The Colonel's Lady (12 page)

It didn't seem possible, but Gorgan was a strange one and you could never tell what he was thinking. I uncorked the whisky bottle this time and emptied it into a mess cup and downed it. Gorgan, goddamn him. If he hadn't come along maybe Caroline would have...

But she wouldn't have. She had taken a chance once, in her own house. She wouldn't do it again.

It was A Company's turn to stand retreat formation that day, but I wasn't in it. As the band played, as the troopers marched stiffly back and forth across the parade to the bellowing of officers and noncoms, I remembered Gorgan's supper invitation.

Well, I had let myself in for it and there was nothing much I could do about it now. I began to strip down as a preparation for shaving and bathing. As I emptied my pockets I came across the twin silver stars that Caroline had given me. The symbols of Caroline's ambition for me. I threw them on the table with the rest of the things and went out on the back stoop to wash and shave.

The retreat formation broke up as I lathered my face, and before long I heard somebody knocking on my front door. “Come on in,” I called. “I'm back here at the wash bench.”

It was Halan. He came to the back door and looked out. “I brought you an official copy of the patrol orders,” he said. “I thought you might want to look them over.”

“Thanks. Why don't you wait inside? I'll be through in a minute.”

“All right. You getting ready to go somewhere?”

“Over to Gorgan's. His wife invited me for supper.”

I was splashing water on my face and couldn't see him, but I knew Halan was grinning. “Are you sure it was Gorgan's wife,” he asked, “or his daughter?”

“His wife,” I said. “And I'm going because I'm damn tired of Army mess, and for no other reason.”

Halan laughed and went back into the hut. I finished shaving and rinsed my face and toweled off. Maybe it was just as well, I thought, if Halan wanted to think there was something between me and Sarah Gorgan. At least it would help keep attention away from Caroline. I found my shirt and pulled it over my head and called, “I'd offer you a drink, but I don't have any left.”

No answer from inside. I gathered up the soap and towel and washpan and went in. Halan wasn't anywhere in sight.

The orders were on the table beside the odds and ends I had emptied out of my pockets, but the Captain was gone. I went to the window and saw him striding across the parade toward the A Company barracks.

Well, maybe a captain had more important things to do than talk to a second lieutenant.

I went through the orders, but there was nothing there that I didn't already know. They were exactly like any other set of orders, put forth in cold precise military phraseology, and it was difficult to believe that I was reading the master plan for my own execution. But that was what it was.

I sat down and went through them again, trying to think of them in that light. I found that I couldn't do it. I couldn't believe that this scout detail would be my last. No matter how well the Colonel had planned it. No matter how much he willed it.

Gorgan, Halan—all the others—maybe they didn't think I would come back from that scout. But I knew I would. I'd fool all of them. I would come back and I would take Caroline from under the Colonel's nose, and to hell with all of them.

I wadded the orders up in one fist and hurled them across the room. “To hell with you especially, Colonel! If you want to kill me you'll have to do it directly, not by military maneuvering. Because I'll come back every time!”

I felt better after that outburst. I rustled up some clean pants and a blouse and headed up the row toward Gorgan's.

The Lieutenant's place was larger than my hut at the end of the row. About four rooms, I judged, with a lean-to at the back for cooking. Over the years they had managed to pick up things that gave the house a homelike touch. No expensive copies of famous paintings, as Caroline had, and no heavy pieces of silver. But there were rich colored blankets from the Navajo country, and mounted antelope heads above the doors, as well as a great many pieces of needlework, some framed and hanging, some serving as scarves and doilies on the tables. There was a pleasant mixed aroma of tobacco and scrubbing soap and rich cooking.

“We're happy you could come, Mr. Reardon,” said Mrs. Gorgan.

“It's an honor to be invited to your home, Mrs. Gorgan.”

“Good evening, Mr. Reardon,” Sarah Gorgan said, and I was surprised that somehow she looked more grown up in a plain cotton dress than in the elaborate party dress she had worn to the dance.

