Shalako (1962) (8 page)

"Eatin' your wagon stock, most likely. They don't figure we'll be goin' any place."

Irina felt a chill of apprehension. Lying on the cold ground, her eyes searched the desert, but she saw nothing. She heard movement behind them and glanced around to see a teamster hurrying toward the tank with a bucket. Yet even as she looked he seemed to stumble, his knees crumpled and the sound of a shot battered against the hills as he toppled face downward upon the sand.

Von Hallstatt's rifle had come up sharply, expectantly, but there was nothing at which to shoot, simply nothing at all.

"Three men killed, one missing," Buffalo spat into the sand, "an' we killed maybe two of them."

The hours dragged. Irina slipped from her position and careful to keep under cover, returned to the stable. Laura had a fire going and coffee on. Mako was breaking eggs into a frying pan. Over at the house where most of the teamsters had slept, another fire was going. There was an occasional shot.

Charles Dagget was breaking down the partition between two stalls for fuel, and making an awkward job of it. It was early, but already the sun was hot.

Suddenly, the morning air was rent by a shocking scream of pure agony, the scream of an animal in mortal anguish. Irina came up, her eyes wide with horror, and Edna clapped both hands over her ears. It came again, that same hoarse, choking scream ... the scream of something in pain beyond belief.

Von Hallstatt cried out, "What in God's name is that?"

"Now"-Buffalo rolled his tobacco in his cheek and spat-"now we know where that other horse guard is."

The sound of gun fire awakened him. He lay on his back staring up at the last of the stars, listening.

He picked up the cigarette he had carefully rolled the night before and put it between his lips. As he struck his match, there were other shots. At least they had not been caught sleeping. They would make a fight of it then.

His mouth tasted bad and the stubble on his jaw itched. He should have been twenty miles along the Tucson trail.

He threw off his blanket and sat up, careful to check the cliffs around with cool, dispassionate eyes. He was a man without illusions, and there was no reason to believe that all the Apaches were over yonder at the point of the Hatchets. He might have picked up a few himself.

The Arab nickered softly and came up to be petted and scratched, making a show of pulling away from his hand, but not doing it.

He saddled the horse first, ready to ride out in a hurry if need be. Then he took up his rifle and led the horse to the trickle of water. His rifle would not change what was happening back there, and he saw no reason to get him self killed because of another man's mistakes. He made enough mistakes of his own without paying for another Nor was he opposed to boy generals. The younger ones were the best, as time and history had proved again and again. Napoleon had completed his Italian campaign by the time he was twenty-five, Hannibal was thirty-three at the Battle of Cannae, Alexander the Great had been twenty-five at the Battle of Arbela, and Wolfe had been thirty-two at the Battle of Quebec ... he could think of fifty others.

The older ones were slower to change their ways, al ways wishing to fight new battles the way they had won old ones.

From time to time there were solitary shots ... more than likely fired by the defenders who probably were seeing Indians where there were none.

He broke some branches from an antelope bush and fed them to the Arab. The stallion nosed doubtfully at the strange stuff, curling his lips around the leaves, hesitant, but aware that for some reason the man wanted him to eat them. Trying them, he liked the taste, and accepted more.

"You'd better learn, boy. You won't have oats very often, traveling with me."

He left his night camp then, and concealed the horse high up in the rocks where there was more antelope bush and another forage plant called wool fat. Then seated against the rock that offered the best position, he studied the situation.

The problem was not one to be solved by a lot of dashing about and shooting. If solved at all it would be by thinking, thinking first and carefully.

It was reasonable to suppose that only a small part of the Apaches were involved at the ranch. As the smoke signals told him, Chato was seeking reinforcements from San Carlos, and some of the Indians had left the reservation to join him.

Moreover, owing to the necessity of living off the country, the Apaches coming up from Mexico were traveling in more than one group, hence one could never be sure of where to expect an enemy.

Colonel Forsyth was in command at Fort Cummings, and would be out in force to round up the Indians.

If some trick could draw off the attackers at the ranch, then the group there might be gotten away to Fort Cummings or into a better defensive position in the mountains.

At the ranch, the defenders would be driven to the buildings eventually, and cut off from water.

Putting himself in Forsyth's position, Shalako tried to guess the moves that would be made. Both the Animas and Playas valleys offered highroads into Mexico for the fleeing Apaches. Hence troops would surely be sent south along the Hatchets and along the Pelonchillos.

As always at these heights in the Southwestern deserts, the air was unbelievably clear. From where he sat the ranch buildings were quite visible, as were the white tops of the wagons. He could distinguish no features of either, but the place itself was clear and sharp.

What was the old rule for judging distance? At one mile the trunks of large trees could be distinguished, at something over two miles-say two miles and a half-one could distinguish chimneys and windows, at six miles windmills and towers could be seen, and at nine miles a church steeple could be recognized.

The rules were for average atmosphere, much thicker than the clear desert air. In the desert there was no smoke, dust, or moisture as a rule, and only one-fourth the atmosphere of the Eastern states, consequently one could see much farther.

Seated on a rock in the morning sun, Shalako watched the ranch and considered the problem in all its aspects. There was just a chance that a smoke signal might work, and he was going to try.

Heat waves shimmered above a desert where nothing moved. Lying on his stomach at one corner of the ranch house, Frederick von Hallstatt, baron and general, tasted the flavor of bitterness.

Sweat trickled down his forehead and into his eyes. From time to time he dried his palms on his shirt, and licked the sweat from his upper lip with his tongue. Heat waves shimmered, and he squinted into the unreality of the desert with a knot of cold fear clutching at his belly.

On his left, some forty yards away, lay an Apache warrior, one arm thrown wide. To von Hallstatt's knowledge this was the only Indian he had killed and he had fired at least thirty rounds.

