Still, hers was a good idea.

It grows late and tomorrow I want to try for a big horn." He got to his feet. "Good night, my friends."

He turned from the table and walked away, and for a moment there was silence. Then Count Henri said, "And how about you, Julia? Are you going with us tomorrow?"

Julia Paige smiled quickly. "Of course, I cannot leave all the hunting to Irina."

Laura Davis had been quiet. "You know," she said, "I agree with you, Henri, and with Irina. I think we should leave, as quickly as possible."

When Julia started to object, she continued. "My father entertained General Crook one evening while I was at home, and they discussed the Apache. Some of the stories were horrible, utterly horrible! They did not know I was listening," she added.

Hans Kreuger shrugged. "I trust the baron," he said. "He is a man of great judgment and discretion."

"It is different here," Laura said. "I think we should go.

"You heard what he said," Irina replied, "and we are his guests."

Count Henri slowly filled his pipe. "I think we should go, Hans. There is no game here that we cannot find farther north, and under pleasanter circumstances."

"Except Apaches." Hans glanced over at Henri. "I know the baron seriously wishes for a bit of fighting. I have heard him express his contempt for this American Army that chases Indians but cannot catch them."

"Has he had experience with guerrilla warfare, Hans?" Henri asked gently. "I have ... much like this, I think, for I fought in the mountains and desert against the Arabs in North Africa.

"Luckily, I had read Washington's comments on Brad dock's defeat by Indians and was cautious. Believe me, the circumstances are much different, and no tactics so far taught in Europe can prepare an army for that kind of fighting."

"Speaking of tactics," Kreuger commented, "I wonder what school the man Shalako attended?"

"School?" Henri glanced around at the young German. "I understood he had lived here all his life."

"Perhaps ... but he mentioned Jomini, Saxe, and Vegetius. I should not expect to hear them mentioned by a buffalo hunter, or whatever he is."

Henri walked off toward her wagon with Julia, and Hans followed. There was a slight stir of wind that ruffled the flames. Buffalo came from the shadows and added fuel to the fire, yet he did not build the big flames.

The bed of coals glowed a deep red, here and there a yellow tendril of flame lifting with the smoke toward the stars.

"You liked him, didn't you?" Laura said.

"Him?" Irina looked up, startled. Then she laughed, knowing evasion was impossible and slightly ridiculous. "I don't know. I never knew anyone quite like him." "Except your father."

"Oh ... not very much. They both like wild country. I don't think that makes any difference, anyway."

"And both of them are those big, self-contained men who do everything well. And Shalako is a handsome man, Irina."

"I never really looked at him ... not that way. Some how it did not seem to matter.

It was something else that impressed me. I cannot remember ever feeling so safe as I was with him."

There was silence between them, and she looked out over the desert, wondering. Where was he now? Was he still riding? Westward, perhaps?

"It's very silly," she said suddenly, "talking this way about, well, a man like that.

There's no telling what he really is, and, after all, a girl just doesn't go running off with any man who rides in out of the desert."

Irina remained watching the stars over the mountains long after Laura had gone to bed. The general, Baron Frederick von Hallstatt, was a man of strength and courage, an interesting man in every sense, but hard in a way that she did not like. Occasionally, and rarely to be sure, he had shown an utter disregard for the feelings of others, even including herself, that was disturbing.

He was ruthless, that she accepted. So for that matter was this stranger, this man Shalako who had suddenly occupied so much of their thinking by merely appearing on the scene. Shalako was ruthless, she knew this at once, but his ruthlessness would be applied to enemies, not to those close to him.

A lonely man, traveling alone and living alone, he was nevertheless far from selfish.

That he had ridden off into the desert to leave them was, seeing it as he did, simply good sense.

Their party had not been invited into this area, and what had begun as a sort of lark when the excitement of hunting buffalo had palled, had suddenly turned into some thing foolhardy and dangerous.

When she had first accepted the baron's invitation to hunt on the prairies and in the mountains it had seemed tremendously exciting. Many Europeans had come West to hunt on the plains. Hunters talked as much of hunting buffalo in America as they talked of hunting lions in Africa or tigers in India.

The element of danger from possibly hostile tribes added spice to the idea, and yet seemed very remote. It was one thing to talk of hostile Indians in the fashionable restaurants of New York or Saratoga, and quite another thing to face the danger of attack in a remote desert.

What had seemed exciting in a conversation at Del monico's in New York was frightful here, and she was not calmed by Frederick von Hallstatt's attitude.

The fact remained that Pete Wells was dead, and his death was in part her own fault.

In part it was all their faults for coming out here in the first place. How many more would die before this venture ended? If there was no attack, they should leave.

Suddenly, she resolved. Regardless of what the others did, she was going to Fort Cummings as Shalako had advised and then back home.

The crunch of a boot on the gravel behind her was her only warning. And then the smell of stale, unwashed clothing before the voice spoke.

"Waitin' for somebody, ma'am?" It was Bosky Fulton. "If you are, you just don't have to wait no longer."

She turned and measured him coolly. "I am waiting for no one. Will you step aside?"

Fulton made no effort to move. "You're goin' to need a friend, so don't come it so high and mighty over me, ma'am. You better make up your mind that you're goin' to be nice to me, or else you'll find yourself in the hands of some Apache ... and that could be worse. Could be." He chuckled.

