The Colonel's Lady (15 page)

It was after sunup when we got there, and the patrol hadn't arrived yet. Our nerves were rubbed raw and our insides quivered for want of sleep. We set the horses to graze and took turns sleeping in snatches. Around mid-afternoon the patrol came riding up the dry bed of Star Creek.

The men were tired and filthy and evil-tempered, but they were all there, so I guessed that they hadn't run into any war parties so far. Halan hadn't changed. At first he seemed surprised to see me still alive—even pleased to see me. But that didn't last long. His eyes were cool as we shook hands.

“Well, I see you made it back, Mr. Reardon.”

“Yes, sir. Two of us did. Black Buffalo and Walking Fox and Red Hand are dead.”

He lifted an eyebrow, almost seemed to smile. “Three good scouts, Mr. Reardon. That's not much of a record to start off with, is it? I don't suppose you got the maps.”

I was too tired to be mad. I handed him the map case and he opened it and looked at the drawings. It jarred him, seeing a detailed diagram of the stronghold. His face sobered, and for a moment he forgot to be cold and bitter and aloof.

“My God, Reardon, are you sure this is correct?”

“As sure as I'll ever be about anything. Kohi has recruited warriors from every Apache tribe in the territory. He's got between eight hundred and a thousand braves in that stronghold of his, all of them half crazy from tiswin and war medicine.”

“My God,” Halan said again, staring at the map and figures. “But why? What does he intend to do?”

“Maybe he intends to attack Larrymoor itself. Maybe that's the prize he's offered to all those Chiricahua and Mimbreno and Arivaipa renegades. It would be a great prize. Sacking Larrymoor would keep white men out of this part of the territory for years.”

But Halan shook his head. “Kohi wouldn't attack Larrymoor. Not even with a thousand braves.”

“Then what does it mean?”

“I don't know, Reardon. It means trouble, but I don't know what kind. This information has got to get back to the Colonel. Can you take it?”

“I guess so. My horse is in pretty good shape.”

“The patrol's got four more days to go. We can't wait till then.”

“I'll go, then. We've got no more than a week at the outside, then all hell's going to break loose somewhere.”

“How do you know that?” He frowned.

I told him about the Apache lookout I had killed, but it didn't convince Halan. “Kohi won't attack Larrymoor,” he said, “but you'd better get your map to the Colonel, anyway.”

The mention of the Colonel seemed to recall something to him, and he became a ramrod captain of cavalry again. “Mr. Reardon, there is no excuse for dressing like a savage, even when on scout. You will wear your boots while under my command, the same as the rest of us.”

What had changed him? I wanted to ask him, but I knew it would only get me a quotation from Army regulations, and I'd had all I could take of that.

I walked into the building and a young Irish lieutenant named Hilligan, the OD, stood up. “Joseph and Mary,” he said softly. “Reardon, I didn't expect to see you... well, not this soon, anyway.”

“Is the Colonel here?”

“He hasn't come in yet.”

“Then you'd better go get him.”

I went into the regimental orderly room and the sergeant major looked at me as if he had seen a ghost.

“Does the Colonel know you're here, Lieutenant?”

“He will in a minute, Sergeant.” I sat down. I was dog tired and I didn't think I could keep my eyes open much longer. I was almost asleep when I heard the crisp crack of the Colonel's boot heels on the plank floor.

He was furious. I knew it before I looked at him. I could feel it. I didn't move until the sergeant major said, “Good morning, sir,” and then I stood up.

“Well, Mr. Reardon, you got back. Early, I see. Perhaps you will explain the meaning of this.”

I put the map case on his desk and opened it. “It was Captain Halan's wish that I should bring this to you, sir.”

Weyland looked at it, his face dark with anger. “Do you propose, Mr. Reardon, that I take this to be a drawing of Kohi's stronghold?”

“That's what it is, sir.”

“Lieutenant,” he said tightly, “do you know the penalty for falsifying scout reports.”

It was like a slap in the face. It startled me, woke me up, made me mad. “I don't understand what the Colonel means,” I said. But I understood.

