Norton, Andre - Novel 15 (26 page)

 
          
 
"Won again, eh, Jeffrey? For you the old
saying doesn't hold, does it? You're lucky both ways, aren't you, man? What do
I mean? Why"—he laughed again and it was all anger—"you are
infernally lucky with the ladies, too—"

 
          
 
Sturgis stopped and drew a deep breath. When he
spoke again, his voice was chill and cold.

 
          
 
"Haines will act as my second, I believe.
You will excuse me, please, gentlemen—"

           
 
They went on. Sturgis was so deeply lost now
in that other world that he had no touch with the present one. He did not try
any longer to beat off the punishing flies that traveled with them in spite of
Ritchie's ineffectual efforts to brush them away. Then, for the third and last
time, he brought his dream world alive for Ritchie, too.

 
          
 
"You are mistaken, Louisa." His
voice was still cold and infinitely remote. "The matter is no longer a
private one. I was struck. Only a public and complete apology can answer that.
And do you honestly expect Jeffrey to make that gesture? No, we shall not
discuss this further—this is an affair of honor, which has only one
answer
now—a meeting." He paused, his attitude that of
a man listening with strained courtesy to a plea that appeared to him to be
utter folly.

 
          
 
"Do you realize, Louisa, that
were
I to follow that suggestion I could no longer live in
this county? Dueling is an accepted procedure among gentlemen. Men forgive in
time most of the sins—but they do not forgive cowardice. You want me to play
the coward before my own kind. That is not worthy of either of us, my dear. I
think you had better go now—before we both speak those things better left
unsaid—"

 
          
 
Ritchie could not stand to listen any longer.
He dared to give Sturgis a slight shake and then was conscience-stricken when a
little cry of pain answered him.

 
          
 
"Sturgis!
Sturgis!"

 
          
 
The Southerner shook his head as if to
dislodge some dizziness.

 
          
 
"A cold morning, Haines," he
continued, now so enmeshed in the dream that not even pain could break through
to him. "No sun, I think. That is good—"

           
 
His right hand came up from the saddle horn,
its fingers crooked as if they encircled something. He raised that hand,
pointing the invisible weapon before him. For a long moment he sat so; then the
trigger finger moved, moved with the ease of long practice. Ritchie could
almost hear the sound of that shot.

 
          
 
Sturgis turned his head and looked over
Ritchie as if consulting someone standing a little beyond.

 
          
 
''Through the heart, I think, Haines. Jeffrey
always did tend to fire—to fire—to fire—wide—" The red-welted face
crumpled about the mouth like a child's, and like a frightened and beaten child
Sturgis gave an odd little wail. Slowly he began to slip, and as Ritchie sprang
forward, he fell, a dead weight which carried Ritchie with him to the ground.

 
          
 
For a moment Ritchie was too winded to move.
He sat there with Sturgis' weight resting across him. And to his horror he saw
the red stain seeping again through the bandages.

 
          
 
"Sergeant!
Herndon!"

 
          
 
The blue eyes opened as he tried to move the
limp body. And Sturgis said, in the conversational tone of one discussing the
weather: *'I killed him, you know, killed my cousin Jeffrey. It was very
quickly done. Only I killed myself, too, just as neatly. Bullet through
Jeffrey—through me, too, me, too—" He was quiet as the Sergeant came up.

 
          
 
Herndon made a quick examination and then
shook his head.

 
          
 
"We can't stay here." Ritchie looked
about the barren cup of rock where they stood. "If we had water—"

 
          
 
Herndon shrugged away that vain wish. "We
can't manhandle him much further, Peters. His wound has opened, and a shaking
might bring on a hemorrhage—it's too near the lung. We'll try to get along as
far as we can—"

 
          
 
Together somehow they put that limp body back
across the horse, and steadying him from both sides, they inched along at a
snail's pace. A sudden turn in the canyon brought them out in another of the
small valleys. Horses stood with lack-luster eyes and trembling legs around a
basin that held water. Birke sprawled some distance away face down. And Tuttle
sat on a rock in a curious hunched position. To Ritchie's surprise, though the
scout looked up when they came, he made no move to aid them.

 
          
 
Herndon started for the pool, but Tuttle shook
his head.

 
          
 
" 'Nother
of
them stinkin' surprises, Scott. Got enough salts in it to kill even an Apache,
mean as the critters are. If we could git up thar now, maybe we'd find us
better drinks—"

 
          
 
"Up there" was the top of the mesa
that provided part of one wall of the valley. From below, the green of the
foliage growing there was a restful band to greet eyes burnt by the vivid
paints of the rocks. And where all that green made such a carpet, surely there
must be water too.

