The Colonel's Lady (3 page)

Roff's breath whistled between his teeth, as if he had been holding it for a long time. “Let's go,” he said.

“By God,” Morgan murmured appreciatively, “I didn't know they grew them like that on the desert.”

“They don't.” Roff looked at him. “She's only been at the fort a little more than a week.” He sounded as if he didn't think much of Mrs. Weyland, but his face colored slightly just the same, because of the thoughts that must have been going around in his head. Caroline could do that to men, even when they didn't like her. “Let's go,” he said again.

At the quartermaster's supply room we drew everything the United States Cavalry considered essential. Blue pants with the yellow stripe of the cavalry down the legs, blue shirts, blue blouse, dress helmets with faded plumes, underwear, boots, shoes, socks, carbine and saber, forty rounds of ammunition, saddlebags, sewing equipment, shoeshine equipment, campaign hat, forage cap, poncho, currycomb and brush, the regimental insignia of crossed sabers and organization number, and what seemed to be a thousand other odds and ends, all a man could carry. After we had loaded our arms, the quartermaster sergeant hung a cartridge belt around our necks, to which there was hooked a holster. In the holster was a Colt's .44-caliber revolver, the long-barreled cavalry model.

We took all that to the A Company barracks and came back and got our straw-filled mattress ticking and blankets.

Morgan swore quietly through it all. Steuber sat on his bunk and immediately began inspecting his Springfield carbine. A poker game went on uninterrupted at the far end of the barracks.

I got out of my clothes and into the new uniform. As soon as Steuber was satisfied that the carbine was a serviceable weapon he did the same, but Morgan sat on the edge of his bunk, his jaws locked tightly. Until now, I guess, he had never actually believed that he would have to wear the Yankee blue that he hated.

“What's the matter?” I asked.

“You were with the Alabama Horse,” he said grimly. “You ought to know.”

“That was a long time ago.”

Retreat had gone while the quartermaster sergeant had been outfitting us. Now we heard the short up-and-down notes of mess call and the Dutchman reached for his mess kit.

The card game broke up as the men filed out, Steuber ahead of all of them. Morgan sat there, glaring. He was still sitting there when I walked out, but before we had half finished supper he came out with his mess kit. He had the uniform on.

That night the three of us, the new ones in the company, went to the sutler's store outside the walls. But the whisky was bad and the prices were high, and none of us had much money.

“Another one?” Steuber asked, fingering his empty whisky glass.

“I'm broke,” I said.

“Maybe the sutler'll give us credit till payday.”

“Not till we get on the books through the company.”

“How about you, Morgan?” the Dutchman asked.

“I'm broke too. Goddamn!” he said abruptly, bitterly, and kicked his chair back and walked out.

“That Morgan,” Steuber said thoughtfully, “he's a strange one.” He scratched his big nose; he pushed his forage cap back and scratched his head. “I think he's in trouble,” he said directly. “Maybe more trouble than he can get out of.”

“He'll have to work it out for himself.”

Steuber shrugged. “Sure. There are things you notice about him, though. The clothes he had on before he changed to the uniform, for one thing. The pants worn threadbare just above the knee, about the place a leather thong would go if you wanted to tie your holster down.” The Dutchman looked sadly at his empty whisky glass. “Nobody but a gunman goes to that much trouble to see that his pistol is just right. Did you notice that?”

I had noticed it, but I hadn't thought Steuber had. I was guessing that Morgan—if that was his name—had killed somebody, somebody pretty important, from the looks of things, and had chosen Fort Larrymoor as a good place to hide out. I could see that the Dutchman was thinking the same thing.

Pretty soon I left Steuber sitting there staring forlornly at the empty glass and went outside and back toward the gates of the fort. It was dark now and it was a sad, lonesome place, that part of Arizona. I could see the heads and shoulders of sentries as they paced the runaround inside the adobe walls. And beyond, a thin slice of moon over the hills. It was smoky-looking and pale and worn out. I had an uneasy feeling that those high sad hills were watching me, and probably they were. I remembered the family we had buried that afternoon and the night seemed cold.

