Norton, Andre - Novel 15 (22 page)

 
          
 
They ate sparingly of the provisions they
carried. Nowhere else was a second paw mark, although the pool was one well
known and much used by the wild life of the district, as the slender claw marks
of birds, interlaced with the tracks of wolf, lion, skunk, lizard and rat,
testified.

 
          
 
As Tuttle had predicted, the rescued mules
refused to be separated from Bess and followed her without urging, much to her
disgust. And during the afternoon six more were added to this train. There had
been no more fatalities, which Tuttle thought remarkable.

 
          
 
"No sign of the camels."

 
          
 
"For which I continue to be glad,"
Sturgis answered Ritchie's comment. "Those plagued mules are bad enough, but
if we had to pull along those desert schooners, too, I’d

give
up! How long, d'you suppose, are we going to march along with this train
of lop-eared wonders?"

 
          
 
He glanced back at the line of mules. Birke
brought up the rear of the procession, riding heavily, slouched in his saddle
as if his temper was several degrees worse than Sturgis'.

 
          
 
"More trouble!" This time Ritchie
had been the first to sight those drifting black shadows overhead.
"Something else must have gone down with a broken leg or neck."

           
 
This time no wolf fed, but when the sluggish
birds were driven away from their feast, the men stood staring. Ritchie
blinked. Those remnants of white hide were smooth and glossy as if the animal
had been well cared for. He said aloud what they all thought.

 
          
 
"But we didn't have any white
mules!"

 
          
 
Tuttle, using the barrel of his rifle, tried
to roll the head over. ''Broke a leg, clip 'n clean."

 
          
 
"And then was shot through the
head." Lieutenant Gil-more squatted down to look, though he did not
attempt to touch the battered thing.

 
          
 
"Dead maybe two-three hours," Tuttle
went on.
"Blood still sticky."

 
          
 
"It ain't our'n." Birke kicked at
the carcass. "The Cap'n, he wouldn't have
no
whites when he was choosin' up the mulada."

 
          
 
"Only one mule like this in these
parts," Herndon said slowly.

 
          
 
And Ritchie remembered where he had seen that
mule walking delicately along the trail, a small, rough-coated dog barking from
the pack saddle on its back.

 
          
 
"Diego's!"

 
          
 
"Where is the saddle?" Woldemar
looked about him as if he expected it to appear magic-wise from the sand and
stunted bushes.

 
          
 
"A question we would all like to have
answered," Gil-more said dryly. "That saddle must have been
shifted—"

 
          
 
"To one of our'n!"
Birke broke in. "He picked one of our'n, Lootenant, 'n marched off with
it! But what's he doin' 'way out here? This ain't the road to Abiqui—'n that's
where he said he was goin'."

 
          
 
"No, it is not!" Gilmore's lips made
a thin line under his trimmed mustache. "Sefior Diego seems to carry his
pose of insanity a little too far. Tuttle, if we turned these mules into that
small box canyon we saw back there and did a little stone-rolling to close it
up, would they stay safe until we returned?"

 
          
 
"Guess so, Lootenant.
Thar's
grass 'n water in thar.
'N we'd travel a right smart faster if they
weren't hangin' on to our coattails."

 
          
 
"Doesn't that black of
Waterford
's favor his off front leg?" asked
Gilmore of the world at large a few minutes later.

 
          
 
"Bin doin' that for
'bout a week, Lootenant.
Yeah, that thar looks mighty like his track. 'N
this is as good as his name in writinM"

 
          
 
The scout leaned from the saddle and pulled
two long black hairs from the jealous grip of a thorny stem. "Let's mosey
up this break a piece. Seems like the black favors side trips. Here's 'nother
piece of his hide flappin' in the breeze—"

 
          
 
"In there?" Gilmore had pulled rein
at the narrow red and yellow walled cut. It was a narrow slash in the
lichen-stained mountain, as sharply dug as if it had been laid open by a giant
dragoon sabre. There was no suggestion of water or vegetation within, but
Tuttle was waving a second black hair.

 
          
 
"Don't look likely, I'll admit,"
agreed the scout. "But critters do queer things.
Them
bosses started runnin' from a combination of devil smells last night—wolf 'n
Injun. 'N they might have had their brains riled up for a time after. The black
musta gone this way, 'n a boss ain't likely to break outa the herd 'n go off on
his own."

 
          
 
But they were reluctant to enter that gap. The
sun heat, reflected back by the bare rock, was of furnace quality, and it was hard
to believe that any horse had chosen to go this way over the bad footing they
found within the slash.

 
          
 
Sturgis had swung his carbine to ready, and
the rest echoed his gesture. The pinch of rock about them had taken on the
appearance of a trap. Their advance was more of a crawl, which, without orders,
they had made as soundless as possible.

