Shalako (1962) (7 page)

He was a handsome, square-jawed man with the scars of his wounds to prove what Indians could do. Trust an Indian to know of any movement in the area ... there was not the slightest possibility that Chato did not know of the von Hallstatt group.

Hall would swing south and west, McDonald south and east, so if von Hallstatt was in the area they would be sure to cut his trail. At the same time their pincers movement might catch Chato in between. Meanwhile he would come down from the north with the 4th Cavalry.

The colonel scowled as he studied the map. That was the way he had planned it and that was how it was supposed to work. The difficulty was that things almost never worked as planned, for Chato and his band would break up and proceed as individual members to a predetermined rendezvous. He had seen such groups fragment before, leaving nothing but a confusion of tracks almost impossible to fool low.

Von Hallstatt had horses, and by the time the Apaches came up with his party, the Apache would need horses.

So few men, so much territory. Forsyth walked to the window and looked out. Somewhere in all that dusty brown vastness was a party of dusty brown bodies, bodies with hard faces and narrow eyes, scanning the desert as he was scanning it. And those bodies were those of forty or fifty of the most dangerous fighting men on earth.

The moves had been made, and it remained to see what happened. His task was to reach von Hallstatt before the Apaches did and, if possible, to capture or defeat the Apaches.

He swore bitterly. A party of casual hunters had gone in boldly, carelessly, where companies of soldiers rode with caution.

Lying on her pallet in the upper room at the stable, Irina could not sleep. It had taken all her arguments and persuasive powers to convince the others that they should move from their comfortable beds in the wagons to the stable, but even now she was not satisfied.

Only Laura Davis had listened and agreed, but Laura's mind had been made up beforehand.

Edna Dagget had complained of the trouble, Julia Paige had scoffed mildly, but with a bit of a bite to her scoffing, too.

Julia had long had her cap set for Baron von Hallstatt, a fact of which only von Hallstatt seemed unaware, and it irked Julia to see Irina walking off so easily with the man she wanted.

Lying in the darkness, Irina stared up at the ceiling overhead, and considered the people with whom she faced this emergency, if such it would prove to be.

With the exception of Count Henri, none of these people had ever faced any kind of a difficulty, or were less prepared to deal with an emergency.

Frederick had been a highly successful officer in a highly organized army, accustomed to issuing orders and seeing them obeyed, yet the organization of that army was such that it left little initiative to any of its officers.

He had won victories over a disorganized, retreating foe, one whose generals had grown old and tired in their Positions and who thought in terms of wars long completed and over. Frederick had received orders and given them, but there had been little chance for improvisation.

How would he react against an enemy when he would receive no orders himself, and where he must fight in per son against an elusive enemy?

Count Henri, somewhat older than Frederick, was in many ways much younger. Henri had fought against Frederick in the Franco-Prussian War, but what was more important, Henri had served in the African desert against a foe much like the present one. Yet he was a man who talked little.

Frederick was brave ... of that she had no doubt, yet more and more she was beginning to be aware that he was not only terribly self-centered, but that he was also without imagination.

Charles Dagget was not a fighting man. He was a diplomat, shrewd enough, congenial, and pleasant company always. This was his first venture into any wilderness greater than the environs of Paris or London. Furthermore, he was not suited to a rugged life.

Edna Dagget was a pretty woman, too thin, and apt to become somewhat hysterical ... yet a lovely and gracious person under normal circumstances.

Laura Davis was the only American among them, a pleasant, charming girl, just short of being really beautiful, and a fine horsewoman. She had traveled in Europe, lived in Washington and New York, and had hunted in Virginia and Kentucky.

Hans Kreuger had been Frederick's aide during a brief period at the Franco-Prussian War's end. A serious, capable young man from a poor but honorable family. Like Frederick and Henri, he was an excellent rifle shot.

Edna loathed guns, and Charles had never fired any kind of a gun until this trip, and was notably poor as a rifle shot. Julia was an excellent horsewoman but uninterested in guns ... as for she herself, she had hunted with her father from childhood, killing her first wild boar at fourteen with her father standing by, and her first lion at seventeen.

Hours after she finally dropped off to sleep she awakened with a start, staring wide-eyed at the roof above. For a moment she could not recall where she was. The faint glow from the dying fire reflected on the underside of the roof, coming through the wide open door at the side of the building, which they had opened to get fresh air.

Otherwise, it was quite dark and she could hear no sound from the outside. Careful to make no sound so as not to disturb the others, she got to her feet and tiptoed to the door.

The fire was a bed of glowing red coals with only a few tendrils of flame doing their weird ballet above them. Beside the fire, his chin on his chest and evidently asleep, was the sentry.

The area within the circle of buildings was perhaps thirty yards long by twenty wide, and the firelight flickered on the canvas wagon tops and made weird, dancing shadows around their spokes. A few men slept under the wagons.

Nothing stirred in the space below, yet she stood for an instant, enjoying the stillness of the night and the red glow of the coals. Then from the corner of her eye she seemed to detect movement near the fire.

The guard was slumped forward, the black log near the fire was ... there had been no log!

She reached quickly for her rifle, but even as her hand grasped it, the log came suddenly erect, a knife flashed in the firelight, and the guard toppled forward, falling at the edge of the fire.

She fired ... too quickly. The Indian turned as if stunned and looked up at her.

She saw the wide, hard-boned face and the dark holes where deep sunk eyes would be, and then a second shot merged with the echo of her own. The Indian took two staggering steps and fell on his face.

