Norton, Andre - Novel 15 (15 page)

 
          
 
"Any chance of Tuttle
bringing in some game?"
Herndon looked up from his file of reports
to ask. .

 
          
 
''No."
Woldemar's one absorbing interest, outside the affairs of Company K, was in the
fauna of this wild country. He had tried to raise a fawn on mare's milk, had
tamed and trained squirrels, and had kept a snake-fighting road runner for two
whole seasons. *'In this weather the deer, they are gone, and the turkeys—they
vanish! There are hungry Indians now begging in the town."

 
          
 
"We might round up Diego. The men seem to
like his show," Herndon suggested.

 
          
 
"Now I will tell you one very odd thing,
my friend." Woldemar laid down his pen. "Diego, he has not come to
the fort for weeks. I do not think that he is any longer in the town. He has
not been here since the day of the paymaster's ambush—"

 
          
 
"Hmm. Weren't there rumors of a man with
a performing dog visiting the
Temple
camp a day or two before they were
ambushed? I was in Burwyen then, but I think I remember mention of that on the
final report."

 
          
 
"That was so. And it was Diego who was
the visitor. I myself saw him—"

 
          
 
Herndon slewed around in his chair. "I
forgot you were one of the survivors, Fred. So Diego
ivas
there. It might be interesting to know just how many other times Diego has
appeared in forts and camps before a raid—"

 
          
 
For a moment the German sergeant stared, and
then he laughed. "It sounds foolishment—what you talk now, Scott. You have
read too much, maybe, of those wild adventure tales in the Ledger. You see a
spy in Diego. He is no Indian —he is Mexican. His family, they were all killed
by the Apaches. He would not act as a spy for them."

 
          
 
"And who told us that sad story about his
family? He did. No, we might never be able to prove anything, but I shall feel
easier if Diego keeps away from here. A very suspicious form of ill luck seems
to follow him. And let's hope that Tuttle can turn up something for
dinner."

 
          
 
There was silence except for the scratching of
their pens until stable call. But Herndon's shelving of the problem could not
keep them from thinking.

 
          
 
When Ritchie went back to the barracks that evening,
he found Sturgis pacing impatiently up and down.

 
          
 
"At last!"
He caught Ritchie by the arm. "How much cash can you raise right
away?"

 
          
 
"About four bits.
Why?"

 
          
 
"I'm hot, I know it!" There were
sparks in his eyes; he could not keep his hands still. "I've a pass. If I
can get a stake and use it tonight, I can cash in. But Quinn won't let anyone
gamble on tick—I'll have to have money to put on the board. Don't put on that
Puritan face, boy. I tell you—I'm hot! I know I'll win tonight, but I have to
have the stake to start with. I have to!" He beat his hands together.

 
          
 
Ritchie pulled out the handful of change and
showed it. "Honestly, that's all I have—"

 
          
 
The Southerner gave it a contemptuous glance.
"Chicken feed! I tell you, if I can raise a starting stake, I can take the
house. I know it! Well, there's one way to raise ready cash in town!"

 
          
 
But Ritchie had caught that quick movement o£
the other's questing hands.

 
          
 
"Sturgis!
Don't
be a fool!" He tried to clamp down on the older man's wrist, but he wasn't
fast enough. The other wriggled free with the object he had snatched and was
already halfway down the room. Ritchie stumbled after him.

 
          
 
Sturgis must be mad. Sure, there were plenty
of men in
Santa
Fe
who
would pay good money for government weapons. But if a man was caught selling
side arms, it meant a court martial and prison. He must stop Sturgis before he
got out of the gate. Once the Southerner got into town, he would never be able
to trace him.

 
          
 
There was one chance, to round the barracks
the back way and tackle him beyond the wall of the stables. Ritchie skidded
through the snow along his chosen path. Sturgis would have to slow down to walk
past the sentry.
Then would be the time.

 
          
 
And his luck was in! Sturgis was just by the
gate walking briskly. Ritchie flung himself forward. He did not know how
natural his tumble would look, but all day men had been falling on strips of
ice.

 
          
 
He hit the ground, and a moment later struck
Sturgis. The Southerner let out a surprised yell and came down hard. Ritchie
twisted and sent the elbow of his injured arm into the other's middle. His
right hand went into the flap of Sturgis' coat, and seconds later the pistol
was inside his own shirt. Sturgis lay still on the frozen ground as Ritchie
bent over him solicitously.

 
          
 
“The Captain wished to see me, sir?"
Ritchie stood to attention and hoped that he had forgotten none of the forms.