Kohi was just a name to me, and not a name to be particularly feared, at that. An obscure chief of an obscure band of Coyotero Apaches making their last stand, fighting their last fight. It was a fight that they didn't have a chance of winning, because the white men would keep coming and keep coming until finally they would overwhelm them, as they were already overwhelming Cochise and his Chiricahuas in the south. I almost felt sorry for Kohi... and then I thought again of the family we had buried.

Then, as she always did, sooner or later, Caroline came into my thoughts. No matter what I was thinking, Caroline could push it aside and come walking into my mind.

It was harder on Morgan that it was for the rest of us because Morgan was a Texan. There wasn't a time that he could remember when he hadn't been at home on a horse—but he hadn't learned to ride the cavalry way. In Texas there had been plenty of horses for remounts.

There were no remounts at Larrymoor—at least, not many—so you took care of your horse and pampered him, because your life might depend on him. Your horse came first, and then your carbine and revolver, and after you were sure that they were in perfect condition you could think of yourself. If there was time.

Skiborsky taught us that. And he taught us how to hate. We were old hands at hating, Morgan and I, but Skiborsky made it seem a new gall-bitter experience, and there wasn't a minute, day or night, that we didn't want to kill him. Skiborsky laughed at us. He grinned that goddamned fierce animal grin at us. But we learned to do things the cavalry way, and after we learned to ride Morgan walked over to Skiborsky and hit him right in the middle of that grin of his.

As punishment Morgan carried a nine-foot, hundred-pound cottonwood log around and around Larrymoor's walls, and every time he dropped the log a guard would hit him with the stock of his carbine. Toward sundown Morgan fainted. The next morning he was back in the riding ring.

We learned to jump our horses then, over a series of barriers of graduated heights, and we learned the fine art of forced marching. Skiborsky taught us to halt fifteen minutes every hour, dismounting and unbitting and grazing. He taught us to trot for a short spell every half hour to keep ourselves erect and light in the saddle, and to dismount and lead ten minutes of every hour.

Morgan carried the log twice that week, but he learned.

And then we went to the carbine range. Morgan shot the bull's-eye's black heart to ribbons. We rode some more. We drilled. We shoveled manure and curried horses. Finally our period of schooling was over. Skiborsky told us about it one day after evening stables.

“A sorrier lot,” he sneered, “I never saw in cavalry blue. But I can't waste the rest of your enlistment teachin' you to stay in the saddle.” He jutted his rocklike chin out, grinning at us, feeling our hate and enjoying it. “Morgan,” he said, “I guess you'll be first.” He walked behind the stables, unbuttoning his shirt.

Morgan was stunned for a moment. “You're takin' off your stripes?” he asked suspiciously.

Skiborsky peeled off his shirt and flung it aside. “That's right, bucko. Man to man.”

Morgan's face split into an evil grin. In one quick movement he shrugged out of his suspenders and began unbuttoning his shirt. “I'm goin' to love this,” he murmured softly, dropping his shirt to the ground. Bare-chested, his lumpy muscles quivering along his thick shoulders and forearms, the Sergeant waited for him.

“Enjoy it while you can, bucko.” He grinned.

Morgan crouched slightly, stepped in. He circled the big sergeant warily, cautiously, the way you would approach a man with a knife. Abruptly, in a flash of movement, his left fist shot out and there was a sodden, wet sound as the knuckles smashed Skiborsky's mouth. He hit Skiborsky again, in his slightly bulging gut, before the big man could back away.

Surprise shone momentarily in the Sergeant's eyes, but he never lost his grin. Morgan began circling him again. He lashed out in that sudden explosion of motion, but Skiborsky was ready this time. The big man backed down with his left forearm, knocking Morgan's fist aside. He stepped in quickly and swung his right fist as though he were wielding a saber. The blow landed on the side of Morgan's face. Skiborsky lashed out with his left and Morgan seemed to break in the middle. He went down gasping, his face an ugly green, his eyes sick. He went to his knees, to his elbows. He crawled in a small stupid circle, like a fly with its wings pinched off. Instinctively, Morgan got his back against the stable wall and began shoving himself up. He stood swaying, his fists clenched but hanging at his sides.

“Had enough, Morgan?” Skiborsky asked, still grinning.

