The Colonel's Lady (7 page)

Sleep came slowly that night to most of us. Mountain darkness came down suddenly and cold and we lay in our blankets listening to the mournful barking of coyotes in the distance—wondering if they were really coyotes or Apaches. The coyotes themselves couldn't tell. Larrymoor and Weyland and Caroline seemed a long way off. I wondered what the Colonel would have thought up for me by the time we got back to the fort. If we got back. As I listened to the coyotes, it didn't seem very important.

Reveille was at four o'clock that morning. Skiborsky came around and gave every sleeping trooper a heavy cavalry boot in the ribs.

“Rise and shine, buckos. See to your carbines and stand by until you get other orders from the Captain.”

We got up numbly in the before-dawn cold of the mountains and took our prepared places around the patrol area, waiting for the sun. Dawn is the favorite time of attack for Apaches. They almost never attack at night, believing that a warrior killed in darkness will wander in darkness forever in the afterlife. After a while the guards came in, stiff and evil-tempered with the cold, and took their places behind rocks or boulders or brush, to wait.

Nothing happened. The sky paled in the east, and after a long wait the sun popped brilliant and blazing over the ridges, and the men began to relax their death holds on their carbines.

“Juan,” Halan called, “you'd better go out and see what you can find.”

The Papago padded off on foot, as silently as a cat, and we all held our places. After fifteen or twenty minutes he came back and said there was sign of Apaches in the nearby hills, but they had pulled out during the night.

We fed our horses and watered them and inspected them and doctored them, and after all that was done we had ten minutes to cook breakfast, eat it, and get in the saddle.

“How do you like the cavalry?” Skiborsky grinned at Morgan.

“Go to hell!”

It was the fourth day out that Juan came back from a lone scout looking excited and more than a little worried. He led us up to some high ground and pointed to some smudged, meaningless traces. Halan and Skiborsky got down and inspected the traces thoroughly, while Juan prowled around the area, breaking up animal droppings with a stick.

Halan looked up. “Chiricahua?” he asked the scout. Juan nodded. The Chiricahuas shod their ponies with stiffened, iron-hard rawhide. The trace was simple to identify.

“How long ago?”

The scout shrugged. About as long as it took a white man to eat four or five times. A day and a half, or thereabouts.

“It doesn't make much sense, sir.” Skiborsky frowned. “What would Chiricahuas be doin' up here in Coyotero country?”

“Maybe they're renegades, Sergeant.”

“Maybe, sir, but I thought the Cochise renegades were goin' with Geronimo down in Mexico.”

Halan stood up slowly and beat some dust from his sweaty campaign hat. “It could be,” he said thoughtfully, “that Kohi is offering them something up here in the White Mountains that not even Geronimo can offer them. But don't ask me what that something could be, Skiborsky. I don't know.”

We came out of the mountains that day and met an E Company patrol in a dry creek bed and bivouacked with them for the night. The next day we cut another wide swath across the desert and headed back for Larrymoor.

Once out of the mountains, we felt safe from attack. The men dozed in their saddles, sweated dry and dumb with fatigue. We smelled of horses and stale sweat, and were filthy with the peculiar clinging filth of the desert, and we were crawling with a hundred different kinds of sand lice that we had picked up in the brush. We didn't look much like soldiers, toward the end of the sixth day. We looked and felt more like a band of saddle tramps, and the men became irritable, and our thighs became chafed from the incessant friction of saddle leather, and our nerves wore raw as we listened to the everlasting rattle of loose steel and the grunting of the horses.

Even Halan became drugged with fatigue and heat. He rode slouched and heavy at the head of the straggling column, fully aware that such riding would likely cost him the service of a good horse because of saddle sores, but sunk too deep in apathy to care. Ten minutes of every half hour we loosened our cinches and led our mounts, and our feet became sore, for thin-soled cavalry boots were never made to walk in. Not over the gravel and rocks of the desert.

Fifteen minutes of every hour we dismounted and un-bitted and grazed. We did it, not thinking of our horses, because it was cavalry routine. We did it automatically and dumbly, thinking ahead to the time when we would see Larrymoor again. The men wondered out loud if the pay wagon had got through from Fort Hope, in the New Mexico country. And if the pay wagon hadn't got through, would the sutler extend credit until it did? Then we would bit up, tighten cinches, climb wearily into the McClellans, and ride again.

Kohi must have known how men feel near the end of a desert patrol. Because that was when he hit us.

Kohi must have smiled as he saw us straggling raggedly into the rocky draw. Later, I imagined that I had picked Kohi out of that swarming band of Indians firing down on us from the jagged walls of the draw, and I imagined that I had seen him smiling. But it was only imagination, of course.

It happened very quickly. I was to learn that everything Apaches did was quick. We rode into the draw, and the ridges and boulders became suddenly alive with a stunning burst of fire. I remember sitting stupidly, watching three troopers pitch out of their saddles. Kohi had planned it well, for three more troopers had fallen, and four valuable horses, before the shock of combat cleared our brains.

I became aware of the noise and confusion, and Skiborsky's bellowing, and the lunging and pitching of riderless horses there in the close confines of the gully. There were eight troopers now, where there had been fourteen a few minutes before. Heaven alone knew how many Apaches there were.

“Skiborsky!” I heard Halan yelling. “Take the patrol up the wall of the draw. Up to that big flat rock. We can make a stand there.” He wheeled his horse, turning to the young, bewildered lieutenant. “Mr. Loveridge, take one man as horse-holder and get back up the draw with these animals. If it's possible, bring them out and get them behind us.”

The men, lashed to life by Skiborsky's curses and threats, began swinging down from the saddles. Carbines came out of boots and began answering the Indian rifles. We clawed our way up the rocky wall, and when we reached the top, Halan called, “Hold your fire. Make them come after us.”