 
          
 
"Yes." Captain Clark favored him
with more than a glance. “Peters, isn't it? Have you been passed for full duty
yet?"

 
          
 
"Yes, sir.
Yesterday."

 
          
 
"Hmm. Woldemar has put in for a clerk,
and it seems you have been helping him out while on light duty—"

 
          
 
Ritchie wondered what the Captain was leading
up to now.

 
          
 
"Do you wish to put in for clerk,
Peters?"

 
          
 
"No, sir!"

 
          
 
"It might mean promotion—a stripe."

 
          
 
"If the Captain
pleases—no, sir."

 
          
 
"How long have you been in the army,
Peters?"

 
          
 
"I enlisted on the second of July last,
sir."

 
          
 
"And this is the second of February,
i860—almost nine months. Ever think of making a career of it? You have some
education, I believe. There's
West Point
—"

 
          
 
"I prefer to remain in the service here
in the west, sir."

 
          
 
The Captain laid down the paper he had been
holding. There was a little quirk of distaste about his lips as he answered
coldly. "So you are one of those, Peters? Well, what has happened before
you entered the service has nothing to do with your life now. Continue to do
your duty, and you will get along all right.
Dismissed."

 
          
 
Ritchie saluted and left. Outside he kicked at
a frozen clod. Now he had put his foot in it—he and his big mouth. The Captain
believed that he was hiding out in the army, had done something back home so
bad he couldn't face it. All because he didn't want to be sent back east! There
were others in the ranks
who
couldn't go back—he was
pretty sure that Sturgis was one of them. And maybe even Herndon. Anyway he had
changed the Captain's mind about appointing him clerk. He could be sure of
riding into action with the troop and not being tied to a stool and a pen all
day.

 
          
 
“Hey, Rich!"
Sturgis came up behind him. ''Didn't you hear—mail's in!"

 
          
 
“Mail!"
He
forgot about the interview as if it had never been and went pounding off in the
direction toward which almost all the personnel of the fort seemed to be
heading.

 
          
 
Later, when he shared his bunk with three fat
letters and a package, he turned his share of the loot carefully over and over.
The world it had come from seemed so far away and almost fabulous now. And yet
he had once been a part of
iL
He carefully slit the
first envelope.

 
          
 
Laura wrote elegantly with curly capitals, her
violet-ink words marching in slightly crooked lines down the page a little
extravagantly. It was almost like hearing her talk. But what she spoke of was
so foreign to him now that he had to reread sentences and sometimes whole
paragraphs to understand.

 
          
 
May was more staid, careful to put in what she
thought might interest him most, but the notes about the doings of his former
schoolmates were also far removed from here and now.

 
          
 
As he read, he flexed his scarred hand as he
did conscientiously whenever he thought of it. Herndon had suggested doing that
as a remedy for the stiffness which had frightened him so much when the last
bandage had been removed. And now he glanced from the page he held to that hand
bearing the twisted red brand which would never fade. They didn't go very well
together.

 
          
 
A little reluctantly he opened Aunt Emma's
letter. With its stiff phrasing he oddly felt more at home. Sometimes, he
chuckled, sometimes Aunt Emma sounded just a little like Sergeant Woldemar!

 
          
 
"Good news?"

 
          
 
Sturgis was shuffling together the pages of
the one letter he had received. And from his looks it had not contained any of
that
commodity
.

 
          
 
"Just my aunt.
Her ideas of army life are a little peculiar at times.
Bad
news?"

 
          
 
"Oh, they've hung that troublemaker John
Brown. My kid brother went to see him turned off. D'you
know
,
Rich, if those abolitionists don't keep their long noses at home and tend to
their own business, there's going to be a smashup before long. A bunch of
northern hypocrites can't come down and tell us what to do!" He stuffed
his letter in his pocket. "Every state has a right to decide its own
affairs—"

 
          
 
Ritchie frowned. "But what if it decides
against the good of the country as a whole? Look here, Sturgis, suppose this
arguing does keep up until somebody touches off a powder keg—why, it might even
mean war!"

 
          
 
Sturgis shrugged. "That's what I've been
saying. If they don't leave us alone, there's always secession. Wouldn't take
us long to teach those Yankees to stay home where they belong-"

 
          
 
''Us?
But, Sturgis,
you're in the army—the Army of the
United States
!"