“You sonofabitch!” the gaunt, sick Morgan grated.

Skiborsky hit him again. This time Morgan fell like a rock, like a poled Texas steer. He doubled and hit the ground with his face and didn't move. Skiborsky took one deep breath, rubbed his hands along the legs of his trousers, and grunted.

“All right, buckos, who's next?”

He looked at me and then at Steuber. It wasn't at all the way I had expected it to be. I had expected a big crowd, the whole company gathered around, but there were only the two of us. Me and the big Dutchman. I began taking off my shirt.

Steuber seemed to consider himself a disinterested bystander. He gazed thoughtfully at the unconscious Morgan, and then at me, and finally at Skiborsky. He shrugged. He could have broken the Sergeant's back, if he had wanted to bother. He was big enough and strong enough. He didn't want to. He had no quarrel with Skiborsky, so he merely shrugged and looked at me.

“I'm next,” I said. I threw the shirt aside. It was what I had wanted for over two weeks and I wasn't letting the chance get away from me.

I don't know how long the fight lasted. It seemed like a long time. I was almost as big as Skiborsky, and I wasn't soft. But the Sergeant knew things about fist fighting that I didn't. He had learned the hard way, in drunken brawls and company fights, and the marks and lumps and ill-healed wounds were still to be seen on his body. He took a fierce joy in not moving back and in fighting a man who wouldn't move back either. I vaguely remember knocking him down and standing there stupidly until he got up again. Skiborsky wasn't so considerate when his turn came.

When I started to get up he knocked my head down with a slashing blow aimed at the back of my neck, and as I went down his knee jerked up and crashed against my chin.

I could hear him laugh hoarsely. “You'll learn, my bucko, not to let a man up once you've got him down.” It was the last sound I heard for quite a while.

I came out of it finally, with thunder in my head. Steuber was slapping me methodically, first on one cheek and then on the other. I pulled myself up to a sitting position. Skiborsky was nowhere to be seen.

“You all right, Reardon?” the Dutchman asked mildly.

My mouth was raw and full of blood. I spat. “How about Morgan?” I started to ask, and then I saw Morgan. He was fumbling with his shirt, still dazed and bloody. He looked like a man picking himself up after the van of a stampede had passed over him. I don't suppose I looked any better.

Steuber allowed himself a small smile. “He's a good man, that Skiborsky. One damn good fighter.”

“You yellow sonofabitch,” Morgan said, looking at the Dutchman.

Steuber looked hurt, but not angry. “Because I didn't fight him?” he asked. “Why should I fight a man like that when I'm not mad at him? Anyway, I think maybe we'll get our bellies full of fighting before long.”

“You're yellow,” Morgan said angrily. “That's what's wrong with you, Dutchman?”

Steuber shook his head sadly. “Don't make me fight you, Morgan.”

I managed to get to my feet, walk over, and pick up my shirt. “The Dutchman's right, Morgan. We've had enough for one day. Let's let it pass.”

Morgan was still full of anger, but he didn't know what to do with it or where to aim it. He didn't really want to fight Steuber, maybe because he knew the Dutchman could break him in half, and use a lot less effort in doing it than Skiborsky had. We heard the bugler sounding mess call, and I found Morgan's forage cap and threw it at him.

“Let's eat,” the Dutchman said, as if eating was the most important thing in the world to him right then.

The men of A Company showed no curiosity at all about the bruises and cuts and lumps that we brought back to the barracks. Most of them, probably, had been through it themselves, and they figured that you weren't really a member of the company until you had faced Skiborsky behind the stables.

But I didn't go to supper that night, and neither did Morgan. We sponged off at the washstand outside the barracks and went to our bunks and lay there like dead men, silently fighting and relighting the thing a hundred times and whipping Skiborsky every time. In our minds. And finally the thing wore itself out. We had been beaten by a better man and that was all there was to it.

About eight o'clock that night Skiborsky and the big Steuber came into the barracks roaring drunk, each of them swinging a bottle of sutler's whisky like war clubs.

“Goddamn you, Reardon!” Skiborsky yelled, and threw his bottle at me. Skiborsky never handed anything to anybody, not even whisky. “Drink!” he yelled, grinning, lurching up and down the aisle in front of my bunk. “Drink up, bucko, you earned it. Didn't he earn it, Dutchman? Morgan, too. Throw Morgan your bottle!”