They came after us when they saw us coming out of the draw. There were four of them, paint-smeared, completely naked except for breechclouts and knee-high moccasins and bright-colored, dirty headbands. They came as fast as shadows flicking across the ground, and Captain Halan yelled:

“Fire!”

One volley was enough. The four Apaches went down under the blast of the carbines and we ran for a rock.

The eight of us made it to the rock and squirmed over it on our bellies and dropped down to the other side. We now had solid rock to our backs and a scattering of boulders in front to furnish us a serviceable fortress. There was a sharp report of a carbine beside me and I looked around and saw Morgan squinting over the barrel of his saddle gun. He looked up soberly.

“By God, this is a different kind of war!”

“Where's the Dutchman?”

“The Dutchman can take care of himself.” Then Steuber crawled up beside us, sweating and cursing.

“By God,” he said, “we're goin' to be busy for a while.”

Morgan spat. “Not for long. We're not goin' to last long. There must be half a hundred of them red bastards hidin' behind rocks out there.”

It was suddenly quiet. We lay there in a rough half circle waiting for them to come after us. Skiborsky and the captain had inched their way up to some high ground to get the lay of the land. Then Skiborsky inched down again and came toward us.

“What're they waitin' on?” Morgan wanted to know. “Why don't they come?”

Skiborsky grinned that grin of his. “They'll come soon enough. Anybody here feel like bein' a hero?”

“We'll all be heroes before long. From duty to killed in action.”

“The Captain says to ask for a volunteer,” Skiborsky said. “Somebody's got to break out of here and bring some help, and damn quick.”

“From Larrymoor?” I asked.

“Hell, no. We'd all be dead by then. The E Company patrol ought to be somewhere south of Star Creek—between the creek and the Boulders, the Captain judges. With some luck a fast rider could get through and bring them back in time to save a scalp or two.”

“I don't feel lucky,” Morgan said.

“I'll try it,” Steuber said, looking over the barrel of his carbine.

“You make too good a target, Dutchman. Besides, no horse could hold you up for that long. How about you, Reardon?”

“All right.”

“A goddamn hero,” Morgan said, and spat in disgust.

Skiborsky looked at him, grinning fiercely. “Maybe all your yellow's not on your legs, trooper.”

Morgan's head jerked up. “Maybe you want a hole in your gut. Say something else like that to me and you'll get it.”

“You're the man for the job, Morgan. You're light and you know about horses, and you can shoot if you have to. How about it?”

“Is that an order?”

“I told you I'm askin' for a volunteer.”

“Then go to hell. I'll stay here and die my own way.”

“Someday,” Skiborsky said, “I'll break your back, Morgan, just to hear it crack. All right, Reardon, you get the job. Go talk to the Captain. He'll tell you what to do.”

The desert was still quiet, but not as quiet as it had been. We could hear them moving around out there, skittering from one boulder to another, holding a powwow of some kind or other. I slung my carbine and began edging away toward the rock where the Captain was.

“Trooper Reardon, sir. Skiborsky said you had a job for me.”

“Did he tell you what it was?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You may not make it,” he said.

“Then I guess none of us will.”

He wiped his face on his handkerchief. “Yes, I guess that's right. That's a good-sized war party for Apaches— about fifty, I'd say. They'll charge before long. We'll be able to throw them back the first time, maybe the second.... But they'll make it on the third try. They always do. Maybe the E Company won't be enough to help us, but we've got to try it anyway.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know where the place is?”

“South of Star Creek, sir. Between the creek and the Boulders.”

“That ought to be about right. Mr. Loveridge got the horses out of the draw and has them behind us now, back there on the other side of that boulder. Do you think you can get back there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well... good luck, Reardon.”

It wasn't going to be an easy matter getting to the horses. There was about a hundred yards of open desert between us and Lieutenant Loveridge, and it had to be crossed some way. I decided that it would be better to run than to try to crawl from rock to rock, so I got a good hold on my carbine and pulled my campaign hat down on my forehead and lit out.

It was a long way. A lot longer than a hundred yards, it seemed. I must have made the jump just as they were getting ready to attack because I heard the Indians let out a howl of anger, and then they were burning the air down with bullets and arrows. The troopers were yelling and shooting now like crazy men, and the young lieutenant up ahead was waving me on.

I finally made it, but I felt that I had already used up all my luck. I wanted to go back and tell the Captain to get somebody else to do the job.

“Are you all right, trooper?” the Lieutenant asked.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “The Captain wants somebody to locate the other patrol and get them to give us a hand. I got the job.”

The lieutenant and the horse-holder were out of the line of fire now, hidden from the draw by the giant boulder. But I was just as glad that I wasn't in their place. Sooner or later the Indians were going to discover those horses back there, guarded by only two men. And then they would charge the position, and I didn't like to think of what would happen after that. The horse-holder cut out a strong-looking roan and tightened the cinch for me. Then we heard the yelling and shooting begin again across the open stretch of desert and we knew the attack had started.

“You'd better ride, Reardon,” the Lieutenant said. “You'll have a better chance of making it while things are hot.”

I got in the saddle and looked at the stretch in front of me. Maybe I said a little prayer. I don't remember. Then I put the iron to the roan and we spurted into the open.

We went straight through it, because there was no other way to go. Over the rattle of gunfire I could hear the troopers shouting me on, while I hung onto the horse's neck and wondered how the Apaches could possibly miss an animal that size. Maybe they were shooting at me, and that was the trouble. Maybe they all had a greedy eye on that big red horse, and maybe they were all thinking what a figure they'd cut astride an animal like that, and that was the reason they didn't aim for him. If I had been in their place, I would have put a bullet through the big roan's heart, no matter how pretty an animal he was, and then I would have gone after the rider.