 
          
 
That was why, when the scream came, it almost
shook them from their saddles. They crowded together, a handful of men and
nervous, sweating horses caught in a pocket of blood-red rock.

 
          
 
There was only one of those long tortured
cries. Ritchie tried to believe it a lion's squall or even the protest of a
hunting eagle. But Tuttle put an end to that flight of imagination.

 
          
 
''Hoss!"

 
          
 
Somewhere up ahead a horse had died—died,
because that cry had surely only been torn out of the laboring lungs of a
mortally wounded creature.

 
          
 
"Can't climb
here!"
Herndon measured the sheer walls around them with an expert
eye.
"Might be some footholds farther on."

 
          
 
"Maybe a cat got the critter."
Tuttle mouthed a square of his strong black tobacco. "Shall we keep goin',
Lootenant?"

 
          
 
"We should know more about what we're
heading into."

 
          
 
"Can do, Lootenant.
Scott—?"

 
          
 
Herndon was already out of his saddle and had
tossed his reins to Ritchie as the scout gave his to Woldemar. Together they
crawled forward.

 
          
 
"I smell smoke!" Sturgis sniffed
down the break.
"Just once in a while—there!
Smell that?"

           
 
But no one answered because somewhere ahead a
rifle cracked, and the discharge of a carbine rang and re-echoed from the
stone.

 
          
 
"Lordy!" Sturgis was already kneeing
his horse on. "What did they run into—the whole Apache army?"

 
          
 
But when they burst out into the small valley
the break led into, the fight was over, or almost so. Flames sputtered, and the
stench of burning meat was strong. Brown skin, red headcloths, high white
moccasins—Ritchie had seen those all before. Only then the ground under them
had been white instead of green.

 
          
 
"Dismount! Birke get back with the
horses! The rest of you fan out!" Gilmore's snapped orders brought them
into action.

 
          
 
"Take it easy, Lootenant," advised
Tuttle's drawl from out of a bush clump. "Them what was havin' lunch might
not be all of the varmints. They hazed the black in here 'n had steaks offen
him quicker than yo' could say Colonel Gibson—"

 
          
 
"Say—look there!" Sturgis arose to
his knees behind an aloe.

 
          
 
A small white animal trotted purposefully out
of the bushes and came to the fire, stopping twice to nose the dead warriors.

 
          
 
"That's Perro—Diego's dog! Here, boy,
here—"

 
          
 
Perro faced about at the sound of his name.
His pink tongue lolled out of his jaws as if he were laughing at all of them.

 
          
 
"Come on, boy—here!"

 
          
 
"Stay down, yo' doggoned fool!"
Tuttle's voice was whiplash sharp.

 
          
 
Perro came forward a step or two. If he had
been an Apache captive, he had been a well-treated one. He was still a sleek
little beast, and the light flashed from the silver knobs on the collar he
still wore.

 
          
 
Apparently he decided that they were worth
investigating. He started for the aloe behind which Sturgis crouched. And he
was almost into its shade when a piercing whistle brought him about and sent
him running back beyond the fire down the slope of the valley and out of sight
into a clump of dwarfed cottonwood.

 
          
 
''So we didn't git all of 'em after all."
Tuttle pulled himself out of hiding, and Herndon appeared just beyond him.

 
          
 
"That's torn it wide open," said the
Sergeant bitterly. *'If we'd only been able to cut behind the fire before that
dog-"

 
          
 
"That thar's a pile of ifs." Tuttle
had already reloaded, and now he carried his rifle at an angle ready for use.
"Sure, 'n if we was the hull army, we could go gallopin' along like Napoleon.
But now—"

 
          
 
Gilmore waved up Birke and the horses.
"Better back-trail?"

 
          
 
The old scout nodded. "If Diego's alive
'n ridin' with 'em, he ain't goin' to leave us alive to talk. That crowd will
jump up some dust on our trail right away. He'll ride spur on 'em until they
do. 'N if we still want to be eatin' 'n breathin' tomorrow, we better lift foot
mighty fast tonight!"

 
          
 
"Hosses ain't so bright 'bout that,"
commented Birke sourly.

 
          
 
"Let's hope then some of those mules we
left back yonder have been ridden before
. '
Cause if
they haven't, they're going to be!" Sturgis burst out.

 
          
 
For the first time Herndon favored him with a
glance that had a shade of real approval in it. But Sturgis did not see that; he
was already urging his tired horse toward the narrow opening of the break.

 
          
 
''Take it easy, son," called Tuttle.
"If those friends of our'n have ambush in their heads—why, this bottleneck
will be the proper place for it."

 
          
 
The Lieutenant was frowning. "I don't
know this country—we're off all the maps. If we go down the valley, we may get
into something worse. I can't see anything to do but head back—"