From outside the circle there was a sudden chorus of yells and then a rush of hoofs that turned into a thunder of racing horses and mules ... and then the sound died and there was only the dead guard and the naked dusty, brown figure sprawled face down on the hard-packed earth to indicate that anything had happened.

Men came from all over the yard, rushing out, then ducking for cover as there was an outburst of firing. She had never seen men take cover so quickly.

Edna Dagget sat up, clutching the blankets to her breast. "What is it? What has happened?"

"We've been attacked." Irina was surprised at her own calm. "A man has been killed."

Irina dressed quickly, and beside her Laura was dressing also. Irina took up her rifle and started toward the steps. Edna Dagget stared at her, frightened. "Where are you going? Why is everybody dressing? It isn't even daylight."

"We should all dress and be ready to help. A man has been killed."

"Killed?" Edna Dagget's shrill cry faded into a gasp of horror, and she started to dress also.

For the moment there was no further shooting. After the outburst of sound the silence was frightening. Stars held still in the sky, and the night was velvet soft. It was unreasonable that a man was dead ... two men.

She went to the guard and, taking his sleeve, pulled him away from the edge of the fire that was already smoldering in his coat.

Buffalo called softly. "Ma'am! Get out of the light! Quick"

She turned quickly and sprang away from the fire just as a bullet kicked sparks near where she had been standing. She knelt beside Buffalo, at the rear wheel of a wagon.

There was something reassuring about his stalwart body. He was unshaved, and probably unbathed, but he possessed an air of competence that gave her confidence.

Buffalo had drawn up the old chopping block and a couple of loose rocks for added protection.

"If I had been a moment sooner I could have saved that guard. I did not recognize that Indian until just before he moved."

"Figured that was you shooting. You set him right up for me. That was good thinking, ma'am."

Inordinately pleased at the compliment, she crouched lower, looking out into the darkness. Here and there she could make out clumps of creosote bush, but nothing more.

For the first time she thought of what had happened and its meaning to them. The Apaches had stampeded their wagon stock and now they were immobilized unless they wished to abandon all their belongings. The saddle stock had all been held inside the circle ... a small concession to Shalako's warning.

"Were there no guards outside the circle?"

"Two. Look close and you can see one of them lying out there. He's the lucky one, he's dead."

Vague recollections returned to mind of stories she had heard, and only half-listened to, about what Indians did to prisoners. Suddenly the night was filled with menace, and with horror.

The castle in Wales where she had lived, London, Paris, New York... they seemed to be in another world. "How much chance do we have?"

With other women he might have lied, but he respected the coolness and intelligence of this girl and she seemed somehow one of them. In part it was her own at attitude and quickness with the rifle, in part it was the fact that she had loaned a horse to Shalako.

"Less'n fifty-fifty, I'd say. Ma'am, I ain't a-lyin' to you, you keep one bullet for yourself, d' you hear?"

She had never thought of death as something that could happen to her... older people died, or lives were lost in accidents, and she heard of them or read of them in newspapers and was rarely stirred. The facility with which people bore the hardships of others was amazing.

She had always known that someday she would die. We are born with this knowledge or acquire it soon after birth, but death always seems remote and far-off. To realize there was no special protection for her... that she, Lady Irina Carnarvon, could die a bloody and cruel death out here in these sand hills filled her with horror and distaste. "He was right to leave us," she said.

"Mighty independent man. Wish he was here, though." Buffalo Harris was doing some thinking of his own. How did a man get himself into a fix like this? How long had he been learning about Indians, anyway? Since he was six, crouched in a cornfield with his sister, listening to the awful, dying screams of his father and mother.

He had fought Sioux, Kiowa, and Comanche, and certainly knew better than to latch onto a greenhorn outfit like this.

It didn't make any kind of sense, the things a man would do. He was loafing around and not even broke when the offer came, and the others were taking it up, so he did too. It sounded like a few months of mighty easy living and good grub ... now he would be lucky to get out with his hair.

"Have you known him long?"

Buffalo shifted the tobacco to his other cheek. Odd, how good tobacco tasted when time was a-wasting. "Awhile. He's a man minds his own affairs, and doesn't wait around much. I mean he rides in and if something isn't taking on to interest him, first thing you know, he's gone.

"He prospects a mite, rides herd once in a while. Been over the trail to Kansas with cow herds a couple of times, and one way or another, he keeps busy."

With faint gray where night's darkness had been, the Apaches came out of the desert like ghosts, running silently in a staggered skirmish line. Buffalo, whose eyes had never stopped searching, nailed the first one off the ground.

He saw the warrior's knee buckle at his shot, and then the girl beside him was shooting, and she put a bullet into the chest of the man he had wounded. And then they vanished like puffs of smoke ... only they were closer now.

Buffalo turned his shaggy head to grin at her. "Two for us. Ma'am, you must have done a sight of shootin'." Von Hallstatt ran up and dropped to the earth beside them. His eyes were hot with excitement. "They move quickly." He pointed with the muzzle of his rifle. "One dropped to the ground out there, and when he rises, I shall kill him."

"He shifted position soon as he hit dirt," Buffalo advised. "They always do."

Von Hallstatt glanced at him irritably, then turned his eyes back to the desert.

The light was growing now... He would not have believed that thirty or forty men lay within rifle shot.

As if speaking only to Irina, Buffalo began to discuss the Apache. "Start figurin'

'em like other folks an' you'll get yourself killed. You never get more than a split-second shot at an Apache, and in a setup like this they attack on foot, all scattered out.

An' they can wait.. . Time means nothin' to an Indian."

"Why don't they attack?" von Hallstatt demanded impatiently.