Steuber grinned foolishly. Morgan sat up on his bunk. “I thought you were broke,” he said bitterly to the swaying Dutchman. “You didn't have any money the other night for whisky.”

“Still don't,” Steuber said mildly. “This is the Sergeant's whisky.”

“What the hell?” Skiborsky demanded. “Whisky's whisky. Don't anybody want any free whisky?” Two or three men started to get up in the back of the barracks and Skiborsky shouted them down. “Not you, goddamnit. Give Morgan the bottle, Dutchman. He earned it.”

Steuber lunged drunkenly at Morgan, the bottle in front of him.

“Drink!” Skiborsky commanded.

“Go to hell!” Morgan snarled.

“Drink!”

I uncorked Skiborsky's bottle and poured some of the pale liquid fire down my throat. Steuber was waiting patiently for Morgan either to drink or hand the bottle back. Angrily, Morgan jerked the cork out with his teeth and threw it across the barracks. He turned the bottle up and drank almost a quarter of it before taking it from his mouth. Skiborsky stumbled and fell across my bunk, convulsed with idiotic laughter.

“Don't drink it all,” the Dutchman complained to Morgan.

“You go to hell, too!”

They began wrestling for the bottle.

“Here, take some of this, Steuber,” I said. Steuber fell off the bunk and lay on his back on the floor, grinning stupidly. Skiborsky, giggling, took his own bottle, held it out at arm's length, and splashed whisky in the Dutchman's face.

“There you are, you goddamn Dutchman! There's a drink for you!” Steuber opened his mouth wide, trying to catch the whisky dribbling from the bottle. Skiborsky became convulsed with laughter again and had to sit down.

“What the hell is this?” Morgan demanded, looking at me.

“What does it look like?” Skiborsky said. “Drink up, Morgan. That's apt to be the last whisky you'll ever get out of me.”

“I didn't ask for your whisky.”

“Drink!”

I had a drink. I passed the bottle to Skiborsky and he had a drink. Steuber was snoring on the floor, his mouth still open. Skiborsky sloshed some more whisky into the Dutchman's mouth and almost strangled with laughter as Steuber spewed and sputtered and rolled under the bunk.

I was seeing a side of Skiborsky that I had never known existed, had never even guessed at. Skiborsky the drunken clown. It stunned Morgan even more than it did me.

“What is this?” a voice from the barracks doorway wanted to know. It was Roff, the first sergeant, looking like Abraham Lincoln in a blue cavalry uniform.

“We're gettin' drunk,” Skiborsky yelled at him. “Me and Reardon and Morgan and that goddamned Dutchman, we're gettin' good and drunk.”

“Couldn't you be a little quieter about it?”

“Sure we could, but we ain't. Have a drink.”

“I've got work to do. The Captain's in the orderly room, he can hear you. They can hear you clean out to the sutler's store.”

“Maybe Kohi'll hear me. What do you think about that, Sergeant? Maybe Kohi'll think we've got a whole damn regiment here at Larrymoor for a change. Maybe I'll scare his goddamn filthy breechclout off of him, what do you think of that?”

“Kohi'll probably think the whole post is drunk and stage a raid,” Roff said.

“Let him raid! Tell the Captain to have a drink.”

“The Captain's busy. Just be a little quieter or you might find yourself a common trooper again, Skiborsky.”

Skiborsky snorted indignantly. “Skiborsky a common trooper? Then where'd this goddamn company be? Where would you find another noncom to take my place?”

Roff shrugged and smiled wearily. “Just be a little quieter. C Company's patrol came in just a little while ago.”

“The hell with C Company.”

“Three men were dead,” Roff said quietly.

Something happened to Skiborsky's eyes. “Who?” he asked, this time in a normal voice.

“Wilson, McCambridge, and Lieutenant Stuart.”

Skiborsky sat quietly for a moment, letting the information roll around his mind. Then he doubled one big fist and punched the bunk lightly three times. “Goddamn, goddamn. All right, Roff, we'll quiet down.”