Norton, Andre - Novel 15 (25 page)

 
          
 
An impatient shake brought Ritchie out of a
horrible dream. He hunched up. The Sergeant had already turned away.

 
          
 
“Up 'n out."
Tuttle slid, as easily as a black-tailed rattler, over the barricade. “Diego's
fool dog may have done some barkin' in the night, son, but he ain't hangin'
'round now. Leastwise thar's no sign. We can hit the trail 'fore the sun starts
broilin'."

 
          
 
Breakfast was enough hardtack to make two good
bites. But Ritchie chewed it in a mouth so dry that he could hardly make an
impression on the flinty flakes of the stuff. He eyed his canteen longingly.
But until they found a real spring he knew better than to indulge that longing.

 
          
 
"The wounded hero on his way home from
the wars!" Sturgis' voice was not what it had been, but his mind was clear
enough. He lay half-propped against the blanket and saddle support they had
built behind him the night before. Rags of a blue shirt made a cumbersome
bandage roll about the upper half of his chest, and his hand trailed limply
across his thighs.

 
          
 
“I can't shoot," he told Ritchie, ''but
if we run into the devils, maybe I can load with one hand. Well, Sergeant, come
to get me aboard?" he asked over Ritchie's shoulder as Herndon came up
with a horse. "Hello—that isn't Blackie -it's Birke's-"

 
          
 
"Blackie's a leetle too brisk for a
one-armed man," Tuttle explained.

 
          
 
Sturgis' head was up. "Birke isn't going
to ride him! Blackie won't stand for that big ape beating him—"

 
          
 
"No." Herndon bent over the Southerner.
"I'll ride Blackie. I'm giving Birke Woldemar's mount."

 
          
 
It took three of them to get Sturgis into the
saddle. And Ritchie did not miss the look which Herndon and Tuttle exchanged
when it was done. He had a moment of pure panic when he imagined what might
happen if they were ambushed for the second time in one of the winding turns of
this break country—ambushed with the helpless Sturgis in their midst.

 
          
 
"Could do with a drink—" Sturgis
murmured. Through the matted hairs of his neglected beard, his pale tongue
licked paler lips.

 
          
 
"We all could," agreed the Sergeant.
He unslung his canteen and held it for the Southerner.

 
          
 
Ritchie took that for an order. But he barely
wet his lips with the flat, faintly odorous stuff inside. Birke swallowed three
or four times from his canteen and even smacked his lips as he drove the
stopper back in. Ritchie moved closer to Tuttle.

 
          
 
"What chance of finding water?"

 
          
 
"As good as any we got, son. We'll jus'
hope the chips are runnin' our way today."

 
          
 
When they had come into this stretch of
country the night before, it had been too dark to see it clearly. But now raw
color struck them face on. Bold slashes of it drew the sun until they had to
squint
their eyes against the glare. In the same rock wall
Ritchie counted splashs of red, blue, purple, yellow, and white as clearly laid
on as if by giant paint brushes. It was a wildly broken land, too, jagged
colorful canyons opening in crooked patterns, with now and then a glimpse of a
forest-crowned mesa high enough beyond their reach to torture them with its
promise of coolness and concealment.

 
          
 
The whole country was a maze of dazzling,
sun-blazoned colored walls and blue-black shadows through which they moved
half-blindly. Why, thought Ritchie hopelessly, half the Apache nation might
crouch here undisturbed to watch the struggles of their quarry, able to pick
them off at leisure.

 
          
 
Tuttle scouted ahead. Now more than ever they
were dependent upon his knowledge painfully acquired as a Mountain Man. If
their circling would ever allow them to cross Sharpe's trail, it would be
because of Tuttle's guidance. But every time the scout slipped ahead, a little
shadow of fear darkened the day for Ritchie. They could not do without Tuttle.

 
          
 
Birke tramped heavily, jerking Woldemar's
patient horse at his heels. He carried his carbine at ready, and his eyes swept
the rocky walls as might those of a cornered and so doubly dangerous puma. He
had not spoken all morning, and during their rest halts he had sat apart.

 
          
 
Taking turns, Herndon and Ritchie walked
beside Sturgis, ready with a steadying hand when the wounded man needed it.
They alternated this with duty as rear guard. But as the morning passed without
incident, their fear of pursuit faded, and the hope that Diego had lost them in
the dark grew.

 
          
 
"How about a drink.
Rich?"

           
 
He looked up at Sturgis. Above the fine fair
hair of the beard the Southerner's face was darkly flushed. His eyelids hung
heavy and half-closed.

 
          
 
"Seems like I have a bonfire
inside," the slurred speech went on.
"Could do with
a little water to sort of dampen it down a bit.
Got a drink for me,
Rich?"

 
          
 
Ritchie scrambled up on a rock and pulled the
plug out of his
canteen,
putting it into Sturgis' good
hand and helping him raise it. The wounded man's hand was like a coal of fire.
And Ritchie had to pry the canteen loose when Sturgis had only taken a couple
of swallows.

 
          
 
'"Nother-?"

 
          
 
Ritchie drove in the stopper with a hand which
shook a little. But he was able to say quite firmly, "Not now."

 
          
 
"Hey—water!" Birke's shout brought
them hurrying on.