“Good evening, Miss Gorgan.”

“Cigar, Reardon?” the Lieutenant said, offering an open box of crooked cheroots. “I've got some Kentucky rye around here somewhere that I've been saving since God knows when.” Handily, the whisky happened to be on a table in front of him, so he poured some into two glasses and handed me one. The women vanished quietly into the back part of the house, and we could hear the opening and closing of oven doors, and the heavy fragrance of venison roast drifted into the room.

We tasted the whisky. It was good, and I had an idea that Gorgan had borrowed on next month's pay to pay the sutler for it. Why he had gone to so much trouble for a second lieutenant, and a new one at that, I didn't know.

“Likely the women will be busy for a while,” Gorgan said, sitting down and stretching his legs. He dallied with his glass, looking thoughtfully into the amber liquid. “Ah—I don't suppose the Colonel has changed his plans, has he?” he asked finally. “About the scout detail, I mean?”

“I got my orders a little while ago. They're still just about the same.”

The Lieutenant sighed, looked as if he were about to say something, and then changed his mind. “Maybe I'm doing a lot of worrying over nothing,” he said. “You can take care of yourself in an open fracas, you proved that. But going Apache-hunting on their own ground, that's something else. It looks like a job for a more experienced man, I'd say.”

“I have more than three years' cavalry experience.”

Gorgan snorted. “This isn't cavalry, the way we fight out here. It's dragoon work. You ride to where you're going and then get off and fight on foot.” He grinned suddenly, and unexpectedly his face reddened in embarrassment. “Hell, I guess it's none of my business, but—well, I keep thinking of the way you saved my hide not long ago. I wouldn't want anything to happen to you. Just take care of yourself, Reardon, I guess that's all I wanted to say.”

I had to grin at that, for Gorgan was obviously not versed in paying compliments. It was strange, in a way, but I hardly remembered anything that happened that day of the ambush. But Gorgan remembered. I knew I had a friend in the Lieutenant any time I wanted to call on him, and that thought was comforting.

Gorgan poured more whisky to cover his embarrassment, and I knew that he would never mention the incident again.

We sat for a while in silence, nursing the whisky, and I could see that Gorgan wanted to bring the conversation back around to the Colonel and the scout detail. He was curious about that. He didn't know anything, probably, but he could feel that something was wrong. Sooner or later, I knew, he would tie Caroline in with it if I wasn't careful.

“How do you like soldiering?” he asked abruptly, and I laughed.

“Major Burkhoff asked me the same question, before I got the commission.”

“Well,” he insisted, “how
do
you like it?”

I wondered about it now, as I had wondered about it before, and the answer was about the same. “I like it all right, I suppose. It's about all I know.”

“It's a hard way to live,” Gorgan said slowly. “Sometimes I think I hate it. There's no future in it for me, because I talk too much, probably. And it's hell on women. Still...”

He let the word hang as he thought of it.

“Still, there's something about it. Out here, you squeeze years into days. You get used to living like that and nothing else is any good for you. I had a chance to go back to Washington once as the chief quartermaster's aide, but I didn't take it. I had been out here too long, on the desert and in the mountains, where everything runs to extremes. Here you freeze at night and then maybe drop over from heat exhaustion the next day. You rot as a garrison soldier, and maybe a week later you'll die violently on patrol, fighting a little private war that nobody outside Arizona Territory will ever hear about. Extremes in everything. I don't think I could get used to civilization again. To be civilized is to be temperate, they say, and this country jades a man's taste for temperance.”

It was the longest speech I had ever heard Gorgan make, and he wasn't through yet. I wasn't sure what he was getting at, but I had an idea that it had to do with me somehow.

“Some people never get used to it,” he went on. “They come out here and hate the country on sight, and the Indians too. Maybe they go on living here because they're afraid of the law back east, and they haven't got the guts to push on west. But they never get to like it or become a part of it.”