“I mean,” he said angrily, “that it is quite obvious, Mr. Reardon, that you deliberately disobeyed the explicit orders of this command.” He looked sternly at the sergeant at the next desk. The sergeant got up and left the room. “Now, Mr. Reardon...” He smiled thinly, but there was hate in his eyes. “Mr. Reardon,” he said softly, “you are a liar. A coward and a liar and a disgrace to the uniform.” His smile was frank now. A gloating smile. “And I shall have your hide, Lieutenant. I shall call a general court-martial and charge you with disobeying a direct order, cowardice in the face of the enemy, falsifying reports, bringing disgrace to the uniform. You will rot for the rest of your days in an Army stockade, Lieutenant, for thinking you could make a fool of me.”

My anger was too great to speak. I opened my mouth, but no words would come.

The Colonel slapped my map with the flat of his hand. “You call
that
Kohi's stronghold? What do you take me for, Lieutenant? You didn't even sec the stronghold. You didn't even get close. You were scared. Skiddering scared, Lieutenant, so you falsified the map and the report. Isn't that what happened?”

“No, sir,” I said tightly. “That is not what happened.”

He laughed suddenly. “But you were too ambitious, Lieutenant, too eager to make a rotten thing look good. A
thousand warriors!
I'm not the fool you seem to think me, Mr. Reardon. Kohi has fewer than four hundred able warriors in his tribe, and I know it. And
two
entrances to the stronghold! Mr. Reardon, that was going too far. It is known to this command that Kohi's stronghold has only one entrance. You should have read the reports of regimental intelligence, Mr. Reardon, before attempting your little fraud.”

I couldn't say a thing. Anger settled a red haze over everything. I was afraid to open my mouth.

“Go ahead, Mr. Reardon.” The Colonel smiled. “Defend yourself.”

“I did read the intelligence reports, sir. They were wrong.”

“That's a lie, Lieutenant! A brazen, naked lie!” He leaned across his desk, his face only inches from mine. I could have hit him then. I ached to smash a fist into that grin of his. But this was what he wanted. Another charge against me.

“Speak, Lieutenant!”

“My report is written out... sir.”

“You are in quite enough trouble, Mr. Reardon, without adding impudence to the list of charges. Answer me.”

“The stronghold is as I have drawn it. Kohi's warriors are as I have numbered them, including Mimbrenos and Arivaipas and Chiricahuas.”

The Colonel smiled widely. He was satisfied with himself now. The first disappointment and frustration of seeing me still alive had worn off, for he had already found another way of taking care of me. A firing squad or a lifetime in a stockade would get me out of the way as well as an Apache bullet.

He selected a cigar from a box, bit the end off, and lit it. “Really, Mr. Reardon, I find this quite amusing. Go on, tell me the rest of it.”

“Kohi is going to attack Larrymoor,” I said. “Within a week.”

The Colonel exploded, almost choked with laughter. “I don't suppose I should be surprised, Lieutenant, but there are limits, even to lies! Kohi attack Larrymoor? It's insane. Even if he
did
have a thousand warriors he couldn't do it.”

I had said all I was going to say. I felt sick and tired and disgusted, and he could do what he wanted.

“Sergeant,” Weyland called, his voice calm at last, satisfied. “Call the Officer of the Day, Sergeant. Have him turn out four guards to escort Mr. Reardon to his hut. He is under arrest, confined to quarters.”

I was glad it was Gorgan. He was the only man I wanted to see right then. He came in and took a bottle of the sutler's rotgut from under the linen cover. “I figured maybe you'd be thirsty, too,” he said dryly. “Where do you keep your glasses?”

I got two tin mess cups and he poured into them. We drank. “Now you'd better eat,” he said, “while it's hot. It's not much, but it's probably better than you get at bachelor's mess.”

I felt better with Gorgan there. I found that I could grin without cracking my face. There was a large bowl of hot stew on the tray, and half a loaf of freshly baked bread. Gorgan tamped his pipe casually, poured himself another cup of the whisky, and sat quietly until I had finished eating.

“Well,” he said finally, “do you want to talk about it?”

“What are they saying on the post?”

