The Colonel's Lady (9 page)

“I should have taken that job myself,” Morgan said bitterly. “It would have been better than lyin' here lookin' over a carbine at a bunch of goddamn yellin' redsticks. Besides, you'll probably get a medal out of it.”

I thought of Colonel Weyland, and I didn't think I would get any medal. “Did anybody else get hurt?” I asked.

Skiborsky pulled his pants up. “Mr. Loveridge,” he said. “And Carlston, his horse-holder.”

“They got their brains scattered all over the goddamn desert,” Morgan said.

Steuber, sitting with his back against a rock, puffing contentedly on a charred cob pipe, seemed untouched by it all. A picture of a man relaxing after a hard day's work, that was all.

There wasn't much talking that night. The troopers cooked their own bacon and coffee over two small squad fires, and after we had eaten we got ready to ride again. We rolled the eight dead men across their saddles, tied them on, and rode away from the gully just as darkness was coming on. We didn't bother about the Indians. Apache could take care of his own dead. If the buzzards and coyotes didn't get there first.

We all had plenty of time to think on that long road back to Larrymoor. We could think of cool water, and meals that didn't consist entirely of bacon and hard bread and greasy coffee, and of soft beds, and the sutler's whisky, and beautiful women. I found myself thinking of Caroline again.

Riding beside eight dead troopers, still hearing the Apache screams, still turning sick with fear... but what I thought about was Caroline. Caroline, cool and beautiful. Caroline's ripe mouth and soft body. I couldn't think of anything else, and I couldn't hate her. I could just want her.

But, now and then, as we rode through the blackness of the desert night, I would remember Weyland. And I could see again the blazing hate in those eyes of his.

We scrubbed ourselves outside the barracks. Standing in big wooden tubs filled with cold well water, we lathered our filthy bodies with yellow soap and rubbed with brushes until the crust of dirt came off. Then, raw and shivering, we went into the barracks and pulled on clean underdrawers and slept.

We slept through the simmering heat of the morning and into the baking, stifling heat of the afternoon. We didn't hear the brittle whang of shovels striking the hard clay earth of the post cemetery, we didn't hear the bugles or the goings and comings of other troopers in the barracks. We slept. And finally, when our bunks were sopping and steamy and the day had mostly passed, we awoke. But I awoke before the others.

I awoke with a big hand on my shoulder and the ugliest face I ever saw grinning into mine.

“Get up, Reardon. They want you over at headquarters.” It was Roff, the first sergeant.

In the back of my mind, before I had time to figure it out, I thought, Well, I don't have to wait any longer. The Colonel's finally decided what to do with me.

“Who wants me?”

“I don't know. The Captain just said for you to report over to headquarters.”

“What's it about?”

“I don't know that, either. But you'd better shave before you go over, if you're goin' to see the Colonel.”

Roff grinned and walked out. My head pounded dully with the heat. My legs ached, and my rump and thighs were saddle-rubbed and sore. Automatically I reached for my garrison shoes and yellow-striped pants and pulled them on. I fumbled until I found my issued razor and soap, then I went outside and lathered and began pulling the week-old beard out of my face. I did it without thinking, the way a man must do such things on his last day, just before they lead him up the thirteen steps and put the black hood over his head and the rope around his neck and let him drop. There didn't seem to be any sense in it, but I did it anyway.

I went back inside and found my garrison cap and a clean blue shirt, because you had to look like a soldier and be a credit to the cavalry arm when you went to see the Colonel. The Colonel was particular about such things. I pulled my suspenders up and tied the yellow neckerchief, and I was ready. As ready as I would ever be.

“Reardon!”

Captain Halan caught me just as I was coming out of the barracks. He was clean-shaven and scrubbed, wearing his best hand-tailored uniform and London boots. He looked as if he had slept, but I didn't know when he had managed it. “I'll go over to headquarters with you, Reardon,” he said.

“Yes, sir. Do you know what it's about, sir?”

He grinned. “Yes, Reardon, I do, but I'll not tell you about it now. Major Burkhoff will do that in good time.” I must have looked puzzled, for Halan laughed. “I don't understand, sir.”

