The Colonel's Lady (6 page)

“What?” Caroline said, surprised, and I guessed that I had been speaking my thoughts. Outside, on the Larrymoor parade, the high-pitched cavalry bugle sounded insignificant and lost in the vastness of the desert.

“I was just thinking of something,” I said. “I was thinking of Three Fork Road. I've known for a long time that you told the Yankees we were gathered there, but I didn't know until the other day why you did it, Caroline.”

Her mouth was thin-pressed, determined. She was going to face it out.

“You picked Weyland for some reason,” I said. “He was young, ambitious, came from a good family, probably. Sweetbriar was lost, so there was nothing I could give you. Nothing the South could give you. So you told Weyland about our gathering at Three Fork and he made the charge that wiped my company out. And Early's attack was broken up before it got started.”

She paled slightly, that was all.

“Weyland was a great hero after that,” I went on, “just as you had known he would be. Promotions came fast for him. It would seem that Weyland was a very fortunate man, except for one thing. He was in love with you, Caroline.” The wine I held suddenly became bitter and I put it down. “I just wanted to see if you would deny it,” I said. “That, I guess, is the reason I came to Larrymoor.”

She stood up then, perfectly composed. She smiled suddenly and without warning. “That's not the real reason, Matt,” she said. “You came to Larrymoor because you're still in love with me.”

I had known it all along, and so had she, but still it was a shock hearing the words spoken in the silent room. Then—I don't know how it happened—I was holding her.

She walked to me and my arms went out and closed around her. Her head went back for a moment and I looked into those deep blue eyes of hers, as deep as an ocean, as the sky, and then I crushed my mouth against hers with a viciousness and fury that I had never known before. For a moment I imagined that there was the scent of honeysuckle in the room and that I could hear Captain Fitzhugh Dunham's orchestra playing:

“Yes.”

“It's true. Everything you said is true. But, don't you see, I couldn't stay in Virginia and watch the South die, the South I had loved so much. I couldn't stand it, Matt, I had to get away.”

“Did you have to betray it because you loved it? Did you have to inform against me? Twenty-eight men died that day because of you, Caroline.”

“They would have died anyway, most of them. The entire South was dying. That day or some other day, what difference did it make?” Her hands went behind my head and pulled my face down to hers. “Do you still love me, Matt?”

“I don't know. God help me if I do.”

I kissed her again and she said, “Yes, you love me. Oh, Matt, I'm glad you followed me here. At first I thought you had come to cause trouble, and I hated you for it. But I don't any more. I love you, Matt. I've always loved you.”

“You take strange ways to show it. Why did you marry Weyland if you loved me so much?”

“I explained that, Matt. I had to get away.”

“I would have taken you away.”

“No, you wouldn't have. You would have fought to the bitter end—just the way you did fight to the bitter end.”

“Not quite. I spent six months in the Yankee prison at Fort Delaware because of you, Caroline.”

“I'm sorry, Matt. What else can I say?”

What else
could
she say? I looked at her, I studied her, and I saw not a particle of regret, not the slightest twinge of conscience for what she had done. To her, it had been the sensible thing, and to Caroline the sensible thing was the only thing.

“Kiss me, Matt,” she murmured. “Hold me close.”

“What about Weyland?” I said bitterly. “You married him. He's your husband. You made a fine hero out of him and got him promotions and then married him because he could offer you things I couldn't. Don't you think you owe him something?”

“Don't talk, Matt.”

“I want to talk. I've got a lot of things to get out of me, and they're not pretty things. What about Weyland?” I felt her shudder against me.

“So that's the way it is....” Somehow I was not surprised. “Tell me, Caroline, was it worth it? Was it worth deserting your country for, and me, this five-room mud house on the edge of God's nowhere?”

“It's better than Virginia,” she said tightly. “Or Alabama.”

“But you hate it just the same, don't you?”

She pressed her forehead against my shoulder and I knew she was crying, although she made no sound and her eyes were dry. “Yes, I hate it. I was going to go back —go anywhere—because I couldn't stand it here any longer. But it's different now that you're here.”

“What difference can I make? I'm not a colonel, not even a lieutenant. I'm just a common trooper.”

“You won't be forever. I know you won't, Matt. I can wait, as long as you're with me.”

It was like talking to a child—a stubborn, persistent, spoiled child who couldn't understand that the world was not made specially for her and for nobody else.

“What do you intend to do?” I said with bitterness. “Send over to headquarters every day and get some 'carpentering' done?”

“Don't talk like that, Matt.”

“How else can I talk? You married Weyland. Not me.”