“That you falsified a scout report, among other things.”

“What other things?” I asked.

“Enough to keep you in an Army stockade the rest of your years, if you're convicted.”

And I would be convicted. The Colonel would see to that.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I think,” Gorgan said, “that I would like to hear the story from you.”

“Is there any way for a man to get his family out of this part of the territory?” I asked, pouring myself another cup of whisky. “Say down to Tucson, or maybe over to the New Mexico country?”

“Not unless some mail or supply wagons get through, and that won't be likely for a few weeks yet. Why?”

“You ought to get your wife and daughter out of here, if you can. Kohi's going to attack Larrymoor. He's going to do it within a week.”

Gorgan whistled softly. “That doesn't seem reasonable. The regiment is under strength, of course, but behind these walls we could stand him off. How does he mean to swing it?”

“I don't know. All I know is that an Apache bragged about it a few seconds before he died. Kohi has gathered renegades from every clan and tribe in the territory, eight hundred able warriors at least.”

Gorgan whistled again. “Did you see them?”

I told him about the scout, leaving nothing out. When I finished, the Lieutenant sighed deeply. “Well, it's easy to see why the Colonel didn't believe you. It's hard for me to believe you—but I guess I do. There's sure not much sense in lying about a thing like that.” He stood up. “Well, thanks, Reardon. I'll see what I can do about getting my family out of here.”

I didn't have any more visitors until my striker came in to see if I wanted supper. I didn't want anything to eat, but there was something I did want. I wrote a note to Caroline and I told her as briefly as I could about the danger of staying at Larrymoor. I told her to contact Gorgan and maybe he could help her get away until the danger was over. I wanted to ask her to come to me; I wanted to hold her and forget. But I didn't do it. I put the note in an envelope and sealed it and gave it to the striker.

“I want you to deliver this to Colonel Weyland's house,” I said. “If the Colonel isn't there, leave it with Mrs. Weyland. Just tell her who it's from.”

I knew that Weyland would still be at headquarters and Caroline would understand that the note was for her. But the striker wasn't sure if it was the thing to do.

I was under arrest and confined to quarters, and he didn't want much to do with me.

“And take that bottle of whisky with you,” I said, “and do something with it. I don't want any more.”

His eyes brightened at that. He took Gorgan's bottle before I could change my mind.

“And keep your mouth shut about this,” I said.

He wouldn't keep his mouth shut, of course, but there wasn't much chance of dragging Caroline into it, anyway. Even if the Colonel found out, it couldn't make things much worse than they already were. The striker went out with the whisky and the note and I lay on my bunk and tried not to think. Tried not to do anything. Wait, that's all I had to do now.

I went to sleep finally, and in a dream I saw Indian ponies running up and down a canyon floor, dragging bloody, shapeless hulks behind them....

The next morning Gorgan came around again.

“I hope you're guessing wrong,” he said wearily, “about Kohi attacking the fort.”

He sat down on my bunk, rubbing his face. I hadn't realized before how old Gorgan really was. “There's no chance of getting the women and children out,” he said. “I tried to talk to the Colonel, but he wouldn't listen to it. He said we couldn't spare the men for escort, although I learned that we're getting reinforcements. Have you got any of that whisky left?”

I grinned stiffly. “My striker got it. What's this about reinforcements?”

“Two companies of infantry are being sent up from the Chiricahua reservation, because of the renegade trouble, I guess. They're on the road now, according to Operations, maybe a day or two away.”

Two companies of infantry. I felt better after hearing that. With that many men, Kohi wouldn't have a chance of breaking the fort's defenses. Gorgan saw what I was thinking.

“If they get here in time,” he said. “Or if Kohi doesn't find out somehow that they're on the march and cut them to ribbons before they get a chance to do us any good.”

“How could Kohi find out? He doesn't operate in the south much.”

Gorgan shrugged. It wasn't much of an answer. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I almost forgot. There is one other thing. Maybe the Colonel doesn't take much stock in your scout report, but something prompted him to send his own wife away from Larrymoor.”

I must have shown my surprise, for Gorgan looked at me with interest. “What's the matter, Reardon?”