I was looking into my whisky, but I could feel the Lieutenant watching me.

“One thing about the desert,” he said, “and the mountains, you have to earn the right to live here. You have to be smarter and tougher and braver than the country itself, or it will kill you. You have to learn fast, and learn from the Indians, because they know more about it than anybody else.” He laughed suddenly. “Now there's a hell of a lot of words said, and they don't mean a thing.”

“You like this country and you like the Army. I got that much.”

“I don't like them and I don't hate them. We've just learned to live together. You start feeling that way when you stop being afraid. And you'll be afraid before long, when you get out alone on that scout detail.”

“Are you trying to tell me there's a good chance I won't come back?”

“A damn good chance. But it's not a sure thing, if you're willing to learn.”

“I'll learn as fast as I can,” I said. “I'll have Juan and Black Buffalo and Walking Fox and Red Hand for teachers.”

He smiled faintly, then took the whisky decanter and shook it. “That's what I wanted to know, I guess. Whether you regarded your scouts as teachers or ignorant savages. I think we've got another good drink left here before supper.”

Supper was pleasant, although we were rather crowded in the small dining room with its post-made sideboard and table and chairs. The roast—rump of young venison —was excellent and Gorgan's mood had changed again and he was in fine spirits. After the meal was over Gorgan and I went out on the front porch and smoked cigars. Blurred figures passed back and forth across the dark parade. Here and there barracks lights were beginning to be put out. The stars were out in great numbers over the desert, and the night was still.

Gorgan had something here that I envied, here in his small adobe hut on an outpost frontier fort, and I wasn't sure what it was. My belly was well filled with the kind of food we never got at regular mess, and warm with good Kentucky rye, but it was more than that. Maybe it was his peace of mind that I felt, as we stood there smoking in silence.

I began to think about the things Gorgan had said before supper, and I would have liked to have him go on talking, about the territory, the Indians. But it seemed that Gorgan was talked out. He wasn't very skilled with words, but I thought I understood what he was trying to say. There was a place for every man—I think that was what he meant—if he could only find it. And if he only knew it when he did find it. Maybe he was trying to say that Larrymoor was the place for me.

Why he bothered, I didn't know. I wondered what Gorgan would say if he knew all about me and Caroline and Weyland. The thought made me grin.

But the grin went away. I had a feeling that Gorgan did know. Not know, maybe, but he was guessing.

'There's some sherry inside,” he said. “Not very good, I'm afraid, but it will do.”

But I didn't want any more to drink. “No, thanks. I've got to get back down the row before long.”

Someone moved in the doorway of the house, casting a long shadow across the lamplit square on the porch. “Sarah?” Gorgan said.

“Yes, Father?”

“Come out and keep Mr. Reardon company for a minute. I want to get a couple of things for him before he goes.” Sarah Gorgan came out, hesitantly, and her father grinned and roughed her hair, as though she were a child. “Maybe you can tell him a thing or two about Larrymoor, eh? She's been here long enough, Reardon. Most of my daughter's life has been spent on this post.”

Gorgan disappeared inside the house, leaving me to shift for myself in the company of his daughter. Sarah came over to the porch banister and leaned over slightly, looking up at the dark sky.

“The desert is beautiful at night,” she said, almost to herself. “Don't you think so, Mr. Reardon?”

“Beautiful? I don't know. I guess I've never thought about it. It's not much like the country I was born and reared in.”

She glanced at me briefly and then looked up at the sky again. The stars were as cold as chips of ice on sheet steel, very aloof and far away. “The desert, I guess, is about all I know. What was your home like, Mr. Reardon?”

“Alabama?” I hadn't thought of it for a long while. “It was black and rich and slow-moving, or that's the way it seems to me now. I don't suppose it was really much different from the rest of the South.” I thought of Sweetbriar, but I knew I couldn't picture it for her. And anyway it didn't seem to be worth the effort. I wondered what was keeping Gorgan.