I wanted to hurt her now. I wanted to hurl her away from me and walk out of the place and never look at her again. But I couldn't do it. I could feel the warmness of her body against me as I held her and the old familiar hunger returned. I could recall a thousand empty nights. For all nights were empty without her. For a moment there were just the two of us, as it had been once before so long ago, with no past and no future. And for that moment I was content.

“Matt.”

“Yes.”

“Kiss me again.”

I kissed her again, bruising her mouth against mine, and only then did I realize how much I had missed her. I don't know how much time passed before I began to feel a difference in the room—before I heard the steady, measured inhaling and exhaling of someone's breathing. I released Caroline and half turned toward the open doorway. Colonel Weyland was standing there.

“Get to your barracks, trooper.”

That was all. He closed his mouth tightly, as though he were afraid to say any more. He stood there without moving and I walked past him and out of the house. Now all I had to do was wait. Pretty soon the sergeant of the guard would come, and maybe the corporal too, and they would take me away to the little two-celled guardhouse behind the stables and there I would stay until a general court-martial was arranged.

I waited, but the sergeant of the guard didn't come. At last recall sounded and the troopers of A Company came straggling in from whatever details they had been on that afternoon.

“It looks like you've got this army by the tail, Reardon,” Morgan, who had worked in the stables all day, said dryly.

I tried to grin, but it didn't feel like a grin on my face.

“We're goin' on patrol in the mornin',” Steuber said. “You got your field equipment ready?”

I didn't want to start them wondering any sooner than I had to, so I said I'd better get on it. No one had told me yet that I was under arrest, so I went with the Dutchman and Morgan over to the quartermaster's and drew forage and rations for eight days and two extra bandoleers of carbine ammunition. I expected somebody to be waiting for me when I got back to the barracks, but nobody was there. I made my saddle roll and then went to mess and ate the government dried beans and sowbelly and corn bread, and still nobody tapped me on the shoulder and said come along.

I couldn't understand it. There was no mistaking the hate—almost a madness—I had seen in Weyland's eyes. It didn't make sense that he wouldn't try to do something about it.

After the bugle had sounded for the last time that night, and the barracks were plunged into darkness, I began to wonder if Caroline had somehow calmed him down and explained the whole thing away. God knows how she would do it, but if anybody could manage it, Caroline could.

But common sense told me that wasn't the answer. Weyland wouldn't be calmed and he wouldn't have the thing explained away. The only explanation was that Weyland had, for some reason, decided against a court-martial. He had figured out something better. What could be better than sending me to a government stockade for twenty years, I didn't know. Whatever it was, though, I would learn about it soon enough.

Nobody tried to stop us.

Nobody came out of the guardhouse at the last minute to say that Trooper Matthew Reardon was under arrest and was to be held for general court-martial for the offense of attacking an officer's wife. I had expected it, but it didn't happen. I tried to put it out of my mind.

By eight o'clock we had already sweated ourselves dry, and the order was to drink from our canteens only on a command from Captain Halan. We rode north and west from the fort, across the great boulder-strewn desert and into the barren, bleak foothills of the White Mountains. Early that morning we crossed what had once been a telegraph line—Larrymoor's only connection with the outside world—and the poles had been burned to the ground and the bright copper wire was cut in a thousand places. Morgan grinned widely when he saw it.

The men rode alert that first day, keeping wary eyes on the high, ragged peaks to the north where Kohi's Coyoteros—the White Mountain Apaches—had their stronghold. Near sundown that day the Papago scout pointed to the west, where a sheer, almost invisible column of smoke climbed leisurely into an endless sky. We watched the column part cleanly, as if it had been cut off with a knife, and after a moment another column began to rise. The smoke seemed harmless and very far away.

“Sergeant Skiborsky,” Halan said, “take two men and go up ahead with the scout. If there is any trouble you know what to do.”

“Yes, sir,” Skiborsky said, kneeing up.

“The Boulder Springs are no more than two miles ahead. We'll bivouac there for the night if everything is all right.”

“Yes, sir,” Skiborsky said again. He wheeled his horse out of column, studying faces as they passed. “Reardon,” he said, “you and Morgan.”

I must have shown surprise that he would select, two green men to go with him that far ahead of the main column. “You might as well find out now,” he said, grinning, “what this country is like.” He turned to the Papago. “All right, Juan, let's go.” The Indian kicked his pony and we left the column behind at the gallop.

After about a mile the country began to get more ragged and dangerous than ever and we slowed to a walk. Finally we got down and led our horses around and over the high-piled boulders. The Indian, traveling lighter and faster, forged on ahead of us.

Morgan frowned. “I don't like trustin' that redstick so much.”

“Papagos?” Skiborsky said, looking around. “They haven't been at war with Americans for years. Juan's all right.”