“Nothing. It just struck me as strange. Did she go alone?”

Gorgan grinned without humor. “Mrs. Weyland? You ought to know better than that, Reardon. She went with a cavalry escort—the men we can't spare, according to the Colonel. Going down to Tucson on a little shopping trip, so the story goes. What do you think of that?”

“I don't know. I guess the Colonel's wife has a right to go shopping, if she takes a mind to.”

Gorgan shrugged. “I guess so. But it seems to be stretching a coincidence, going at this particular time.”

So Caroline was gone. Caroline was safe. That was what I had wanted, but now the thing left me empty of feeling. Let the Indians do what they would—Caroline wouldn't have to be here to face it. Something in that thought struck me as funny and I laughed abruptly.

“Maybe you'll let me in on the joke,” Gorgan said.

“It's nothing. I was just thinking of another time.” Now, it didn't seem so long ago. “And another place.” Three Fork Road.

The day passed. The night passed. I lay on my bunk and thought of nothing. Let the sand run out—that was about all I could do.

Gorgan was the only one who came to see me. Being under arrest made me poison to the others, but Gorgan didn't have anything to lose. He wasn't going anywhere in the Army anyway. We talked about a lot of things, but we didn't talk about Apache, or wonder what he was doing. Not aloud, anyway.

Larrymoor went on the same as ever. No changes were made in the routine, and garrison life went on as monotonously as ever. What was happening to Halan and his troopers on patrol, we didn't know.

I wondered about Halan. What kind of man was it who was your friend one minute and your enemy the next, for apparently no reason at all? I didn't have the answer to that. I didn't have the answer to anything, it seemed. I ate, and slept, and waited. Vagrant thoughts floated in and out of my mind without stopping long enough to make sense.

I felt something pinching me. The two silver stars that Caroline had given me had worked out of my pocket and I was lying on them. I found them and flung them across the room. To hell with them.

There was a knock on my door the next morning and I guessed that it was Gorgan again. I called, “Come in,” without bothering to get off the bunk.

But it wasn't Gorgan this time. It was his daughter, Sarah.

“Oh,” I said. I swung my legs off and stood up. “I'm sorry. I guess I was expecting your father.”

She stood in the doorway, not knowing exactly, what to do. And I wasn't much help. Both of us, I guess, were thinking about that night, and our faces were burning.

“My father has gone out on a special detail, Mr. Reardon,” she said formally. “He wanted you to know. He was afraid you would think he had forgotten you.”

“Why, thank you, Miss Gorgan. Won't you come in?” It wasn't the thing to say, for young ladies didn't come unescorted to bachelor quarters. Then I tried to cover it up and made it worse. “I guess,” I managed finally, “I've forgotten how to talk to people. Did your father say what kind of detail it was, Miss Gorgan?”

I noticed then that her face was sober, her eyes solemn. She was almost pretty, but I kept comparing her with Caroline, and no woman could stand up to Caroline. “Yes, Mr. Reardon,” she said. “My father wanted me to tell you. Mrs. Weyland's escort was ambushed by Apache.”

I didn't hear the rest of it. I stood there with the words going around and around in my mind. I didn't believe it.

I didn't understand it. Not Caroline. Nothing ever happened to Caroline.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Reardon,” Sarah Gorgan said softly.

“Sorry, Miss Gorgan?”

“You were in love with her, weren't you, Mr. Reardon?” It was hardly more than a whisper.

I went over to the bunk and sat down again, looking at the floor. It was all some kind of mistake, I kept telling myself. It would all be cleared up in a little while and they would find Caroline was all right. Nothing could happen to Caroline. Then I heard Miss Gorgan's question. “You were in love with her, weren't you, Mr. Reardon?”

I looked up. “What makes you say that?”

“I don't know. The way you looked just now. But I've known for some time now, somehow. I've seen you looking at her. Remember the night of the dance? I saw you looking at her that night, and I guess that was when I knew.”

I remembered the night on Gorgan's front porch. She had known, even then. I didn't know what to say. After a long while I looked up again and she was gone.