 
          
 
But the big dragoon's face was a mask of pure
rage as they came up to the pool fed by a finger-sized trickle of spring. And
even as Ritchie brought up his canteen, Birke kicked a rock into the water and
pulled savagely at the trailing reins of the horse, which had made no move to
approach the spring. Herndon dipped a finger in the liquid, smelled it, and then
licked gingerly. He made a wry face and shook his head.

 
          
 
"Salts and alkali—"

 
          
 
With a sigh Ritchie reslung his canteen. He'd
heard enough about what happened if you poured that sort of stuff down your
gullet. He was almost moved to follow Birke's example and kick a few rocks. But
instead he dropped into line as they plodded on.

 
          
 
They were well away from the site of that
disappointment when they came into the black flies ‘territory'. The creatures
lit and stung almost before a man could sight them. And where they stung, the skin
swelled and itched as painfully as it might after a brush with poison ivy. Sturgis
began to moan feebly, flapping his good hand at his face and neck. Herndon's
beard-shadowed cheeks showed the red blotches, and Ritchie gritted his teeth
against the torment. A meeting with Apaches seemed the lesser of two evils
now—in fact he could almost welcome such a diversion.

 
          
 
Herndon had stopped, and when Ritchie looked
up to see why, he motioned him up. As he came, the Sergeant spoke tersely
through bitten and swollen lips.

 
          
 
"Keep Sturgis quiet if you can. There're
lizards here— might be able to get one—"

 
          
 
He pointed to a rockslide which in times past
must have thundered down the side of the canyon, bearing with it trees from the
mesa to form a wild tangle of sun-bleached and dried roots and splintered
trunks. Lizards, whose scales winked with the glints of jewels, swarmed in this
reptile paradise, skimming like flashes of colored light between one hole and
another. Herndon cut a long switch from a bush. Then he sat down and drew off
his boots before approaching the hunting ground.

 
          
 
Ritchie had heard that the Apaches ran down
and killed with a switch the lizards of the desert, which they esteemed as
food. But his stomach still was uneasy at the thought of touching such meat
himself. However, the few scraps of hardtack and jerky they carried would not
last long. And if they were to have the strength to go on, they must learn to
live off the country. He resolutely swallowed his queasiness and hoped that
Herndon would be lucky.

 
          
 
But the Sergeant, perhaps made clumsy by his
very eagerness, was not successful. He pounced and struck without results as
far as Ritchie could see.

           
 
Sturgis was growing restless; he was moaning
regularly now. And once or twice he muttered, "Water!" The skin of
his arms and body where not protected by the roll of bandage showed thick welts
left by the fly bites. Ritchie put down his carbine and unbuttoned his own
sun-faded shirt. He rebuttoned it capewise about the unresisting Sturgis. Then
he tried to adjust his neckerchief to cover his own back as far as possible. He
was still tugging at it when Herndon returned, the broken switch dangling from
his fingers.

 
          
 
As he came up, he snapped the stick in two and
threw it away. And, saying nothing, he waved Ritchie on, dropping back to play
rear guard. Birke and Tuttle had disappeared ahead while the lizard hunt was in
progress, so that now the three were alone, walled in by the multi-colored rock
of the endless canyon that led nowhere but deeper into the center of a maze of
sun-baked, waterless rock and mocking mesa. They would just go on and on,
thought Ritchie wildly for a moment, on and on and on until their feet could
move no longer, and then they would lie never to be found—

 
          
 
"It's a grand morning." Those words
came from the man at his side.

 
          
 
Sturgis was erect in the saddle, looking about
him with a show of real interest.

 
          
 
"A grand morning," he repeated.
"The scent will lie right, gentlemen. I'll wager Belle will find within
the quarter hour. Have I any takers?"

 
          
 
He waited courteously and then nodded in
answer to some expected reply. "Fifty it is, Jeffrey. You hear that,
gentlemen?
Fifty that Belle will find within the quarter
hour.
She's a keen-nosed old girl, and there isn't a fox in the valley
that can outwit her in the chase—"

 
          
 
Ritchie had to look about him. Sturgis was
conjuring up a picture so vividly that he could almost see those other shadowy
riders, too. But Sturgis had forgotten his horsemen almost as quickly as he had
summoned them. Instead he was now smiling at a greasewood bush, and the smile
which lit up his flushed, bitten face was one Ritchie had never seen there
before.

 
          
 
"Louisa—" He was eager, welcoming.
But a moment later some of that eagerness died, the shade of boyish gaiety
faded out of his eyes. "Louisa," he said again, not welcomingly but
questioningly. Then the smile disappeared altogether, and he added sharply,
"You do not understand. A friendly wager between gentlemen—" He
stopped short as if interrupted and then went on almost bitterly.

 
          
 
"It shall be as you wish then, Louisa. I
shall not come to Greenhaven again unless you signify I am welcome. Good
day."

 
          
 
Ritchie pulled the reins. The horse, head hanging,
followed. But Sturgis was still stiff-backed in the saddle. His face was dusky
red, and his eyes watched what Ritchie could not see. Then he laughed
recklessly and harshly, as if anger not pleasure had brought that sound out of
him.