“Is that his real name?” I asked. “Juan?”

“Sure. A lot of Papagos have Mexican names. Some Apaches too, for that matter.”

We moved on and pretty soon we saw an enormous hill, almost a mountain, that looked to be nothing but one great boulder piled on top of another. We topped a rise and headed down into a rocky ravine, and there we saw Juan on his belly drinking from a small pool of water. We headed straight for the spring.

“Hadn't we better scout this place first?” Morgan said.

“Juan's already done it, and a lot better than any of us could. There's nothing Apaches like better than killin' Papagos and Pimas. They call them
converted
Indians. They consider them a disgrace to the Indian race for takin' up with the white men.”

We stopped at the springs and drank and filled our canteens. Juan took the blanket from his pony's back— the only saddle he used—and cut the sweat from the animal's chest and shoulders with the edge of his hand. He could have been the only living thing for miles around, for all the attention he paid us.

“Morgan,” Skiborsky said, “can you find your way back to the column?”

“What the hell do you think I am, a dude?”

“All right, get back and tell Captain Halan it's all right to bring the patrol in. There's no sign of Kohi.”

Morgan took a brown twist of tobacco from his shirt pocket—the only kind we could get at the sutler's store —broke off a small piece, and rolled it between his hands to crumble it. He poured the flakes into a charred brier pipe, tamping it carefully, taking his time, plainly daring Skiborsky to tell him to hurry.

The Sergeant said, “Unbit and unsaddle, Reardon. We'll stay here until the column comes.” Morgan, in good time, lighted his pipe, climbed back in the saddle, and rode off.

“Is he a friend of yours?” Skiborsky asked after we had set the horses to grazing beside the pool.

“Morgan? I didn't know him until he got in the wagon outside of Tucson.”

We filled our own pipes and sat down against a boulder, watching Juan inspect his pony. “He's askin' for trouble,” Skiborsky said finally. “Most men get all the trouble they want in a place like Larrymoor, but Morgan goes on askin' for it.” He puffed thoughtfully. “If the telegraph was up, maybe we'd find out why.”

I remembered the way Morgan had grinned when he saw the telegraph lines down. “What do you mean?”

“I figure the law's after him. Government law, probably. He knows his days are numbered, because sooner or later that telegraph will go up again and we'll have a connection with the outside world.”

“I didn't think civilian law bothered men in an outpost like Larrymoor.”

“It depends on what the crime is.”

We sat there for a while, saying nothing. Skiborsky, it seemed, could be as changeable as a chameleon. He could be an iron-hard sergeant, or a drunken clown, or, on rare occasions, he could be the way he was now, easy to talk to and thoughtful and human. Right now I had a feeling that Skiborsky was actually worrying about Morgan and what was going to happen to him. But tomorrow, I knew, the feeling would be gone.

I watched Juan as he finished rubbing his pony down with his blanket. He was a pretty good size for a Papago, slightly larger than most Apaches but not as thick or big as a Comanche. He wore regulation cavalry pants—without cutting the front and seat out of them, the way Apaches did—and soft buckskin moccasins and a leather vest. His heavy, long-muscled arms were weighted with silver bands and bangles, and around his neck was a sacred necklace of elk's teeth. A battered cavalry campaign hat sat square on his head. Quietly he replaced the blanket on the pony's back, swung up gracefully, and rode away from the springs.

“Where's he going?”

“I never ask Juan where he's going,” Skiborsky said. “If it's important he'll tell somebody.”

After a while we began to hear the complicated sounds of loose steel and screeching saddle leather and stumbling hoofs and we knew that the patrol was nearing the springs.

“Where's Juan?” Halan asked, after he had dismissed the column and given instructions for setting up the camp.

“He rode off, sir. He didn't say where.”

“Any Indian sign around here?”

“Not a thing, sir. I guess Kohi's goin' to stay in his stronghold after all.”

But Halan shook his head, looking vaguely worried. “I don't know. We saw some more smoke. They're worked up about something. I wish I knew what it was and what Kohi was going to do about it.”

The men began building squad fires and putting on the spiders to cook their supper before the sun went down. The horses were put on a picket line and Halan called to Lieutenant Loveridge. “Mr. Loveridge, will you take evening stables?”

“Yes, sir.” The Lieutenant began checking the mounts for cuts and bruises and fatigue and the hundreds of other subtle but fatal illnesses that horses are heir to. The men began taking heavy bags of forage from behind their saddles for feeding. The sun was still high, I noticed, as I worked beside Morgan. I dreaded to see night come, for night is the time for thinking, and Caroline was there in the back of my mind, waiting to come out.

