Norton, Andre - Novel 15 (31 page)

 
          
 
"If anyone tries to build a dam between
Apache raids, he isn't going to find it easy."

 
          
 
"The Apaches will go. That won't be easy
either. It may take years of fighting to drive the last warrior out of these
mountains. But the Apache will go and white men will come—because we are land
hungry, greedy for our own holdings, and we spread out and take and take. Fifty
years from now there will be trains running through such valleys as this one,
settlements, cities, live land—"

 
          
 
Ritchie, propping his chin on his hands,
watched the heart of the fire dreamily. The smoke curled up into the night and
vanished. Back in the towers hearth fires had once burned. Then came the killing
fires, and the towers were left to the wind and the rains, to the desert sun
and the lash of lightning bolts.

 
          
 
The tower people had gone long ago. And now he
and Herndon were fighting their own private war in the same setting, and they
would pass on. But maybe later would come those who would not go, who would
linger and with water as their tool would rise up to conquer the deserts and
wastelands.
And after them—?

 
          
 
He rolled over on his back and closed his eyes
for a moment. When he had cleared the glare of the fire out of his eyes, he
could look up into the night and count the low hanging stars. They never seemed
so bright or close in the skies back home—as if you could reach up and pick a
cluster of them for the fun of it.

 
          
 
"You going to try to build a dam?"
he asked abruptly.

 
          
 
“No, not dams.
But
this country gets into a man's blood. I don't think I shall ever leave
it—willingly. I've four years to go on this hitch before I'm free to choose
anyway."

 
          
 
"There's all that secession
talk
—" Ritchie stopped. He remembered too vividly the
one who had first suggested trouble to come.

 
          
 
"Yes, a lot can happen in four years. But
the land will wait. Once I heard a chieftain—he wasn't an important man, just
the leader of a handful of fighters who had been starved and beaten out of
their hold in the hills. But he knew how to talk—Indians do, you know. They put
things into words very well. And he said to our commander when he came to make
peace, 'I have drunk of these waters; I am a part of this land.' "

 
          
 
Ritchie repeated those words softly. They did
sound good and real.

 
          
 
In the morning the water had shrunk away to a
few stinking, muddy pools far apart. And there was no more hunting. Herndon had
restrung the Apache bow, but with that weapon he proved to be a poor marksman.
To their mutual surprise Ritchie had the hand and eye for the more primitive
weapon and was able to knock over a jack rabbit and pick up a ring-tailed cat,
limp after a last despairing kick.

 
          
 
For a day or two Ritchie clung to the hope
that they might find some trace of Bess or the camel. But neither animal had
left any tracks. Either the storming waters had engulfed them or they had taken
some side canyon in search of grazing.

 
          
 
In spite of the drying up of the water, they
kept to the river for a guide. It was the one hope left of getting through the
maze to the Chama. Now the few bright hours that had followed their victory in
the valley of the Torreones were only a dim memory. They only dared wet their
mouths with the muddy water sloshing in the bottoms of their canteens, and they
ate lizard and once snake. But they went on.

 
          
 
Strips from their shirts were bound
turban-wise about their heads for sunshields, taking the place of hats lost
long ago. Their skins were thorn-torn and so burned that they were as dark as
Apaches. They seldom spoke after they cached the useless carbine in a niche.
There was still a load of ammunition for the rifle, so Herndon trailed it. And
they kept on.

 
          
 
They drank from a chemical-infused spring
because their thirsty bodies had grown stronger than their dulled minds. And
then they were sick, so sick that the following day's journey was the few yards
between the spring and a clump of cacti beneath which they lay at nightfall.
But after hours of racking cramps they crawled on.

 
          
 
Ritchie didn't know which day it was that they
followed the bird—time had no meaning any more. The bird had been brown—rather
like a chicken—and it had run along the ground instead of flying. Herndon had
given a strange, cracked cry when he saw it and had tried to run—not that he
managed to catch it. It had fluttered very easily out of their clutching hands.

 
          
 
But it was the bird which brought them to
water, good water. And the grassy green stuff growing around it, which they
crammed into their mouths, allayed the tearing pain of the cramps. A trickle of
the water seeped away downhill. Ritchie watched that for a long time. Then he
made a great effort and dropped his scarred hand into it, feeling the soft
caress across his skin.

 
          
 
''The—Chama—" A hand, which was all bones
under a tight stretch of skin, caught at his shoulder and tried to pull him up.
He stared up at the brown face of a mummy. There were red-rimmed eyes in it,
oozing tears which dribbled down into a mat of sun-rusted beard.
"Chama," the thin voice repeated.

 
          
 
Chama!
Once that must have
meant something.
But he couldn't remember what. It was of no importance.
He tried to free himself from that bony grip.

 
          
 
''Chama!"
Broken
nails bit into him; the weak tug grew stronger.

