The Colonel's Lady (17 page)

“Apache got a shock, I guess, that he wasn't expecting, and fell back to regroup. But they'll be back before long.”

I still didn't know how many Apaches there were, or understand clearly what had happened. The men looked at me in a way they had never looked at me before, half in fear, it seemed. But apparently they didn't hate me or envy me any more. Morgan grinned at me, showing yellow teeth. Steuber, the big Dutchman, was still cursing his jammed carbine.

“Get back to your positions, men,” Gorgan said. “They'll be coming back in a minute.”

They went back to the clay breastwork and leaned over it with their carbines. All but the two men who were dead.

“What the hell's got into you?” Gorgan demanded when we got near the end of the gully. “Nothing,” I said.

“No man would beg to get himself killed, the way you did, unless...” Then he shrugged. “All right, I'll mind my own business.”

We stood there, waiting for the next rush. “Halan's dead,” I said finally.

Gorgan nodded.

A sergeant from E Company called, “These redsticks are up to somethin', Lieutenant. Damn if I know what, though.”

“I'd better take a look,” Gorgan said. “Take it easy, Reardon. There's no sense getting yourself killed if you don't have to.”

I pretended to check my revolver and prepare for the next rush, but Apache could have been a thousand miles away for all I cared then. The same crazy thoughts went round and round in my mind, and the vision of Caroline was the center of all of them. Caroline. The taste was bitter. How far did that ambition of hers reach? How many more officers had she given those stars to? How many more men had she held, kissed, made the same promises to? The questions flitted and darted like mice on a treadmill, getting nowhere.

I heard a stirring toward the end of the draw, and I wheeled, my revolver pointed in that direction. There was nothing there. I moved on down, carefully, around a bend in the gully, half hoping that an Apache would be there—someone I could take my anger out on. But it wasn't an Apache. It was Skiborsky.

The Sergeant was sprawled stiffly along the wall of the gully, his teeth clenched, his eyes staring wildly at nothing.

“Skiborsky, what's wrong?”

He shook his head from side to side, still staring with those fixed eyes. I knelt beside him and went over him quickly for wounds. There weren't any, except for a small scratch along his neck glistening with tiny beads of bright red blood.

“Skiborsky, what is it? Answer me!”

He worked his mouth. “I'm... finished, Reardon.”

“I don't see any wounds. What's wrong?”

His jaws quivered with the effort of speaking. “My... neck. They got me... goddamn them. A poisoned arrow.”

A cold wind seemed to sweep down the gully and hover over us. It was a rotten way to die. The thought of it sickened me as I tore his collar open to see if there was still a chance of bleeding the small wound. I took out Gorgan's bowie knife and started to slit the neck. But something was wrong. The scratch was not inflamed, the flesh was not burning with fever. I looked around and found the arrow embedded in the clay bank of the draw.

I said, “Get up, Skiborsky. There's nothing wrong with you.”

His eyes blazed. “Goddamn you, Reardon. If you can't help me... let me alone!”

“Look at this flint head.” I held the arrow in front of him. “It's clean, no sign of poison. Besides, that scratch on your neck shows no sign of inflammation, and your forehead's as cool as mine.”

He didn't believe it. But he felt of his forehead, he felt of the scratch, and he stared at the clean head of the arrow. After a while he put his hands under him and sat up—his face red now, but not with fever.

“I'll be damned!” he said hoarsely.

“Are you convinced now?”

“Sure. I guess so, anyway. Look here, Reardon...”

“I haven't seen a thing,” I said. “If that's what you mean.”

He grinned suddenly and was the old Skiborsky again. “By God, I was scared, Reardon. I was so scared, I might have died, at that!”

“Maybe you've been out here too long,” I said. “There's a limit to how much a man can take, Skiborsky.”