 
          
 
"Tried to git me a look-see," Tuttle
went on
, "
'n got me a tumble instead. Kinda
shook the breath clean outta me for a while." He held both hands to his
right side, and he was breathing in short gusts as if it hurt him to move his
ribs. Herndon watched him with a frown.

 
          
 
"How bad?" the Sergeant demanded
harshly.

 
          
 
Tuttle did not raise his head but peered up
through the half screen of his bushy eyebrows. "Jus' lost my breath a
trifle, son. Nothin' to git all betted up 'bout now—"

 
          
 
"Yeah."
Birke braced himself up on one elbow. His lips worked as if he wanted to spit
but had no moisture in his mouth to spare. 'Tell down 'n busted his fool self.
Now he'll have to be toted, too, 'les yo' git wise, Herndon, 'n leave all the
crocks. Else we
won't never
git out!"

 
          
 
Herndon's fist tightened, but he did not use
it on the lounging dragoon. Instead he kept most of his attention for Tuttle.
With a little sigh, which was more like the wheeze of air expelled from aching
lungs, the scout straightened and took his hands away from his side. But the
knot of pain was still etched deeply between his blue eyes.

 
          
 
"How's Sturgis?"

 
          
 
The Sergeant indicated the body they had eased
down from the horse. He lay very quietly now, a huddle of drab blue and brown
without any life. Tuttle got slowly to his feet and came over. For a minute or
two he examined the still oozing bandages.

 
          
 
''Better call it a day, Scott," he said
to the Sergeant
, "
'n make camp here. The water's
bad, but maybe the bosses will drink. 'N if yo' can figure a way to git up that
thar cliff, we maybe can have us somethin' long 'n cool down our throats,
too—"

 
          
 
"So we're gonna be flies now?"
Birke's voice rose. "Well, I ain't! I ain't goin' up a cliff 'n take a
tumble to bust me all up like yo', Tuttle. I'm damn hungry, 'n I'm eatin' 'n
drinkin' right now!"

 
          
 
Before they could move, he drew Gilmore's
six-barreled revolver. The blast of the shot was not followed by any cry. But
the horse which had borne Sturgis all day sank forward and rolled across the
trampled soil. Birke, with the suppleness of a striking cat, was on the carcass
and his knife plunged deep. Ritchie's stomach heaved violently. He buried his
face in his sweating hands rather than watch what followed.

           
 
The sharp smack of flesh meeting flesh snapped
him out of his sick horror. Birke sprawled full length, but his fingers groped
in the dust for the knife he had dropped, even as his eyes glared with a wild
beast's fury at Herndon. Blood not his own was smeared and slobbered over his
mouth and chin.

 
          
 
The Sergeant kicked, and the knife was gone.
Ritchie darted out and scooped it up. Birke got to hands and knees and
scrambled hastily between a cactus and a boulder, screaming obscenities which
echoed fantastically from the mesa heights.

 
          
 
Herndon walked steadily forward and gathered
up the revolver Birke had dropped in his short flight and the dragoon's
carbine. His face was as unmoved as if the horrible scene had never been.

 
          
 
"All right!" the Sergeant snapped.
He handed the revolver to Ritchie and dropped Birke's carbine by the scout.
"There's a barrel cactus down there aways—"

 
          
 
"Rats, eh?" Tuttle nodded. "Try
it, boy. They ain't bad eatin'—kinda like squirrels—"

 
          
 
For once their bad luck did not hold. The
barrel cactus had been hollowed out by the sharp rodent teeth of the
bushy-tailed cactus rats until it was only a shell housing several families,
all of whom were not quick enough to move. Swinging half a dozen small shapes
by their tails, the hunters came back to camp. But Herndon's eyes measured the
rocky top of the mesa.

 
          
 
"How are you for heights?"

 
          
 
Ritchie shrugged. "All right, I guess.
I've never done much climbing, but I don't get dizzy easily."

 
          
 
"We're going to try that one
tomorrow." Herndon nodded toward the cliff. "We'd do better on
water—if can find it!"

 
          
 
Ritchie could not sleep. He had passed the
point of sheer exhaustion to encounter its worst neighbor, a fatigue so deep
that he could not escape it into unconsciousness. Overhead the stars were
bright and clear, sharply cut as if he could reach out a grimy finger and touch
them. And the bark of a coyote carried like a bugle call across the ranges.
Each rock and cliff showed perfect edges, as if they had been cut from paper
with a very keen-bladed pair of scissors. Slowly he pulled himself up on his
elbows.