 
          
 
"And just how long do you think this army
is going to last if there is a break between the states? My young innocent,
maybe Herndon, Woldemar, and a few other die-hards will be left here high and
dry, sitting on their tails and wondering how long they'll be safe before the
Apaches learn what's up. The rest of us will be elsewhere."

 
          
 
Ritchie slowly refolded his letters.

 
          
 
"But, if the army goes, then the Apaches
would think they had won. There would be raiding from the Mexican border clear
up to the Mormon towns—"

 
          
 
"Maybe and maybe not.
If the army pulled foot, there'd be a lot of settlers go with us.
Wouldn't be much left in the country after a while.
And who
would care—honestly? Do you think anyone back in
Richmond
or
Atlanta
or
New York
or
Boston
cares about this death trap? We could be
all wiped out tomorrow, and maybe one small paragraph would be written about
us—appearing on the back page of some eastern paper. Why, to most people back
east, there isn't any such country as
New Mexico
at all. And why should there be? Stinking
pest hole where you
either starve
, freeze, or die
under Apache knives! We'd better get out and leave it to the Indians—they like
it!"

 
          
 
"We're still in the army." Ritchie
could not see the flag which hung outside, but he knew that it was there. And
while it was there, they held this stretch of land against the coming of a war
so vicious that no man liked to even think of it. He had never yet ridden to
the smoking ruins of a ranch house and buried what the raiders had left. But he
had heard plenty of tales told by men who had. With that flag gone the whole
countryside would be a funeral pyre within the month.

 
          
 
"What's in your package?"

 
          
 
Ritchie roused and accepted the change in subject.
"Something from the girls—that's Laura's writing." He unwound the
cord and pulled off the wrappings.

 
          
 
"Will you look at
that!
Some one sure loves you, boy. That's a nice bit of foo-fraw—"

 
          
 
Ritchie shook out a square of fine soft silk
badly creased from packing. He had seen such neckerchieves. Herndon and one or
two of the officers had them. They were invaluable in summer worn over nose and
throat on a dusty trail to keep out the thick powder. This was a glowing golden
shade, close to the glisten of a polished button. Sturgis touched the soft
stuff wistfully, trying to smooth it out.

 
          
 
"You can have it up the snoot with the
rest of us when you go sporting that. It's better than the one the Colonel's
wife ordered from the east for him."

 
          
 
"Glad I had the boxes to send the
girls." Ritchie folded away his treasure. "Maybe I can get them some
of that Indian jewelry that
Hastings
was showing around last night."

 
          
 
"Then you'll have to take to
cliff-climbing," Sturgis answered. "He found that under a stone in
one of those ruined cave houses. Scraped out the beads with his fingers and got
that Chinaman in town to string 'em for him. They're pretty, I'll admit."

 
          
 
But what Ritchie remembered was not Sturgis'
stories of cliff-house finds but his dark hint of war and disaster to come. On
the other hand, the Apaches during the following days seemed to have withdrawn
to the ends of the earth for all the news which reached the fort. And Company K
settled into the steady monotony of drill, drill, drill, with only a
paymaster's visit and subsequent disturbances in the town to brighten
existence.

 
          
 
"Peters!" It was Woldemar who caught
him at the door of the barracks one day. *'So you would not be a clerk? Why?
Because you are afraid that when it is time for the guns to go bang, bang you
will not ride with the troop? Ah, I see by your face that that is so. Maybe you
are right—only a little bit right. But what do you do now with yourself?"

 
          
 
Ritchie grinned. ''What do I do? Why,
Sergeant, you know the order of the day. I have very little time for idling, I
assure you."

 
          
 
''Idling? And who was playing at monte the
other night? Yah, always there is mischief for young hands to meddle with. That
is why I now say to you come with us—"

 
          
 
"You?
Where?"

 
          
 
"You will make yourself nice and neat,
and then you will go to Lieutenant Gilmore and you will apply for a mounted
pass. Having that, you will prepare to ride with us—hunting. Do you not care
for
that.
Private Peters?"

 
          
 
"I'll say I do!
Right
away, Sergeant?"

 
          
 
"Right away.
We
go to hunt meat for the fort and maybe learn a little about the country. Now
hurry, boy, hurry."

 
          
 
Four of them rode out of the fort with
Gilmore's lank hound and another as huge running easily beside the horses and
the pack mule. The Lieutenant himself was not with them, but Herndon had
authority to take the dogs. It was midmorning, and the air was clear. The snow
which had blanketed them in remained only in draggled patches. Tuttle held his
head high, drawing in great breaths, and Woldemar chuckled.