“You will. You will, Reardon, all in good time.” Halan seemed in good humor and well satisfied with himself. I didn't know what to make of it, but I decided I didn't like it. I didn't like that grin of his, or that casual way of talking to me—not the way an officer talks to a common enlisted man. But I couldn't break him down. We walked across the parade without saying anything else, and into the headquarters building. A grizzled old sergeant major looked up as we came in. He looked at me as if he had a special grudge against me.

“Is Major Burkhoff in, Sergeant?” Halan asked.

“Yes, sir. He'll see you now, Captain.”

We went into a small partitioned office where the Major sat red-faced and sweating behind a plank desk. “Rest, Captain,” he said wearily, stopping Halan's salute in mid-air. Then he looked at me as if I were the prize stud in a horse show. “Is this the man?”

“Yes, sir. Trooper Matthew Reardon, the man I mentioned in my report, Major.”

Thoughtfully, Major Burkhoff took a brittle cigar from a box on the desk and rolled it in his mouth to moisten it. The Captain pulled up a chair and sat down, stretching his long legs comfortably. I didn't move. An enlisted man remains at attention in the presence of his officers until he is given permission to rest.

“At ease, Reardon,” Burkhoff said after he'd got his cigar going to suit him.

I relaxed slightly. I didn't understand what was going on, but I would find out soon enough, and I didn't think I was going to like it when I did. The Major had my enlistment papers on the desk now, spread out before him. He sat back looking at the papers, then at me. “Do you like soldiering, Reardon?” he asked abruptly. The question startled me. I had never wondered whether or not I liked soldiering, but I had been a soldier for a good part of my adult life and I was slightly surprised to realize that I had never complained about it.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I like it all right, sir.”

“According to your enlistment papers, Reardon, you were at one time a commander of a troop of cavalry.”

“In the Confederate Army, sir.”

“You must understand,” the Major said, looking at me, “that the war of the rebellion is over and finished. The point is that you have had experience in commanding cavalry, is that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anyway...” He looked at Halan, and I had the feeling that he was grinning—or leering—from behind that shaggy dragoon's mustache of his. “Anyway, Colonel Weyland is a fair-minded man in such matters. It's the Indians we have to contend with now, not the Johnny Rebs. Is that clear, Reardon?”

“Yes, sir.” It was all I could say. Sooner or later he would get around to what he had on his mind.

“As a matter of bald fact,” the Major said, and his voice was suddenly harsh, “we're short of officers here at Larrymoor, Reardon. We're short of officers and we're not getting any replacements. Not even the shavetail pups from the Point that they used to send us. As you know, Mr. Loveridge was killed in your brush with Kohi yesterday—owing to his own damnfoolishness, no doubt, but killed anyway.” He sighed and put his cigar down. “The point is this: Considering the emergency of the situation, Colonel Weyland is empowered to make promotions from the ranks to the grade of second lieutenant —temporary, of course, until it clears Washington. Captain Halan has recommended you for the job, Reardon.”

I don't know how long I stood there letting the idea roll around in my mind. An officer in the United States Cavalry. The idea was ridiculous and completely impossible, for I knew what Weyland would do to a recommendation like that.

“Quite a surprise, isn't it?” Halan grinned.

“Yes, sir. It is.”

“Well, do you want the job, Reardon?”

It wasn't a question of whether or not I wanted the job. There were at least a hundred men on the post who should be ahead of me when the field promotions were handed out. I remembered the sergeant major in the next room, and the look he had given me. He was one of them. And Skiborsky, and Roff, and God knew how many more.

I heard myself saying, “But a thing like this can't just be handed out, can it, sir? Like an EM's promotion?”

“It can if the Colonel says so. And the Colonel says so.”

I couldn't believe it. “Colonel Weyland has already passed on it, sir?”

“The commission is signed and sealed, as far as the post commander is concerned,” Major Burkhoff put in. But he gave me a shrewd, calculating look, and I knew he was thinking of all those other men who deserved promotion ahead of me. The Major didn't understand it either.

The thing didn't make sense. Weyland, I knew, wasn't making me an officer just because he liked what Halan had said about me in his report. But why was he doing it?

For a moment I wondered if maybe Caroline had something to do with it. But I didn't think so. It was the Colonel's idea. The thinking behind it was elaborate and smooth and probably deadly.