But he shook his head. “It's them damn poisoned arrows. I've been thinkin' about them for a long time now. I've seen the way they work and it's not pretty. I knew just as sure as hell that I was hit by one! Goddamn, the men will never let me hear the last of this, if we ever get back to Larrymoor.”

“They won't hear about it,” I said. “Not from me.”

The big sergeant rubbed his face sheepishly, and maybe he was thinking of that whipping he had given me behind the stables. Or the time he had given us in the riding ring. Then he picked up his carbine, stood up, and grinned that old fierce grin of his. “I guess I'd better be gettin' back to the patrol then... Lieutenant.”

Pretty soon I began hearing the Apaches scurrying around, and whoops and yelps went up and I guessed that they were coming again. But no shots had been fired by the time I had reached the other end of the draw, where the patrol was.

“It looks like the party's been postponed,” Gorgan said dryly. He pointed down the grade where the Indians had been gathering, and there was nothing there now. But over to the right we could see the dust clouds boiling up from behind the boulders and we knew that the war party had decided to pull out for some reason.

“What do you make of it?” Gorgan asked.

I didn't know for sure, but I had a feeling. “It might be they've found bigger game to kill.”

“The regimental column?”

“They were headed this way and the Colonel was looking for a fight. Maybe Kohi obliged him. That sure wasn't Kohi's main force that attacked the patrol.”

But while I talked I kept thinking: Caroline's out there somewhere. In the hills. On the desert. Maybe dead, for all I know. Knowing what I knew about her, I still couldn't get her out of my mind.

After the last trace of the Indians had vanished we went down to the bottom of the slope, where Juan and a trooper were holding the patrol's horses. Gorgan had the detail's horses brought down and we headed back in the direction we had come from, toward the Colonel's column coming up. In my mind I counted the hours we had been on the march—almost thirteen hours since we left Larrymoor. And Caroline had been gone longer than that.

I suppose, in the beginning, I had some sort of idea that would get us in Kohi's stronghold again, but I knew it was useless now, for Kohi wouldn't have returned to the stronghold after the massacre of the infantry column. But did they still have Caroline with them?

My mind was numb and I couldn't think. It was almost as if Caroline had died back there when I found the stars in Halan's pocket. I didn't hate her. I didn't love her. After a while she didn't even seem real, and it was hard to imagine that she had once been the reason for everything. I kept thinking: Caroline won't be hurt. She'll find a way to get out of it, even with Kohi. Caroline always finds a way.

It was strange that after all these years I could think of Caroline that way. Without feeling. I felt sorry for Halan; I even felt a kind of pity for Weyland, but the thought kept growing in my mind that there was no need to feel sorry for Caroline, because Caroline never got hurt.

“Snap out of it, Reardon,” Gorgan said. “You look like you're riding in a dream.”

I said, “I guess I was,” but Gorgan didn't hear me.

Juan, who was riding at the point of the column, held up his hand, signifying that he had spotted something. When Gorgan and I reached the high ground we could see the long streamer of dust in the far distance.

I looked at Gorgan and he shrugged. “I guess,” he said, “the Colonel has found his fight.”

“I don't think it's a fight,” I said. “If it is, it's stretched out all over God's nowhere. Could it be a chase?”

Gorgan rubbed his face. “Maybe.”

I thought I knew what it was. My head was suddenly clear now, but there was a cold emptiness in my guts as I realized what the chase might mean.

“It looks to me like they're heading straight for the stronghold,” Gorgan said. “Where the stronghold's supposed to be, anyway. Does that make sense to you?”

“If Kohi's letting himself be chased, it's because he's got a reason for it, not because he's not strong enough to stand up and fight. If the reason's what I think it might be... Gorgan, we'd better start riding.”

Gorgan straightened his seat and looked at me. “And where do you suggest we ride to, Mr. Reardon?” he said in that dry voice of his.

“Toward the point of the cavalry charge, because that's where the Colonel will be.”