He swore bitterly, in German. This was not the kind of fighting he was used to, nor the kind he expected. He glanced around at the others.

Henri faced south from the stable. Buffalo Harris, his skull wrapped in a bloody bandage, was facing west. On the north Charles Dagget held a rifle in unfamiliar hands, and beside him was Roy Harding, late of Ohio, and Bosky Fulton, that ill-smelling, hatchet-faced gunman. Rio Hockett was inside the house.

Early that morning one of the mule skinners had slipped a hand through a wagon flap and stolen a bottle of cognac, and when he stole that bottle he stole death.

The bottle lay out there now, only a third empty, reflecting the morning sun in a bright arrow of light. It had taken only a couple of swallows to make the mule skinner careless, and bottle in hand he started across the open ground toward the stable. The bullet had gone in over his ear, mushroomed, and tore away half his skull when it emerged on the other side.

Inside the stable in the coolest spot on the ground floor lay Hans Kreuger. A handsome young man who danced well in the ballrooms of Berlin, Vienna, and Innsbruck, he lay dying on a pallet against the wall. He had made up his mind to die well, for it was the last thing left to a man, and he had a pride in such matters.

He was a sincere young man who had tried all his life to do things with dignity and manner. He was a proud, but not a vain man, convinced there were certain ways in which a man should conduct himself, and he had lived according to his principles.

It was incredible to him, as it was to von Hallstatt, that their losses had been greater than the attacker, for it went against all military reason.

Hans Kreuger lay on his back staring up at the ceiling. Whenever anyone on the upper floor of the barn took a step a little puff of dust came through the cracks. Cobwebs trailed their gray nets to catch stray sunbeams ... perspiration beaded his face but he held himself tight against the pain that was in him and thought of how little a man knows of what destiny has in store.

How proud he had been when he became aide to General von Hallstatt! How proud his parents had been when he was asked to accompany the general on his hunting trip to America, partly as aide to the general, and partly as a guest.

The others of the party would be people a young man of poor family rarely met. It would be a unique opportunity. He had no idea when accepting the offer that he was accepting an invitation to die.

To remain a man and a gentleman to the end, this was all that remained.

Removed from active combat by the bullets that ripped into his body, he could still observe. Laura Davis had grown somehow. She was no longer the friendly, pretty girl, although she was that, also. She was more quiet, more sure of herself. She worked at whatever she did with quick but capable hands. Laura Davis ... young, beautiful, and exciting. And he lay dying.

Edna Dagget he had once thought frail but lovely, now she was frail and haggard, her loveliness scarcely a memory. Her lips worked with wordless movement, and at every shot, she cringed. A few days ago he had admired her rather biting wit, and her coolness, yet when the emergency developed she proved a hollow shell with nothing inside.

Her husband, whom Edna had always spoken of in disparaging terms, had shown surprising strength. He al most seemed to welcome the fighting. He was entirely ignorant of warfare, yet he was observant, quick to learn, and careful to take no chances.

Hans Kreuger closed his eyes against the ache and the tiredness and tried to remember how the apple trees had looked when they bloomed across the countryside around his home in Hofheim, near Frankfort. He felt Laura wipe the perspiration from his face, and he opened his eyes to look up at her, proud that he could conceal his pain.

How excited his family had been when he became aide to the baron! He was a powerful man of ancient family and much influence, and Hans's family assured him his fortune was made. How little had any of them known!

How can a man know? How can he guess which decision it is, often an inconsequential one, that sets him irrevocably upon the highway to failure, success, or sudden death?

How can a man guess that from one particular instant he is committed, where the cogs will fit, one into the other, and each one turning the wheel inevitably closer and closer? How can he know as he laughs over a glass of wine, as he marches proudly, as he talks softly to a girl on the terrace ... how can he know that each is a move that brings him closer to the end?

And had he taken another turn, met another girl, drunk his wine in another cafe, he might have lived a decade longer... or three decades even?

In the loft over the stable, Irina yielded her place at the window to Bosky Fulton.

She had been looking out over the desert when she heard faint movement behind her and smelled the stale odor of unwashed clothing. She turned and he leered at her, his shirt collar edged with grime, the grime showing in the skin of his neck.

He grasped her arm and pulled her toward him and she jerked free, astonished and angry.

"Aw, don't look at me that way! Before this is over you'll be glad to ride out of here with somebody who can take care of you."

"I can take care of myself."

"Can you now?" He gestured toward the ladder. "Go ahead an' fix the grub. Meanwhile you better think on this: you cotton up to me or you stay here as bait for those 'Paches. I can get you out of this, and that fancy Fritz Baron of yours, he can't get himself out."

She was trembling with shock and anger when she came down the steps. Yet she was frightened, too, deeply, seriously frightened. And she could not remember being frightened in the same way before this.

One by one the men came for their food, crawling around the rim of the circle, keeping to the small shadow and what protection the buildings and wagons offered.

There was little talk. The men ate quickly, seriously, then returned the way they had come. Only Charles Dagget was excited. "I think I hit one," he said. "Scared him, any way.

Irina scarcely heard what he said. Should she say any thing about what Fulton had told her? And did he really believe what he said? Or was that merely something to use as an argument to her?

He believed it. She suddenly knew that he believed it. Bosky Fulton did not think they were going to get out alive.

Coming after what Shalako had said, she was convinced of their situation. Yet it had not been that which frightened her, but Fulton's own attitude. His cock-sureness, his disregard of what would happen to the others, and the sudden sharp awareness that nobody here could protect her. Von Hallstatt was a man of undoubted courage, so was Count Henri, but she had heard enough talk around camp to know that something else was demanded, and she had seen some very tough men walk softly around Bosky Fulton.