"Will you step aside?"

Fulton hesitated, grinning insultingly, and then he stepped aside and as she walked toward her wagon, he said, "And if you want to get that general of yours killed, you just tell him what I said."

She was trembling when she reached the wagon and she stopped, her knees shaking.

She remembered then some of the talk around the camp, that Bosky Fulton was a gunman who had killed several men in gun battles.

Suddenly there was no safety anywhere, and the night seemed filled with crowding menace.

She started to get into the wagon, then hesitated again. Would they not be safer in the upper room at the stable? If she and Laura, and some of the others...?

Shalako heard the whisper of the approaching riders' coming through the sand, and he eased his position in the saddle, holding the Colt ready to fire.

The horsemen, riding single file, came like ghosts out of the night, and for an instant each Indian was starkly outlined against the sky as he reached the edge of the wash, then dipping into it he dipped into shadow and was gone, like the targets in a shooting gallery. There were six.

Only those brief, momentary shadows, a whisper of hoofs in the sand, the rattle of a stone as they left the wash, and they were gone.

He walked the Arab steadily into the night, holding his pace down, wanting no Apache to smell dust as he had smelled it, for others might be coming.

There was a canyon of which he knew, a canyon that reached back into the mountains south of Gillespie Peak, and there was a place there he might hole up. Farther up the canyon there was a trickle of water that occasionally flowed in the early months of the year.

He walked the stallion for approximately three miles, then touched him lightly with a spur and let the Arab run. The horse ran tirelessly until the black wall of the mountain loomed over them. He knew when he had reached the mouth of the canyon by the sudden coolness of the air, and turned the Arab.

Twice he rode past the place he sought, but finally he located the small hollow, shielded from the rest of the canyon by brush and boulders. There was an acre or so of sparse grass where water from the spring kept it fresh. There he unsaddled and picketed the horse on the grass.

Spreading his ground sheet and blankets, he stretched out with a sigh, easing his tired muscles and closing his lids over eyes that ached from the strain of watching a far land under a blazing sun. Once more he opened his eyes to look up at the pinnacle of the mountain, and the last sound he heard was the placid munching of the horse, close beside him.

Lieutenant Colonel George A. Forsyth, in command at Fort Cummings, replaced the letter on his desk and was for a moment swept by a wave of helpless fury. His lips tightened and he sat very still, fighting down his anger before he looked up at Lieutenant McDonald.

The colonel pushed the letter across his desk. "Look at this! Of all the damned fools!"

McDonald took the letter and read it through twice before realizing all it implied.

Fort Concho, Texas April 3, 1882

Officer Commanding, Fort Cummings, New Mexico Territory Sir:

The Baron (General) Frederick von Hallstatt and party, believed in your area. Last seen, vicinity of Lost Horse Lake, buffalo hunting. Eight wagons, twenty odd persons, including four white women. One of the latter is Lady Irina Carnarvon, another is the daughter of U. S. Senator Y. F. Davis. Locate, and escort out of the area.

Sincerely, John A. Russell, General Commanding Lieutenant McDonald was shocked. "My God! Four women! At a time like this!"

Colonel Forsyth tapped his pencil on the edge of the desk and studied the map before him. If von Hallstatt's party had been in the vicinity of Lost Horse Lake on or before the third it was just possible they had reached this area. But why would they come here?

Antelope were the only game, and there were more of those in the country from which they had just come. In the mountains there were big horn sheep, but they also could be found farther north. The desert mountains to the south were bleak and inhospitable to an outsider, offering little, promising less.

A veteran Indian fighter, dangerously wounded in the Beecher Island fight in which Roman Nose was killed, he respected the Indian as a fighting man, and knew few warriors more cunning than Chato existed.

The barrel-chested, flat-nosed Apache had the torso of a two-hundred-pound man on his stocky body, and enough battle lust for a dozen men of his size. Not an hour before had come word that Chato was over the border and moving north.

Moreover, Nachita and Loco had fled the San Carlos reservation with a party of young braves who were spoiling for a fight, and undoubtedly the two groups would meet somewhere to the south. And right in the middle of the country where the meeting was likely to take place was a party of casual tourists, ignorant of the desert and the Apache.

If anything happened to any one of them he would be replying by endorsement to the War Department for the next two years.

Colonel Forsyth's force was too small and the area he was expected to patrol too large. Military forces much larger than his had failed to pin down the will-o'-the-wisp of an Apache band. Chato would be sure to raid north and east, trying meanwhile to augment his forces still further by drawing upon discontented elements at San Carlos.

For months Forsyth's scouts at the reservation had warned that trouble was stirring.

"Lieutenant," Forsyth said at last, "I want you to take your scouts and ride west toward Stein's Peak, then swing back a little south of east and come up toward the Hatchets. If you cut the trail of those wagons go in and bring them out of there.

Understand?"

"Yes, sir... I have heard, sir, that von Hallstatt can be difficult."

"You are a soldier, McDonald. Bring him out of there." "Yes, sir."

"Lieutenant Hall will make a scout toward the Hatchets, so be on the lookout for him. I shall follow with six troops of the 4th Cavalry."

When McDonald had gone, Sandy Forsyth sat back in his chair and considered the situation.