 
          
 
Horse meat, half-seared,
half-raw, lay heavy in his stomach along with a few bites of cactus rat.
It had gone down hard without water. Maybe tomorrow—he studied that tantalizing
mesa top. In the black and white of the night it was startlingly clear.

 
          
 
Something moved.
Birke
venturing out of cover?
He had sulked just beyond the camp all evening,
ostracized by the others. Ritchie's hand swept to his carbine without thought.
A hunched shape detached itself from the rocks by the bitter spring. It crawled
a little then dropped flat. A faint moan from it brought Ritchie forward.

 
          
 
"Who's
there!
"
The challenge came out of the dark.

 
          
 
"Peters." Ritchie had reached the
huddled shape." Here's Sturgis, sir. I think he's been drinking the
stuff—"

           
 
There was no answer to the soft word Herndon
said then.

 
          
 
"Toss a cactus root on the fire and make
sure!" he ordered from his post.

 
          
 
The flames spread to the stump, and the light
touched Sturgis' face. There was a slime of wetness across his chin to make
Ritchie's foreboding sure.

 
          
 
"He did-"

 
          
 
Someone else sighed. "Wal, that 'bout
puts the lid on it, son—"

 
          
 
The Sergeant's bootheels clicked on the stone
as he came into the circle of firelight. He stood looking down at Sturgis'
flaccid body. His thin face was a chip of weathered granite.

 
          
 
"I didn't think he had the strength to
reach it," he muttered. "Well, let's get him back—the damage is done
now—"

 
          
 
"Any chance?"
Ritchie straightened the blankets from the tangle Sturgis had left behind on
his fatal crawl.

 
          
 
"While a man's still breathin',
son," Tuttle returned, "thar's always hope. Only to swill that stuff
would rock a well man back on his heels, 'n Sturgis—he's lost a powerful lot of
blood. He ain't a well man—"

 
          
 
Ritchie dropped down beside the Southerner who
was moaning again. "I'll stay here. If he tries it again, he'll have to
crawl over me—"

 
          
 
Somehow he actually slept after that. When he
awoke, the sky was already light. Sturgis had ceased to moan. His face was a
dirty gray against the rough blanket, and he was breathing heavily in a way
which seemed to shake his whole body.

 
          
 
Ritchie, stiff and aching, got clumsily to his
feet. Gold was cutting across the green of the mesa. More than ever it seemed
an unobtainable paradise.

 
          
 
"Rise 'n shine,
son."

 
          
 
"Why didn't you call me for
guard!
My tour must have been hours ago—"

 
          
 
"Yo' shouldn't deny an ol' man his
usefulness." The old humor colored Tuttle's voice, but something else lay
beneath that, something which Ritchie could not identify but which made him
uneasy.

 
          
 
"
Them
thar rats
was mighty tasty last night.
A leetle better for invalids
than hoss meat.
Suppose yo' mosey down the canyon a mite 'n look round
for 'nother of their hidey holes—"

 
          
 
Ritchie bent over Sturgis. The Southerner
still slept or else lay in a stupor which held him immovable. He took up his
carbine and prepared to follow the scout's suggestion.

 
          
 
Just beyond the fire Herndon lay, as stiff and
straight as an engraving which had ornamented one of Ritchie's history books.
He was one of the effigies used on the Crusaders' tombs—all he needed was the
dog at his feet, the sword hilt between clasped hands. Nothing in that stern
face had been relaxed by sleep; the lines of pain and fatigue were as deep as
they would be when he awoke. Ritchie stepped over those straight legs and
walked along the sandy ground toward the cactus which might or might not hold
their breakfasts.

 
          
 
It was just beyond the plant they had
demolished the night before in their hunt that he came across something else,
deep and so freshly printed that none of the sand had shifted yet. He awoke
very suddenly out of his half-stupid lethargy.

 
          
 
Yes—and there was a stripped branch with a few
chewed leaves clinging to the
bough.
A second track.
His quarry was going at its own deliberate
pace then, free. If he could only catch up with it and get control! He hugged
that wild hope—it was almost like having a drink of real water! What he did now
might mean all their lives.

 
          
 
Then, beyond the screen of cactus, he saw the
big dun-colored body moving with its curious rocking gait. Ritchie's trot
became a slow crawl as he edged along. It was the best of the camels—the huge "mule,"
which both the driver and Captain Sharpe had so praised. No saddle encumbered
the rising mound of its back, and the short ends of the halter, which dragged
from its lower jaw, were frayed. He squatted down to consider his next move.

 
          
 
All he knew about camels was what he had
picked up during the short time before the stampede. Should he make the wrong
move now and frighten off the beast, there would be small chance of catching up
with it again. This country, as harsh and horrible as it seemed to him, was the
natural land of the slobbering, cud-chewing creature before him.