 
          
 
He raised his head. There was more water
below—much more water. But all the water in the world couldn't save them now.
Ritchie knew that deep inside. And he didn't care. It was no longer important
to get up on the torn feet —from which the last scrap of boots had sloughed
days ago —to keep wavering toward a goal beyond the next ridge. He couldn't go
on.

 
          
 
He
lay
back again and
felt blindly for the cool water. But the skeleton hadn't given up. It was on
its knees, and with fumbling, pitiful movements it was loading the rifle.

           
 
The bullet slipped through trembling fingers
and must be searched for on the ground, with a whimper of relief to mark its
recovery. Then it was done, and Herndon fired into the air. As the sound echoed
and re-echoed, the rifle slipped out of his hands and he pitched forward,
striking hard across Ritchie's legs. Ritchie moaned. It was growing dark, and
he could no longer feel the water trickling through his cramped fingers.

 
          
 
A strip of bright yellow made a pattern on a
white expanse. And it moved. Then there was another light, brighter, which came
and went. Sometimes it bothered his eyes. If he watched either long enough, he
slipped back into the cool, waiting darkness where there were no dreams.

 
          
 
Then he became aware of the table. It was
smooth, but he could see the grain of the wood. All lines, something-something
like other lines he had seen, lines drawn by the stub of a battered pencil,
rivers and mountains and tangled canyons. But to remember the pencil and the
lines always made his head ache.

 
          
 
The man came next. He stood beside the table,
and he had a glass in his hand. He made booming sounds which meant nothing, and
he pushed aside the dark in spite of Ritchie's effort to hold it. Sometimes he
brought the light with him, and then he did things to Ritchie's body that hurt.

 
          
 
"—fever gone—"

 
          
 
That was the day those two sounds became
words. The world was coming into focus again. But he still lay on the hospital
cot very tired, sleepy, and ready to go back into the place from which the
surgeon had dragged him.

 
          
 
On the day he was first propped up with
pillows behind him there was the bite of fall in the air. But he was more
interested in the other bed across the room and the man who sat up in it
grinning back at him. There were questions to be asked and answered with long
pauses between the words. They could marvel alike at the thought of that patrol
which had heard their last shot and tracked them down to save them.

 
          
 
Then one morning Ritchie
stood on his two feet before a shaving mirror and studied with grave intensity
the face of a stranger.
All the boyish roundness was gone from cheek and
jaw. The lips were tight, compressed at the corners, straight set, and around
the unsmiling eyes wrinkles had been etched by sun and wind. His own face—he
ran his fingers in exploration along the angle of that jaw. There was something
else. He saw in that murky mirror a faint resemblance to someone else—he
couldn't remember and he frowned.

 
          
 
The door squeaked as Herndon came in. As yet
the old spring was not in his step, and he dropped down on his cot with a real
sigh of relief, lying there staring at the ceiling as fingers which still bore
some likeness to claws worked the buttons of his short cavalry jacket out of
their holes.

 
          
 
Ritchie sat down on a stool by the window and
waited. There were lines of fatigue between Herndon's eyes, but he was
satisfied, satisfied and, in his own way, happy.
Odd how
Ritchie knew that without being told.
He guessed vaguely that he would
always sense things like that now—at least with Herndon. There was a bond
between them—one which would never be put into words. He relaxed in the bar of
sunlight and prompted.

 
          
 
"What did the Old Man want?"

 
          
 
"Had news from Sharpe.
They went through all right."

           
 
Ritchie nodded.

 
          
 
"George Caster and two of his Pima scouts
caught up to them the day after we left. They got back the mules and some of
the horses. We were just a little too previous, I guess—" Herndon's voice
trailed off.

 
          
 
Ritchie remembered graves. Just a little too
previous— the game had been stacked against them that time.

 
          
 
"Sharpe's been promoted and is to
organize a special detail. Going to map more mountains—"

 
          
 
Ritchie was still watching the parade ground
beyond the window, but his attention was all in the room.

 
          
 
"He can pick his own men. If there's
trouble blowing up, he has to be sure—"

 
          
 
Herndon unbuckled his belt. He was still
studying the cracks in the ceiling.

 
          
 
"It seems he has asked for a Sergeant
Herndon—"

 
          
 
Ritchie had to moisten his lips before he
could answer. "You're the right man for a detail like that, Scott."

 
          
 
"A Sergeant
Herndon," the other repeated as if he hadn't heard, "and a Corporal
Ritchie Peters."

 
          
 
Out on the parade ground the chill wind was
ruffling the tails of the mounts. Ritchie could hear the commands— maybe better
with his heart than his ears.

 
          
 
"Stand to horse! Lead out! Count fours!
Mount!"

 
          
 
"I told the Old Man," Scott Herndon
went on, "that he could have the both of us—"