“There's Juan now, sir,” Skiborsky said to Captain Halan. “Up there on the ridge. You can just see him.” We all looked up, seeing the small figure silhouetted on the ridge against the fading sky. He rode his pony in a small tight circle. He completed the circle three times.

“He's spotted something,” Skiborsky said.

Halan nodded. “It looks like it. Take the men you had before, Sergeant, and we'll go up and have a look.”

So we got our horses from the picket line and saddled up again and rode up to where the Papago scout was waiting. We had no trouble spotting the thing that was bothering Juan. Down the rocky grade, on the other side of the ridge, a swarm of vultures glided sluggishly, heavy-winged, around and around. Halan took off his hat and wiped his face with his yellow handkerchief.

“I guess we'd better go down,” he said quietly.

We kneed down the grade carefully, keeping wary eyes on the high ground around us. Most of us, after finishing the schooling at Larrymoor, had learned something about Indians, and especially about Kohi and his Coyoteros. The subject of Indians was brought up in all conversations when two or more troopers got together; it dominated all discussion and most of the thinking. And long recitals were heard about Indian torture and savagery.

Around Tucson it had been Cochise and his Chiricahuas. Or maybe the Pinaleno. And the newspapermen wrote long stories about the Army campaigns against them and sent the stories back east to be printed in the big-city papers. But in the White Mountains it was different. There was no publicity up here, and Army officers avoided Larrymoor like the plague. There was little chance for advancement, and no chance at all for glory. But there were plenty of chances to fight and die, if that was what you were looking for.

We learned quickly that most of the officers were bitter, with reason, but the men for the most part took it philosophically, for there was no other place for them to go. Some of them—like Morgan, maybe—almost dreaded the day when peace would come to the frontier north of the Gila. It was their last stronghold, too, in the face of the oncoming tide of “civilization,” just as it was with Kohi and his White Mountain Apaches. They fought to the death and showed no quarter, the troopers and the Indians, but they had one thing in common: They both had learned to hate the white settlers now coming into the Arizona country.

I could see that hate now on Skiborsky's face, for he had already guessed what we would find at the bottom of the grade. The vultures, startled, flapped noisily and rose heavily into the air as we approached. We saw then that it had been an Apache camp—a permanent camp, more or less, for the wickiups had been laid out in orderly rows, like an army camp. The wickiups had all been burned. Burned, and scattered, and hacked, and strewn all over the floor of the valley.

We found more than twenty fairly new graves at the far end of the camp, the mounds covered with the vulture-cleaned bones of horses. Halan looked shaken, almost sick.

“Well,” he said flatly, “we know now what Kohi is mad about.”

It was pretty clear what had happened, but the Captain sent Juan out to scout the nearby valleys before any of us put it into words. It didn't take Juan long to find what he was looking for. He reported that there were traces of a wagon train—twelve to fifteen wagons in it—less than a mile to the east. The trace, Juan guessed, was nearly a month old.

So the pieces fitted together. The men from the wagon train had attacked the Apache village, burned it, scattered it, killed everybody they could find—women and children and old men, mostly, because the signs showed that the braves had been away at the time of the attack. Hunting, probably. Anyway, the wagon train would never have made the move if the warriors had been there.

Skiborsky cursed softly as we kicked around through the ashes. “So this is the white man's civilization,” he said bitterly. “You can't blame Kohi much, I guess, for not wanting any part of it.”

“How about that wagon we saw coming from Tucson?” Morgan said.

“Part of this same wagon train, probably, that had to stop with a busted axle or something. Whether it was or not wouldn't have made any difference to Kohi, though. His village had already been sacked and burned. His old warriors and women and children already killed. What puzzles me is why he hasn't raised more hell than he has.”

“Maybe this'll teach him to go back to his reservation and stay there,” Morgan grunted.

“What would he do on a reservation? They can starve in the summer. And in the winter they can freeze. While the 'Indian experts' in Washington fiddle away time and rob him blind.”

Halan, hearing that, said, “That's enough of that, Skiborsky.”

“Yes, sir.”

Juan was grinning widely, for the Papagos and Apaches were bitter enemies. He poked here and there among the burned-out wickiups while Halan got the thing organized enough in his mind to make a report. The vultures circled lazily above us and began to drift away. There was nothing for them now. Apaches always bury their dead where they fall, if possible, and that was what they had done here. They had cut the throats of the dead men's horses and poured the blood on the graves and left the dead horses beside them in the belief that the animals would serve the dead in the next world. But the horses were picked clean now. And the vultures drifted, watching, waiting.

It was near dark when we headed back toward the bivouac. We saw another gauzy column of smoke rise gracefully in the distance. But what was being said with the smoke we could only guess.