 
          
 
He rose to his feet and edged out of the
concealing cactus. Rubbing dry lips with a tongue almost as cracked and hard,
he tried to shape the call he had heard the camel drivers use. But his
imitation was not a good one.

 
          
 
The "mule's" rubbery neck swung; the
flattish head
raised
. A half-chewed strip of tasteless
dry stuff wavered from the working jaws as the creature sighted him. Ritchie
stood still. But the camel moved off with the ponderous tread of an animal
which did not fear capture.

           
 
That slow step deceived Ritchie. He threw
aside his carbine and leaped for that bit of halter rope that bobbed below the
clumping jaws. With a swiftness he had not thought possible, the snake head
dodged. Then the camel rocked away through the cactus. Ritchie stumbled and
fell. He
lay
flat, his cheek grinding into the
gravelly soil while sounds tore out of his throat, dry sounds which could not
be muffled by his clawing hands or the dust and sand.

 
          
 
At last, very slowly, he pulled himself up
again. Grimly he crawled back and retrieved his carbine. And, as grimly, he
turned away from the trail the camel had left. There was no use in following it
now; the creature would be alarmed enough to keep out of reach and none of the
horses —even were he able to find one which could still be ridden —would
approach close enough to a camel to capture it.

 
          
 
''Heee—" The call came up the valley. He
guessed it was for him, although it was uncannily close to a coyote's questing
bark. Herndon, Woldemar, and Tuttle had adapted that as a signal on their
hunting trips. He started back dispiritedly.

 
          
 
Beside the fire Tuttle was tending, he told of
his failure.

 
          
 
“I’m thinkin' that critter won't be goin' far.
Them brutes
is
more civilized than mule or bosses.
They
ain't never
lived wild out here. Like as not
it'll come around agin when it sniffs us out—"

 
          
 
"A good meat reserve—even if we can't put
it to work," Herndon answered almost absently. Most of his attention was
given to the mesa wall. "Where did you try climbing yesterday,
Jesse?"

 
          
 
''Over thar—where that thar
prong sticks out a mite-jus' like a yearlin' buck's antler.
Goes up nice
'n easy ten feet 'r so, then she busted off right when I was changin' grips 'n
down I came!"

 
          
 
"Hmm."
Herndon went back to the work which had held him on Ritchie's return from the
hunt. He was braiding into one the two lariats which he and Tuttle had always
carried coiled on their saddles.

 
          
 
“Eat your breakfast, Peters," he said
over his shoulder. "We'll try climbing when I get this in shape."

 
          
 
Sturgis was still in the half stupor, and of
Birke there was no sign. Since his disappearance into the brush the night
before, he had not shown himself, but there were indications he was still near.
Most of the extra weapons of the camp, Ritchie noticed, lay close to Tuttle.
The old scout still sat in a curiously cramped position, favoring his side as
he had the night before.

 
          
 
Ritchie choked down the scraps of meat they
had left for him and allowed himself one scant swallow from his canteen.
Another such and it would be bone-dry.

 
          
 
After a survey Herndon decided that, in spite
of Tuttle's accident, the place the scout had chosen for his ascent the night
before was still the best point to attempt.

 
          
 
"Where's Birke?" Ritchie wanted to
know.

 
          
 
"Up yonder."
Tuttle pointed up the valley. "He's after cactus rats. As long as we have
his knife 'n guns, I ain't afeared of trouble. Now watch yoreselves,
boys—"

 
          
 
Herndon and Ritchie tied the canteens to their
belts, having poured all the water left into the one Tuttle kept.

 
          
 
"Don't worry." For the first time
Herndon's tight lips stretched into a kind of death's-head grin. "We'll
grow lizard pads on our fingers and toes and be down again before you know
it!"

 
          
 
"All right, all
right."
Tuttle chuckled. "Laugh at an old man, will
yo' ?
I'll sit right here 'n like as not shoot me a bear.
'Member one bear as I shot oncet, weighed nigh six-hundred pounds skinned, he
did. Had hisself raking claws 'bout four inches long—"

           
 
"And you killed him with a bowie
knife?" asked the Sergeant.

 
          
 
The lightness of question and tone were so
much in contrast to his face that Ritchie almost dropped the canteen he held.
But Herndon was already heading for the cliff, and he had to hurry to catch up.

 
          
 
They rounded the spur Tuttle had pointed out
and saw before them an expanse of rough, pitted rock which seemed to offer a
maximum of handholds. Following Herndon's example, Ritchie pulled off his boots
and threw aside his hat, twisting his neckerchief around his head like an
Apache's turban.