If Gorgan had any questions, he didn't ask them. He signaled for the column to come up. He tugged his battered campaign hat down over his right eye and grinned a humorless grin. “All right, Reardon. As the Colonel pointed out, this is your detail. But I don't think he's going to be very glad to see you, considering you haven't found his wife yet.”

I let that go, and Gorgan didn't push it. When the detail reached the top of the grade, we rode.

We took the shortest way, which was also the roughest way, to Kohi's stronghold. The horses grunted, stumbled, sometimes went down as we made our own trail over the rugged, pathless hill country. The men, when they lost their seats, picked themselves up cursing and got in the saddle again. We rode where we could, and where we couldn't we got down and led. We lost sight of the dust trail, but that wasn't important now because we could guess where it was leading.

Gorgan's horse stumbled once, almost went down as we swung tight around one of the curious, senseless mounds of boulders. “I hope you know what the hell you're doing, Reardon,” he shouted.

I hoped so too, but I couldn't be sure of anything until we finally came within sight of the ridge that bounded the stronghold. Then we began hearing the firing and yelling. It was to the west of us somewhere, and below us, near the western pass that led into Kohi's private fortress.

At that instant I had some idea of trying to get inside the canyon while the cavalry had Kohi's warriors occupied outside, but that idea didn't last long. A band of Apaches—the guardians of the stronghold, probably— came barreling out of nowhere. There looked to be a hundred of them. Probably there were half that many, but still too strong to fight.

Gorgan stood up in his stirrups, calmly looking back at the anxious faces of the troopers. As the Indians bore down, he raised his arm and let it fall lazily. “At the gallop! Follow me!”

We went slamming down the rocky slope, with Gorgan and myself in the van. The Apaches gave up the chase after letting one volley go at us. They must have figured that it didn't make much difference if they killed us or if their friends down by the pass did it.

Pretty soon we saw where all the noise was coming from. In front of the pass the cavalry was locked in bloody hand-to-hand fighting with the Indians. Pistols, sabers, hatchets, knives. The fight swirled senselessly about three hundred yards from the pass.

I lost Gorgan after a moment, and I lost the detail and became just another dirty blue-clad figure in the screaming mill of horses and men. I emptied my pistol and pulled back a little way to where Skiborsky, his arm slit open and blood dripping from his elbow, was trying to reload his revolver.

“Have you seen the Colonel, Skiborsky?”

“By God, I haven't seen anybody, except a thousand goddamn redskins!”

“You'd better look after that arm.”

“Sure. I'll wait here until a pretty nurse from the Sanitary Commission comes along to fix me up.” He got the last round in the cylinder of his Colt's and rode back into the thick of the fight.

A strange thing happened then, and it happened so fast that Kohi must have planned it just that way. The Indians somehow disengaged themselves from the battle and broke for the pass of the stronghold. The cavalrymen found themselves suddenly slashing at empty air.

Gorgan came riding out of the mill and dust, his hat gone and one gauntlet missing, but unhurt. “You all right, Reardon?”

“I'm all right. Have you seen the Colonel?”

“He was over on the right somewhere. It looks like the Apaches have had a bellyful. They're crowding into the stronghold, anyway.”

But I wasn't sure about that. The cavalry, still stunned at finding nobody to fight, had failed to follow up its advantage. Over on the left I could hear Major Burkhoff bellowing, trying to get the troopers into some kind of formation. I rode to the right.

By now Kohi had set up a rear-guard action, dismounted Apaches taking up positions behind boulders overlooking the pass, harassing the bewildered cavalry. At last the troopers began to move forward again, but uncertainly, still not understanding what had happened. It looked as if almost half of Kohi's force had disappeared into the stronghold. Then, without warning, they wheeled and attacked again.

They hit hard, fast, swinging low over the necks of their ponies. They hit while the column was still disorganized, firing their volley, slashing with their hatchets, and then they ran again. More Apaches were being swallowed up by their stronghold canyon. More dismounted warriors were taking up positions to guard the pass.